Here is an excerpt from the initial application I made – This collaboration emerged after two full visits to AWC’s Scotia sanctuary in remote NSW – a place where I had both volunteered previoulsy as a field assistant and spent time talking, thinking and preparing. There are times in life when you find something very meaningful and a team who are impassioned – and you know that you want to put energy into it too – this was how I felt – and so – I began to think through how I could use my skills to help build something bigger – something more than just another artwork.. and so I began to look for a way to make it happen. The ANAT Synapse residency is renowned and they were able to accommodate the need to visit several properties and break it into trips working with the field ecologists 🙂
Long Nosed Bandicoot, The Re-introduction Project, ANAT-Synapse Residency (Photo Keith Armstrong, Courtesy of AWC)
Here’s what we planned ..
Keith Armstrong and SW region Chief Scientist Matt Hayward have co-planned this creative research residency through a series of seven high intensity field-trips to AWC’s remote properties in VIC, NSW and SA. These trips coincide with key times at which the AWC’s mobile scientific teams will be undertaking intensive scientific activities on these far-flung properties. The program coincides with specific events that Matt will lead in 2012 at Mallee Regions (Yookamurra, Scotia and Buckaringa), Lake Eyre Basin (Kalamurinia) and Sydney (North Head).
We have agreed that Keith will also be given the opportunity to work actively as a research assistant during these day and night long activities in order to gain in-depth, practical exposure to AWC’s cutting edge scientific processes and practices. Through the ‘watercooler effect’ of these extended interactions we will concurrently develop focus for a mutually beneficial future project or event as we begin to understand each other’s processes in fine detail. This will arise through detailed practical work, conversation, direct experience and, where possible, a range of small-scale actual art-science experimental outcomes we will conduct on each site.
The residency will conclude with an exhibition of the ensuing creative process at Mildura Arts Centre who have expressed strong interest – and whose regional reach/audiences are highly relevant to AWC’s HQ at Scotia (See Supporting Letter). We will also conduct significant planning together towards a potential future ARC Synapse Linkage application.
