STUDIONONSTOP

woodblock print from Masanobu Fukuoka’s ‘One Straw Revolution’ reaped from Culiblog and used twice without permission

Nothing to give.

catalogue essay

Moon Garden
Mikala Dwyer
Aratoi – Wairarapa Museum of Art and History
Masterton, Aotearoa New Zealand
december 08 – february 09

“Natural farming” is a method of land use developed by Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008) on his mountainside farm and orchard in southern Japan. Known also as “Do-nothing” farming for Mr. Fukuoka’s recommendation of doing away with unnecessary work, its grounding is in the four principles of no cultivation, no fertilisers, no weeding and no chemicals. His plentiful crops of rice, citrus and vegetables demonstrated that with careful observation and minimal tending, land left to itself will find a natural pattern and balance. Using cooperative systems of green manure cover crops, rice straw mulches and small grazing animals the Fukuoka method shows that even the most depleted soils can be restored, healing the land and maybe even the spiritual wellbeing of the practicing farmer. Continue Reading »

Urban grassland &
inner city seagull sanctuary
Prince Alfred Park pool
Surry Hills
Sydney

Closed for redevelopment and growing over.
Walk around the fenceline and seedball action.
27.11.08

Rainfall:
28/11
29/11
7/12
8/12
10/12
11/12
12/12

Mowed down & whipper-snipped:
17/12

image courtesy of Firstdraft

Notes on a state of conversation

essay commissioned and originally published
Runway
Issue 11: Conversation
edited by Anneke Jaspers
Winter 2008

download pdf of full text here [64KB]

HOW DO WE COMMUNICATE?
On the short term, phones and email can be used
to arrange meetings. But they often fail to provide
the impetus that actually brings people in
dialogue with one another. They act as alibis for
the commitment that may or may not be sufficiently
developed between people. Given the event-led
cultural economy we live in today, communication
after the fact proves to be the weakest link in
our development. One might envisage setting up
an AGENCY FOR AFTERMATH COMMUNICATIONS in
art practice… Face to face contact is precious.

– Clementine Deliss (1)

Over a recent three-week period I was immersed in an incidental but noticeable sequence of visual arts dialogue events and encounters. These seem useful material for a part round-up, part temperature check on how occasions to talk to each other – as artists, audiences, people, peers, and communities – are being generated out of local practices, projects and spaces. On the varying qualities of these occasions, differing approaches to facilitation, and the meaningful potential and effects of thoughtful discursive practice. Continue Reading »