sweet peats hangover

 photo: kate taylor

so the punk monks picnicked at peats. after a fashion. we sweated, kicked sand in our own face, painted with light & distorted soundwaves, curated a 360 degree film installation, & bled from our ears in the sweet stickiness of the heat & good vibes which oozed like an impenetrable aura around the festival-sphere. 

we made love to the geodesic dome & paid homage to the rejenr8 & figure eight tribes who held court there. visions of the phantom menace battle scene pervade except there were much less special effects. for the most part, excluding the dome, the few days there were really rather deliciously analogue/lo fi. as orgies usually are.

there'll be a more complete wrap later, once we've collated footage, images, etc and all sat together for a new year pow wow/debrief. however the ABC just did a story on the expansiveness of the art experience which is peats & profiled us [punk monk propaganda] featuring a much sleep deprived interview with me on the home strait of editing "15Mb of FAME" our crowd sourced film festival initiative. somewhere in the life-saving air-conditioned shadows, steven patiently waits.

so this is all about puff & ponce on the back of the wonderful punk monks collaborative efforts and muchos hard work as i run out the door to escape the urban swell and heat. time to mix up the scenery before chewing mammothian chunks into the year.

kudos to the peat's ridge punk monks & family. they are:

clare devlin mahoney

alexander papasavvas

kate taylor

ky-lee menzies

steven kastrissios

andrew berman

anna slowiaczek

alexander sovronsky

james crawford

jacqui stanton
domonique turner

15Mb of FAME [Peats Ridge 2010] 

it really was a supreme team effort. life at some points may not have gone on without a well placed gin & sparkling pink grapefruit juice. and this is one of our results: 15Mb of FAME. the culmination of 48 hours or so of crowd sourced punk monk driven lurve. power to peats ridge festival [waves at victoria johnstone] for having the vision to let us play in such a wonderful playground. we're looking forward to hitting rinse repeat again next year.

the greener screen [now in black & white]

the greener screen... everyone's pimping their eco warez these days & film being an incredibly wasteful industry is a prime candidate for a major production overhaul. emerging trend spotters & pioneers of issues to champion, NSW prime film educator/facilitator, metroscreen, was in on the act this week running a series of proactive green screen workshops from their always humming beehive hub.

the greener screen is all about sustainable practice in the creative screen industries & goes far beyond the mandatory lip service corporates often deliver whilst mincing words between other contradictory indulgences.

from the reduce, reuse & recycle mentality emerges practical working solutions from pre pre-production, through to the marketing & distribution of the final project. people are starting to become not just interested so they can stick another logo on their credits and pat themselves on the back whilst crossing boxes but actually genuinely make a difference & minimise cost/waste simultaneously, ID inefficiency and produce both a film and modify impact ecologically in the long term. it is possible. i was there, on the fringe. there were others. we ate delicious vegetarian finger food together.

punk monk propaganda were the invited installation artists for the metroscreen event which we snapped up since it has a little bit of everything we love all at once. in association with the bower we created an art work from entirely salvaged items to enhance a cooperative eco-interaction environment. clare & alex conceived & shopped. 

on the day, alex diligently demonstrated that being a scout has excellent rope work advantages later in life & together we made this mutant incarnation... we considered calling it something obscure & typically wanky but "why run when you can barely balance" seems to have stuck & seems strangely appropriate.  

green screens don't just have to be for bad mashups or CGI laden films. if you reduce saturation they can be B & W. is that a bastardisation of eco i wonder?

for further future forward metroscreen events contact kate taylor, network co-ordinator.

zen toilet flux

zen toilet flux: the install at "decorating loos" group art exhibition. 

we graffiti'd the toilet doors in custom-made cubicles built into the gallery infrastructure as well as creating our own transmedia experiment beyond the walls in the gallery atrium. we integrated crowd-sourced haiku into an evolving zine on a "toilet roll" sculpted into a living waterfall.

photos by alexander papasavvas

zen toilet flux -- artist statement:

inner reflections 

at haiku waterfall, space

time continuum

public toilet is a misnomer for a meditative space which offers respite from the incessant hub of the outside. often associated with graffiti which is unfairly represented as transgressive or low-brow, it seems natural when given quiet time that we seek to make our mark: a tangible extension of our thoughts, on a wall, commencing way back when with antediluvian art.



whether this communication serves a purpose other than advertisement or is merely a human compulsion to disrupt order & white space is not definitive.

in the frenetic paced urban world can art be typographically packaged into the convenience of haiku for the person on the street & ultimately fuse gallery & gutter?

this stylized urban zen garden welcomes you. the crowd-sourced haiku waterfall’s negative ions offer regenerative tranquility and the invitation to all for reflection at the water’s edge.

exhibition ends this wknd. come soak up the art. find a happy place.

"decorating loos"

featuring art by punk monk propaganda & talented others

at the vanishing point

565 king street

newtown

haiku: crowd sourced toilet art

this saturday june 05, 2010 fellow punk monks; clare, alex and i are creating a crowd sourced art experiment at ATVP [at the vanishing point] gallery. 


it is the first of multiple parts of our protest installation about transgressive toilet decoration in response to adolf loos, the puritanical aesthetist's theory that "one can measure the culture of a country by the degree its lavatory walls are daubed".  


this is a transmedia project with varied entry points arguing that high art need not conflict with form nor function but readily adapts to space and time. 


the work in progress will be revealed on opening night june 10. our success largely relies on participation. this experiment requires neither rocket scientists nor fine artists. please spread the word.


we'll be there at 2pm. come join the quiet fray!


email me @ propaganda[at]punk-monk.com with any questions.


decorating loos @ ATVP
at the vanishing point - contemporary art inc.
565 king street
newtown, australia