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Container or music series
Portrait #2 (dust to dust)
Wellington 2017
Illimine Collective
Portrait #2 is the second iteration of Illimine’s Portrait series. Two artists, Majella Thomas and Malcolm Angelucci, stand on opposite sides of a concrete wall and engrave a self-portrait in words into the concrete using portable drills. They each vocalise as they write, without interruption for 8 hours per day for 3 days. The more they inscribe, the more their memories literally ‘turn to dust’. The vocalisations will be manipulated by Chris Caines into a live multi-layered in-situ composition, that mirrors and dialogues with the movements of the artists, combining it with soundscapes from the container itself to create a durational sound sculpture. The work is a process of live scripting that engages with Giorgio Agamben’s concept of ‘gesture’, defined as ‘means without end’. The relationship between the artists and writing itself, is pushed to its limit; opening up a space of focus on the act of writing and its performative elements, of writing, memory, life. The product is ‘just dust’.
Illimine is an international collective of multimedia artists, performers, academics and professionals. Their aim is the practice of a trans-disciplinary dialogue around gesture, duration, expanded poetry, narrative, and site-specific art. Portrait #2 is performed by Chris Caines, Majella Thomas and Malcolm Angelucci. Chris Caines is an interdisciplinary artist who has been working in digital and electronic media for over twenty years. His work has been widely exhibited, including at ACMI, Queensland Art Gallery, MOMA (New York), Tate (UK), Art Gallery of NSW, and the Berlin, Venice and Cannes festivals. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Media Arts program at UTS. Majella Thomas is an interdisciplinary artist, with particular interest in the nexus between performance and multi-modality. Malcolm is an artist and lecturer at The University of Melbourne, with a background in aesthetics. Since 2009 he has worked on the nexus between voice, subjectivity, poetry and technology. Both Malcolm and Majella are founding members of Illimine.
Presented by International Programme Partners Bolton Hotel
Supported by the Public Art Fund, Wellington City Council
