Ex3 Position Statement

The site during the day lives on the boundary between the explorative, the realm of texture, taste, fragrance, sounds – and the peripheral, that of driving past without noticing anything other than the slight chill down the spine, as the ominous smoke stack spewing out its filth looms briefly overhead.

While the various scales and movements around the site exhibit a split world, still more subtle is the disconnect between wildly different pedestrian identities that inhabit the area. There is the drunk who wakes up in the shadow of narrow back lanes, or on the doorstep of a young family’s heritage terrace. There are the groups of subversives who graffiti everywhere and anywhere, in an attempt to extend their ownership over a place already mired by signage posted by the “official” owners of buildings. There is the social shadow cast over every local by the Eastern Distributor ventilation stack, on a site owned by the RTA and distinguished by its inhabitability. Clearly, the site is distinguished by cultural silos.

Far below the surface is a stream of cars, most active in the periods marking sunrise and sunset. The arrival of accompanying smog is the most widely relevant output of the site; it is the opening and closing act of the site’s daytime drama.

Pollution spewed from the site itself sits in watch over the silos of human activity. It broods, watches, infects. The brooding, the space, the melancholy of the activity that occurs is the inhabitant, is the character of the site. One feels that the site, the bricks and mortar, sand and cement may be built on, but the character of the site, the one that exists there at this time will not be shattered, will not change. One feels that it will move, walk down the footpath to the alleys and back lanes of Surrey Hills, stand up the sign of no trespassing once again and continue on uninterrupted with its life.

The work of high power simulations these days is a reconfiguring of player positions, finding ways to enable collaboration of personified identities – teams, organisations, matter. In embodying the perceived meaning of these identities, we hope that such identities can be dealt with rather than overlooked.


Experiment brief [RussellLowe.com]