July 8 – July 31, 2004
Opening Reception Wednesday, July 7, 6-8pm

PASSED for EXPORT, a site-specific installation by Mark Themann, raises questions about the American Landscape, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in times of political crisis. Two videos of monumental US landscapes are projected in unnervingly slow and steady takes on opposite walls. Any potential romanticism is forestalled by the cacophonous clashing of two audio tracks in which the narrators are each reading from the Amendments to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, reciting with an extreme stutter.

Over monolithic landscapes that slide past each other, these documents are restructured within the unsteady articulation of stuttering, faltering, persisting voices. In PASSED for EXPORT, the Amendments to the Bill of Rights are further amended via the narrators’ stuttering. The voices struggling to articulate and maintain a continuity contrast with the steady camera pans.

Claire Montgomery, Founder and Director of Location One, says of the installation “We think it is crucial at this moment in US history to examine documents that are intended to define the nature of our society.”

Mark Themann (Germany/Australia) is an Artist in Residence at Location One.

PASSED for EXPORT has been commissioned by Location One with support from the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria.

May 28 – June 30, 2004

Click here to view the embedded video.

On Thursday, May 27, Location One presents its third annual artist-in-residence group exhibition. Eight works ranging from video, to sculpture, to robotic structures, to interactive installations were developed by emerging international artists during their stay. Featured in the main gallery, the show will be open to the public through Wednesday, June 30th, 2004 and will be streamed live on www.location1.org

Vincent Lamouroux (France)
A site-specific wall drawing that consists of simple sets of words culled by the artist from Joseph Lanza’s writings “Gravity” as he investigates roller coaster structures as a social and cultural phenomenon in the US.

Alexandra do Carmo (Portugal)
In the installation “50 Richards” the artist explores issues of surveillance and voyeurism. The visitor is invited to sit at a microscope to view a continuous recording of the artist’s studio practice. Music inspired by the video and composed by Paul de Jong pours in from the ceiling.

Miguel Soares (Portugal)
H2O is a 3d animation about marine trash and the often absurd reactions of maritime flora and fauna to these “alien visitors”.

Federico Muelas (Spain)
What do Apples Sound Like? An interactive audio visual environment where the artist questions human perception by translating into sound the spatial values of the 365 vertices on an apple – symbol of wholeness and forbidden knowledge.

Hsiao Sheng Chien (Taiwan)
Watch is an installation with video robot and sensor that features an eye. The robot perceives the presence of the visitor and begins interacting with him, drawing him in, watching him and then pushing him away.

Koki Tanaka (Japan)
Things Happen Again presents a humorous reflection on the question of how we perceive the world by filming the simple and repetitive motion of rolls of tape that glide inside the frame.

Mark Themann (Germany/Australia)
Go Into This Space presents an evocative single screen DVD work, a silent film that consists of phasing texts, interrupted by flashing color fields, and utilizing structures of invocation and evocation.Location One is a not-for-profit organization devoted to the convergence between visual, performing and digital arts in a time of rapidly changing technology.
Location One’s Residency Program is a central part of its activities. It encourages collaboration by inviting artists from all over the world and different media to experiment with advanced technological tools and delivery systems, and to develop new work.

SPONSORS: INJUVE, Asian Cultural Council, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs Turkey, Moon and Stars Project, AFAA – Ville de Paris, Yageo Tech-Art Award of the ACC (Asian Cultural Council), Australian Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria, Luso-American Development Foundation, Instituto das Artes (Lisbon).

“RE/ general focus of work

1.Collaborate with the contexts + possibilities at Location One. This open approach, refuses a pre-determinism + echoes my 20 years of nomadicism within: Site specific “Installations”, Performances and a Sculptural practice, enacted across Australia, Western and Eastern Europe, and the USA.

2.Given the artists and cross media and cross cultural contexts, accessible via Location One, how can a context specific practice, continue to objectify, as an intuitive process, a paradoxical occurrence and a conceptually pointed manifestation?

3.Can a materiality (including the “high –tech” + the collaborative) and the conceptual – can each be utilized, to (both) reflect on itself and question the other. Start with the video/DVD media “finish” with the question: Where does one gesture end and the other begin?”
Recent exhibitions include: Palazzo della Pappesse, Siena, Italy; ARCO, Madrid, Spain; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France.

Mark Themann’s residency at Location One is sponsored by the New Media Arts Board-Australia Council and Arts Victoria.