Spirit of Place
Video installation in collaboration with Mia Salsjö
Digital Video Art
2022
Digital Wall Exhibition : Bunjil Place
Spirit of Place
23 May - 22 July 2022
It's hard not to be moved by Mia Salsjö's score “Quietude”.
What is this thing we call life and how do we interact with physical space? This piece, based on the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre designed by McBride Charles Ryan Architects, reaches for those fleeting moments when we transcend our mortal existence.
In 2021 Gertrude Contemporary studio artist Mia Salsjö, approached Gatherer Media to collaborate on a video installation based on the score she wrote in response to both the physical and intangible qualities of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Parkville, Melbourne.
With a background in improvisational jazz, Salsjö applies similar methodologies to interpreting physical space. Her multi-faceted process involves writing scores on building schematics, long conversations with architects and meditating on the intersections the occur in physical space. In response to the architecture of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Salsjö wrote Quietude a 12-minute score for a quartet during Melbourne’s extended lockdown.
The project saw Gatherer work closely with Salsjö to develop visual systems in response to the both the score, the Cancer Centre and the esoteric qualities of the artist’s unique vision. In response Gatherer produced Spirit of Place, a seven-minute single-channel video installation. Part visual poetry, part meditation on intangible ideas, the video installation adds a further layer of complexity to Salsjo’s score for Quietude on which the work is based.
Spirit of Place was developed specifically for an 8K digital wall at Bunjil Place in the City of Casey and opened on the 23 May with a live performance of Quietude on the 26 May. The project can be seen 24 hours-a-day on the Digital Wall, Bunjil Place until 22 July, 2022.
MIA SALSJÖ
Mia Salsjö is an Australian Artist and Composer of Albanian-Swedish descent, who orchestrates multi-disciplinary art projects, encompassing drawing, music composition, text, performance, video, and textile-based works. Her practice is grounded in complex code-based systems, devised by Salsjö as a means of linking diverse media to underlying systems and structures.
Her work has been performed and presented in many exhibitions, including Modes of Translation presented at the 13th Bienal de la Habana, Cuba 2019 and The Score at Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne in 2017. She currently holds one of the prestigious studio residencies at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, Australia.
