a project by ART IN PROCESS
crosscultural experimentations with performance and new media art - discovering our surroundings: a project that fosters cultural & art networking promoting the idea of "art as collaborative work" as one of the highlights of contemporary art production

Introduction
The project is created by several parts of a bigger context of discovering and discussing different Emotional Seasons in Society and diverse surroundings nationally and internationally, how the living environment, immediate surroundings are formed and influenced by its people.
ART IN PROCESS is a partnership based in Fremantle, Australia. In our work we explore relationships between humanity, technology and the natural environment in a socio-cultural context. We work together across installation, video, new media, performance and live art. The work attempts to illuminate problematic issues inherent in multiculturalism, globalisation and mass-consumption. It further addresses notions about how we fit into certain places, what impact we have on our surroundings and what impact the surroundings have on us. Artistic outcomes are based on certain explorations through on-site projects (residencies, travel) in relation to our own living environment.

The Process
Within Emotional Seasons we question borderlines in society, in real and cyber space. The project includes artistic interventions in public and private. Based on our own work methods of combining static and temporal forms of expression in a hybrid art process/making we take them further into the public sphere. This results in video & sound installations based on collaborations with other international artists.
We explore multiple (global) realities (interdisciplinary and intercultural) in individually placed surroundings - building layers of reality, created through filmed performances (public and private). Question: What are today's realities of human existence in a global, but still cultural diverse society? The project develops from our special perspective and perception of the core theme into various video & sound installation.

Theoretically
Our projects constitute a critical engagement with a number of issues specific to Western, consumer culture and behaviour: our intent is to instigate a change of thinking, a shifting of accommodated world conception within the viewer/participant, in continuously looking for an open dialogue with the public (i.e. through Art-Interventions, Performances and exhibitions with audio-visual and mixed media installations). In our work we investigate how the frame of Art applies to the audience and life itself - in a social context; how artistic practice should engage with the general public. Questions we try to answer: What does it mean to make artistic comments on our world, what triggers them? Why has it become a crucial responsibility for an artist once again to serve as the public voice to the extent to educate or inform the public about issues/ethics that otherwise would go unnoticed or even ignored? We try to initiate discussion about how artists should communicate their ethical ideals in engaging with the broader community through public and participatory projects and beyond. We are especially interested in terms used and created by Nicolas Bourriaud, describing how use over meaning in Art has developed in recent years.

The new modernity - invites the whole world into an artistic discussion and invention of project/art form - Creates a truly world wide cultural project - differences and similarities develop specific imagination. Nicolas Bourriaud, 2009

Our projects question the artistically created worlds in real- and cyberspace, asking for connection points and how the general public's perception, how global culture per se influences artistic expression today. During the project period we will be able to present our running projects as well as a compilation of past work based on specific aesthetics concerning socio-political issues, especially the 2009 international project series called Intervention, developed in Salzburg/Austria, Evora/Portugal and Kumasi/Ghana about tapping local resources (Sustainability in/and Art).

ART IN PROCESS have pursued a speculative practice which has extended into a range of endeavours unique to the visual arts community in Western Australia. Over the past few years their visibility within the local cultural landscape has exemplified a model of independent and experimental visual art that is positioned at the forefront of creative thinking and somewhat apart from the market forces of the commercial market.
Dr Peter Mudie 2009 (Associate Prof at the University of Western Australia)