activities 
festivals Writing Floating Land
festivals Writing Floating Land
festivals Writing Floating Land
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Writing Floating Land Noosa biosphere, June 2009
The inaugural Writing Floating Land brings together writers interested in art and environment.
This is the written component of the Floating Land environmental art event held in the Noosa biosphere on the Sunshine Coast of Australia every second year. The 2009 Floating Land will be held at Boreen Point from 19th – 28th June with the theme of climate change and rising sea levels on coastal and island communities of the Pacific Ocean. It includes artists, musicians, photographers, and writers focusing on the lake and its surrounds, with site-specific work, outdoor sculptures, symposiums, workshops, dinners, and exhibitions, culminating in firings on the lake. 2009 activities include artist installation of works, systems thinking workshop, teacher’s forum, community dinners, Tuvuluan culture exhibitions, storytellers, children’s workshops, music nights, sustainable design forum, Shifting Paradigms conference, markets, food, and Writing Floating Land. For the full program and bookings, see www.floatingland.com.au or contact Noosa Regional Gallery (07) 5449 5340 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Writing Floating Land is a partnership between Noosa Regional Art Gallery, The Cooroora Institute, and Art Monthly Australia. In 2009, its components include: a writing competition, an informal meeting and writing place, a collation of eccentrics, workshops, and collective dinners.
The essay competition on art and environment run by Art Monthly Australia closed end of February 2009. Winners received cash, mentorship, publication in Art Monthly’s June edition, as well as basic accommodation and free attendance to all Floating Land events.
Plus publishing and mentoring opportunities for other outstanding entries. All work selected for publication will also be offered an opportunity to write on the Noosa Biosphere Floating Land with accommodation and free attendance to all events, mentored by Tamsin Kerr, writer and director of the Cooroora Institute, as well as other publishing opportunities. Deadline: February 27, 2009
Floating Land - for writersFloating Land is a 10-day art festival from June 19 to 28 held at Boreen Point on Lake Cootharaba, 15 minutes north of Noosa. This year, the inaugural writer’s component is facilitated by Tamsin Kerr of the Cooroora Institute. Its components include:
An informal writer’s space, online access, and printer will be available over the 10 days (but bring your laptops and USB sticks). Tamsin Kerr and Maurice O’Riordan will also be selecting works over the week to be published in Floating Land online, as well as offering mentoring/ publication through Art Monthly Australia.
Art and environment writing: getting ideasA Collation of Eccentrics interactive forum This is a day-long interactive forum to discuss the ideas and creative flows of writing about place, green art, environment, culture, creativity, and community. Two speakers will present their work as seeds for discussion. The event is aimed at the interdisciplinary work of academics, students, artists, and writers that connects place and environment. (40 participants maximum and bookings are essential.) Cost: $65 (morning tea & lunch) Where: TopTent, Boreen Point When: Sunday June 21, 9.30am to 4.00pm Bookings: Noosa Regional Gallery - 5449 5340
Margaret Somerville is interested in writing place through the body. She likes to work in the space in between creative and academic writing and indigenous and western knowledges. Her experimental writing combines journal writing, spoken word, multiple voices, visual images, and sensory responsiveness to place. Her most recent projects have been about how we learn about place and form community - in the brown coal mining communities of Latrobe Valley Victoria, and in relation to water in the drylands of the Murray-Darling Basin. Her latest publication Always unfinished business: of singing the country is an alternative version of a catalogue to accompany an exhibition of stories and artworks about water. It explores place-making-in-process within an Indigenous/non-Indigenous project team. Margaret is the Professor of Education at Monash University. Recommended pre-reading: Body/Landscape Journal and google ‘place pedagogies’
Paul Carter is an internationally acclaimed author, scholar, designer and artist. His latest book, Dark Writing: geography, performance, design, explores the nexus between spatial history, and placemaking theory and practice. Previous books include The Road to Botany Bay, The Lie of the Land, Material Thinking, Parrot, The Sound In-Between and Repressed Spaces. Paul is Creative Director of Material Thinking, a Melbourne-based placemaking research and design studio. Major placemaking commissions include Nearamnew, Federation Square, Melbourne; Relay, Homebush Bay, 2000 Olympics (with Ruark Lewis); and Golden Grove, University of Sydney. Paul is currently designing a public space project in Darwin. Recommended pre-reading: Material Thinking and google material thinking
Books’ launch Cost: Free Where: TopTent, Boreen Point When: Sunday June 21, 5.30pm to 6.00pm Paul Carter’s Dark Writing: geography, performance, design Margaret Somerville’s Always unfinished business: of singing the country
Art and environment writing: getting in printArt & Environment Publishing in Magazines This half-day workshop hosted by Art Monthly editor Maurice O’Riordan will look at ways to optimise your potential for art magazine publication along with other print and online publishing avenues. With a focus on green arts writing, the workshop will demystify key aspects of the writing, pitching, and editing processes. Cost: $30 Where: TopTent, Boreen Point When: Thursday June 25, 9.00am to 12.30pm Bookings: Noosa Regional Gallery - 5449 5340 NB: Participants have the option to send examples of the writing they wish to be workshopped /published directly to Maurice O'Riordan up until a week before the workshop. Art & Environment Books & Booksellers Fiona Stager, President of Australian Booksellers and co-owner of Avid Reader, gives insights into the world of art and environment books, distribution and booksellers in this half-day workshop. Cost: $30 Where: TopTent, Boreen Point When: Thursday June 25, 1.00pm to 4.00pm Bookings: Noosa Regional Gallery - 5449 5340
Art and environment writing: getting an audienceWriters on Writing Forum Meet the writers of Writing Floating Land and the winners of Art Monthly’s inaugural competition of How Green is my Pen? Talk to the budding green art writing industry and be encouraged to write your own words. Learn about themes and trends in modern writing, gain an insight into an ever-growing genre of environmental writing, and share your work with other writers and audience. This is an informal forum: buy food and drinks at the Apollonian and come over. Cost: Free Where: TopTent, Boreen Point When: Thursday June 25, 5.30pm Beautiful Words Writers & Photographers Exhibition Writers, photographers and visitors to Floating Land are invited to contribute to the Beautiful Words exhibition. Inspired by the surrounding artworks and community, writings and photography created during the festival will be exhibited to start wider conversations about climate change, art and the environment. Includes time-lapse photography of the shoreline sculptures as they are produced. Cost: Free Where: TopTent, Boreen Point When: Friday-Sunday, June 26-28, 9.00am to 4.00pm
NB: A copy of June’s Art Monthly Australia, a bumper edition on green art events and ideas, will be provided free to all participants of writing sessions.
This is only part of the 10-day program of the festival. For more information on these or other events visit www.floatingland.com.au or phone 07 5449 5340 to receive a program.
History of Floating Land Floating Land began as an outdoor sculpture event and has since grown to include writers, performance artists, musicians, photographers, academics and scientists. Conceived in 2001, planning has commenced for the 5th Floating Land to be held in June 2009. Artists will explore the theme of climate change and the impact of rising sea levels on coastal and island communities of the Pacific Ocean, all set within the beautiful Noosa environment. Floating Land has gained national and international recognition for nurturing art and environment themes. Artists from the Pacific Islands and New Zealand will join Australian and local artists to create and deliver messages that explore ‘Green Art’. As artwork sites are located in the bush and water and on the foreshores, artists are challenged to create work that uses transient materials that leave no mark on their environment. Floating Land events and artworks, with an emphasis on their fit into the environment, are ‘discovered’ in the stunning outdoor location of Lake Cootharaba in the UNESCO biosphere-listed Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. Fifteen minutes north of Noosa lies Boreen Point, the principle venue for the Floating Land artists and writers workshops, installations and performances, forums, storytelling, markets and food events. Visitors to Floating Land are encouraged to stop and watch the sculptors over the 10-day event, participate in the workshops, attend the forums, follow the daily photography exhibits, and to watch the spectacle that has become known as ‘Firings on the Lake’ at sunset on stunning Lake Cootharaba. Floating Land coincides with the Noosa Longweekend, a festival of national reputation that includes theatre, literary events, performance and forums. Floating Land provides the creative and visual art aspect of the festival which last year attracted over 8000 visitors from around Australia. The Noosa Regional Gallery will hold two Pacific Island exhibitions in conjunction with Floating Land. The first is Waters of Tuvalu: A Nation at Risk which presents works from the Museum of Victoria and artefacts from the community of Tuvalu. The second exhibition, Legacy Tuvalu: The Footprint on Funafuti, by photo-journalist Jocelyn Carlin, shows the impact first-hand that climate change is having on the Pacific Islands. Article written by Tamsin Kerr on the first Floating Land, instigated by Kevin Wilson (now run by Christine Ballinger) in 2002 The Floating Land – a gallery without walls
“I love the vision of art becoming part of everyday life, rather than an event”
Kevin Wilson, the director of the Noosa Regional Gallery, is the instigator of Noosa’s Floating Land international sculpture and performance lab. His philosophy is to reduce the gap between art and life. Floating Lands was inspired by Les Vent de Fores - international artists work with the natural materials of a French forest to create public sculptures in situ. The Floating Land followed on from Noosa’s Sculpture by the Sea, where art was placed outside so people could relate to it.
Using money from his artist in residence programs and funding from the Centenary of Federation program, Kevin advertised for artists to work around Noosa Shire on nature and art projects. The 19 selected international artists had their fares and materials paid, and were housed in local residences. A number of community dinners with the artists were arranged with the local community halls in the region.
Artworks were developed by the artists in collaboration with community volunteers. They were made over December 2001 with a focus of “on water, over water, in water”. The artists displayed their works on sites around Noosa foreshores and around the hinterland.
In partnership with Woodford, much of their work was then re-invented on site at the Folk Festival and the artists ran a workshop to discuss the process with Kevin as part of the Festival’s exchange program. The ideas and the art were exposed to many of the tourists and local residents across the Sunshine Coast; people were generally engaged and excited.
However, translating the French idea to Noosa had some problems. In France, a walk through the forest environment occasionally surprises with the additional delight of sculpture, some so old or so closely woven into the natural, that it can take a while to realise the human intervention. Conversely, in Noosa, people went looking for the art and were frustrated by the environment obscuring or even demolishing the art (for instance, the wind tore the paper sails of one artwork and it was consequently removed by the artists). Other viewers found the art threatening or too attractive – some works were stolen or destroyed. None of the works have been left in situ because of vandalism and local’s complaints.
The interaction between community and artists was also more difficult. Kevin’s experience in France was that the artist is vaunted and the community has a cohesive, village mentality. In Noosa, the mix of tourists and residents, and the greater distances, changes the dynamic. Artists were treated with suspicion, not only by locals but also by Council staff. Kevin says the community dinners in local halls were difficult. The lack of community cohesion or interest was compounded by the fact that the artists also wanted more informal time to be by themselves.
There were problems too in getting EPA approval for placing art on the river, because of the river’s A-grade rating, and their consequent requirements made the artist’s work harder to place. Next time, Kevin says, they’ll avoid the river. Other unexpected outcomes was there was not much use of natural materials on site, most pieces were built first in studios, leaving both nature and the public out of the process of creation. As a consequence of these difficulties, there are a number of changes planned for the 2003 event, given that the funding is available. Changes are inevitable as the idea of art in nature evolves. As Kevin says: “We build houses and houses build us”. Christine Ballinger is presently evaluating The Floating Land I and preparing for the Floating Land II, to be held over October 2003. The first “review and think tank meeting” was held in August 2002 and invited a range of community members and some Councillors - the process of evaluation and community engagement has started.
A community and Council with a greater ownership in the event will hopefully ensure greater success in promoting the philosophy and process of art making into the broader community. But a council such as Noosa that relies upon tourism as a key economic base cannot just focus on the local community engagement aspects of projects such as the Floating Land. Ultimately, Kevin hopes the Floating Land will become part of the tourism psyche, like the Noosa triathlon, and it can be tied into tourism packages with B&Bs, hinterland, and gallery works. Perhaps these dual goals of tourism and building community social capital do not always sit neatly side by side.
The plans for more of the Floating Land are moving along enthusiastically. Partnerships will be established with other regional galleries – both inter and intra State. Kevin hopes to work with local schools, with National Parks, and to hold a large youth and children’s festival component. Technology and science will also play a bigger part. Workshops with visiting artists will lead up to a 3 day display of public art in specific confined areas of the Noosa Woods and the hinterland. There will be three categories: Space focusing on youth and performance as sculpture; Time featuring 6 artists (already selected) creating site specific multi-media works on the coast; and Water featuring site specific, natural material sculpture in the hinterland. There may also be a conference linking art to science and a series of artist’s monthly residencies to work in partnership with sectors of the community. Kevin sees the concept broadening, finding its Australian feet, and attracting wider interest. Kevin’s the Floating Land aims are to start to build Noosa’s community capacity through an increased valuing of public sculpture and art. The Floating Land is a project that builds on Kevin Wilson’s working philosophy. He says, “community cultural development is about developing a culture of art in the everyday life of communities”. Kevin would like us all to appreciate artists, to have art everywhere in our daily lives, if not to become artists ourselves. Kevin believes that respect for the landscape and an understanding of creativity go hand in hand. |
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