Monday 9 April 2012

Static Ice Melt at 'Cage in Us'

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Nicola Morton Static Ice Melt 12/04/2012 Performance 1hr10min; Video 15min; Installation 2.2mx2.2mx0.5m ice, recycled wood, newspaper, diary entries, polyeurethane film; Photographic Installation/Costume 2mx1.5m 32 modified 4x6prints on recycled plastic; for “The Cage In Us” Judith Wright Center of Contemporary Art, Brisbane.


The performance/installation happens simultaneously with Cage’s Theater Pieces (1960) as part of the “Cage In Us” festival celebrating John Cage’s 100th birthday. The performance experiments with ideas of psychological static and melting vs stasis and shedding at the autumn equinox.
The performance is an audio-visual experiment and durational. Nicola lies on a bed of ice for 1hr and 10 minutes. Sounds from VLF receivers and static are produced, accompanied by a projection of a performance for video of an autumn equinox ritual, Nicola screaming at the edges of a gigantic waterfall. The bed of ice is installed surrounded and littered by photographs, newspapers and diary entries spanning the last year and a half. Nicola wears a camoflauge hooded costume made out of transparent cellophane and photos. The photos reflect stasis, and consist mostly of lone psychedelic experiences with strangers and the built environment.
The audience response was also an experiment (and on reflection, frustratingly ironic). Mostly the viewers sit down and read the diary entries to the freezing Nicola, a weird time warp happens as they read her own diary entries to her, trying to keep her mind engaged while she slowly becomes frozen from the ice. An unexpected sense of community was experienced.
Psychedelic and shamanic forces vacillate between static (permanent) and (stasis) temporary. Sharing a shedding ritual is problematic. In an attempt to psychologically free herself from her diary entries and photographic memories of stasis nothing is actually shed at all. The community rescues the entries and upholds the static till her death. Media triumphs forever as static. Shedding is truly temporary. Ice melts.












Nicola&Noise: 10 Year Retrospective

Celebrating 10 years of myself in live noise music.

Equalizer 24K: 2012

Live at Intervention #5, Stefan's Skyneedle, South Brisbane. 2012


 Equalizer 24K: 2000-2003

 Sticker. Photo by Natalie.


Photo by Michelle Brown

 abbaabba: 2006-2009

Live at Wasted Festival, Transmediale, Berlin  2007
Photo by photofunk.de
Photo by Jason Forrest

Photo by Jason Forrest

Live at Aktoer and Vanner Theater, Gothenberg, Sweden. 2009.

Photo by Eric Westward
Photo by Eric Westward

Live at 1000fyrd, Aalborg, Denmark. 2009
Photo by Nuno Alexandre
Photo by Nuno Alexandre

Nicola composes Life is a Rubiks Cube: 2010

Live at Tidy Kid Space, Wooloongabba 2010

Nicola and Simbi: 2011 

Live at Bali Seamen's Club, Sanur, Indonesia 2011
 
Videostill by Irinka

Warden Burger: 2012

Live at Substation, Paddington, Brisbane 2012.