I am very excited to be invited to Made of Walking V in Prespes, Greece in July. This will be a wonderful opportunity to connect with walking artists from around the world, some of whom I met last year in Cyprus at Made of Walking IV. To participate in this event, I am reaching out for support through the @AusCulturalFund to get me to Greece.
Your support is greatly valued and donations are tax deductible 🙂
https://australianculturalfund.org.au/projects/made-of-walking-v/
There is only 23 days in this campaign so I am putting a lot of energy into reaching out to my community across the arts, sciences, policy and education sectors. With 18 days to go, I have raised 15% of my funding goal from 6 fabulous supporters so feeling very encouraged. I am also very grateful for the many lovely messages of support since the fund raising campaign kicked off ❤
From Greece, I plan to travel to Chartres Cathedral to build on my research into the Sacred by participating in The Cosmic Dance of Astronomica with Ubiquity University. This is a dream come true for me as I have long been aware of the importance of Chartres as a sacred site of Europe. Ubiquity University has also generously offered in-kind support for me to be a part of this special event.
To date, I have written a number of blogs relating to the Sacred, mythology and the world of symbols. The most recent post, The reluctant scientist: giving space to the Sacred seeks to look at the relationship of the Sacred to how we understand the world.
After all this deep immersion, I plan to continue my exploration further north as I have been invited back to Drammen to be artist-in-residence with Drammen Kommune. While I am there I will be exhibiting at the Kulturhuset Hovtun in my ancestors village in Klokkarstua in the Buskerud region of Norway.
As I mentioned on my ACF project page, as an artist I rarely create saleable works – most of (not all) of my works are experiential in nature, rather than object focused and my passion is to engage audiences to explore ideas of place and presence.
What else has been going on in 2019?
I have been involved in a number of exhibitions in the US, notably the MIT Water Night and NORDIC5 art exhibition, Nordic Lights. I also had a small exhibition focused on the Murray Darling Basin at the Belconnen Library, which will be coming down next week.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I was at the IREE19 conference in Brisbane, presenting two papers about my research into energy efficiency and behaviour change. After the conference, my wonderful Lobaki collaborator Josiah Jordan came to Canberra and we presented a workshop featuring the ‘energy choices’ VR experience. We had some great feedback and look forward to evolving this project.
After a deep breath out, I am looking forward to heading back to Aotearoa New Zealand in late May to Wellington and Taranaki. I will be in Parihaka collaborating with my dear friend, mentor and kuia (female tribal elder) Maata Wharehoka to create a work for the Puanga Festival – more on this project to come soon 🙂 We will also be spending some time with the More than Human Lab at Victoria University in Wellington and plan to present our work at the Thomas King Observatory.
Phew! Well this is probably enough from me for now.
xT
Ps: Here is a link to the project for Made of Walking again, just in case you missed it 🙂
https://australianculturalfund.org.au/projects/made-of-walking-v/
Tracey M Benson || Bytetime 