Arteles Catalogue 2023-2020

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2020
Ana Tiquia
Australia
workplaceproject.net
About
I am a transdisciplinary artist who was born and lives in
Melbourne, Australia on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri
People of the Kulin Nation. My work encompasses a range
of practices: curation, producing, futures research and
strategy, visual and participatory arts practices. I am also a
trained yoga practitioner and teacher. My current research
explores energy futures, futures of labour, the role of arts
practice in socio-ecological transition, and the power
dynamics encoded in algorithmic systems. I am also one half
of artist duo EXOGAMY.
I began with a moving image practice, but over the past decade
my mediums and artistic strategies, and the conversations I
seek to have with audiences have transformed. Collaborative
and participatory practice has become an important part of
my work, whether I’m curating, producing or in the artist role.
I recently completed my Master in Strategic Foresight – a
degree that merges futures studies with strategy. This has
led me to explore the interplay between arts and futures;
exploring the role of arts and culture practice in relation to
future inquiry, imagining, and social change. My most recent
projects are public interventions; participatory, performancebased
installations that invite audiences into dialogue with
‘The Future’.
Acts of attention
Asking “what is one’s ‘practice’?” has parallels to the
question “what does one do with one’s life?”. What to do with
the time we have at this residency? What to do with the time
we have with each other? What to do with the time we share
on our planet? The easy answer in our neoliberal capitalist
times would be: “to be productive”. For me, following the
‘productivity line’ to dictate my own practice has become too
easy and too problematic, equally.
I began my residency at Arteles by asking “how do I
‘de-capitalize’ my practice, and the way I approach and
appreciate my work? How do I embrace other forms of
value, and reframe ‘productivity’ in my work and action?”.
I was curious about the other rhythms of work and rest that
might emerge in a month of cultivating silence, awareness
and contemplating existence. I was keen to know where
my attention would go, once a focus on ‘productivity’ was
put aside. I turned my attention towards intuitive impulses
to make, play, research, contemplate, and rest; both in
my practice with Christian Bishop as Exogamy and in my
individual explorations. We embraced spontaneity and
worked with whatever materials we had at hand.
A playful project that began with daily painting of icicles using
blackcurrant ink became an act of attention to phenomena
in the landscape we worked in. As temperatures rose the
reddened icicles would pale, eventually disappearing all
together as we entered above-zero temperatures. In an alltoo-hot
winter for Southern Finland, this playful gesture
rendered each icicle as a barometer: an amplifier of attention
that revealed in the microcosm of Arteles the macrocosmic
realities of global warming and our changing planet.