2017 was the inaugural year of FSM, the nomadic iteration of KochiAIR, an artist residency established by Lichen Kelp and Dylan Martorell in Kerala, India in 2014.
In June of this year FSM travelled with artists Belle Bassin, Nathan Gray, Dylan Martorell, Lichen Kelp, and Michael Candy, beekeeper and poet Nic Dowse and dancer Benjamin Hancock.
They were based in Athens, Kithera and Serifos where over a period of six weeks these diverse practitioners engaged collaboratively with the public and each other creating improvised communities and radical experimentation.
These artists and musicians, dancers and poets used the streets, airwaves, gallery and digital media to create a common noosphere of sensory activity incorporating robotics, interactive electronics, public lectures, wearable art, kinetic sculpture, performative chemistry and workshops.
Image by Nic Dowse/Honeyfingers
More information on this project here; lichenkelp.com/forum-of-sensory-motions
FSM GREECE 17: For 6 weeks, Australian artsits Michael Candy, Nathan Gray, Benjamin Hancock, Belle Bassin, Dylan Martorell, Nic Dowse and Lichen Kelp travelled thoughout Greece, developing works and collaborations.
Text by Nathan Gray:
FSM 2017’s emergent themes include notions of the body and materiality apprehended in movement. Dylan Martorell’s practice, for example, scavenges discarded objects and activates them kinetically via robotics in order to explore their auditory potential. Rather than simply broadcasting sound, as through a sound system, these sonic automata are arrayed throughout spaces allowing audiences to venture inside these complex acoustic environments. These works are presented as collaborations with the other artists in the group.Belle Bassin presents works using the body as a sculptural form, merging bodies with landscape and architecture in aesthetically driven experiential works. Developed on Kythera, Serifos and in Athens, her recent work questions how to preserve the ethereal space of visions in accessible material formats and complications of the creative process.Dancer Benjamin Hancock will present his new solo work WITCH an attempt at using shape shifting and possession as strategies to disrupt gender binaries and explore new potentialities of the body.Both Michael Candy and Nathan Gray present new works that question technological determinism through mixed strategies of documentary and speculative fiction. Candy will show documentation from recent interventions in Kathmandu that explore the spiritual life of robots while Gray presents a new lecture performance entitled The Antikythera Device and the Holographic Universe that looks at a 1st Century BCE Hellenistic Era analogue computer, discovered in a ship wreck, in the light of recent claims by technologists including Elon Musk that we exist inside a simulation. Both of these works create histories of simulation and artificial intelligence that move the future back into the distant past.Another area of enquiry for FSM 2017 is the way that movement occurs across material, biological and phenomenological boundaries. Lichen Kelp’s work uses improvised thermal and chemical reactions from materials such as botanical samples, oils, ice and ouzo to generate live imagery and sound. Liquid imagery with its floods, waves, ripples, tides and flows provides a rich source of metaphors for economic and geopolitical thinking into the early 21st century (waves of migration, economic ripples etc.) Closer examination of these actual phenomena can lead to a reinterpretation or replacement of these metaphors with ideas of greater utility. Nic Dowse’s work moves across biological and authorial boundaries in his ongoing collaboration with bees and beekeeping. FSM 2017 sees him present a series of works that have been installed in beehives in the foothills of Athens and embellished by colonies of bees, furnishing his works with honeycomb, pollen and honey.
Night one performances held at: Exit Gallery 1-7 Evmorfoupolou, Psiri, Athens July 4th.
Image: Benjamin Hancock performs Witch on Opening Night, Exit Gallery Athens.
Image: Night two of The Witch; collaborative dance piece by Benjamin Hancock with mic'ed up skate bowl and robot orchestra live soundtrack by Dylan Martorell and performances by local skaters at Latraac, Athens, for Forum of Sensory Motion, July 2017.
Both nights performances viewable here
View more images from FSM residencies: #forumofsensorymotion
As part of the FSM program in Athens, Belle Bassin presents her work, using the body as a sculptural form, merging bodies with landscape and architecture in an aesthetically driven experiential work.
Belle Bassin, pictured above in Serifos, Greece with robotic instruments by Dylan Martorell
Bodyclock, above, filmed in Kythira Greece, June 2017. Screening at Testing Grounds, November 2017
Michael Candy's bees-eye-view of a mountain apiary in Serifos, screening at Testing Grounds November, 2017. Candy worked on a series of videos filmed with a customised drone and VR goggles for the artists on the Forum of Sensory Motion residency including this one in collaboration with beekeepers Honeyfingers and Nikos Kokolakis. Honey Fingers and Michael Candy presented this experience in the streets and bars of Serifos and Athens, with the smell of freshly crushed wild Thymari and Mountain Sage and other herbs that the bees feed on, for an immersive extra-sensory experience . Viewable here
Participant experiencing the DIY VR installation and footage by Michael Candy in installation by Belle Bassin For FSM Greece, Exit Gallery Athens, July 2017.
Nathan Gray, The Mechanism, 2017, screening at Testing Grounds throughout November 2017, during opening hours.
IN 1901 a mysterious device is found in a Roman shipwreck of the island of Antikythera. In 1974 a science fiction author has a revelation that reality is an illusion controlled by an ancient roman machine called the Black Iron Prison. In 2028 a prominent technologist gives a press conference to announce he has died and is addressing his audience from an augmented reality network called After-life. This complex narrative weaves together historical research, philosophical enquiry and speculation on future events.
The Mechanism is a new Short Film By Nathan Gray that juxtaposes narration over hypnotic video shot in Greece, Germany and Australia. It was developed over the last 3 months with the help of ZK/U, Berlin and The Forum for Sensory Motion.
Performative outcomes from FSM Greece 17 held at Testing Grounds November 2017. Pictured; Kelp D/J with Benjamin Hancock.