Earthworks

Artist Phil Dadson
Period 1971-72
Length 11 min 30 sec
Country NZ
Tags

28650006

Description: Digital video or 16mm
Exhibition mode: Option 1 (Cinema): 16mm film projection. Option 2 (Gallery): Digital video projection or LCD flatscreen. Loop optional.
Media details: SD Digital video conversion from 16mm Ektachrome film. Ratio: 4:3. Stereo audio.

EARTHWORKS (1971/72) A simultaneous, ten minute performance & recording event – co-incided with autumn and spring equinoxes, on the 23 or 24th of Sept – (depending on the longitude of location) 1971 – proposed for 1800 hours G.M.T at 15 diverse earth locations representing a diversity of physical phenomena on earth re: altitude, latitude & longitude. The event aimed to capture a temporary instant in the continuum of universal ebb and flow.

8 of the 15 recipients participated in real-time, performing instructions to shoot stills and make an audio recording, reporting on local conditions, time etc. The NZ part in the event was recorded at 6am sunrise Sept 24th 1971 on the central North Island volcanic plateau, & was filmed continuously onto a ten minute roll of 16mm film. In 1972 stills and audio from other locations and project participants were later synchronised and edited into the 10 min continuum. The audio track is an unedited mix of tape-recordings at the time.
 
 
Credits: 

Concept/Editor: Phil Dadson
Camera: IB Heller and Leon Narbey (1971)
Edited by Phil Dadson with stills and audio received from project participants (1972)

Selected Exhibitions:
Concertina, St Paul St Gallery, Auckland (2006)
Tapping the Pulse Philip Dadson works 1971-2004, New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington (2005)
Global Conceptualism, Queens Museum of Art, New York (1999)
Headlands, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1992)