ISEA (International Symposium of Electronic Art) Brisbane 2024
Time Tracing (2020) & Wish you were here on VHS (2024)
Video Duration 15min
June 2024
Video Sample – Time Tracing
The Cube QUT Gardens
Time Tracing recreates the map lines of the Murrumbidgee river as giant water drawings in the earth, which–over time–move, extend and connect. Working in collaboration with local Wagga Wagga artists, this large-scale video work incorporates dance, movement and sound that simulate the power of the Murrumbidgee river catchment. This ancient and fragile ecosystem has held and traced story for communities throughout time; Time Tracing aims to honour the unique characteristics of the Murrumbidgee river, in all its all states; flood, drought and flow acknowledging the catchment’s significance to communities both past and present. Filmed on the banks of the river at dusk, with Indigenous and non-Indigenous emerging performers of Wagga Wagga, the video aims to celebrate the river’s connection to the land and people it supports across time as a collision of moving bodies utilise lines and repetition. Commissioned by Wagga Wagga Council
Artist: Kellie O’Dempsey
Sound: Mick Dick
Videographer: Damien Jenkins from Next Inline Productions
Performers: Wes Boney, Zoë Hadler, Natasha Strimpf, Markus Wright
Wish you were here on VHS is an immersive video of collaged test patterns, glitches and moving figures that transports the viewer into an uncertain landscape. The Wish you were here series began as a response to lockdowns and has continued to develop with transforming elements of humour and oddity. In this version, swimming eyeball fish collide with unstable analogue geometry. In search of progress, multiple figures attempt to travel, yet go nowhere in this oddball world. Their figurative and abstract forms gently smash together as we all fumble for connection. Through repetitive rhythm, monotonous loops, remnants of the pre-, in non-specific locations and an unspecified time, Wish You Were Here blends the physical and promises endless energy to keep trying in this weird and changing world.
Artist: Kellie O'Dempsey
Sound: Mick Dick
Augmented Reality & Animation: Helena Papageorgiou
