[1.6.09 - 1.7.09] Chris Bell - Australia
"I’m interested in suggesting alternative views and uses of the simple materials and objects we (in the west) live with..".

Chris Bell fra Usa

Name:Chris Bell

Nationality: Australia

Homeland: now living in California, USA

Town: San Francisco

Age: 42

How long are you resident?  From 1/6/2009 until 1/7/2009?

Have you been in Trondheim before?  No,

Do you wish to get in touch with somebody in Trondheim?  no

Is it something you look forward to?   Yooo bet!

About you work

Discipline: installation and sculpture

Technique:  trial-and-error

Statement:  I’m interested in suggesting alternative views and uses of the simple materials and objects we (in the west) live with.   Our relationships with one-another are often mediated with objects, (clothes, cars, buildings etc). These simple material signifiers are usually straight-jacketed and so strongly co-opted to a ‘universal’ role that their essences are overlooked.  Changing the context and  ‘performative’ qualities of objects and materials- giving then new uses- is my attempt to inspire all of us to see the potentials for creative interaction with the everyday. 

Plans for your residency?

Arriving with a booking to exhibit at Babel gallery, I plan to work hard to make an installation using solar-powered motors, doing Herculean feats despite their tiny size and weakness. (through gearing)
The consideration of energy consumption has been a strong defining feature in my life for 20 years now. Our relationship to the use and misuse of energy is incredibly integral to our lifestyle, comfort and conveniences.
It is why the industrialised world is having such difficulty reducing consumption.
 So, for the first time I am making an installation with this dilemma as a basis.
The demonstration of the many small motors making slow, but large effect will serve as metaphor for the way that the seemingly insignificant individual has, as a member in a world-wide army of consumers, also made such an effect - on a planetary scale. Now, with the right collective will and co-ordination, the same armies can have the opposite, positive effect.