2007 » New Zealand » Student section

Intent/Extent

Two sites for performance design: a tent built in the grounds of PQ (Intent), and a space in the Student Section (Extent). The tent is transient architecture, with surfaces that respond to the movement of light, wind, and bodies. It allows us to enter the design, and encounter the work as a live experience. Transported into the tent from the other exhibition space (Extent), design takes form, animates and performs. The other half of this exhibit (Extent) provides an experience wherein the event is recorded or proposed through drawing, photography, and physical artefacts. Ongoing documentation makes a record of Intent as it evolves, whilst other elements adapt conventions of re-presenting performance design for exhibition. Conceptual readings traverse these two sites, constructing a dialogue or migration of ideas back and forth. At times it is a journey that recalls the miles this exhibit has covered travelling from NZ. Individual works speak of this distant country: evoking the domestic, cultural, and geographic landscapes that are influencing these young designers in their work. Atent counterfeits security. Its thin membrane is all that separates the private interior from the glare of public scrutiny. In the unexpected location, the material qualities of the tent are exposed as fragile, no longer sustaining the stability one may expect inside its recesses. These contradictions are experienced as the public moves from exterior space into the claustrophobic and personal interior of an inhabited tent. Thus the two prefixes (In- / Ex-) evoke contrasting states of interiority and exteriority in relation to the work. Intent suggests the immersive, tactile interior of live performance, where a subjective experience allows individual readings and personal encounters.