Beth Dawson

Directed by my audio-visual drawing installation practice, this research is concerned with the potential of materials and being in city spaces. This project is situated in Tāmaki Makaurau, most closely within the neighbourhoods of Karangahape Road, Wai Horotiu, and Onehunga. By improvising with my selected vocabulary of materials and motifs in temporary social city sites (gardens, stairwells, corridors, carparks, galleries, bars, community halls, and my apartment block), I engage in a heightened understanding of how our bodies occupy space and experience time. My motifs are saturated with the ephemera of the modern city, being laced with melodrama drawn from film noir and horror and romance comics, found footage home movies, and first-person field recordings. My subversive recontextualising of cultural detritus employs the aesthetics of music subcultures and is a realisation of my participation in punk and experimental music communities. Dwelling in audiovisual spaces of process, such as in online performance, hanging posters, projecting onto sculpted screens, processing field recordings, and sharing comics, makes abundant my continual queer feminist elevating and valuing that which is temporary, collective, amateur, and improvised.