Finite Eyes

Finite Eyes brings together live-performance, pre-recorded sound, and moving image in an evening exploring the emotive pull and mobilising force of utopian visions. For the Australian premiere of this programme, experimental music duo Ora Clementi and curatorial collective anorak invite two new artistic collaborators, Debris Facility and Melody Woodnutt, to adapt it for the stage.

Finite Eyes puts an emphasis on questions surrounding interpretation, the function of memory, and sound within both listener and performer, merging curatorial and compositional techniques. A bespoke stage design forms the environment for three music sets, which are put in dialogue with film and sound works by various artists, reflecting on how seemingly empirical information is manipulated and transformed through the interplay of speech, voice-over, and moving image.

Teetering on the borderline where the ephemeral realm of the imaginary converges with situated experiences, Finite Eyes raises questions about how utopian visions are informed by collective fantasies that in turn shape perceptions, memories, and imagined futures.

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Ora Clementi is the duo of Canadian sound artist crys cole and Australian composer/performer James Rushford. Distinct, disorienting and highly performative, their work examines voice and vocal mirroring through preconscious speech processes and the codified abstraction of found texts, supported by a vast battery of handmade instruments, electronics, and hyper-colour processing.

The Debris Facility has been providing para-corporate operations to the sector through installation, a/v, design, performance, discourse, wear, events and administration. They process and oscillate between value and waste, signal and noise, subject and object, micro and macro. They have produced over 200 public works over almost a decade.

Melody Woodnutt works primarily within the expanded field of 16mm analogue moving image film. Her artworks take form as large scale immersive installations, expanded cinema, short 16mm films, or printed photographic film stills. Melody’s films are often made from an alchemical feminist position as default (alongside bio-art’s concept of “witches in labs”).

Composition and music  Ora Clementi (James Rushford & crys cole)
Curation and concept anorak (Lukas Ludwig & Johanna Markert)
Lighting and Staging Debris Facility
Film and Projections Melody Woodnutt
Featuring work by Basma al-Sharif, Tolia Astakhishvili & James Richards, Charles Bernstein, Ora Clementi, Marguerite Duras, Dani ReStack, and Melody Woodnutt
In partnership with Composie: Moving Image Agency & Media Bank
Supported by Creative Australia (Arts Projects For Individuals and Groups)
Commissioned by anorak, Berlin, 2023