www.making-time.net
http://p4pilot.com.au

18 November – 18 December, 2010
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
Perth, WA


s the invited representatives of ‘Practice’ for the P4 (pilot) initiative from Performance Space and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Making Time was a live art project we conducted in PICA’s Westend Gallery over one week at the beginning of the Now Right Now! exhibition.

Making Time was an unfolding exercise in redirective practice, beginning with the craft of pickling, jam-making, bottling and otherwise preserving food. It took the form of an open laboratory and series of actions/exchanges, into which ‘skilled’ participants were invited to teach the artists (and other interested parties) how to bottle, preserve and pickle a variety of native or backyard surplus foods. In exchange, we made ourselves available for introductory micro-seminars on key ideas informing our practice such as ‘futuring’, ‘sustainment’, ‘shuttling’, ‘chronophobia’ and ‘designing in time’ – experimenting with translating these ideas to new audiences in unlikely (and edible) settings.






Making Time

2010

Preserving jars, Fowlers Vacola preserving unit, found materials etc.

Dimensions variable


he project sought to generate agency in relation to food security and non-institutional learning, investigating how food preservation techniques may be themselves preserved and deployed in an impending age of unsettlement and urban adaptation.

Over the course of the residency we bottled marinated abalone (plucked fresh that morning on one of only 6 days of the year it can be legally harvested by license-holders...), made Country Women’s Association-inspired strawberry jam, produced pots of gleaned mulberry jam and preserved whole peaches from a local organic farmer…

Thanks go to the team at PICA and P4(pilot), all who contributed recipes equipment or know-how, and to our gallery neighbour Hiromi Tango.

 


This work was commissioned by Performance Space and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in 2010 as part of P4, a live art initiative supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, and the British Council.