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The Niche project begins on the northern bank of the great Shoalhaven river in the Dharawal language lands of the Wodi Wodi clan. Together with other clans, they make up the Yuin nation. Theirs is a continuum of timeless laws, ceremonies, practices, knowledge and signs triggering events that bind time and space to a deep connection with the land. In Dharawal, the Wodi Wodi people might call this ‘bugjari bamul’. Ancient Greeks called it γαια (gaia), and biologist/philosopher Jakob von Uexkull refers to it as ‘umwelt’.
The Niche project is part of our ongoing investigation of umwelt, heimat and ‘country’. The work is a series of small Monopoly like huts in which people sit and which invite a way of responding to ‘habitat’.
Umwelt is how we perceive our surroundings. The signs we read and how they affect our daily activities and means of survival. Translated from German it simply means ‘environment’. But every environment is a subjective universe and every organism has its own way of interpreting it. A wild fig will be perceived differently by an ant, wasp, larva, bat, bird and human. Wild figs abound in Wodi Wodi country.
Umwelt determines how we approach each day and the fictions we choose to inhabit. Apparently for those who live in the shadow of Vesuvius, each day is lived as a new beginning as if it might be their last. For others, each day might be a return to a crime scene, run as a marathon, performed as ceremonial law, or played out as monotony.
Each to their own umwelt.
Rather than an environmental niche, umwelt is a subjective niche where each person is like an island in a complex archipelago of others - and otherness.
The Niche project currently consists of two distinct umwelten, Niche #1 and #2. These are ‘sense islands’ presented as two bubble-like universes amid thousands of others in an effervescence of natural systems.
the Niche project
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Each Niche invites a contemplation of umwelt; a consideration of how living organisms might perceive their environment each from their unique perspective. A reflection on how our own personal views and actions connect in new ways with the animals and organisms surrounding us.
Our arrival at each niche is shaped by how we have read a flow of signs where, roughly every tenth of a second, we’ll have noticed movements and shapes that guide what we do and how we feel.
Niche #1 offers a social sanctuary. From within it we find ourselves amid an exhibition of locally created structures. It shifts the language of habitat so that we live its mystery and vitality as contemporary art.
It is sited within an inhabited gallery exhibiting:
Traces, Islands, Wrappings, Installations, Constructions, Accumulations, Rubbings, Piles
Niche #2 tenders a place of refuge and intimacy. It is a hideaway island in a field of subterranean safe havens. It shifts the practice of habitat so that we live its repose and calm as intimate refinement.
It is sited within a field of underground dwellings, constructed shelters and containers and includes:
Foot bath components, Fragrance, Botanicals, Materia Medica
In stepping into each Niche, we enter a remembered space of species…warm blooded, omnivore, mammal, homo sapiens, hunter, gatherer, submissive, alpha…
We also encounter the involuntary art created by the fauna around us.
Ultimately, the Niche Project is a primal experience.
It is a call to interact with a timelessness and natural processes of transformation that supersede a life span.
Jude Anderson – Punctum 2016
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traces
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islands
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wrappings
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installation
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constructions
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accumulations
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rubbings
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piles
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The Niche project is a Punctum production by
Jude Anderson - Punctum– concept, direction, design
Gilles Lapalus – photo documentation and materia medica (Maidenii)
Nici Wright – construction
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With thanks to my brother who offered me a sublime booklet of poems by Pelham Corbett – Home on the Farm, one of which I recalled while devising the Niche project:
‘Hello yellow lemon
In the lemon tree,
Say: am I as here for you
As you are there for me?’
With heartfelt thanks to:John Baylis and Julie Ryan for their warm welcome to Bundanon, Ralph Dixon for generously sharing his knowledge and understanding of the history, flora and fauna of Bundanon Farm, Adrian Corbett for his ongoing good management, and the Siteworks team.
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Copyright Jude Anderson - Punctum 2016
www.punctum.com.au
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