Banalities for the Perfect House

Here's the details of the show I'll get Ruark in (eventually) to plug in person.

BANALTIES FOR THE PERFECT HOUSE
A new performance installation by
Ruark Lewis & Rainer Linz about living more lightly
in the city and suburbs

8, 9, 10 September 8pm @ Performance Space

In Banalities for the Perfect House Ruark Lewis and Rainer Linz take a hammer to the dominant gridlines of the city and suburbs and smash down the entombment of conventional chamber theatre and music. They break through the constraints of spoken word, nail down the sound of the computer and it's network, and employ the carpentry of song lines to create an immersive environment of sound and installation.

Taking apart the concept of poetry readings and music recitals, visual and performance artist Ruark Lewis, in collaboration with Melbourne based composer Rainer Linz, use sound, noise and synesthetic transcription to build the perfect house for an imperfect world.

Poetry is stencilled on beams of wood that scale the walls of the theatre and timber frames hang suspended from the ceiling representing the framework of a house. The audience are invited to wander through the installation as Linz and Lewis perform, sample sound and project imagery from six stations throughout the space.

Banalities for the Perfect House is part 4 in the Who’s Afraid of the Avant-Garde? installation and performance series curated by Blair French. Each project presents work that engages with avant-gardism in manners suggesting its reinscription as a paradigm for art and social action in the 21st century.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS
RUARK LEWIS is a Sydney-based artist and writer who works closely with text and image relationships through installation, painting, artist-books, site-specific commissions and performance. He has exhibited and performed widely in Australia, the UK and Europe. His permanent installation Relay (with Paul Carter) is situated at Sydney Olympic Park. His publications include Depth of Translation: The Book of Raft’(with Paul Carter), Just for Nothing (with Nathalie Sarraute) and False Narratives.

Melbourne-based composer and sound artist RAINER LINZ has a long involvement in radio, music theatre, instrumental and electronic music. His work includes an opera as well as numerous chamber and electronic pieces intended for concert performance. He is also an author and publisher. The Oxford Companion to Music in Australia (OUP, 1999) notes "Linz's innovative and entrepreneurial work in Melbourne has been a significant factor in the city's prominence in experimental music." His recent collaborative work includes the sound installation Barcode (Graz, 1999), and the interactive gallery installation infonoise (Belgrade, 2001). . Under the title New Listener he has devised a series of computer programs where a music or sound composition can be adjusted to the listener's preference.


For more information contact Rosie Dennis at Performance Space
02 9698 7235 or, media@performancespace.com.au
Performance Space 199 Cleveland Street Redfern www.performancespace.com.au