vivonne thwaites
curator
cole larsen
Cole Larsen opal mining in Mintabe SA
cole larsen
Cole Larsen is a moving image artist and narrative film maker working across the disciplines, and using each to inform and influence the other. He has employed film making techniques to firstly document and then interpret topical landscape works, and he recently incorporated visual art and animation with live action drama to create an experimental narrative about an artist living between reality and alternative realities, using his body as a canvass for human suffering.
For the past decade Larsen has worked in close collaboration with landscape artist Robert Habel depicting topical landscapes. Locations and focuses include the wind turbines at Starfish Hill, Santos refinery at Point Lowly and the arid environments of the mid north in SA, the Kimberleys and Bungle Bungle ranges in WA, the proposed Gunns pulp mill site and roaring 40’s wind turbines in Northern Tasmania, and the anti-landscape of Singapore.
Also studying for a PhD, Larsen (director) is developing a creative doctorate project, a feature film, with fellow PhD candidates Tom Young (producer) and Matt Hawkins (writer). Each of the three will write a thesis on their area of speciality and will then collaborate to complete a 90 minute low budget feature film set in an alternative reality in the near future.
In this alternative reality, uranium is the new oil and the republic of South Australia is the new middle east. The one company state, dominated by the powerful uranium entity UCORP, has developed a near perfect weapon of mass destruction that targets the cells of the body that protect us from cancer. The weapon will have devastating effect, and more importantly will enable a population to be wiped out while infrastructure remains intact. The only problem is that the scientist who developed the weapons program has had a nervous breakdown, and UCORP is in a continual cycle of trying to re-program the genius into his former ruthless self.
The Jetty @ artroom5
A nation obsessed with summer and an artist obsessed with statistics makes for an interesting interpretation in The Jetty, the most recent work by film maker and moving image artist Cole Larsen.
In a 12 hour period on Saturday 13 February 2010 the temperature will pass 40 degrees for the 27th day in a row and reach a record 48.2 degrees. South Australians will drink 90 thousand bottles of beer, perspire 1.2 million litres of sweat and spend a combined three years surfing the internet.
People will flock to the jetty to sing songs, play chess, walk with their children, drink beer, paint pictures, deliver monologues, meditate to tai chi, listen to radios and look for a sign that global warming is an insurance scam.