Sediment by Jen Valender
Sediment (2023) is a digital artwork by Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist Jen Valender. The work is presented as part of Fed Square’s annual curated program of digital art, for the Big Screen.
About the artwork
Sediment (2023) features aeolian harp-sculptures created from antique surveyors’ tripods sourced from a local agricultural college played by the wind within a retired quarry and activated by Australian pythons. The resonance from the harps remains raw, with the sound unaltered, capturing the essence of the elements and connecting with country in regional Victoria.
The tripods are relics from a bygone era, once used to measure and map the landscape. This cross-elemental performance activates natural forces, while reflecting on place and cartographic memory. The energy generated by the wind vibrates the harp strings, giving presence to the site’s dynamic natural qualities and acoustics, seeing the landscape itself as a collaborator.
Snakes personify how the artist views the Australian landscape, with the dual interpretation of being simultaneously beautiful and terrifying. Sediment explores how sound may be translated to an animal. A python hears via vibrations through its skin, enabling a truly embodied sonic experience.
Sediment conjures deeper and universal relationships between visual language and myth making to reveal how serpents are transformed within aesthetic-cultural fields and to examine the postmodern animal as performer.
Developed during an Art + Ecology Residency hosted by the Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) at the University of Melbourne’s Agricultural College in regional Victoria, this work is inspired by Valender’s experience of the sights, sounds, stories, and serendipitous encounters with residents of all species at the campus.
About the artist
Jen Valender is an Aotearoa New Zealand-born, Naarm Melbourne-based, multidisciplinary artist who creates performative encounters on and with the landscape that raise questions about the relationship between art and the natural world. Through moving image, she explores the ways in which art may be used as a navigational tool to investigate human and nonhuman connections.
Valender has exhibited widely in galleries, museums and public spaces in Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, England, Italy and Portugal. She is a PhD candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and is an ongoing ACMI X resident artist at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Jen Valender, Sediment (2023)
Performers
Basil the Albino Python (Morelia Spilota Varigate)
Banjo the Carpet Python (Morelia Spilota Variegate)
Lara the Olive Python (Liasis Olivaceus)
Director of Photography: Gene Alberts
Colourist: Nicholas Andrews
Herpetologist: Michael Alexander
Image credit: Gene Alberts courtesy of the artist
Sediment is presented by Fed Square in collaboration with the artist.