Kenzie Larsen

It's Just Everything

2011-12-29T21:10:00.000-08:00

Upcoming solo show

Where- 55 Sydenham rd Sydenham NSW

Opening- Thurs 19^th Jan 6- 8pm

Exhibition continues- Thurs- Sun 1- 6pm

Everything is a show about a few things, mainly; excess, destruction and perspective and in this context ‘mainly’ should be defined as something closer to ‘kind of’ or ‘not at all’. Larsen has thought about these themes along with a few others and then devised studies on various topics using instruments such as, play dough, video, seafood and illustration. How these studies turned out is this show.

Grand Chasm

2011-10-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

For their latest artistic collaboration Kenzie Larsen, William Mansfield and Eddie Sharp present ‘Grand Chasm’, an installation and naturally occurring wonder. File in. Be amazed. Leave quietly.

Human intervention of special effects to change or enhance natural wonders is a magical union in the eyes of our collaboration. We think that theatric devices (lights, stories, ghost tours) coupled with natures own mystical displays distort our experiences of natures majesty and align them more with the uncanny rather than the natural.

More info sanddunehike.wordpress.com

New Performance

2011-10-03T21:41:00.000-07:00

For Cab Sav at the Melbourne Fringe Festival this year I created a new video/ performance work for the stage. A short piece in which outline the many ways in which 'Beyonce stole my identity' followed by a large scale video interactive choreographed dance routine inspired by Beyonces' spectacular live performance at the Billboard Music Awards this year.

Freedman Exhibition 2011

2011-10-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

A is for America

2011-07-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

I have been in America for the past few weeks on an epic road trip from Los Angeles to New York. I have been documenting my aesthetic interests and research whilst in America as research for an exhibition in Sydney in September. This trip is the first of many trips in which I will travel to one place for each letter of the alphabet (preferably in alphabetical order) to undertake research for new art works.

View "A is for America"

A story in a book

2011-05-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

The premise of this blog post is that;

Kenzie and Eddie wrote a popular monologue about a Sci- fi thriller movie pitch (starring Morgan Freeman) for their theatre show "Some film museums i have known". Then Penguin plays rough put it in their book.

Holey Moley!

This book is also full of other amazing short stories by the likes of Zoe Coombs Marr and Claudia O' Doherty and some other people but i forget their names... The story by Claudia is about killer whales and I got to draw the illustrations for it (it's mostly tessellating whales swimming in a sea of love hearts).

Also this book has a hard cover and a matching iPhone 'app' (short for application) and i think it is available in most books stores in Sydney and Australia at large. It was launched at the Sydney Writers Festival last week but i couldn't go to the launch because i wanted to watch 'Lost' re- runs and cook this really amazing fennel and Barramundi dish that i'd read about on the internet.... i mean... i was sick that night...

Anyway, i think this book is pretty cool on a number of levels and i think that you should all 'get amongst it'. You can order it online here

Space Happens!

2011-03-23T23:27:00.001-07:00

“Space Happens”
Is a new video/ sculpture work that functions as a video hosted board game for up to six players. “Space Happens” references a time when video board games such as “Nightmare” and “Atmosfear” were a hip novelty for a generation that took amusement from both board games and VHS. Larsen is investigating both the nostalgia of childhood forms of entertainment and means by which a gallery audience can participate in and use artwork in a physical and cognitive way. Through the participation in playing the board game the displayed artwork becomes a model through which the audience establishes relationships to one another.

Directions:
To play “Space Happens” six players are allocated a planet, which they are ruler of. The aim of the game is to have your ruler complete one whole orbit and make it back to their planet before the game timer runs out. Simple! I hear you say! Well not really, as there are black holes, jealous aliens and an array of space obstacles that will try to knock you off your orbit. Kenzie is your video host who keeps a time check on the game, enforces tasks and guides the players through the mysterious fun of space!

"Space Happens" opens at Firstdraft on the 6th of April and runs until the 24th of April. More info available here: www.firstdraftgallery.com

Hand made T- shirts by Kenzie now available!

2011-01-28T16:37:00.000-08:00

WOW! I built a website to house my new project 'hand- made- T- shirts- by Kenzie'!

www.handmadetshirtsbykenzie.com

This project has developed out of my commitment to making my friends personalized T- shirts as gifts for just about any occasion you can imagine. With my new website i am expanding the option of having your own personalized T- shirt to EVERYONE! Not just my friends! So if you are into badly drawn fan T- shirts featuring a poorly rendered version of your favorite musician, band, celebrity, TV and cartoon characters then send me an order ASAP!

The deal is that you pay a small fee of $65 plus postage and tell me your T- shirt size. Then the most important part is the "About me" section in which you let me know about 'you', your likes or dis- likes, your hopes and dreams and the things that represent 'you'! I then take this information and design a T- shirt that will most accurately represent your interests.

All T- shirts come in white and the hand drawing is made in permanent washable ink. If you have any questions about this project or if you just want to drop me a line to chat about all things 'hand- made- T- shirt" then email me at,

kenzie@handmadetshirtsbykenzie.com

Made for James Brown because he is a super cool ex boyfriend to me and other girls!

Made for Mish who just LOVES Megadeth!

Made for the coolest couple to ever walk the earth and they also dig party time!

Amazing theatre show!

2011-01-16T16:54:00.000-08:00

This is the show that has been keeping me busy lately, opening for a Sydney season in February.
"A theatre show. A comedy, with a lot of live video and models.
Welcome to The Barumpool Film Museum, a broken down tourist trap in a remote country town. It’s not about accuracy or even safety. It’s about getting to the rebirth you were promised when you first got on the minibus.
From Rhubarb Rhubarb (Wonka!, The Mad Max Remix) comes Some Film Museums I Have Known. A darkly comic journey into the heart of cinematic obsession.
Pilfering elements of horror and fantasy, Rhubarb Rhubarb have crafted a wildly ambitious show of songs, dioramas, model trains, tiny cameras, live video and holograms. A raucous comedy of utter dread, within an ever-evolving DIY set."
Starring Nat Randall and The Holographic Ghost of Nick Coyle
Written by Eddie Sharp & Kenzie Larsen with Natalie Randall & Nick Coyle
Set Design, Holograms and Technical Wizardry by WillMansfield with Eddie Sharp, Kali Reid, Kenzie Larsen and Fred Rodriguez
Music by SPOD
Directed by Eddie Sharp
Produced by Kali Reid
Part of The Imperial Panda Festival (!!!!)

Documentation and assorted oddities from the Sydney season,

Dr. Kenzie Larsen at The Melbourne Fringe Festival

2010-10-13T18:53:00.000-07:00

The documentation my performance as Dr. Kenzie Larsen for Cab Sav at the Melbourne Fringe festival 2010. This performance is based on the premise that i am promoting my new joke book "102 Jokes" and details some of the funniest one liners around, including a recent breakup.

Richard in your mind film clip "Losing our minds"

2010-09-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

I just completed a new film clip for Sydney band "Richard in your mind". This clip is based on an art video i was working on whilst in residence at the Piet Zwart Institute in Holland. By layering projected footage and re- filming each layer I found that I could create a scene in which multiple versions of the same person could interact, kind of. I was reading a lot of Jorge Luis Borges and Kurt Vonnegut at the time. So i wanted to experiment with multiple images of self and changing perspectives of time, which is why i ended up calling the videos "Time sculptures".

I recently got the opportunity to create a video clip for my favorite Sydney band "Richard in your mind" so i jumped on the opportunity to use this idea again. I thought 'the only thing better than one "Richard in your mind" band would be two "Richard in your mind" bands mixed together through the magical power of video art'. So it goes.

The Joke Book

2010-08-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

The Joke Book is a project that i created for a recent FBI fundraiser. They asked me to submit a work for a seven hour exhibition. I decided to sit at a table in the exhibition space for the duration of the show and invite people to share their jokes with me no matter how long, funny or unfunny they were. i have recorded them all in my joke book and now i'm just looking for a publisher...hahaha. There are 74 jokes in the joke book so far but i would like to get that number up to 102, just because the title 101 jokes is already taken. Here are a few of my favorite jokes from 102 Jokes;

Joke 33- Why did the astronaught cross the road? Because he needed some space

Joke 43- Why did the baker have dirty hands? Because he needed a poo

Joke 60- What do you call Woolworths when it burns down? Coles

Joke89- What’s brown and rhymes with Snoop? Dr Dre

Joke20-A man walks into a bar and the first thing that the bar tender notices is that half of the mans head is an orange. He walks up to the bar and orders two scotch and cokes and one lemonade. The bar tender says that will be $12.50, but before the bar tender finishes the man pulls out exact change and puts it on the bar. The bar tender says “wow that’s amazing, also I noticed that all the women in the bar are gravitating towards you, what’s the deal?” half an orange head man takes a sip of his drink and it dribbles half out of his mouth and says “I was cleaning out my garage the other day and I found an old lamp, naturally I gave it a clean and a genie popped out and he gave me three wishes, first I wished for is for every woman in the world to be attracted to me, second wish I wished for was for there to always be correct change in my pocket” Bar tender says “That’s smart because you can get any woman you want and you can buy anything from drink to a car but what was the third wish?” He takes another sip of his drink, which naturally spills half out of his mouth and says “well that’s where I screwed up, I wished for half of my head to be an orange”

Joke3- I went into a fish and chip shop the other day and I said “Do you serve crabs?” and they said “yes we serve anyone, sit down”

Joke 25- when is a door not a door? When it’s a jar

The above photos were taken by Lucy Parakhina and Amelia Groom (not a joke)

New video

2010-04-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

"How to change yourself into an object" is the video that accompanies sculptures and drawings for the exhibition "Platinum Prospects Prosperity Power Lunch". This video was an attempt to integrate comedy and B- grade special effects into the ramshackle collection of sets and props in the show.

Platinum Prospects Prosperity Power Lunch

2010-03-07T01:47:00.000-08:00

The proper documentation of my recent exhibition at MOP. The show was made up of a series of drawings and sketches, two large sculptures one complete with a functioning water feature/ continuously erupting volcano. There was also a video that was an instructional guide on how to turn yourself into an object

Platinum Prospects Prosperity Power Lunch

2010-01-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

It's the final countdown

Exhibition of my new sculpture and video work at MOP Projects opening on the 21st of Jan
http://www.mop.org.au/upcoming.html

This show is based on the writing of Donald Barthelme and b- grade sci- fi film sets. The show features super large sculptures and super small landscapes and a ramshackle layout of furniture, props and video.

“Ask us anything about our thing, which seems to be working”, the chief engineer said. “We will open our hearts and heads to you, software man, because we want to be understood and loved by the great lay public and have our marvels appreciated by that public, for which we daily unsung produce tons of new marvels each more life enhancing than the last. Ask us anything. Do you want to know about evaporated thin- film metallurgy? Monolithic and hybrid integrated- circuit processes? The algebra of inequalities? Optimization theory? Complex high speed micro- miniature closed and open loop systems? Fixed variable mathematical cost searches ? Epitaxial deposition of semiconductor materials? Gross interfaced space gropes? We also have specialists in the cuckoo flower, the doctor fish, and the dumdum bullet as these relate to aspects of today’s expanding technology, and they do in the damnedest ways.”

- D. Barthelem "60 Stories", P. 79 (From short story "The Report")

New sculpture and drawing

2009-11-08T01:33:00.001-08:00

New studies for B- Grade sci- fi film sets in texta and sculpture.

I have been working on these smaller sculptures whilst procrastinating making the large sculpture that i should be working on. After completing the small sculptures in materials such as plasticine, perspex, balsa wood, felt, bricks and paint i decided to draw portraits of them. The portraits are more like 'interpretations' as they are not entirely accurate, i guess you could say that i took some 'artistic liberties' with the drawings.

Paintings

2009-09-19T21:33:00.001-07:00

Locksmith Project #1

2009-06-11T23:39:00.001-07:00

The first issue of Locksmith project space's publication was launched last night! We are currently seeking submissions for the second issue which will appear in September. For more information visit the Locksmith website,

www.locksmithprojectspace.com

Memory experiment 2

2009-05-17T00:31:00.001-07:00

The second film in the "Movie memory" experiments series, now completed. The second film features the retelling of "The Wizard of Oz" as remembered by James Brown. Both of these works will be shown on the 5th of June at the "Play pause play stop" video screening at workshop showroom

Video Screening June 5!!!

2009-05-10T18:15:00.001-07:00

A video screening of new works by Sydney artists at the amazing Workshop Showroom! I will be showing two new works and a kind of old one. I have put together this night in order to get some feedback on some videos that i'm stuck on and to provide an opportunity for other artists to do the same.

Memory experiment 1

2009-03-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

Memory Experiment is a new project i have been working on where i ask selected volunteers to describe what happens in a movie that they remember from their childhood. I then edit the footage of the movie they are talking about to fit their description exactly. The inconsistencies in memory are highlighted and the narrative of the movie is reduced and re- created into a disjointed abridged version. The still above is from 'The Wizard of Oz' as remembered by Mish Grigor.

Word Game Project Phase 2

2009-03-09T19:53:00.000-07:00

The Word Game Project was presented as part of the Tiny Stadiums festival in Erskineville. The work was presented for the first time in the Erskineville Town Hall. Over 40 new players were added to the game. I am now working on developing software that will run the word game by randomly selecting questions to be played followed by randomly selected answers.

A huge thank you to all those who participated in the WGP over the course of the festival!

Time Place Space 2009

2009-02-13T05:13:00.000-08:00

Stills from the 'Assumptions experiment'

A group of 20 people were asked to arrange into groups and lines according to personal information. The only rule of the experiment was that you weren't allowed to speak to anyone else at any point. Participants either had to find an alternative way to communicate or make assumptions about other people. The formations participants were asked to organize into ranged from height, weight and age to sexuality, how professional you thought you were in comparison to others and how much money you made.
Participants were also allowed to leave the experiment at any point if they did not feel comfortable categorizing themselves or others. In this instance everybody stayed until the end. A huge thank you to all the TPS6 participants for their participation in this experiment

2009-02-03T20:49:00.000-08:00

20 Emotions is a re- creation of a drama exercise that i would frequently play in drama class as a child. My childhood plan was to become a famous actress like Nicole Kidman when i grew up.

Instead i am an artist and judging from my current acting abilities it's probably best that i was led astray from the road to thespian glory.

2008-12-14T18:23:00.001-08:00

Quarterbred Residency

The first phase of the Word Game Project is finished. There were 27 participants for this round. I'll be developing some kind of program to make the video installation work over January, then it will be shown In February for the Quarterbred Festival in Erskineville. I'll be adding more video files from new participants during the festival. Whenever the work is shown i hope to be able to add more people, so it will be continually expanding.

2008-12-10T20:37:00.000-08:00

Day three Quarterbred Residency

More people added to the video database for the Word Game Project. I am starting to get an idea of how it will look. Participants are contributing some really great responses

2008-12-09T02:34:00.000-08:00

Day two Quarterbred Residency

The Word game project is starting to take shape. I saw eight new participants today, each with quite amazing questions and answers to contribute to the work. More tomorrow, i am trying to reach 30 by Friday.

2008-12-08T00:20:00.000-08:00

Day one of the Word Game Project. Participants were streaming through the doors to take part in the Work. Participants are invited for the next four days to drop by to PACT Theater to take part.

2008-12-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

Words and images I have been in the habit of collecting words and images and randomly pairing them up to 'see what happens'. To begin with i was using quotes and 'found text' but lately I've started to devise my own text that takes the image as a starting point. Some examples above

2008-12-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

An Interview with Kenzie Larsen

By Kenzie Larsen

Ongoing

K- Hi Kenzie thanks for meeting with me today

K- You’re welcome Kenzie, I always have time for you and I quite enjoy our little chats (Laughs)

K- (Laughs) Let’s get started shall we. With your work I always feel like there is a separation between what you want to be doing, let’s say the idea of the work, and the physical realization of the work. Or perhaps the physical realization cannot do the job of the idea and your negotiation of this paradox is your practice, what would you say to that.

K- Yeah I see what you are saying and that is true for some works and not for others I guess. I mean all my works start from an idea and weather that idea is the work or becomes the starting point for a work is really debatable. All my works start from research and weather the result that that research has on me is direct or indirect is not always obvious. To an extent all artwork is a result of some kind of research weather that is intended or not. I mean, well, I know that in my case I will walk down the street and see the most normal inconsequential things and to me this is still research because those events will have imprinted on my mind to a certain extent. But then say when I am researching in an academic sense the ideas are much more consequential to what I am interested in because I choose what I research and that impacts on my work a lot more, or at least I feel like it does because the work that I do is explicitly related the research I carry out

K- So when you go to do, let’s call it ‘research proper’, what kind of things do you look for? Are there specific topics?

K- Yeah sometimes, often not. I usually start with an artist that I think has an idea that will resemble mine and then I usually scope out their influences and try to trace them back as far as possible. Other times I just walk through the aisles of the library and grab whatever jumps out at me. I usually find that researching in this way, while it may seem like it would only lead down irrelevant tracks, actually leads to something interesting, most of the time, which can be related back to my ideas in some way. Because really once you have decided how you are going to look at things you can fit everything into your world view in a meaningful way, or attempt to. But I mean this tactic doesn’t always work, obviously, sometime I find nothing, or the means I would have to use to use to make a relevant idea, relevant are beyond me, so then I just pick up a book I know I like and try to squeeze more information out of that.

K- That is interesting, I mean I know that you are interested in fictions, and in this way you fictionalize everything you come into contact with, by a means of some kind of curly logic or power to argue anything into its place. But I the end it is still fiction right. Doesn’t it make your ideas more farfetched? Doesn’t it fictionalize them?

K- Yeah it does, but that’s ok, I mean the more fictional the better. I like to see fact evolve into fiction by way of research. There is only a certain amount of ‘relevant’ themes that you can draw upon to make meaning within the context of ‘contemporary art’. So I want to mash a few together to see what happens, maybe the result is completely irrelevant and maybe that’s good, I don’t feel like it makes my work less relevant, whatever I do is an illustration of what I’m thinking about and I like to think that my thinking process as relevant, even if for no reason than as a historical document. This is what a 23 year old girl in 2008 in Sydney thought about on the 19^th of October...

Stay tuned for the second part of 'interview with Kenzie Larsen by Kenzie Larsen' which will be posted next week

2008-12-03T19:44:00.000-08:00

The Word Game Project
PACT Theater December 8- 12. 2008

The word game project will invite participants to devise three questions and three answers, they will then be filmed asking their questions and giving their answers. These video file will go into a video data base that will then be fed through customized software that will randomly pick a question file to be played followed by a random answer file. The result will be a video installation that mimics a word game with many different players that never repeats the same sequence twice. It is hoped that the software mediated combinations of Q and A will make for Hilarious, absurd, topical or eerily profound combinations.
Co- ordinated by Kenzie Larsen with many participants yet to be announced for more information go to
http://www.quarterbred.blogspot.com/

2008-12-03T19:41:00.001-08:00

"Stop doing what you are doing"
Firstdraft Sydney 2008

Exhibition documentation, featuring James Brown and Kenzie Larsen

2008-12-03T19:36:00.000-08:00

The final frontier

The gallery space is the main idea for this work; this space takes on its own life through the events and experiences that we set aside for it to contain. The system of producing and presenting art is ultimately about space; the artist needs space to create the work and needs space to present the work, the work needs a certain space, endowed by a name and white walls, to be received as art. For this work the viewer is not allowed access to the space, they are only allowed to see the space via the cameras view, isolated and presented through the doorway. The entrance is a frame and the experience the viewer gets of the space is pre- recorded and limited by the perspective of the camera.

This work is a parasite on the gallery, it is about a symbiosis, where the artist and the gallery need each other, the artists’ actions and ideas are physically dependent on the gallery space. I have not created a discreet object for display but rather an artwork that is an organism. The actual gallery space is integrated into the work and in this way I have internalized the gallery space as an integral part of the creation process. This work includes the artist, the space and the process of making art in the exhibition as the art work.

The space can only be seen from the awkward angle of the camera, the space inside the room, what the camera can’t see, is no longer a concern of the viewer. The room’s interior is usually familiar as a space dedicated to the presentation of objects and images. This space has been re- claimed and utilized as an instrument for illustrating the meaning and readings that are integral to it because of its history. I am attempting to objectify the gallery space and the artists’ actions within it to create an angle in which experiences and perspective become meaningful.

Art critic Jan Verwoert, in the article “This is not an exhibition” states that ‘the artist is an outsider to the art work at its moment of presentation and that, the institution is an outsider to the choices the artist makes in the conception and production of the work of art’. He then goes on to say that throughout modernity it has been the aim of critical art practices to break this contract by including all the personal, social and institutional processes that shape the work into that gallery space’. Verwoert states that this has been done with ‘the aim of disrupting the objectivity that is created by the ‘exclusion’ of the artist from the work in the moment of its exhibition’1. By filming the space and the artists’ presence within it, my aim was to emphasize that the gallery is significant because of the artist’s activities in and outside of it. By not allowing the viewer into the space I have attempted to reverse this process of exclusion, the artist is included in the art work at its moment of exhibition whilst the viewer is excluded from the gallery.

The video in some instances depicts the space in its ‘natural’ state, this is where the space is seen through the doorway and then out through the window onto the street. I call this the ‘natural view’ as this is the view that is frequently overlooked as meaningless or as non- art. This view would normally be seen if you looked through the door if the space was not modified by the work of an artist. This view becomes meaningful now that it has been recorded and projected back to you to be seen the same way that you would see it normally. Through this process the meaning is generated by capturing the ordinary on video and presenting it back to you in a frame and a context. Miwon Kwon In the essay “One place after another; site specific art and locational identity” states that “Experience is not real unless it is recorded and validated through media representation”. In the case of this work the re- presentation of the gallery space and the artists’ inhabitation of the space is given meaning through the video camera.

For much of the time spent in the gallery I attempted to interact physically with the space via objects found in and around the gallery. The purpose behind my actions was to make temporary sculptures and structures to ‘block’ imaginary people who would be trying to enter the space. The action of blocking out people who are not present at the time of filming, gets reversed at the time of presentation; where the physical objects (besides the screen) and their construction is not really present at the time that the viewer experiences the work. This process creates a delayed performer/ viewer relationship in which the artist and viewer experience their roles out of sync via the mediation of video.

Brian O’Doherty states in “Inside the white cube” that “The white walls neutrality is an illusion, it stands for a community with common ideas and assumptions”. In the case of Firstdraft this is particularly relevant, as an artist run space operating In Sydney for as long as it has, it is safe to say that these walls have been infused by the ideas and values of a generation of emerging Sydney artists. The meaning and weight that the history of Firstdraft lends to every work that is exhibited in this space cannot be denied. While the values of such a space may be fluid and interchangeable within the artists that run and exhibit in the space the context that supports the exhibited work is the same, the white walls represent a ‘contexless’ context.

Bibliography

M.Kwon; “One place after another; site specific art and locational identity”

B.O’Doherty; “Inside the white cube; the ideology of the gallery space; 1986

N. Montman ,Edt; “Art and its institutions; current conflicts, critique and collaborations”; Balck Dog publishing; London; 2006

1. N. Montman ,Edt; “Art and its institutions; current conflicts, critique and collaborations”; Balck Dog publishing; London; 2006