The Wired Open Day Festival. Photograph by Jacob Raupach. Supplied.
The Wired Open Day Festival – Wired Lab’s signature event – is a day of celebration and exploration which honours interdisciplinary art practices.
Set on the lush grounds of a working farm in Cootamundra in rural South-West NSW, the festival takes place on Saturday 21 October.
Festival-goers will have unfettered access to the land and the art it showcases. Sarah Last, WIRED Lab CEO and Artistic Director, said: ‘We are creating a really authentic and distinct experience for our audience members which is oriented around the agrarian landscape. We see the agrarian landscape as a cultural landscape and we have some compelling leading artists who are interpreting the agricultural theme.’
The Wired Lab connects the audience with the natural environment through the exploration of contemporary art. The Festival begins in the afternoon and continues well into the evening with meals and transportation to the festival included in the ticket price.
PREMIERE OF THE AGRI(CULTURE) PROJECT
Certain to be a festival highlight is the highly anticipated The agri(culture) Project, a landscape-scaled, participatory and omni-sensorial exploration of rural and agricultural life. Twelve interdisciplinary Australian and International artists are represented in this first iteration of the project.
‘From edible insects to experiencing the infrasonic rumble of a herd of elephants, to lying down on a fungal super highway, and being a part of a podcast series with rural kids reviewing art, this project is wide-ranging yet incisive in its exploration of the agrarian theme from past, present and future perspectives,’ Last explained.
Click here to book your ticket to THE WIRED OPEN DAY FESTIVAL
Also participating is BAFTA Award-winning artist Chris Watson (UK), who premieres his work Beyond Ol Tokai. Watson’s multi-channel sound performance follows a herd of African elephants across the Olodare marshes of the Amboseli National Park, Kenya, at sunset. The following week Watson will also be presenting ‘Wild Lab’ a wilderness-based sound recording masterclass in Kosciuszko National Park.
Last said: ‘We are very excited to exhibit Chris Watson’s world premiere of his sound works based on his recent recording activities in Africa. We have an amazing sound system prepared to honour the scale and intensity of that work.’
Wired Open Day Festival also includes artist collective Field Theory and their podcast series, Kids vs Art, featuring the brutal honesty of children talking about the art they experience; and Cat Jones’ collaboration with Soon Lee Low, an internationally trained molecular chef, on Insecta Delecta. Jones has created a human scale terrarium of edible ‘exotic’ delights.
Many Wired Lab projects provoke the audience into questioning their own definitions of art and artists. ‘We really want to give agency to participants, where they can be an active and crucial component to the realization of a work.’
Last said a good example of participatory subversion within a developmental community project is The Edge, featuring works created by photographer Tamara Dean in collaboration with young people from the rural communities of Cootamundra and Tumut. ‘The insight and quality of the work these teenagers produced is quite stunning.’
Ticket price includes entry to The Wired Open Day Festival, your selected meal and bus travel to and from Cootamundra to The Wired Lab. The WIRED OPEN DAY bus departs from Cootamundra Post Office at 2.30pm and returns at 10.00pm. Tickets must be pre-booked by 20 October. USE PROMO CODE: EARS Tickets are $60, with the EARS code tickets will be $45.
