XCHC Café hosted a collaboration between two international art projects in the last month. The café became the centre of a group of artists discovering the relationship between a person and a location in Christchurch.
ZeroGravity, a group from Korea visited Christchurch for two weeks. The group consisted of an architect team and a dance team to establish a site-specific contemporary dance performance. The group connected with the site and the performance was created as an expression of the joint emotional reaction of the dancers through motion and the architect team through architectural design.
The Me+Christchurch photography project is my work. I am Vera Hegedus-Gaspar, I am a photographer and I moved to New Zealand a decade ago. For the last year I have been mesmerised by the secrets of the emotional ties between a person and a place in this city. My project has many different aspects now. I also feel that working closely together with the Zero Gravity group gave a fantastic perspective to what I've learned from my project until now. Many parts of my project have been exhibited at XCHC from mid-September till early October 2016. Now all artwork is available on my homepage, vera.nz
Me+Christchurch photo journal
“What do you feel about this very spot I’ve just stopped you?” - the Me+Christchurch project enquired about the emotions of a person each day for nearly a year. Discovering that each person I came across is an inspiring, deeply feeling, interesting individual led to several extensions of my initial approach to the question (including the Mute Messages series). This journal is available for viewing in photobooks, on my homepage or on Facebook
Four walls of my soul
This installation explores the full range of emotions tying one person to Christchurch. Viewing from the middle point you can see four contrasting images of a person. Shifting from positive to negative, passive to active, internal to external this series is to inspire you to feel compassion towards a stranger, a city and yourself.
ZeroGravity&Co
This series of photographs talks about the journey of a dancer who came to Christchurch to connect with people through movement. Kyungmi invited me to join her as she endeavored to create an environment for a group of people where they can safely explore the inner recesses of their feelings and express them through site-specific contemporary dance.
Passage
This series confesses the secrets of the dancers rehearsing and performing the contemporary show, Passage. The choreography and the workshops were created by Kyungmi Natalie Kim during the visit of the ZeroGravity Project from Korea. I joined these deeply emotional movement sessions to report these brutally honest, complex ways the bodies communicate feelings.
Interactive installations
I created an interactive corner at XCHC with two things in my mind. The first one was to honor my models participating in my project earlier. The second one was to open an opportunity for those visitors who felt touched to express themselves and take part. Both installations seek the collective emotions of the inhabitants of the city in a limited space modelling real life as we experiece it in Christchurch. One installation presented a map of the city and called for people to color different locations according to the emotions they associate with them. The other installation presented an orange cone and craft supplies and called for people to change the cone according to the emotions it invokes. I also invited people to contribute by photographing themselves as part of the interactive work.
- Vera