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Tina Havelock Stevens

is White Drummer
HD Video Still
fromSubmerge2013
MONA FOMA 2013
the artist

While cross-disciplinarity is nothing new in the broad sweep of art history, there has been a recent preoccupation with cross-disciplinary,
interdisciplinary, or, to put it yet another way, anti-disciplinary practices. Its more than mere chance that the ascendancy of these practices
has coincided with the erosion of disciplinary boundaries in the academy. The desire to deconstruct the traditional categorical distinctions in
art history and theory is not only influenced by the dominance of postmodernism, its also part of the rise of a visual culture which is antagonistic
to the notion of discrete disciplinary models of analysis. This has led to a number of artists taking as the starting point of their practice, say,
identity politics, and privileging theories around that conceptual trope over the way they choose to materialise it in an object or action.

There has been an almost unquestioning
celebration of this breaching of conventional
disciplinary fields and categories which has
attracted substantial institutional support.
Many universities now offer postgraduate
qualifications in cross-disciplinary practice,
the Australia Council established the
Inter-Arts Office specifically to support
interdisciplinary art practices, and a number
of traditional visual arts institutions have
chosen to exhibit art that occupies an
expanded creative context.
An often unacknowledged problem with
interdisciplinarity, however, is that of discipline
itself. Much of this art suffers from a lack of
rigour which, on the face of it, appears to come
from a failure to master a single area of
expertise and therefore a general lack of
proficiency by artists who range across a
number of fields. But an alternative explanation
for the mediocrity that characterises a lot of
cross-disciplinary practice is that it is too
concerned with resolution of ideas that are
then given material form rather than
understanding the material context of the work
as providing its own unique conceptual terrain.
MONA FOMA is a festival in Hobart that
celebrates an anything goes approach to
art-making. And this year there were a series
of works that show anti-disciplinary practices
don't have to be mediocre. Tina Havelock
Stevens knockout performance on opening
night demonstrated her core interest in the
body as a site of immanent meaning. The
visual elements of the performance her
witchy sea creature costume, her drum kit
affixed to a cage, the crane that hoisted her
into Salamanca Bay, but particularly the
specificity of the artists body all combined
in a moment of pure presence with her
subaquatic endurance drumming performance,
proving that a feminist punk ethic can produce
an inspired and enduring aesthetic. It was the
Dionysian union of Havelock Stevens
high-octane underwater drumming and a
crowd that was ready for anything which
ultimately constituted the work White
Drummer as it was taking place.
And connections were everywhere in
the collaborative work of interdisciplinary
artists Vicky Browne and Darren Seltmann.
The implication in Synchronic Lines is of a
collective mind, and the works seamless, hand-
made elegance a sign that it was made by one.
There were connections in the careful glue joints
between all the pieces of cardboard which made
up the audio pods, and connections to the Mylar
tent upstairs where the noise made by the pods
was transmitted. The audience was left to interact
with the work by manipulating the knobs inside
the pods to create noise, and to experience that
noise upstairs in the magical space of the Mylar
tent. In other words, to complete its meaning
or function in their own way.
There is a fierce intelligence behind the
work of these artists. And both Havelock
Stevens and Seltmann have been successful
in other creative industries; even Browne, while
a visual artist, has a unique flair for sound. Yet
they dont rely on fixed conceptual meaning or
their superior technical facility to determine
the experience of their art. Instead, there are a
million ideas sparking off these works which
are all part of a series of ongoing conversations
which fuel the artists practices. Which is why
they are cross-disciplinary artists in the best
sense: comfortable to let the material speak
for itself and for the audience to speak back.

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