Thursday, March 25, 2010

Uncanny land: Scottius Polke's Lunamaruna

Late last night, at project Z, while taking the Preview tour of another Zachh Cale-induced confection, a gentleman offered to show me his starfish shooter. I still had my Euphemism Translator-bot set to 'Italian Sim', so I ignored the offer, which I now regret. Walking the cobbled streets thousands of metres above the gallery, an extremely entertaining group of people were throwing about comparative triptychs, and I fell into a pond with a lantern fish. 

If you put Lost, Portmeirion, and Play-Doh in a blender, turned it on for about an hour, then threw it away and called in Scottius Polke to make something fun, fresh, and interesting, you'd have Lunamaruna.
It's a floating island village of twisted towers and odd offices, the only inhabitants seem to be the fish: rocking, smoking, swimming and flying - you can jump on the back of a manta ray and take a tour.
If you like to bounce, which we both know you do, so don't lie, you'll find a dedicated platform where you can have a do-over from Scottius' bed in the MushROOM. This is no mere bedspring fling - in fact the whole build is an exciting, expanded new adventure through Polke's art.
Scottius Polke: Lunamaruna is a place with elements of fantasy and science fiction where something has gone wrong - something fishy, a on a large scale. However, whatever it is that went awry, I can't say... On the technical end, it is my sketchbooks made 3d and animated, come to life. The drawings go back over several years, and I've been working on the project inworld over the past four months or so with great help from Kimba Sideways as well as animators and scripters Alexx Fenstalker and Desdemona Enfield, and of course Zachh Cale who is always so generous with space and encouragement here at project Z.
Zachh Cale: Scottius continues to amaze me with his approach to art - and you can feel it in all his exhibits - it's an invitation to explore and embrace both his vision and your own. And don't forget to say I'm wearing the Lunamaruna T shirt.

Thirza Ember:Okay, Will do! /note to self, do not take a photo of Zachh wearing the Lunamaruna tee.

A visit to the opening on Sunday March 28, 1 PM SLT at project Z will get you a lovely Lunamaruna Tee, made by Estelle Parnall, and at 2pm the music of  Skye Galaxy. It's going to be otter bliss.
The availability of cans of Kelp and other Green Matter at Lunamaruna does raise a side issue.  In Stato di eccezione, Agamben posits the tin can as a topos for fused secession, at once in the world yet discrete from it, an interstitial veil of aluminium interpolating the originary unity of content and  consumer,  raising the stakes of the inherent graspability of the object while precluding access to its disclosure. This being said,  Foucault's oft-cited excogitation on the phallic implication of can opener configures the discourse within the parameters of inter-penetration, through the duality of presence and absence, vacuum and volume, and reminds the reader of the formal apparatus of the essential, and one might add primordial, dialectic between one who can and one who cannot. Yum.

3 comments:

Thirza Ember said...

I should like to make it clear that the gentleman who made the generous offer mentioned in the opening line of this post was not Mr. Zachh Cale.

Rowan Derryth said...

Thirza - wonderful review, and yes, much fun was had. And your last paragraph KILLED me. :-)

Scottius said...

The offer still stands.