For seven days in the Australian winter, artist Mel O’Callaghan and curator Peta Rake camped out in the unforgiving, remote desert in a field of towering mounds made by cathedral termites.
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The intricate architecture of the mounds, which can reach five metres high, are like appendages to the sprawling subterranean roots of the termite colonies. For some of the Indigenous communities in the area, including the Walpiri people, the mounds have deep spiritual meaning. They also maintain life for the termite colonies by acting as a ventilation system.
“It’s like a lung,” says O’Callaghan, in an interview with Postmedia at the Esker Foundation in Calgary. “It’s cooling and filtering the air and oxygen for them. It was a real exploration getting to these termite mounds.”
The resulting film, The Source, is a 10-minute study of the mounds shot in high-definition video and with surround sound. It depicts not only the bizarre and beautiful shapes of the mounds but the orange-red sand and cobalt sky that define the desert in central Australia. It’s an area that is sweltering by day and cold by night. O’Callaghan and Rake drove an “all-purpose, crazy vehicle” to an area that was 12 hours northwest of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory.
“It was a very harsh environment,” O’Callaghan says. “We were really in the middle of nowhere.”
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“We camped next to termite mounds every night,” Rake adds.
“We went in winter and it was really hot and really cold and night and there were stars we had never seen,” O’Callaghan.
The Source is one of the pieces on display as part of Pulse of the Planet, a solo show co-curated by Rake and Shauna Thompson that incorporates nearly 20 years of work by the Sydney and Paris-based artist. It is O’Callaghan’s first Canadian exhibition and will run until Aug. 27 at the Esker Foundation in Inglewood. The granddaughter of world-renowned mineralogist Albert Chapman, whose massive collection is on display at the Australian Museum, O’Callaghan grew up surrounded by science and nature. Her work, which includes film, painting, sculpture and installations, often involves collaborations with a diverse group of experts, including oceanographers, physicists, microbial ecologist, psychologist and musicologists. The Source, which is making its debut in Calgary, is just one of O’Callaghan’s pieces that blur the lines between science, art and the mysteries of human consciousness.
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Her journey to the “middle-of-nowhere” to capture the strange communities and architectural feats of industrious termites is not the only time the artist’s sense of adventure took her to a remote locale. The 20-minute video Centre of the Centre found O’Callaghan on a three-week mission aboard the research vessel Atlantis on the Pacific Ocean 4,000 kilometres from Panama. The research was overseen by 15 scientists and a film crew. Using the Alvin, a submersible owned by the U.S. Navy, O’Callaghan directed the pilot and film crew from aboard the Atlantis. The Alvin descended four kilometres beneath the ocean surface to the East Pacific Rise and fields of hydrothermal vents and the micro/macro organisms that thrive there despite the lack of light, the high temperatures and crushing pressure. The video also visits the coral outcrops of the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines. The two sites, O’Callaghan says, are potentially “the point of origin of all life on Earth.”
“Where I was really going was to these hypothermal vents, which are these huge cathedral-like towers,” O’Callaghan says. “Out of them gusts are coming out, are very, very hot and hitting 2-degree water. This space between the two is extremely generative for life. They believe all life began there.”
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But the heart of Pulse of the Planet may be First Sound, Last Sound, a piece that will be performed once at month at the Esker by a rotating cast of Calgary dancers, including Scott Augustine, Bryan Francisco, Ebony Gooden, Catherine Hayward, Viviane Martin and MelVee X. The performance piece features two large-scaled tuning forks that have been placed atop a resonate chamber. When struck, the three-metre forks emit notes and vibrations that are believed to be a “universal tone” that “heightens mental acuity and extreme physical awareness.”
“With all of my work, there’s this idea of connection and communication, and connection through something,” O’Callaghan says. “So this work is about vibration that is travelling down these tuning forks, through the resonance chamber, off the body of the performer but also out to the audience. So, essentially, anybody can perform in it and the audience is as well. These new performers are amazing.”
Most of the works on display are borne out of collaborations and study how the rhythms of the natural world can impact consciousness. O’Callaghan, who has had solo shows throughout Australia and Europe, says much of her work is fuelled by curiosity, not unlike scientists.
“Scientists are highly curious, they are also really, really artistic and creative, ” O’Callaghan says. “They think metaphysically, so we just have these very natural conversations. The works that you see are usually just one part of a much bigger process.”
Pulse of the Planet runs until Aug. 27 at the Esker Foundation. First Sound, Last Sound will be performed at 2 p.m. on June 24, July 22 and Aug. 12 and at 6 p.m. on June 15, July 6 and Aug. 24.