Dr Louise Curham is a media artist, researcher and occasional archivist based in Canberra. Louise uses her expertise in archives and media art to explore themes that flow from old media, ranging from digitisation to the impact of algorithm-based technology on citizens. In recent years, Louise has been bringing together ideas from environment volunteering and caring for cultural heritage eg just as places gather people, so to do objects and practices from the past that matter to people. Coming together in the present is a key purpose and benefit of keeping old stuff and caring for things – it both strengthens long standing practices and existing relationships and builds new ones.
Her PhD research explored looking after heritage items that elude digitsation. A key historical influence for her media art is expanded cinema, a form from the 1960s and 1970s that combined live performance with media. It’s combination of a focus on the relationship with the audience and the performance of technology has seen a wave of international activity and scholarship in the area of expanded cinema; Louise is actively involved in this. Re-enacting expanded cinema has formed a key part of Louise’s work in the past decade within the artist group Teaching and Learning Cinema (TLC) with artist and scholar Lucas Ihlein.
In her art practice, Louise makes performances, photographic works, video and 16mm films and installations. The themes she explores are decoding the ‘black box’ of contemporary technology and extending the life of old media through creative archiving. Her methods include hand processing super 8 and 16 mm film, making performances using old media and re-enacting early media art performance.
Drawing together communities around media has also formed part of Louise’s work. She was a convenor of regular media art screenings and performances through the Sydney Moving Image Coalition (2002-5) and its successor group TLC (2006– ). Current projects extend Louise’s practice of building communities around media to questions of how communities represent themselves through technology. This takes the form of a community locative media project, The West Kambah Peoples’ Map. This project connects Louise’s work in old media with her work as a leader in environment volunteering in her local area, surfacing the potential for ecological thinking that engaging with old media contains.
Since the early 1990s, Louise has presented exhibitions, public programs and community events throughout Australia and internationally. Her art has been supported by ArtsACT (2020, 2013), Bundanon Trust (2012), BankART1929 (Yokohama, Japan), UNSW Student Union (2002), Creative New Zealand (1995). Her research has been supported by the University of Canberra Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (2016). She is a recipient of the Margaret Jennings award of the Australian Society of Archivists and the University of Canberra Pitch for Funds (joint winner 2016). Her film works are in the collection of Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision (NZ) and the National Film and Sound Archive (Australia).
Bio 2016: Louise Curham uses her art and her expertise as an archivist to explore how we can look after things we can’t digitise. Louise invites us to think about the wisdom that accompanies things we want to keep and how we can pass that on.
Louise writes:
Keeping heritage can be a difficult business. Our commonsense assumption is that the internet and digital systems will save and store everything, but some things don’t digitise well. Here’s an example: under the nom-de-plume of ‘Teaching and Learning Cinema’, an artist-colleague and I re-enact Expanded Cinema, a form of live art that involves film projection and performance. One of our projects re-enacts a seminal British expanded cinema work, Guy Sherwin’s Man With Mirror (1976). When we first made this re-enactment, we produced a user’s manual. We recently tested the manual with Australian artist Laura Hindmarsh.
Laura’s experience shows that the ‘item’ Man With Mirror is an example of heritage that can’t be comprehensively recorded and transferred textually or diagrammatically. It includes a batch of ‘embodied data’ that needs body-to-body transmission, passing on in person from one user to the next. For Laura to carry out her own re-enactment, despite the diligent instructions in the manual, she relied upon information conveyed in-person in real time from my colleague Lucas and I, as indeed, before her, Lucas and I had relied upon information from Guy Sherwin to make our re-enactment. What this means is that we need to keep the things, and the wisdom that goes with them.
Louise is a researcher in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at the University of Canberra, until very recently, an archivist in the Australian Government and an artist who specialises in obsolete technology. Louise trained in film, later in live arts and archives. Both live arts and archives continue to run parallel in her career. Currently finalising her PhD at the University of Canberra, Louise’s research draws together art and archives, exploring how we keep things we can’t digitise. The data set for this research takes the form of performance art re-enactments from the 1970s.
As an archivist, Louise works for the Australian Government, setting policy and curating future archives. As a consultant archivist Louise has conducted significance assessments on several seminal small arts collections. In live art, Louise performs with obsolete media such as 16mm and super 8mm film. She collaborates with luminaries in Australian contemporary, classical and jazz music, in key venues and festivals in Australia and internationally. Louise’s films are in the collections of the region’s film archives.
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CV
Education
PhD, Centre for Creative & Cultural Research, Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra (2014–) Graduate Diploma Information Science (Archives & Records) Edith Cowan University 2010
Graduate Certificate Audiovisual Archiving, Charles Sturt University, 2005
Master of Fine Arts, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Sydney 2004
Bachelor Film & Television, VCA School of Film & Television, Melbourne 1993
Solo exhibitions
A Film of One’s Own [Archive Fever], PhotoAccess, Canberra, November 2015
A Film of One’s Own [Fugue Solos], Performance Space 2005, NZ Film Archive Media Gallery Wellington 2006, Te Manawa ART Palmerston North, NZ 2006
Floodgate (2006) College Gallery, QUT in the OtherFilm Festival, 2006
Moving Still Life Blackwood Gallery Melbourne 1999, UNSW Hutchison Gallery 2002, Kudos Gallery Sydney 2004
Herbaceous, NZ Film Archive Auckland, 2003
Selected group exhibitions
The Stand-in Lab with Lynn Loo, PhotoAccess Canberra 2019
Encyclopedia of Forgotten Things, Faculty Arts & Design Group Show, Belconnen Arts Centre, May 2016
Slowing Down Time, Belconnen Arts Centre 2015, Articulate Project Space, Sydney Mar 2014 & FCA Gallery, Wollongong Aug, 2014
Still Life | Moving Fragments, Belconnen Arts Centre; Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney 2012
Propositions and Game Plans, Melbourne International Arts Festival, 2007
Selected re-enactment events
Teaching & Learning Cinema expanded cinema re-enactment projects inc. Horror Film 1, CCAS June 2014; Hollow in the Paper, CAST, Hobart 2013; Unconscious Archives Salon, London 2013; The Parlour in 13 Rooms, Sydney April 2013; Imprint, Artspace Sydney, 2009; Performance Space, Sydney 2007.
As curator & convenor
Stand-in Lab events program in the Stand-in Lab exhibition, PhotoAccess Canberra 2019
Poetry Film screening in Poetry on the Move symposium, University of Canberra, Sep 2016
Teaching & Learning Cinema events 2006 ongoing. Highlights include Photochemical Games and 16mm from the ‘70s the films of artist Malcolm Le Grice at Belconnen Arts Centre, Canberra 2013.
Selected performances
Yokohama Flowers with Erik Griswold, Brisbane 2019
In a Bone Way with Debra Di Centa, Dance on the Edge, Belconnen Arts Centre, 2018
Tracer film performance for prepared screen and haiku in You Are Here Festival, Canberra, April 2016 Room 40’s Open Frame with Chris Abrahams, Carriageworks Sydney, July 2015
The Film Remains the Same film performance in You Are Here Festival, Canberra 2014
Unconsious Archives at Café Oto, London, June 2013
SoundOut Festival, Canberra 2013, 2014
Melbourne International Arts Festival, Soak, with the Australian Art Orchestra, 2010
Jazz Visions Festival, Sound Lounge, Sydney, 2010
NZ International Film Festival, Frames Per Second A Film of One’s Own, Auckland, 2009
Waiting to Turn into Puzzles at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 2008
Val Camonica Pieces, Victorian Arts Centre, 2007
OtherFilm annual festival, Brisbane 2006-8; NowNow annual exploratory music festival, Sydney, 2006-9
Residencies
Bundanon 2012; University of Wollongong artist-in-residence 2008; BankART 1929 Artists-in-studios residency Yokohama Japan 2007; Performance Space 2007; UNSW union artist-in-residence 2002
Filmography
Dance films: Knee Deep in Thin Air 1992; Fugue in Pursuit of Flight 1994; Slipped 1997;Doona Grrl, Transparent 2000 Other films: Johnny & Irenie 1993;The Princess & The Pea 2000; Tenho Saudades (with Peter Humble) 2004; Conimbla 2009
Short bio
Dr Louise Curham is a creative person who turns her skills to making links between people through creative practice, archives and records research, teaching and practice and as a volunteer in the environment. Louise joined the university sector in 2020 after two decades working in government information, community records and archives and audiovisual collections. She has held policy and project-based roles in national cultural collections and she has been an advisor in the community archives sector. Louise’s PhD was completed at the University of Canberra. She has information management qualifications from Charles Sturt University and Edith Cowan University. Louise first trained in film. That thread has continued, as questions around managing complex analogue and digital objects have been a feature of her career. Louise’s research focuses on objects that elude meaningful digitisation.
louisecurham.net 