About...

Agents of Proximity  (Amy Spiers and Victoria Stead)

Agents of Proximity is a collaboration between artists Amy Spiers and Victoria Stead, which began in Melbourne in 2006. We use text, photography, performance and public intervention to try and make art that is socially engaged, curious and critical. Our first work together was a two-year project run in Melbourne's northern suburbs, using mapping and social arts practice to explore the subjective experiences of shared space. See www.agentsofproximity.org

As part of the South Project Gathering happening in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, the Agents of Proximity are developing a new project exploring travel, tourism, leisure and the relationships of power and exchange which these things generate. Carrying forward our fascination with travel, we want to critically examine the power relationships and forms of exchange—spoken and unspoken—which exist when people from relatively economically privileged social contexts (like ourselves) travel as tourists to "developing" social contexts (like Indonesia) which are marketed as desirable and “exotic” holiday destinations.

Our project aims to draw attention to and explore these forms of exchange through attempting to invert/subvert them. In practical terms, we are offering to take on the work of an Indonesian for one day, while they in return venture out as experimental tourists of Yogyakarta. In offering to take on this work, our desire is for non-commercial exchange — based on negotiation of time, skills and capacities — that moves away from the standard forms of tourist-local interaction. We hope to create situations in which artistic practice enables the capacity for a different set of relationships and experiences to occur, inverting and subverting the expectations and roles of local and tourist.

Over a three week period in October Amy will be based in Yogyakarta in the lead-up to the Gathering, working with locals and Indonesian artists to develop a series of social interventions. During this time, Tori will remain based in Melbourne. A sustained dialogue between the two of us — mediated through blogging and internet chat — is intended to generate a rich source of textual material and reflection. These three weeks then are a period of intense creative development and exchange - across distance, language and culture - which we hope will give way to new creative and collaborative possibilities. You can follow our progress, and participate in the exchange, at

http://agentsgosouth.blogspot.com/

Destiny Exchange / Pertukaran Nasib

The Agents of Proximity have joined forces with writer Nuraini Juliastuti (Kunci Cultural Studies Center) to develop a new project exploring travel, tourism, leisure and the relationships of power and exchange which these things generate. In the lead up to the South Project Gathering The Agents have been swapping roles with Indonesians, in an "exchange of destiny" that attempts to subvert and invert the usual forms of interaction that occur between locals and tourists. Come see the results at an informal presentation and slideshow!