Artist’s Statement:
“toe hold… strangle hold… hold fast… hold on for the ride of your life…”
From the core elements of language, and the rules by which it is constructed, we can find narrative in fragments that float past us. But we need to unlock the doors of preconception, unshutter the windows of expectation.
Amongst other things, I am very interested in translation and how concepts do not always migrate well from one language to another. This piece relies absolutely on the idiomatic structure of English, and, as far as I can tell, it would be effectively impossible to translate in any way that would preserve its inherent structure.
The video sequence is composited from images taken around Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide, South Australia. The audio is built up entirely from a single spoken sample of “hold”.
A different version was exhibited at HOLD, Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide, Adelaide Fringe Festival, February – March, 2022, curated by Tony Kearney.
For more on translating poetry videos, see https://www.iangibbins.com.au/2022/04/06/video-
