Featuring work developed during a recent New York residence, Sriwhana Spong's installation Myth and Practice, at the Film Archive in Wellington, includes video, film and sound.

Leonard Cohen's room at the Chelsea Hotel, an Indonesian artifact at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and birds sitting on a telephone wire: Spong's 4-part installation addresses traditional means of capturing images and impressions €” using diverse processes, including hand-wound Super 8 film and a pinhole camera, to record her subjects.Featuring work developed during a recent New York residence, Sriwhana Spong's installation Myth and Practice, at the Film Archive in Wellington, includes video, film and sound.

Leonard Cohen's room at the Chelsea Hotel, an Indonesian artifact at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and birds sitting on a telephone wire: Spong's 4-part installation addresses traditional means of capturing images and impressions €” using diverse processes, including hand-wound Super 8 film and a pinhole camera, to record her subjects.During what hours of the day do you feel most inspired?
Generally in the late hours, around midnight.

How would a good friend describe your aesthetic or style?
A friend once said my work was psychedelic, which I found incredibly insulting, but funny at the same time.

What aspect of your creative practice gives you the biggest thrill?
When new ideas appear and begin to take shape, looking at art, and meeting other artists.

How does your environment affect your work?
I like using things that are easily accessible. So often my backyard, the park near my house, or the everyday stuff that surrounds me, appears in my work in one way or another. My practice plays in a space somewhere between the quotidian and the unknown, which can often be the same thing.

Do you like to look at the big picture or focus on the details?
Both. Each informs the other.

What's your number one business tip for surviving (and thriving) in the creative industries?
A sense of humour.

Which of your projects to date has given you the most satisfaction?
I am never satisfied.

Who or what has inspired you recently?
Maya Deren, Vaslav Nijinsky, Danny Williams, the Russian film Aelita: Queen of Mars, Paul Chan.

Your upcoming show at the Film Archive mediagallery is a collection of film related works, does that differ from your usual practice?
No. Moving image is generally my first instinct when thinking of a new body of work.

The show involves footage shot at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, how did you end up there?
It was a friends birthday.

If you could go back and choose a completely different career path to the one you've chosen, what would it be?
Aid work. (Something completely practical, useful, and involving direct action. Everything I'm not. )

What place is always with you, wherever you go?
My propensity to day dream.

What's the best way to listen to music, and why?
For me there's no best way. Its more about the situation, how I'm feeling at the time, and/or the people I'm with.

You are given a piece of string, a stick and some fabric. What do you make?
These are materials I already use in my work, so more of the same.

What's great about today?
Its potential.

What's your big idea for 2009?
Costumes, although at the moment its a rather small idea.

There will be a special film of the avant-garde classic Maya Deren's Meshes of the afternoon (1943) screening in association with this exhibition at 5pm, Saturday 6 December at the Film Archive.

This will be followed by a discussion between Sriwhana Spong and Vivian Lynn who will use Deren's film as a springboard to consider the sources and procedures of their own practices which seek to develop a visual language and forms specific to their experiences. This project is developed in partnership with the Adam Art Gallery on the occasion of I, HERE, NOW Vivian Lynn and Myth and Practice - Sriwhana Spong.

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Sriwhana Spong's installation Myth and Practice

04/11/08