Untitled (refrain) was an installation of performance videos exhibited at c3 Contemporary Arts Space at the Abbotsford Convent in July this year. The videos were displayed on five CRT televisions and DVD players and documented a range of performances in a costume designed in collaboration with Kiki Ando. The performances enacted a state of jouissance, a stolen moment of bodily pleasure, a dance-like gesture of delight. One of the performances took place in the site of the installation itself, captured on the gallery's closed security system and greeting the visitors as they entered the gallery space. Many thanks to Jon Butt from c3 for his assistance with the exhibition and the lovely Darebin Waste Transfer station employees, who were generous with their assistance in acquiring the many tv and dvd players used in the exhibition.
http://www.c3artspace.com.au/tania-smith/

The inaugural Channels- Australian Festival of Video Art begins this week- 18- 21 September 2013. My work, Untitled #8 (2012), will be screening as part of the Nocturne program, a series of videos projected at the Chin Chin Wall of Art, a unique outdoor laneway projection space opposite the much loved Chin Chin restaurant. Other Channels highlights include Transmissions at Screen Space, the Video Visions program at ACMI and Memory Screens, featuring live performances by artists Hannah Raisin, Salote Tawale and Emile Zile. On a side note, Chin Chin is a colloquial/ childlike term for penis in Japanese. See the Channels website for more info and to book tickets to any of the events.  http://www.channelsfestival.net.au/ 

I was recently fortunate to present a paper at the recent Contesting Identities Symposium hosted by the Photography Studies College (PSC) at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale. My paper, "Funny and Feminist: Playing the Comic Anti-hero", spoke of the potential for humour to liberate the viewer, and thus humour's use for revolutionary feminist thought. My paper looked at writings on humour by Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, Jo Anna Isaak, Simon Critchley, with a nod to those comic anti-hero's par excellence, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Jill Orr gave an expansive keynote, and Ann O'Hehir from the National Gallery of Australia gave a wonderful opening address on the work of artist Carol Jerrems. Of particular note was Jerrems fastidious archiving, a dream for curators and conservators alike (artists take note was the none too subtle hint!) My session included papers by Lucia Rossi and Clare Rae that collectively interrogated the rich field of female subjectivity.

http://ballaratfoto.org/symposium/