Dalison is a new collaborative work by transdisciplinary artist Ian Strange and American musician Trevor Powers, involving light, sound, and video.
In a first for Strange, Dalison explores the phenomenon of the “hold out” home, transforming an isolated suburban home in Western Australia into a light and sound installation, for one night, for a select audience.
Strange’s durational light installation, choreographed to Powers’ original eighteen-minute composition of poetic, experimental sound, transforms the empty residence of 20 Dalison Avenue, Wattleup, Western Australia, using a stadium-sized LED video screen and programmed theatre lighting. The three-day “performance” was documented in a film short and four photographic works to be shown in a series of upcoming exhibitions and screenings around the world.
On-site creating Dalison, Wattleup, Western Australia, 2021. Courtesy the artist
Responding to the recent history of Wattleup, a former suburb slowly erased as part of a state government redevelopment, Dalison forms part of Strange’s ongoing global body of work, building large-scale architectural interventions with communities, exploring ideas of “home” and social displacement around the world.
“The idea of the project was to build this large-scale screen that would allow us to cut the house out of the landscape with light, to experience the home in shifting states of visibility, either silhouetted, isolated in darkness, or revealed in its vast, empty context,”
Strange says.
Powers created the composition from isolation on the other side of the world, sourcing inspiration from Strange’s research into 20 Dalison as well as his home in Idaho:
“I wanted the music to sound like it was dug up in a field, like something that was discovered, covered in dirt, that it had some kind of past life or maybe multiple past lives.”
Strange adds, “In my work, I’m interested in universal and shared connections to the image of the home. These are places we tend to project with a sense of stability, but are often more vulnerable and temporal than we would like to think. This is especially true in the experience of hold-out homeowners like those of 20 Dalison.”
For more on the work, and screening and exhibitions announcements, visit www.DalisonProject.com.
