Diana Baker Smith: A score for reconstruction

"The ground makes movement that we can't see or experience and the score brings this to the surface" - Diana Baker Smith  

In her hoarding commission, A score for reconstruction, artist Diana Baker Smith invites you to take part in a series of movements. 

Baker Smith uses geological terms to create a score of movement prompts inspired by the ground-remediation work completed at the start of Newcastle Art Gallery's major expansion. This groundwork involved filling in historic coal mines to stabilise the earth beneath the building to prevent subsidence, or "creeps," in the future. 

A score for reconstruction seeks to make visible the slow environmental processes that we can't see or feel. This work acknowledges deep time and the legacy of mining in Newcastle's foundations. Like the earth, our bodies are always in motion. By enacting Baker Smith's movement prompts, we can reflect on our own relationship to the rhythms of change, renewal, and development in Newcastle. 
 

Watch our choreographic response to Baker Smith's bold score. Create your own response by downloading the assets below! Share your responses by tagging us at @newcastleartgalleryaustralia

Developed in collaboration with Remy Rochester and Erling Gronhaug, with costumes supported by Kowtow.

Click here to download the audio for the video

Click the images below to download the corresponding prompt animation to include in your videos.

About the Artist 

Diana Baker Smith is an artist who works at the intersection of performance and moving image. Her artistic practice examines the politics of art history through methods of archival research, collaboration, embodiment, and fiction and underpinned by feminist methods. A score for reconstruction builds on her fifteen year-long artistic practice, in which she uses scores and instructions to structure her work across text, performance, video, installation and photography.  She lives on Gadigal land in Sydney and is a Lecturer in the School of Art & Design at the University of New South Wales.