“I think adding more systems makes things worse for me,” says Holly Childs, about the new age practices and alternative paradigms of pseudoscientific beliefs, like tarot and astrology. “I think that the magic that I love, or that I believe in is Earth sciences.” Speaking to editor Steph Kretowicz for AQNB’s latest Artist Statement podcast, the Adelaide-based interdisciplinary writer and artist’s work follows an elaborate creative cosmology that filters “stories of computation through frames of ecology, earth, memory, poetry and light”.
Graduating Amsterdam’s Sandberg Instituut in 2019, Childs has worked across a spectrum of fields and forms, publishing experimental novels via Hologram in Melbourne and London’s Arcadia Missa in 2014, with a third called ‘What Causes Flowers Not to Bloom?’ set to come in 2021. The latter text is an extension of Childs’s Hydrangea performance series and album collaboration with Lithuanian artist Gediminas Žygus, along with artist duo Metahaven. Released via Berlin’s Subtext Recordings in 2020, the project is largely inspired by her time as part of Benjamin Bratton’s The New Normal post-graduate program at Strelka Institute in Moscow. Right now, Holly has been riding out the pandemic in her hometown of Adelaide Australian, where she is developing a project with dancer and choreographer Angela Goh, which looks at states of suspension and attention in the film and TV device of the cliffhanger.
‘Working Systems’ is the latest in our Artist Statement podcast series, with past episodes featuring Elvia Wilk, Amrita Hepi, Jonnine Standish, Cristine Brache and more. The full episode is accessible to our subscribers right now on Patreon. Sign up now: www.patreon.com/aqnb.**
