Fringe 2010: Nag

For every creative leap there are hundreds of stumbles.  But sometimes you make and make and make and at the end of it all everything you’ve made still needs work.  So do you stop?  Or do you nag yourself to keep on going?

Based around five years of obsessive daily to-do lists; constructed of ancient timber from a defunct mental institution and some very tricky wiring; set to a soundtrack composed for thirty-five naked speaker cones and entirely powered by vintage racing bicycles, Nag mixes obsession, sweat, light, text, visual art, implicit statistical failure and humour into a coherent whole. 

Presented by previous Fringe Visual Art award winners afterburner as part of Fringe 2010 at Toi Poneke, Nag is an installation powered by the artists themselves that focuses on creative self-propulsion and takes sustainability to a bizarre and kafkaesque level.

During the day Nag uses it’s mix of vintage technology and electronics to explore the obsessive desire to create, and during the evening the artists will use the installation itself as a studio to produce and produce and produce non-stop, and even to create things for their audience.  All the while riding vintage bicycles to power the installation and their equipment, and so running the risk of failure if they slow down. 

Ceaseless self-propulsion being one way to deal with projects that never finish, with drawings that never look right, with roads that go nowhere.  Don’t examine.  Don’t slow down.  Just nag yourself to make and make and make and make.