Dowsing, Detecting & Window Cleaning
Spring news from Max Dovey
Hello, below is a quarterly correspondence from myself (Max Dovey) where I reflect on current projects, share joyous cultural experiences and indulge in seasonal pondering towards the end of this very occasional newsletter.
This is the 2nd substack mailout I’ve done, and while I hope to continue the writing endeavour and I wont exceed writing to you more than 4 times a year. If you wish to not receive any further emails from me (I will totally understand) you can unsubscribe yourself using the button at the end.
For everyone else, thanks for sticking around your attention is everything! 🙂
Making - what have i been up to?
Residency at Medialab Matadero
I've been in complete creative freeform joy during a 2 week residency at Medialab Matadero in Madrid, Spain that took place between 25 Jan - 12 February 2023. My ongoing project ‘all our best machines’ was chosen to be prototyped as part of a collective residency program titled ‘the metabolic sublime’. Our starting provocation was:
Considering electronic devices as geological artefacts, what stories and tales can be unearthed through embodied practices?
During the residency we designed models for interfacing with rare earth elements & critical minerals used in electronics through embodied practices. We workshopped process based methods for excavating minerals (such as dowsing, detecting, foraging and finding) and designed lo-fi instruments with found minerals to create physical circuits of energy transfer and mythical enactment. By evoking mythical tales associated with stones and minerals we developed a number of participatory methodologies for re-configuring humans relation to stones & technology and fostered new paradigms towards ‘clean’ energy.
I want to thank the artists that contributed so much to the development of the project and thank them for their trust, generosity, commitment and patience. You can watch a 9 minute video documenting the workshop process here.
The methods devised during the residency will form a cookbook for ‘rare earth alchemy’ an artist guidebook for exploring the mineral entanglements of our technosphere through acts of material and spiritual experimentation. ✨
Control shift Festival
I’m really happy and pleased to have an opportunity to present some of these ideas and methods as part of Control Shift Festival taking place in Bristol on the weekend 1 and 2 April 2023. The program is really exquisite and there have already been lots of workshops, gatherings and performances as part of this critical tech community focused festival. Many of the events are happening in Bricks, a community artist space and creative studios in St.Anns in Bristol.
The walk will involve some foraging, stone collecting and metal detecting and through these activities we will be discussing the materiality of electronic hardware and the geological and mythical properties of the elements present in technology. I'm really looking forward to coming back to Bristol and taking this research for a walk through the woods with others and telling stories with what we find 🌳🪨🔮
Picklefest 2022
After at least 3 years of attempting to rank anywhere in the top 3 in any of the of the categories at the dog and bell’s annual Picklefest I finally found victory in the arts and crafts category 🎨 with “pickle power” a pickle powered LED light 💡. Congratulations to other winners including my good pal Mika who won best overall winner for her submission to pickle photography category. 🏆
Reading, Listening and Watching
Books
is an incredible collection of writings, research and reflection on humanities reliance of the mineral; its micro biological tendencies and the indigenous territories damaged by it's extraction.
Strange relics: stories of Archeology and the Supernatural, 1895 - 1954
is an anthology of supernatural stories where excavations and remains evoke haunting memories and encounters.
Lapidarium : The Secret Lives of Stones
an encyclopedia of mythical histories and enchanting narratives enshrined upon various stones throughout time.
Podcasts
Each week 3 friends Marika Hackman, Gina Miller and Jelly Denniston choose a word to present a very brief but informative history of that word with lots of laughter in between and at least one interesting piece of trivia that you can discuss with your mates down the pub.
Contemporary fiction writers create new fables in the style of Aesop ’s allegories, very short pieces of flash fiction, each episode is less than 10 minutes so i wish there was more of!
This is a true crime style journalism podcast you can get your teeth stuck into, 8 1hr episodes that document 2 fugitives wanted for ‘eco terroism’ for some arson they did in the 90s and no-one got hurt.
Recent exhibitions
I will be showing a small phone mineral (Wolframite - pictured above) that is used in mobile phones to help them vibrate. When attached to a vibration motor and wired to a lithium battery the circuit replicates the same materiality and performance as when its embedded in a mobile phone. This small circuit will be vibrating as part of Forces of the Small:Project for an Artwork compacted and condensed at Filet Gallery from Thursday 2nd March until 7th March from 12.00 - 6pm daily.
There is a new artist run gallery space in Lewisham called Chemist Gallery, I don’t know loads about it but recently caught the last day of 'Hard Drives, Soft Walks' a collaborative duo show by Serene Metcalfe and Martina O'Shea at Chemist Gallery
I don’t know if this will be any good but i do always find the level of detail in Mike Nelson’s set design good for short mini escapes into abandoned slightly haunting spaces. Mike Nelson’s show Extinction Beckons at Hayward Gallery runs till 7th May 2023.
Seasonal Chat
I’ve just wrangled the time to sit down and start writing this newsletter after cleaning the windows and digging up all the various bits of paraphernalia that have been accumulating over winter in our dirty laundry basket /office in our bedroom.
Even as i write this i can hear my son knocking on the door but i woke up determined to make a start on writing this newsletter to catch up with myself and get things that have been ideating through the long months out into the wind. I realised that this urge is reflective of the changing of the seasons, as we enter march and drift from what feels like a long winter i am itching to clean and tidy and make space for the sunlight. I barely noticed the dirty windows that have been there all winter because there was barely any light shining through, now as we enter March the sun begins shining for longer and Im cleaning all the windows to get as much of that light in as possible.
This morning i woke up early enough to see the bin men (6am) and it was light outside! The spring equinox will be 20th March so as the northern hemisphere tilts towards the sun hopefully you are able to lean into it to and make space for the extra light in your environment. That doesn’t have to involve cleaning the windows, you could plant some seeds or look out for the daffodils in early blossom, enjoy the extra daylight and start planning some trips for summer.
thankyou for taking the time - look after yourself and one another
lots of love ❤️
Max x