John Conomos

Leftquote We were put on earth to make things. Rightquote
W.H.Auden
Double Take: A Forum with Brad Buckley and John Conomos
Australian Centre for Photography, 2013

Double Take: A Forum with Brad Buckley and John Conomos in conjunction with Buckley and Conomos’ exhibitions The Slaughterhouse Project: Alignment and Boundaries (L’Origine du monde) and I wonder whether that’s Joanna Hiffernan with a Brazilian (revisited), and The Spiral of Time. Chaired by Nicholas Tsoutas, the speakers Dr Ann [...]


Dada Buster
Dada Buster catalogue essay, 2013

“If made-up lives are better than true biographies, then it’s the absolute truth that Keaton was a tipsy geameter, an amnesiac hypnotist, a palsied ballet master, a commander in chief with dyspepsia, a Columbus sailing for Prague.”
–Robert Benayoun
“Beautiful as a bathroom, vital as a Hispano… With Buster Keaton the expression is modest as that of [...]


Etudes for the 21st Century (aka ‘The Hong Kong text’)
Etudes for the 21st Century, 2013

What follows is a text I wrote for the recent exhibition “Etudes for the 21st Century in which I collaborated with Robert Cahen and Kingsley Ng at the Osage Art Gallery and Osage Foundation, Hong Kong, 28 November–28 December 2013.


Air and Water
unpublished, 2008

“What follows is my speech given at my launch of my book “Mutant Media”
(Artspace/Power Publications, 2008) at Gleebooks, Sydney, on April 1 2008.
The title of my speech will become self-evident towards its concluding
paragraphs. George Alexander launched the book for me in Sydney and in
Melbourne, Adrian Martin, will launch it at Monash University (Clayton
Campus) on 28th [...]


Introduction (extracted from Mutant Media)
Power Publications and Artspace, Sydney, 2008

Excerpt…


Jean-Paul Fargier and the Electrification of Literature
Chimaera Monographie, Jean-Paul Fargier, No 5 Edition du Centre International de Creation Video Montbeliard Belfort, 1992

Jean-Paul Fargier as a video artist, critic and polemicist is, without a doubt, one of the most eloquent voices to be heard in video. What I propose to do today is think aloud in open-ended terms concerning the invaluable role Fargier has (to-date) played in shaping some of the more salient aesthetic, cultural, historical and technological aspects of video as a dynamic contemporary art form.