On the Couch with Madeleine Flynn

Madeleine FlynnWHO IS MADELEINE FLYNN?
I am an artist who creates unexpected situations for listening. I have a long term collaborative practice with Tim Humphrey, and my work is driven by a curiosity and questioning about listening in human culture and seeks to evolve and engage with new processes and audiences, through public and participative interventions.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY TO WHAT YOU DO NOW?
To my younger self I would say Compliance is not necessary. And again, compliance is not necessary.

WHO INSPIRES YOU AND WHY?
People who seek change in form, and ways of thinking and being in the world. This includes my kids, neighbours, collaborators in creative practice.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD?
I hope that through being engaged in contemporary art practice I am bringing into being that thing that I can do to create possibilities for change.

FAVOURITE HOLIDAY DESTINATION AND WHY?
Pretty rare to have a holiday, but I have some strong connections with sites and people in the world that revive me which includes rural South Korea, rural Finland, and the coast of Victoria.

WHEN FRIENDS COME TO TOWN, WHAT ATTRACTION WOULD YOU TAKE THEM TO, AND WHY?
Depending on their interests and energy, I take them to the sea, to the bush, to free art.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING?
The Booker Shortlist.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY LISTENING TO?
Teenage music rehearsals of Cracker La Touf and Culte.

HAPPINESS IS?
Making the imaginative concrete, making the concrete imaginative. Also dogs.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR YOU?
As an artist concerned with the experiment of listening, I am continually asking myself two questions. Who is not heard, and what I have not heard yet? These questions directly address considerations of who is there, and what are we doing together. By definition these questions bring into arts’ orbit considerations of form, comrades, collaborators, and culture. The experimental act in art is a hopeful one, one that continually pushes at the limits of what is possible and for who. Diversity needs to be embodied in the experimental act. Diversity of thought, of form, of body, of sense, of culture. I feel in experimental art we are making the future, and I want that future to be as expansive, generous, strange, thoughtful and radical as possible.

Madeleine’s work can be seen in The High Ground – presented as part of in extremis at Arts House – North Melbourne Town Hall: 1 – 11 November 2017. For more information, visit: www.artshouse.com.au for details.

Image: Madeleine Flynn (supplied)