DENNIS KRATZ

ABOUT

From 2004 – 2007, Svenja Kratz collaborated with writer/artist/film-maker Sarah-Mace Dennis.   As Dennis Kratz, they produced a range of new media and photographic works exploring history, memory, presence and absence.  In 2004 the pair traveled to the regional NSW community of Hill End, where they undertook a seven week collaborative residency.  There they began work on Guided by Voices a new media project dealing with presences, absences and the passing of time. On return from this residency they developed an interactive video installation called To Rose (My Love), which explored the mysterious death of a woman and her three children on her property at Triamble, situated approximately 45 kilometers from Hill End.

In 2005 they were awarded a residency at the Petersham Town hall in Marrickville, where they teamed up with Sydney based public artist Graham Chalcroft to develop Secrets of the City: Gumbramorra Swamp Thing!.  This experimental art event consisted of a series of workshops where participants created site specific public artworks and installations that mapped and interpreted stories pertaining to sites within the footprint of the former Gumbramorra Swamp that extended across the suburbs of Marrickville, Sydenham, Tempe , St Peters and Newtown .

In 2006 Dennis Kratz  received funding from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts to develop Di.O.ram.a: Constructing a Virtual Memory, an online new media project that uses language as an entry point for exploring historical memory and the way that it is affected by an environment increasingly mediated by new technologies.

The following year Dennis Kratz collaborated with artist Archie Moore on the development of Where Whispers Walk – an interactive video animation commissioned by Artworkers Alliance and the State Library of Queensland.  The work was installed in the SLQ InfoZone in 2007.

 
Photo of Dennis Kratz: Tamara Dean