Night Chatter
For Rendezvous II, Austin Ballard and Kate Stone collaborated through a series of physical and virtual hybridizations to create an animation that explores sites both intimate and uncanny. Exploring personal domestic rituals, Ballard began by creating a series of objects that serve as fantastical distortions in design, ergonomics, and physical therapy aids. Stone then built sets from Ballard’s objects and textures and brought them to life through stop-motion animation, embracing light and shadow to create an ominous psychological space. The rooms resemble distorted domestic sites in which Ballard’s objects take the place of furniture and appliances. They multiply, wriggle and grow. Stone passed the finished animation back to Ballard, who created a soundtrack to accompany the video. Inspired by Stone’s imagery, Ballard combined a variety of sound clips ranging from his childhood home, his neighbors cat, a sleeping app, and some of his favorite horror films. The project explores virtual misinterpretation and disconnection as a mode for creation.
Download a Zoom Background and join us for the Screening of Night Chatter:
Register for the event: Rendezvous II Night Chatter with Kate Stone and Austin Ballard
Friday Jan 29th @ 7pm EST
Objects created by Austin Ballard and Photographed by Kate Stone
View the Zoom Event from Jan 29th, 2021 with Co Directors Tiffany Smith and Clare Britt in conversation with the Artists Austin Ballard and Kate Stone.
About the Artists
Austin Ballard (b. Charlotte, NC) received an MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where he also served as an Assistant Professor in Textiles. Ballard has received numerous awards including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Sculpture Scholarship, Windgate Foundation Fellowship, Kenneth Stubbs Endowed Fellowship and the Rhode Island School of Design Graduate Studies Grant. He has been awarded fellowships to the Museum of Arts and Design, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Ox-Bow School of Art, Vermont Studio Center, Wassaic Project, McColl Center for Art + Innovation and the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. Ballard has held solo exhibitions at Smack Mellon, NY, Wave Hill, NY, Napoleon, PA, Real Art Ways, CT, and Ithaca College among others. He currently lives in Ridgewood, NY.
Kate Stone is a Brooklyn-based artist working across photography, sculpture, installation and animation. Her work explores the domestic uncanny and the narratives embedded in everyday architectural structures. Kate received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Parsons the New School for Design. She has been awarded the Tierney Fellowship, The Lotos Foundation Prize and FST StudioProjects Fund. Her self-published book, “How We End,” was shortlisted for the Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards. She has attended residencies at NARS Foundation, Artists Alliance LES Studio Program and Mudhouse Residency in rural Greece. Her work has been exhibited at Transmitter Gallery, Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, bitforms gallery, Rubber Factory, 601Artspace and The Museum of Broken Relationships, among others.
View Kate Stone’s Animations on her Vimeo Page