Australian
and international
exploratory
performance and
media arts

February 2002

Peggy Napangardi Jones, Yellow Bird, 1998

Without question, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award—officially NATSIIA but better known by its brand-name, the Telstra Art Award, or just ‘the Telstra’—is Australia’s premier Indigenous art prize. And Transitions, the touring exhibition which showcases a selection of the prizewinning works over the 17 years of the award’s duration, is arguably among the strongest and most significant Australian visual arts events of this Federation year.

The consistently high standard of the works in this ‘best among equals’ exhibition means that singling out any for special mention becomes a somewhat arbitrary affair. One of the brightest stars in this galaxy is the Warlpiri artist Dorothy Napangardi. In 1991, Napangardi won the Museums and Art Galleries Award in the 8th NATSIIA for her Wild Black Plum Dreaming, a lyrical and deliciously evocative rendition of the wild plumbush, heavily laden with fruit, which grows on the Warlpiri homelands of her youth. In this work Napangardi uses feathery brushstrokes and luxuriant colours, including light mauves and yellows, to depict the Mukaki or Bush Plum Dreaming, over which she has custodial rights. Napangardi’s relatively early artistic success augured well for what was to come, because now, 10 years down the track, this modest and reserved artist has been declared the overall winner of the 2001 Telstra award for her stark, haunting, ethereal work Salt on Mina Mina, in which she depicts her Women’s Dreaming.

Also represented are many other artists from the Northern Territory, including Napangardi’s older countrywoman Jeannie Nungarrayi Egan. Egan’s Young Men’s Dreaming (1987) is a powerful and elegant composition that shows just how gifted this artist is. Had she not devoted most of her life and energy to teaching at the Yuendumu School (where she still works), Egan would surely be recognised as one of Australia’s greatest living artists. Tennant Creek based Warumungu artist Peggy Napangardi Jones’ wonderful, unselfconscious Yellow Bird (1998) demonstrates Picasso’s maxim that it can take an entire lifetime to learn to paint like a child.

Travelling north, Jack Wunuwun’s marvellous and seductive Fish Trap Story (1984) shows an Old Master at his best. Wunuwun won second prize at the inaugural NATSIAA. Gali Yalkarriwuy’s fascinating and apparently seamless cultural fusion, Three Wise Men (1999), combines the Christian story with that of Banumbirr, the Morning Star, belonging to the people of Galiwin’ku (Elcho Island).

Moving west, a sublime work by Balgo artist Eubena Nampitjin, Wirritji Rockhole (1998,) uses colour to suggest immense, pent-up ancestral energy straining to be unleashed. There is a curiously paradoxical spirit apparent in Nampitjin’s work. It is at once bold and calm, forceful and sublime and always grounded in her ‘country’, characterised by an explosion of warm, sometimes even hot, colours, mostly yellows, oranges, reds and pinks. This artist ought to be regarded as one of our Living National Treasures.

A strong contingent of South Australian artists is also represented. Trevor Nickolls’ Garden of Eden (circa 1984) depicts an Indigenous Adam and a non-indigenous Eve standing hand in hand in front of a lake shaped into a map of Australia. Behind them a backdrop of Australian flora and fauna signifies idyllic peace, encapsulating the artist’s dream for reconciliation. A wonderful diptych by Ian Abdulla, Memories of Fishing with the Family (1996), is a loving portrayal of the Riverlands of the artist’s youth. Abdulla’s vivid, dreamlike memories of his irretrievable past are rendered in powerful colours, including an astounding technicolour blue. A series of etchings, Tweret Spirits, Dingo Spirits, Njoorlum Spirits and Anthropomorphs of Aboriginal Life (1990) by Port Pirie’s Bevan Hayward (Pooaraar), depicts an era when people were half dingo and half human, also make a substantial contribution.

Queensland offers particularly memorable contributions by Yidindji artist Michael Anning and Thursday Islander Sania May Mabo. Mabo’s subtle and understated lithograph depicts the ceremonial headdress of her people (Headdress [1997]). Anning has in recent years led a cultural revival among his people, resurrecting the almost lost Yidindji art of weaponry carving. His skilful, elegant and professional works Rainforest Swords and Shields (Starfish, Matchbox Beanpod Seed, Tree Grubs Designs) from 1998, indicate that this artist is carving out an important niche in Australian art history.

Transitions covers almost 2 decades of artistic production, during which time this distinctively Australian art has consolidated its place in the world of international art. An exhibition of this nature necessarily has an historical dimension. So, it is interesting to note that most of these artworks seem to have ‘aged’ extremely well—perhaps in contrast with the work of many of their non-indigenous peers over the same time span, whose works seem subject, to a greater extent, to the vagaries of fashion. Taking such a retrospective view also brings some sorrow when one reflects on some of these artists who passed away much too young. For example, the late Robert Campbell Junior’s Robert Marbuk Tutawallie Supports Aboriginal Stockmen Striking for Equal Pay (1990), a work of great visual and political literacy, reminds us what a fine artist this Ngaku man (from Kempsey in NSW) was.

Transitions is an exhibition to rival the spare-no-expense blockbuster travelling visual arts roadshows of recent years—the Monets and the Manets, the Old Masters, the cloyingly ugly and tasteless Dale Chihulys—and even the current rash of shows exhibiting Federation fever. Mercifully this seems to have been a short lived and not very serious illness that has now nearly run its course, and to which Australians didn’t seem to succumb in large numbers. Transitions not only represents an implicit challenge to any residual cultural and colonial cringe on the part of Australians, but is a 5-star show.

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Transitions, Tandanya Cultural Centre, Adelaide, Sept 15 – Oct 21; Melbourne Museum, Nov 9 – Jan 27 2002

RealTime issue #47 Feb-March 2002 pg. 27

Claudia Karvan & Samuel Johnson, Secret Life of Us

At moments of change you have to step back into your world from a new direction. Life doesn’t come in a straight line—it’s more of a dance. You gotta know the moves.
Evan, The Secret Life of Us

They shag, drink and think too much. They try not to hurt each other, and fail. It’s us, our stumbling secret life, but nothing stays secret for long, especially in a St Kilda apartment block.

Network Ten’s series The Secret Life Of Us soars above the prosaic 70s pap wallpaper of Australian soapies with its mix of refreshing character-driven writing by Judi McCrossin and Christopher Lee, and nice shooting on Super 16 cameras, thanks to English co-financing.

Principal writer McCrossin believes the series has struck a chord with 19 to 30-year-olds because, “It’s truthful. It shows how people actually behave. I drew inspiration from the lives and stories of my friends, the inconsistent way we behave—to the extent that some no longer confide their tragic stories.”

The initial dazzling pace has slowed in the final episodes. Well, maybe some viewers prefer a more measured tempo. In real life we tend to fall blindly into the wrong relationships too fast and then it takes us a long time to crawl out. The frisson between Alex and Evan dragged on through the entire series. Realistic? Admirers are secretly thinking, “When is Alex going to get her top off?” Gabrielle and Jason’s break up was painful and protracted. Realistic? Yes, breaking up is a process not an event, but did we want to watch it? And please, when is Will going to stop being a sour old sack? Why did that babe, Sam, have to die? It’s the dilemma of balancing realism with entertainment.

The screenwriting textbooks say avoid voiceovers, unless you’re Woody Allen. Evan’s voiceovers are generally ironic and whimsical. He’s the destitute writer who, like the young Henry Miller, hasn’t written anything yet. He’s the resident philosopher, but he’s only 23, so what the hell would he know? At times his voiceovers state what’s bleeding obvious from the action and the dialogue. Sometimes his tirades fall flat. Collectively they’d probably make an ideal Xmas gift or some nice T-shirt slogans.

The shooting is fairly conventional. I’d prefer to go more adventurous, like the double-take when Alex is asked out by a junior colleague and she intends to say no but says yes.

A real life drama has to face the fact that most young adults (including actors, writers, gays, doctors and lawyers) are doing some form of illegal drugs—without necessarily decimating their lives. Secret Life tackles this responsibly without the prudish moralising that you see on most TV shows.

If the second series continues on the same trajectory of personal and domestic relationships, it may risk becoming claustrophobic. I hope the series finds some new vistas of external experience—perhaps in the world of work. The younger vibe parallel ABC series Head Start exploits this realm quite effectively.

According to Mark Lawson of The Guardian, Secret Life has revived Australian television’s reputation in the UK debased by crass teatime soaps—Neighbours and Home And Away. Comparisons have been drawn with its American cousin Friends but, thankfully, The Secret Life of Us is artier, sexier and doesn’t cue us with canned laughter.

But it’s another example of how commercial TV invests good money on good actors then shoots their best series to bits with a fusillade of commercials. They expect us to focus our late evening attention on a 45-minute story with 4 sub-plots which they interrupt 5 times (15 minutes) with attempts to sell us 40 products we don’t want, not to mention a pseudo-newsflash and sports highlights. Will the ABC ever again be able to afford to make quality series, post-Jonathan Shier’s assault on the national broadcaster’s creative heart?

Damn it! Strike out my trifling picayune jibes. Like all the other fans who club together on Monday nights to watch it, I’m addicted. I look forward to seeing the next series, reflecting our foibles, our fragile human desires, our relentless vain pursuit of meaning in relationships, yep, next February. Secret Life—keepin’ it real!

Secret Life of Us, Southern Star, Network TEN & Channel 4 (UK), writers Christopher Lee, Judi McCrossin, directors Cate Shortland, Stuart McDonald, Kate Dennis, Daniel Nettheim, performers Sibylla Budd, Damian De Montemas, Joel Edgerton, Samuel Johnson, Claudia Karvan, Spencer McLaren, Deborah Mailman, Abi Tucker. Monday nights, Network TEN, 9.30pm. The first series is currently available on DVD.

RealTime issue #47 Feb-March 2002 pg. 19

Michael Schiavello, Fire & Paper

Certainly, if nothing else, Triple Alice effectively asks one question: what happens when you put 25 artists, writers, academics, performers, scientists, painters, historians, bureaucrats, media artists, cooks, poets, installationists, technicians, and anthropologists, from Australia’s capital cities, New York, Rome, Alice Springs, Northern Territory Aboriginal settlements and various universities, onto a once deserted cattle station converted into a youth camp about 100 km northwest of Alice Springs, in the shadow of a couple of aeroplanes flying into a couple of buildings on the other side of the world, in the third of a series of annual get-togethers, with a brief to work with the place and each other?
According to creative director Tess de Quincey, you get “a fertile bed of cross-cultural, interdisciplinary practice from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous traditions in relation to the Central heartland of Australia (which) embodies a sustained commitment by a core group of artists to uncover a new cultural practice.”

According to diverse past attendees, you get anything from a living topoanalysis to a potential Jonestown massacre.

According to this critic you get a boggling agglomeration of brilliance, dross, courage, dishonesty, commitment, well-meaningfulness, triumph, sadness and ignorance, all served up as a feast of dialogic art and thinking in the form of conversations. Conversations between the participants; between the participants and the place; between disciplines; between Triple Alices 1, 2 and 3; between cultures; between conflicting histories; between shock and habit. Conversations crackling through the hot Central Australian days, evening thunderstorms and cold nights; sustained by the forces holding grains of sand together and pushing the MacDonnell Ranges, in whose shadow this event unfolded, up out of the plain, and dribbling through a 7200 kbps internet connection.

A facile cynicism could easily dismiss the whole affair as a case of what Edward Casey characterises as “being transported to wilderness areas in vans and planes in the expectation that experiences in these areas will somehow redeem and redress our technologically overwrought (and philosophically underthought) lives” (Getting Back into Place, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993).

A more generous reading might find a bunch of transplanted artists trying out what happens when they do their work at a youth camp in Central Australia.

Or is there something else?

Structurally, the plan is simple. It is the third of 3 comings-together of 3 interlocked laboratories: a Bodyweather laboratory [the environmentally responsive performance methodology derived and developed by De Quincey from Min Tanaka, Eds], an artists’ laboratory, and a writers’ laboratory, all pouring into and drawing from a central shared well of exchange and collaboration. A cursory diagnosis reveals a glaring triadomania, but a closer examination shows just how much stuff can get made, pushed, pulled and drawn together and apart, arranged, dismantled and in-formed in 3 weeks:

1. Michael Schiavello places a subvertisement, a billboard bearing the message “advertise here”, on the side of a hill where no-one is ever likely to see it, and makes a video surveying the full 360 degree panorama of the scrubby landscape, ending with the billboard.

2. A group of Bodyweather practitioners compiles a performed “dictionary of atmospheres” of the place, in a process of concentrated indwellings.

3. Kim Kerze finds old rusted metal objects, the scant debris of Western inhabitation of the place, which have, he asserts, in their colours, shapes and decay, been claimed by or made part of the land, and uses them to make eerie monolithic sculptures accompanied by odd electronic noises. Exercises in strangeness.

4. Peter Fraser, Peter Snow, Tess de Quincey and Lynne Santos perform a series of 3-5 minute improvisations which conjure up embodiments of ghosts dwelling in and around the historic National Trust listed buildings of the old station.

5. Victoria Hunt snuggles into a clump of rocks in a dried up riverbed in a co-inhabitation with a death adder.

6. Keith Armstrong and Richard Manner mount an installation and performance site at a fork in a dried up riverbed, used for 3 large multimedia performances.

7. Fifteen people, descended variously from European, Aboriginal and Asian races, collaborate on a large painting in the style of Aboriginal place painting, telling the story of a group of women walking to their traditional homeland. The Aboriginal women also dance the same walk.

8. Tess de Quincey rolls a large boulder into the dried up riverbed, smashing it onto the rocks below.

9. Academics Edward Scheer, Kerrie Schaefer and Jane Goodall lead walks and workshops exploring various aspects of Place and Performance.

10. I chase it around, trying to write it all down.

11. Installationists Julia White and Anne Mosey sustain a week-long domestic inhabitation of a small pump hut, painting gum leaves, festooning tinsel, arranging and rearranging objects in the hut.

12. Historian Dick Kimber, ethnobotanist Peter Latts and anthropologist Scott Campbell Smith tell campfire stories about the past and present of the place, and their experiences in it.

Each of these not quite randomly selected samples from the hundreds of projects, works, discussions, thoughts, encounters, problems, adventures and inquiries shares one specific significant structural feature. They, and most of the other work emerging from Triple Alice, are all instances of a 2-way mutual interrogation of emplacement. What happens when I do this with that person here? How is the place revealed, changed, enhanced, damaged; and how am I affected by the encounter? What is produced?

This sort of question and answer with the place was conducted at times with great delicacy, at times with fear, brutality, naiveté, at times with pigidiot dumbheaded stupidity, and at times with refined finesse.

However, irrespective of the various skills and sensibilities of the participants, what did emerge with certainty from Triple Alice was a commitment to the inquiry, to the experience/experiment, in a 3 week long embodied/emplaced ethos.

And the worth of that is another question altogether.

Triple Alice 3, interdisciplinary forum & laboratory, Central Desert, Sept 17-Oct 7,

RealTime issue #47 Feb-March 2002 pg. 9

Robert Iolini

Robert Iolini’s on a high, if quietly so. When we meet he’s just couriered off a new work which draws on his Maltese heritage for broadcast on Netherlands radio. He’s working on a commercial production with long-time collaborator, the writer (and Big hART leader) Scott Rankin and performer Glynn Nicholas, a theatre work with a substantial video component and an integrated soundscore. As well, he and Rankin are creating a new work for Robyn Archer’s Melbourne Festival this year. There’s a new ABC radio piece on the back burner and the UK’s ReR Megacorp has just released a CD compilation of his electroacoustic, chamber ensemble, soundscapes and works for radio. Iolini’s idiosyncratic compositions are musical in the broad sense but they carry whole sound worlds with them often built from fragments of events or speech, not in an old avant garde discontinuous sense but with great fluency.

Goddesses and Rabbits

There weren’t so many Maltese in Matraville where I grew up and the ones that were there were immigrants from Egypt and they were more sophisticated people. When I was 12 we moved out to Pendle Hill. This was the place that Sydney’s Maltese went to from the inner city round Darlinghurst and East Sydney—that was like Little Malta in the 50s. They bought land out at Greystanes and started farms. My Mum is from Malta and my Dad is from Italy. So it was all very rustic and I think I just blocked out a bit of my Malta side.

When I was about 14, there was a group of musicians that played at the local festival. I’d forgotten about them and then recently I met a British musician, Mike Cooper, and he mentioned them. They’re called Ghana (pronounced ‘arna’). I thought this might be an interesting way to get back into some sort of connection with Malta. So I put a proposal in to Supplement, a new music program based in Holland. They commissioned me to do a piece about Maltese traditional folk singing, music and poetry, and successfully applied to the Australia Council for some extra funding through the commissions grants. This meant I was properly funded to go to Malta for 2 weeks. It turned out to be a difficult work because I felt obliged to tell the story of Ghana. At the same time I wanted to fulfil the brief to create an artwork. So I had to negotiate this territory between documentary journalism, soundscape and musical composition. It’s a place I love to work anyway. But this particular one was so narrow because I felt indebted to the people. I’d spoken to supposedly some of the best folk musicians in Malta. They’re sort of gods in their own genre. Anyway I finally created a 21 minute piece.

My parents took me to Malta when I was 17 but this time I found it slightly disturbing. We travelled inland and it was this barren place, really bad roads, like a poor, third world environment. I didn’t remember it like that. Then we got to this weird tourist place with English pubs on the coast, like some kind of Maltese Blackpool.

The Maltese Consulate lined me up with a scholar called George Mifsud-Chircop, basically a one man operation, trying to keep folklore alive. For 2 weeks he took me round and he knew all the musicians. As I try to show in the piece, the social structure there is very class focussed. These musicians were classed as “vulgar”, unsophisticated. Only now, and probably a lot of it to do with the efforts of George Mifsud-Chircop, the government is starting to see what a resource the musicians are. That’s why they were enthusiastic about this piece I was doing.

I’m preparing a piece for The Listening Room about the whole experience of going to Malta. It’ll be longer and looking at more aspects of Maltese culture. I discovered it’s quite a rich culture. The Neolithic temples go back to 7000 BC and the oldest goddess cult worship. The piece is going to be called Goddesses and Rabbits. It’s bizarre: it’s 2 islands but rabbit, not seafood, is the national dish and many people keep rabbits. I’ve also got a lot of video material so I’m actually going to try some experimental image work to go with it.

Black Sheep

I went with Scott Rankin to Darwin in 2000 to create a theatre piece with boys and young men in Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre [on the Big hArt Wrong way Go back project]. We were working with people at risk of becoming offenders and some who were in detention already. Most of them had Indigenous backgrounds and a lot were in there as a result of the mandatory sentencing laws that applied then for stealing pens and blotters and stupid things like that. I was interviewing boys in the centre as well as people outside it. We did workshops to generate music and sound. At the same time, Scott and I were running another project at the council library with people who use it. It’s a good example of how you can get multiple outcomes using the same material. I’ve learned a lot from Scott about that. You can work on an installation piece and a video work and combine all your work. It allows me to move out of the strict area of composition. In fact I don’t think of myself as a straight music composer.

Scott would generate text with young people in the library and then he’d send the same people to me and I’d get them to speak or improvise on the work that they’d generated with him. Then they’d go home and write more stuff and Scott would analyse it with them. They’d talk about their dreams, experiences—maybe the worst they’d ever had and the best, experiences with fire for example, with water—elemental things. Then Scott would try to bring out text that would be poetic in some way. They’d come to me and we would speak the text, and sing parts of it. Then we’d create the music for it. Out of that I also made these almost song or spoken word pieces purely from the material that these young people generated and JJJ broadcast 3 of them in their morning show. We used some of the work in the theatre piece because some of the same people worked on both projects and we added the texts and interviews that I’d worked on with the boys. So we had this whole mass of material. There were some really beautiful photographs by Randy Larkin, and Patrick Burns went out with the boys and did short film shoots. [Iolini’s radio work based on his Darwin experience has the working title Black Sheep.]

Putting it together

I was obsessed with music from about 9 years of age. I can remember seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV and I got Led Zeppelin’s first album when I was 10. I was a bit ahead of my peers, probably from having an older brother who was introducing me to new music. I was lucky. I was always finding mentors along the way from when I was quite young. At about 14 or 15 I was forming my own bands and I’d write all the music and we’d collaborate, based on that King Crimson kind of thing. So when I say “rock”, it wasn’t really rock ‘n roll but it was about improvisation and experimentation. So where I am now is logical I suppose. I meandered for a while but when I reached my mid-20s that’s when I had to really make a decision and that’s when I found [composer] Richard Vella.

I was doing a courseand I’d dropped out because it wasn’t really happening for me there. My friend [composer, sound artist] Ion Pearce said Richard Vella’s doing these lectures at the Conservatorium and he’s so cool, he just lets you drop in. So I did and I introduced myself and he listened to some of the work I was composing. By then I was getting into some “serious” composition, you know writing down notes, and he liked what I was doing and he just took me on as a pupil. So, basically he nurtured me on through the years and gave me connections like Sandy Evans and Roger Dean—the people who played in some of the early pieces that I wrote with Richard’s guidance. So I feel really indebted to him. [See the review of Vella’s Tales of Love on www.realtimearts.net]

About 1993 David Nerlich and I were at The Performance Space doing a live performance with 2 computers, way before computer jamming was the big hit thing to do. Ros Cheney, sadly now no longer with The Listening Room, saw us and said “You guys should put in a proposal.” So we came up with this radiophonic opera called Vanunu.[Mordecai Vanuna was imprisoned for divulging information about Israel’s nuclear weaponry capacity].

From there it just kept going and that relationship with radio has really focused me. I think it was the launching pad to go into writing…Jean-Luc Godard is one of my heroes. Just that aesthetic where anything is fair game, whether it’s an image or a sound, a gesture, whatever, it’s all material…I’m just assembling found texts. But it is writing because I create a new text. I’ll write a few melodies here and there but really it’s about grabbing what’s around you and making work out of it.

It’s about structuring and I’m finding more and more it’s about editing skills and narrative skills. That’s what I’m developing more and more and maybe that’s why I’m able to work in different areas because I’m understanding more and more what it means to create narrative—I include narrative told in very non-linear fashion or in multiple layers. A lot of the musical techniques that you find in Richard Vella’s teaching are there in his book (Musical Environments: A Manual for Listening, Composing and Improvising, Currency Press, 2001). I apply them all the time. That’s been a very strong grounding for me. I apply them to text, to whole concepts and structures. It’s about perception and about understanding relationships between objects or…let’s just call them events. So it’s quite exciting. I feel like now is a new era coming up where I’m hopefully going to create works that combine many, many things, even more.

IOLINI, Electroacoustic, Chamber Ensmble, Soundscape & Works for Radio, composer Robert Iolini, ReR Megacorp, CD RER RII.

RealTime issue #47 Feb-March 2002 pg. 29

Islands hold a particular fascination in Australian culture. We’re taught at school that Australia is the largest island; we cherish the concept of island as playground. Daydream. Hayman. Lindeman. The names conjure up paradise. Many go to Fiji or Tahiti or Hawaii for their honeymoons. And further afield, what about the Greek Islands or Ibiza, colonised by post-teen partygoers from the UK and dramatised in truly the worst reality TV show so far. After watching these obnoxious Brits pucker up and puke over Spanish soil I lost the stomach for Survivor. But in the Howard universe perhaps the dreamlife of islands is changing. Christmas Island. Nauru. Not quite the same ring to these names, when tagged with ‘Pacific’ and ‘Solution’, is there? And now there’s Norfolk, taking on the fortress mentality, trying to deny rights to people living with HIV and Hepatitis. Where is it going to end?

The Performance Space’s recent selection of documentaries and shorts from the Pacific region, Pacific Visions, took on some of these complexities in our attitudes to island cultures—and their attitudes to us—and shifting identities within our region. While the film screenings were disappointingly attended and some of the programming seemed dated (perhaps due to filmmaking only gradually emerging from some of these areas), there were a couple of outstanding documentaries, most notably Velvet Dreams and Islands, which experimented with the documentary form, playing with the conventions of a quest narrative.

Islands was made by Amiel Courtin-Wilson (2000 Dendy Award winner for his exploration into the life of Buddhist nun and aunty Robina Courtin in Chasing Buddha) and the film’s star Vincent Hymann as part of SBS’s inspired Hybrid Life series. Born to a Samoan mother and German father, and living in Melbourne, Vincent is ideally situated to explore the tensions implicit in belonging to an islander culture yet growing up apart from it; a voiceover speaks Samoan: “it is not my voice you are listening to.” Vincent takes on everything—cultural relativism, patronising attitudes, the conventions of docos where you trace your family history—with a gentle assault, using archival footage to particularly innovative effect, intertitled with quotes about islands from the likes of John Donne that often contradict what characters are saying. His mother talks of the shock of the new when arriving in Melbourne: so much noise, so much glass and a different smell, the “smell of the West”, while Margaret Mead’s ideas of Samoa—promiscuous natives in tropical paradise—are cut with Tony Barber on Sale of the Century trying to entice a contestant with a tropical holiday.

In an inventive ending, Vincent arrives to the shores of his ‘island home’ and the film stops, and I realise how I’m used to this just being the beginning. I have all the usual questions: do you feel whole now, now you have found your roots? But there are no answers here. Or, we have to rewind rather than fastforward to find them. It’s a funny, experimental doco, implicating us all in islander stereotypes, as the Pacific Islander doll wiggles out of frame and Vincent’s mother says, “turn that camera off and sit with us.”

Velvet Dreams plays with some of the same stereotypes, and with us, in Tahiti. It’s luscious to the point where you want to stroke the screen, as we’re enveloped in a detective story (with gumshoe narration) in a quest to find a voluptuous woman: the ‘dusky maiden’ featured in a velvet painting found by the owner/narrator in an opshop in the States. These velvet paintings are classic kitsch, gorgeous stylised Polynesian women with long hair, hibiscus behind the ear, naked to the waist, huge breasts. Got the picture? Not only that, they are painted onto black velvet. Tactile, sexy, with the added allure of perceived vulgarity, they were often hung in men’s clubs, and have acquired a kind of retro chic.

So from Seattle to New Zealand we follow an obsession, a mission, “to recognise my velvet lady”, and what a great ride it is. What’s exciting about the film is that it takes on the agenda of the aging, white, well meaning (but, let’s face it, sexist) male and runs with it. Filmmaker Sima Urale (born in Samoa, grew up in NZ, studied film at Victorian College of the Arts), Polynesian herself, is obviously familiar with the arguments that would question the use of such women as passive, acquiescent subjects ready to fulfil male desires, but chooses to reveal such objections in interviews the narrator has, often filtered through him. The total subjectivity says more about the Western way of ‘seeing’ the exotic than if it had been even-handed; it’s a delicious surprise. It works because the film, like the paintings, is about male fantasy. He is out to find his dusky maiden but the viewer knows that she will not be what he is looking for, 30 years on.

Lascivious, funky lounge music and slide guitars accompany our glide through parlours of Polynesian princesses. And of course these paintings have travelled, as does our narrator, coming to encapsulate everything alluring associated with the Pacific region: seductive, always available. Historian Lisa Tauoma argues that these paintings were always purely artificial: for instance, the women in these communities had short or shaved hair, rather than long flowing locks. And a velvet painter reveals his studio with a stock of body poses and naked torsos; he just painted the heads on. “If this is a construction, I like it”, says our narrator, and moves on, tracking his lady’s painter Charles McPhee to a bar in New Zealand, on the dance floor in a spectacular orange suit, surrounded by young women. The party animal, aged 88. But does he arrive in time to meet his velvet lady? You’ll have to see the film. It’s worth the detective work to track it down.

Velvet Dreams, director Sima Urale, Top Shelf Productions, Aotearoa; Islands, directors Vincent Hymann, Amiel Courtin-Wilson, Go>Group, Australia; won the The Open Channel Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking at the 2001 REAL: Life on Film Festival; Pacific Visions, part of Pacific Wave 2001, curators Brent Clough, Jaunnie ‘Illolahia, Margot Nash & Fiona Winning, Performance Space, Nov 13-24

In 1997, on the eve of departure first time for New York, I had a dream which turned my idea of this cultural mecca on its head. In place of my imagined skyscrapers, clogged, cold-hearted, shadowed streets, claustrophobia amongst the crowds, I dreamt of quite a human-scaled city, 6 to 8-storeyed buildings, wide streets, not too many people, comfortably humane stonework details. The dream proved more accurate than my daylight fears. Formed from book reviews, arts, criticism, and probably something extracted from Big Apple vocal twang, my imagined city had been constructed by proxy from armchairs and chattings, mental glimmers becoming architectures and a too-sombre picture of others’ lives.

Elizabeth Paterson’s work has long been concerned with how stories of other places are both transported—and not—in pictures, postures, fabrics, foods, musics, physiognomies. The Monkey Show (what is that little monkey, dancing beside the hurdy-gurdy, pulling [tamed] jungles into tapestries and paintings from Roman to Medieval times), formed from a 10-year obsession, is a questioning of the relation of the glimpsed ‘exotic’ to Western culture, and of what is both treasured and ignored in the juxtapositions of memory within the contexts of experience.

To European-descendant Australians, we perhaps have our ‘normal’ exotic (Paris; a winter Santa Claus), and then what surprises us in our own backyards: frilled-neck lizards, the vibrant-red shock of galahs in dusty gums—still visitors to our picture of ourselves, still a surprise in the mixed history of our Australian lives. Paterson’s work teases at the cusp of these cross-relationships.

There is immense fullness and richness in this installation: the gorgeous blood-orange tapestry-work armchair (a copy of the 1500 Flemish tapestry The Lady and the Unicorn); bead-cloaked monkey-parrots bent over bright cotoneaster buds; the coconut-textured fur, veined faces and dreamy eyes of the 5 monkeys themselves, drawn together in a life-size installation entirely constructed out of paper and cardboard—walls, chimney, animals, bush scrub, French doors, images of both solidity and delicacy, an environment inviting habitation and yet not up to normal domestic bruising. The installation space, roughly 4m x 8m, is housed within 3 glassed walls tucked to the side of quiet, downbeat Civic Square, its fountains of water and passers-by reflecting in the glass, both veiling and revealing the image.

There are other strong elements of ostraneia (‘making stramge’): a dry sclerophyll landscape rolling out of the fireplace; a Santa-monkey descending and ascending the chimney; little journeying cars like an animated cartoon riding a small section of picture-rail, disappearing left to right into an architrave. A floating armada of sailing ships impale white clouds with their masts; and all the while, the centrepiece (although this piece has no ‘centre’), the armchair on which perch the monkey-parrots and in which lounges a relaxed naked monkey. A gramophone (the end-shape of a meandering bend of paper-water flowing into the room from one of the doors) bends towards his ear, carrying music from yet another landscape of memory.

I find myself falling into some, and ignoring other details, such as the dry eucalypts shedding their leaves: a small and peripheral worrying at the edges of my preferred attention.

What is astonishing is the relationship between the density of the craftwork—beading, embroidery, the mechanics of the Santa-monkey’s descent and the little travelling cars, so seductive and alluring, so attractive and preoccupying—and the spaciousness between each of these elements. There is a vastness circulating within and between the elements of this immensely ornate work. This should be a room crowded with furniture, a dense population. Instead, we have enough space between armchair and fireplace as between 2 desert spinifex; as much distance and disparate meaning between cloud-skewering armada and monkey as 2 separate journeys by different people in different lifetimes.

So where am I? Everywhere. Nowhere. Here. As much in-place, my pregnant belly bulging and breath puffing in the still heat, as I am anywhere else, eating strudel, pizza, swimming in Lake Burley Griffin, cleaning renovation dust from my home. I want to ‘have’ one of the monkeys for my daughter’s room; yet I would be dismantling an entity, my aesthetic lust colonising an entire landscape and history of negotations (each element already threaded through to its own invisible past time). A quandary of aesthetics and ethics; settling, thence unsettling. A strong, subtle, alluring work that leaves me tempted, teased and tantalised.

The Monkey Show, installation by Elizabeth Paterson, Car & Santa mechanised by Michael James & Mike MacGregor, Canberra Museum & Gallery window space, Civic Square, Canberra, Dec 15-Jan 27

One feels the nearness of the songs as they override time. Within each, a voice, therein a character, therein a life, and therein an era. All this breathes through Boulevard Delirium as one balances on the edge between tragedy and comedy. One feels the nearness of the Schauspielhaus’ great discovery, actor Werner Schwab, who choked to death at a party in honour of his rising fame. One feels the subsequent decline of the Vienna Schauspielhaus theatre that Barrie Kosky has recently taken over. Vienna, a city that has learnt from the darkest lessons of history, follows when Kosky “goes straight into the darkness,” says Paul Capsis, admiring the director’s courage and his influence on his own work. To illustrate he clasps his face between palms and pulls the skin back, creating a grotesque image of forced composure, and utters “I would never have done Marlene like this!”

I trust Barrie, utterly. With experience you learn that you have to protect yourself, own what you do, but then often walls go up between you and the director. A director like Barry is an outside-I. You surrender to him.

Despite the notoriously unforgiving climate of art criticism in Vienna, Kosky’s tough but brilliant judgement has produced almost only positive reports on his first couple of pieces, Medea and now the one-man ‘show-theater’ starring Capsis. Speaking to Paul about the lack of distance between himself and the subject that could reduce the show to parody (or sugary imitation) I addressed the religious element, because the gospel music struck me as too hysterical to be reverent.

Paul Capsis: I like to have a spiritual connection, that’s why I sing gospel music. I love those voices, where they go with it, how it moves them, the connection to the soul. I had a very religious upbringing. My grandmother who raised me was a strict Catholic, and I also had a Greek Orthodox father. But I rebelled at 15, somewhat like Alex Dimitriades’ character in the film Head On. I find spirit in other things, in other places.

I discover them; and it’s like falling in love, with these people [Marlene Dietrich, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, etc]. Really the first one that happened to me was Janis Joplin when I was 12; for what reason I still don’t know. I was interested in her more than in anything else. Obsessed. I had to have all the music, had to see as much film footage as I possibly could. I was already a sponge for that kind of thing anyway, with people and things that I heard about. I was obsessed with places before I became obsessed with people. I collected postcards, maps, stories, anything I could find to do with my grandmother’s native Malta. If you’re interested in something, if you love something, you totally ‘take it on.’ When I finally went to Malta I knew it so well. Then when I became obsessed with Janis Joplin it was the same thing.

I just found something lacking in where I was growing up; there was something uninteresting about Australia to me as a child. Where are the bombs, the air raid shelters, why aren’t we in costume and why are the buildings so boring?

Despite sketching those perceptive comparisons between “hot Sydney” and icy Vienna, you reiterate that Boulevard Delirium was made here. In a culture that revels in theatrical ceremonies, particularly on the several public holidays for the dead, as der Profil wrote about your show, “no one speculates whether this is art or entertainment.” Will it be hard to go back to Australia again, after living in Vienna, whose streets, as Karl Kraus wrote, are paved in culture?

There’s a huge knot here [gesticulating wildly around his stomach] when I think of going home…particularly in terms of my art. I’ve never fitted into the idea of an Australian. Vienna’s decaying presence of greatness is so beautiful…here there is a respect for the past. Those people lived for a reason and we should learn from them.

You’ve said failure is important. Is that because only when one fails is one free of all the possibilities of blinding success; then there appears a horrible yet also childlike freshness. With these women, are you working from a common experience of tragedy?

There’s something in the voice that connects with me. I don’t know if it’s the pain in their voice that I connect with, I think it is. There’s also a power in their voices. There is something that goes beyond. Then it’s their physicality, their life, what they did, what happened to them.

I hope so, that’s really important to me. I’ve seen a lot of people doing [impressions] and I was always left feeling dissatisfied. I thought, those people can never be recreated, it’s interesting to try to duplicate somebody but you can’t. So I took an actor’s approach: researched the characters, because I felt I needed to dig deep, learning as much about the person as I could from all sources to try and understand the historical and psychological makeup of that person. Everything effects the voice, the voice tells you where someone is. I had to study all this to get in there.

The Austrian press has called you a Verwandlungskuenstler, which is one of those translation-resistant German words, a compound of ‘transformation’ and ‘artist.’. As I remember, you delivered the comparison with Head On of Persephone—who spends half the time in hell and the other free of her husband, Hades, god of the underworld—as an allegory of your socially unacceptable sexuality. Can one read you returning to these characters almost every night of the week as something more than ‘an act’? One critic thought you may be a case of multiple personalities; would you say that’s true?

I lived in a fantasy when I was a kid. I liked to think I was someone else, somewhere else. But I am not a case of multiple personality disorder. I’ve really got a sense of being who I want to be. Sometimes it’s overwhelming. Sometimes before a show I think I can’t go there. Last night in particular, I was so depleted after the previous night’s show. I was anxious. I couldn’t breathe. I was thinking of where I had to go, and I was thinking I can’t, I can’t. Then Wolfgang (Luckner) the drummer starts warming up and at that point I try not to get in the way, just to let it happen.

Boulevard Delirium, performer Paul Capsis, director Barrie Kosky, Schauspielhaus, Vienna, Dec 3 – Jan 3. Capsis vs Capsis opens at The Studio, Sydney Opera House Feb 19-28

At this year’s Sydney Festival the mood was more contemporary than in recent years with the best work of the handful of shows I saw certainly coming from Australians: Sandy Evans’ jazz oratorio Testimony, with the Australian Art Orchestra and a long line-up of great vocalists, and Kate Champion’s Same same But Different, a complex multimedia, dance theatre work. Both works were joint initiatives of the Sydney and Melbourne Festivals (Testimony is also supported by the Sydney Opera House), so they will live again with welcome room to move and improve and impress larger audiences.

Testimony: The Legend of Charlie Parker

Jazz has rarely found a home in Australia’s international arts festivals. Concerts are one thing, but an outright celebration of jazz is something else, and that’s what Testimony is. First it is a response to the work of the jazz great, Charlie Parker, by an American poet, Yusef Komunyakaa, in 14 sonnets arranged or (mostly) musically composed by Sydney saxophonist Sandy Evans, or spoken by Bobby C. Secondly, it is implicitly a tribute to Australian jazz, to the musicians of the always impressive Australian Art Orchestra (under the direction of Paul Grabwosky) and in turn the many outfits with which they play, to the many vocalists who perform in Testimony, and not least to Evans herself. She treats Komunyakaa’s words with respect and verve and has created some outstanding compositions. The CD is eagerly awaited.

The challenge in theatricalising what was originally a work for radio is to not diminish attention to the words and music. Director Nigel Jamieson, designer Dan Potra and video artist Andrew Savage achieve this by making the orchestra the visual centre of the action. A small ensemble of shifting dimensions (but always with piano, bass and drums) occupies the forestage and is frequently joined by vocalists. Meanwhile, the orchestra is encased in several storeys of scaffolding with full-scale screens front and back (the forward one is raised and lowered). Members of the orchestra can be spotlit. The orchestra can be disappeared or silhouetted. Images appear in front of them and behind, as if peering through. They range from the face of the narrator, to big city scapes, buses and cabs moving dreamily towards us, 50s style decorative patternings, maps, trains and chain gangs. A repeated, poignant slo-mo, kaleidoscopic shot of Parker playing as his life goes to pieces (“He was naked…”) is paralleled by the orchestra and violinist John Rodgers’ performing a dark, modernist fragmentation, followed by a divine, sustained lament.

The constructivist impulse of the staging means that the simple set is constantly transformed—lighting and projections altering the depth of field, evoking movement (a camera tracks up the Chrysler Building; huge industrial wheels turn), providing visual motifs corresponding to musical and poetic images. At times there’s a superfluity of images, too literal, too much video clip business when the music is already hard at work, and too many visual styles relieved only by returning to key images.

Komunyakaa’s poems comprise fragments of a life (including the death of Parker’s daughter, his temporary recuperation from heroin addiction), impressions (“always on the move on some no-man’s land”), character (“enough irony to break the devil’s heart”), desires (his favorite food, chicken) and the poet’s own witty be-bop-inspired litanies, ideal material for Evans. The poems are served best when they become the lyrics for Evans’ compositions. Testimony does not in fact narrate Parker’s life and only falters when it slips in that direction, or promises to and can’t. It’s a pity that on opening night the song lyrics weren’t always audible in the awkward sound mix and, worse, that they hadn’t been reproduced in the printed program.

There were too many high points, too many excellent performances to single out here save to mention that some of the most eccentric moments were the most celebratory: Jackie Orzacksy singing and playing electric bass on Abel & Cain and the indefatigable Joe ‘Be-bop’ Lane scatting on Barrow Street and Moose the Mooch. The blend of small, taut ensembles and a magnificent, burnished big band sound, the classiness and confidence of the 11 vocalists (8 of them women) and the occasional bursts of raw but always coherent and plangent sax and trombone, made for one of the most memorable festival shows in Sydney for a very long time.

“Take a bow Christopher Williams of (ABC) Audio Arts,” wrote John Shand opening his review for the Sydney Morning Herald (Jan 18). Sad to say, Soundstage, the program for which the innovative producer Williams originally conceived and commissioned Testimony, is no more, a victim in 2001 of “reform” at the ABC that has greatly reduced the possibility of creating such large-scale, cross-artform, stereophonic art works.

Testimony: The Legend of Charlie Parker, music Sandy Evans, libretto Yusef Komunyakaa, musical direction Paul Grabowsky, stage direction Nigel Jamieson, design Dan Potra, image design Andrew Savage, sound design John O’Donnell, lighting design John Rayment; Australian Art Orchestra and vocalists: Kristen Cornwell, Kate Swadling, Dan Barnett, Jackie Orsaczky, Tony Allayiallis, Tanya Sparke, Shelley Scown, Tina Harrod, Joe Lan, Michelle Morgan, Lily Dior. Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, Jan 16 & 18

La Fura dels Baus: øBS: Macbeth

After the infinite joys of Michael Kantor’s King Ubu for Belvoir St in late 2001, the strictly finite pleasures of La Fura dels Baus’ ØBS (for Macbeth’s obsession) seemed slight. Kantor and his team managed to evoke through design and stylised performance an eery sense of Jarry’s original. At the same time they left the museum and opened out Ubu into a rude, adroit political satire of contemporary Australia. ØBS looks contemporary, but its huge mobile screens, its TV game-show version of the witches, its VR-attired killers are just as kitsch as Lady Macbeth’s long-winded pole-dancing and have nothing to say about power, let alone obsession, or the mass (and new) media which are loosely satirised.

For a company whose principal claim to fame is its risky relationship with its audience and for whom narrative has not been an issue, the telling of the Macbeth story is inevitably unwieldy. While there are still the thrills and spills of almost being mown down by huge metallic sculptures, mobile screens and ramps, of being hit by a heart, stained by a liver, slapped with a sausage as King Duncan is disembowelled and consumed (a la Totem & Taboo), ØBS is a show where the audience can feel rather secondary to the action. Their view of it is diminished at times by the very 3-D glasses meant to enable them to enjoy, for example, the giant pulsing labia behind Lady Macbeth’s bump and grind. The ending is typically anticlimactic. As Macduff’s sword swings towards Macbeth’s head—blackout. Look the other way and you might see his head rolling about on a screen. The end.

Nonetheless, there’s a perverse pleasure at times in being part of the chase, enjoying the projected advice (“do not form groups”, “definitely do not disconnect your mobile phones”), admiring the sheer scale of the 2 monstrous war machines that tilt across the space, and feeling fear as Macbeth’s thugs round up and slash people (cast members) in the crowd and fling them onto ramps that dump the bodies in obscene piles. Acting is replaced by broad gesture—we see Lady Macbeth’s imaginings as she is paraded in a bath full of blood. Spectacle evokes primitive ritual—at its best when you feel fleetingly complicit. The La Fura dels Baus’ artistic team directed an acclaimed Berlioz Faust (now available on DVD) for the Salzburg Festival 1999—that I would like to see.

La Fura dels Baus, Øbs: Macbeth, director Pep Gatell; Hordern Pavilion, Fox Studios, Jan 12-18

Théâtre du Soleil: The Flood Drummers

The massive fires that had surrounded Sydney over Xmas and into the New Year sparked impassioned debate about, among other things, the maintenance of national parks and the dangerous luxury of environmentalism. Théâtre du Soleil’s The Flood Drummers seemed timely—in an ancient Chinese feudal realm an imminent flood can only be diverted by destroying a dam. But which one? Either the peasantry or the city dwellers of the kingdom will have to perish. The complexities of choice for an ageing ruler, his perspicacious but alienated advisor, various opportunist lords and the advisor’s heroic spouse, play out over 3 hours with the moral twists and turns of the dilemma heart-breakingly accelerating in the late stages of the work.

Ariane Mnouchkine and her great French company have finally made it (if hesitantly because of their anger over the ‘Tampa crisis’) to Australia. They bring with them a scale of vision and production, of ensemble training and sustained development we can only envy. A sense of inclusiveness is also on offer—arrive early, eat, watch the performers preparing, and enjoy the drummers again after the show. The greatest pleasure to be had is relishing the skills of the performers not only playing complex multiple roles but pretending-to-be-puppets-pretending-to-be-humans. In an idiosyncratic fusion of Bunraku and Kabuki, the performers play both puppets and their masked manipulators, while the set echoes the scale and some of the magic of the Kabuki stage (giant silk scrims fall away to create new backgrounds, the elaborate castle-cum-landscape stage finally floods). While the strict formalities of Bunraku are not observed (no narration from the side of the stage, no un-masked master puppeteer), the embodiment of the puppet is studiously realised, every entrance and exit exhibiting the transformation in and out of doll-like stiffness and complex motion (and emotion). Of the actors, several, like Sava Lolov (the villain, Hun) performed with such precision that it was frightening—a human-cum-expressive puppet. As the flood drummers (warning the populace of danger) the whole cast excelled, managing demanding rhythms while maintaining the exact sense of being manipulated. However, the device here of 2 puppeteers dressed in white loosely ‘controlling’ the flood drummers—as marionettes—from above seemed as ineffectual as it was unecessary.

It is one thing to skilfully evoke the worlds of Bunraku and Kabuki (and fashion a script that sounds like it could have come from 16th century Japan), it is another to make sense of why you’re doing it other than enacting an odd kind of mimickry and appropriation. Puppetry in The Flood Drummers begins as a conceit and remains one. It never flowers into metaphor, nor blooms into motif. We admire the artistry of the ‘puppetry’, grow anxious as the flood threatens and lives and values are discarded, but something is missing. Curiously, it’s the last reflective minutes of the play that depart from the feel of literal reproduction and become more suggestive. Earlier in the play there is concern Baï Ju, a master puppeteer, will have his work destroyed if the flood sweeps the city away. In the final scene, as the waters rise, tiny puppets are flung (rather indifferently after so much precision) into the flood. Jun Bai stands chest deep in water amidst them, staring at us as helpers rescue the dolls and place them in a long row on the edge of the stage, gazing impassively, in a reflective scene evocative not only of the loss of life but also of the art that disaster and corruption can destroy.

Watching composer Jean-Jacques Lemêtre at one side of the stage seamlessly play dozens of instruments from viol da gamba to unnamed exotica (some of his own making) was a special pleasure, as was his sensitivity to the relationship between voice, movement, music and effects (cast members joining him to howl up a storm).

Théâtre du Soleil, The Flood Drummers, director Ariane Mnouchkine, writer Hélène Cixous, designers Guy-Claude François, Ysabel de Maisonneuve, Didier Martin, composer Jean-Jacques Lemêtre; Royal Hall of Industries, Fox Studios, Jan 5-24

Force Majeure: Same, same but different

The image of exhausted couples struggling to keep dancing is familar from the American play and film They Shoot Horses Don’t They, an account of tortuous competitions for money prizes held during the Great Depression. It recurs as a kind of race throughout Same same but different, Kate Champion’s initially whimsical but increasingly dark, dance theatre vision of the life of the heterosexual couple, from flirtation and seduction to various discontinuities and breakdowns and on to dependency. In the end the race flows from the performers onto a big screen in black and white and then colour. While the image has power, more potent throughout is the struggle that goes on within each of the couples and the individuals therein. In fact the relationship between the desparate race of a mass of couples and the dilemmas of individual pairs is never clear. Other alternations work—the aged couple, seen recurrently on their own, reveal a quiet on-going intimacy, finally threatened by the dementia of one—or the group scenes, individuals moving at a table against life size projections of themselves with which they move dextrously in and out of synch, a vast crowd of competing desires and wrenching loneliness.

Early in the work the portrayal of couples is primariy presented through dialogues, where one partner speaks and the other physically enacts their emotional state, their voice (often at odds with what they appear to feel) is delivered from the dark by another member of the company. Here and there these are sharp, though too often quaint and yielding cute overracting. In a one-off mode of delivery, a couple dance against a large projection of courting giraffes, reproducing the animal’s loping grace but also interpolating it with moments of irritation, a motif that recurs more forcefully as the work develops. The device might be too one-off, but it is part of Same, same’s obsessive investment in screens and framing. Not only are projected images inherently framed, but also much of the physical performance. A stage wall slides open and shut into various compartments or window-like spaces where we glimpse small, intimate moments or bodies falling or tussling. In one of the 2 most sustained and demanding scenes in Same, same, the wall opens a little to reveal Benjamin Winspear and Roz Hervey in a small, tight space. He faces us, angled tensely against the wall, locked into a cycle of gesture signalling ever-increasing frustration. Hervey paces behind, her back to us. Breaking the projection frame, an image of a reclining, restless Hervey, is eerily cast across the front of Winspear’s cell and his lower body. Unlike the literalness and brevity of the earlier scenes, moments like this and those around the table yield constellations of suggestiveness that endure.

The climactic and most emotionally engaging moment of Same, same has Hervey and Shaun Parker locked in an intimate dance. We’ve seen it earlier, especially the cradling motif—she has her back to him, sinks into him, or he takes her to him, both sets of knees slightly bending before the couple unfold. As the dance locks into a cycle, the cradling becomes more like a trap, tension moves into the dancers’ faces, their desperate breathing is audible, sweat flows—this intimacy is as demanding as it is sustaining.

Same, same starts out lightly, episodically (the audience responding with short bursts of applause), even slightly, but darkens and deepens. Although what it has to say about relationships is limited, it speaks with enough anxiety and pain embodied in memorable images and movement for us to both recognise what we have seen and anticipate what we fear. It is the emotional directness of Champion’s work and the theatrical virtuosity that frames it that will win her growing audiences. It’s also her excellent choice of ensemble and collaborators. The choreography is not always distinctive (its mellifluousness though is miles away from the sharp edges of many of her contemporaries) but the careful distribution of motif and constantly inventive framing make for vivid images that linger long. Several of her cast are actors, but she knows exactly how to work within their movement limits and still make great use of their expressivity gesturally. And she knows how to draw emotional power from dancers without, for the most part, imposing the actor’s mask. All the performers are good, the sense of ensemble already strong. But in this production Winspear and Hervey excel (a reminder just how good Hervey is and how rarely seen), not a little because Champion gives them the space and time to mine her investigation so thoroughly.

Impressively, once again Champion and her collaborators (filmmaker Brigid Kitchin, cinematographer Roman Baska, set & lighting designer Geoff Cobham) get the relationship between performers virtual and real right—as Champion sees it in her program note: “the increased multiplicity we now live with…our limitless options…our refracted narratives. The diminished continuity of people, place and responsibility compared to the generation of my parents.”

Force Majeure, Same same But Different, director Kate Champion, lighting & set design Geoff Cobham, filmmaker Brigid Kitchin, composer Max Lyandvert, performers Roz Hervey, Kirsty McCracken, Veronica Neave, Shaun Parker, Byron Perry, Benjamin Winspear, Arianthe Galani, Brian Harrison; Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, Jan 14-19

William Yang: Shadows

William Yang’s unfolding life on stage and screen takes a less effective and less intimate turn than usual in Shadows, a string of photographic and verbal associations, some stronger than others, a few simply not taut enough. However, it’s those moments when the personal breaks through that remind you that Yang’s persona in these works is often that of the observer, the man with a camera, especially now that he’s moving away from his well-mined family and personal history. Roland Barthes wrote that it is the punctum, the unlooked for, in a photograph where unexpected meaning hovers. Those moments are verbal in Shadows and warrant more reflection than Yang affords them. A few irritable words about a declining Aboriginal community spending all day playing cards become more significant when Yang suddenly wonders, with a hint of desperation, if these people are really his friends. He is frustrated when his planned expedition to photograph a massacre site is constantly thwarted by his Aboriginal contacts—one even opines the event a myth. The man with a camera wants evidence of genocide, but is not going to get it.

However, documenting his contact with an Aboriginal community (originally through the artist George Gittoes) has enough detail, personalities and history to suggest just how far removed most of us are from Indigenous life and how much we need to understand. Between Yang’s 2 visits over a decade, welfare funding declines, Fulla Shillingsworth (a boy earlier ‘adopted’ by Gittoes) has had children by 3 women and been gaoled for fighting racists, alcoholism has ruined some of the family and the weight of responsibility for looking after children is still with the elderly Ruby. The community doesn’t display despair, but Yang sits on the edge of it, the outsider—still further in, if uncertainly, than most of us will ever get. But part of you wants to break the casually awkward, conversational, diffident Yang spell, to call out, ‘How can you be a friend to these people at 10 year intervals? Who are you kidding?’

Yang tells a parallel story, well, not really a story, rather fragments of history about Australians of German stock interned during World War I. Although he shows us his Hahndorf informants, they don’t seem to have provided him with the specifics that could make this story personal in the way we expect of Yang. One of them tells him that people didn’t speak of the internment because they were ashamed. (The association here becomes a young German artist with whom Yang has a relationship. The artist’s father refused to speak of the war, but when pressed dug out a box of books, including Mein Kampf, as evidence of what swayed him as a young man. Presumably he too had not spoken, and still would not, out of shame.)

Given that my family name was mentioned or shown a number of times as part of the German ancestry of South Australia along with shots of the old homestead, I took more than a little interest in this part of Shadows. (I’d also co-written and performed a work about that heritage, Photo Play, in 1988 and 1994.) I don’t recall from my childhood anyone speaking of internment with shame, but rather resentment. After all, my great grand father Johann Joseph Gallasch was naturalized in 1841, 2 years after his arrival in Adelaide, 73 years before World War I. The strongest moment in this section of Yang’s performance comes when he simply shows a long list of German town names in the Adelaide Hills and Barossa Valley along with their English replacement names, an act not revoked until 1937 (not long before another round of internments). Hahndorf became Ambleside, Lobethal became Tweedale. Not that Yang probably knows it, or that he’d have space to tell it, but the Gallaschs were not German Lutherans, but Polish Catholics who fled with Lutherans persecuted by the German state. Under the same state, these Poles had been forced to speak German, adopt German names and the name of their Silesian town, Zbaszyn, had been changed to Bentschen. The small town the Gallaschs soon settled, not far from Hahndorf, was Grunthal (meaning green valley), which was renamed Verdun (more green) during World War I. The name stuck, despite the repealing of the Naming Act, though there was an unsuccessful lobby during the renaming to use the Aboriginal name for the area, Tumbeela (green valley).

Yang’s story of German internment is atypically dry and short on detail and personalities, though its entry point, the Adelaide Festivals of Christopher Hunt and Jim Sharman (Yang was official 1982 Adelaide Festival photographer) and the cultural influence of Don Dunstan and Kym Bonython, are brief, entertaining reminders of histories yet to be written. Closer to Yang’s home, an excellent documentary on Queensland canecutters on SBS (As It Happened, Jan 26, 7.30pm) revealed that Italians (and other nationalities) had been interned during both wars (even when in World War I Italy was not even the enemy), some of them in South Australia, presumably on the bleak Torrens Island internment station on the Port River that Yang shows in Shadows.

Having surveyed the harassment of an old migrant cultural minority, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ongoing struggle of Aboriginal Australians, Yang concludes his journey with photographs of the Reconciliation March across Sydney Harbour Bridge that capture the size and celebratory disposition of the huge crowd—a faintly reassuring but necessary gesture in the current political climate where we seem to be doing just as badly, if not worse, by minorities and refugees than ever before.

Colin Offord supports Yang with his idiosyncratic blend of entwined vocal and instrumental music with some nicely sustained passages as, for example, when Yang’s road shots evoke the geographical and cultural distances the photographer (and not a few of his subjects) travel.

Shadows, written & photographed by William Yang, music composed & performed by Colin Offord, lighting Martin Langthorne; The Studio, Sydney Opera House, Jan 20-25

The Marrugeku Company: Crying Baby

The Marrugeku Company’s Crying Baby has been extensively written about and reviewed on these pages (RT41, pp 8-9, RT 42 p24). It was good to see it at last even if the rain that followed the bush fires severely depleted rehearsal time onsite and made opening night a sometimes uncertain occasion. The performance space is immediately engaging—a lurching phone box centre-stage, red earth littered with television monitors, poles and wires cutting across the terrain, a skeletal vessel, tall metal plants, a large circular screen, and a humble gathering point for the musicians. With a Les Ballets C de la B casualness the performers gradually occupy the space (including a couple who had wandered pre-show among the audience looking like real trouble), chatting, dancing and squabbling it into being. The ensuing performance and its soundscape soon confirm the double life of the spatial design—actual and virtual, contemporary and ancient, inhabited by ghosts, spirits, forgotten history and ideologically-driven mythology—the colour footage of the lone, white child lost in the bush pitched against black and white documentary records of too, too many Aboriginal children lost to home and family.

The presence of Arnhem Land story custodian Thompson Yulidjirri telling both the Crying Baby story and the history of the invasion of his culture by the missionary Mr Watson (conversationally translated by composer Matthew Fargher), validates and intensifies the sense of co-existence of past and present that the performance constantly conjures. Watson is surrounded by a spirit world that he is either totally blind to (we witness its dancing Mimis) or must deny so he can enforce his mission. The show’s ahistorical narrative climax has Watson finally come face to face in an aerial acrobatic battle with this other world, a fight he will lose, no solace offered by his blazing Bible, only madness.

The contemporary framework is less tangible than the Watson story (and the Crying Baby and lost children analogies). The suggestion is that the present (with its outbursts of drunkenness and violence, its own sense of loss) needs storytellers, ceremonies, re-enactments so that the way forward can be envisioned and a culture reconnected with the land, and the young with tradition. The Watson story, partly told by Thompson Yulidjirri while marking out the terrain in the sand, is mostly revealed through action, but is not always clear; some of the gaps in the performed tale are frustrating. Theatrically, the rhythms of the performance and the marking of physical and emotional peaks (like the shaping of the otherwise spectacular storm or Watson’s delirium in his spiritual wilderness) sometimes seemed underdeveloped, even given the demands of such discursive narrativity. However, the visual management of the space, the dynamism of the Mimis (even more dextrous and dancerly here than in Mimis) and the power of traditional dance (sometimes seamlessly blending with contemporary idioms) all make for a unique experience. The presence of Thompson Yulidjirri, as he watches the unfolding of the stories enacted by the young cast is pivotal. Those reviewers relieved by the work’s apparent lack of didacticism should take note of Watson’s demise as a less than gentle hint of the torment of cultural and spiritual denial.

The Marrugeku Company, Crying Baby, storyman Thompson Yulidjirri, director-writer Rachael Swain, choreographer Raymond Blanco, composer-musical director Matthew Fargher, designer Andrew Carter, costumes Edie Kurzer, set engineer Joey Ruigrok van Der Werven, lighting Mark Howlett, film director Warwick Thornton; collaborators-performers Dalisa Pigram, Sofia Gibson, Trevor Jamieson, Katia Molino, Simon Pearl, Tanya Mead, Rexie Barmaja Wood, Alan Gagiba, Lee Wilson, Sean Chollburra; Heritage Lawn, Australian Technology Park, Jan 17-24

Lyndal Jones: Deep Water/Aqua Profunda

On a warm, steamy Sydney Australia Day, the cool floor of the MCA is littered with bodies, sitting or stretched out, staring with a dreamy attentiveness into the large video tryptich on one wall of Lyndal Jones’ 2001 Venice Biennale work, Deep Water/Aqua Profunda. From time to time these watchers look back, at the single large screen behind them, or to their left, another screen, but on which a segment of the image is always tautly framed, the rest set at a darker hue. More persistently they turn when a voice is raised, a woman’s from a small adjoining room. They glimpse her, on a window-like screen, in the thrall of the passion that is ‘waiting,’ a tear down a cheek, a hand tangled in hair, the curve of the back, or the direct gaze of admission. Some go and sit on long benches in the small room to be with her, savouring the confidentiality, the poetic obliquity, the unnerving clarity of face and voice. Meanwhile, the big room moves, gently like a ship, like a ferry actually, in Venice or in Sydney, as video images mark the rise and fall of water with long close-ups of waterlines, paintwork, pylons, faces, almost as still as paintings. Suddenly, the ferry moves off, a joyful acceleration of image and sound, the walls of Venice flickering by, Harbour water restlessly, impressionistically patterning colours from the world above. We stand, testing our sea legs. Deep Water/Aqua Profunda is a great pleasure, offering serious choices, granting the satisfactions of film’s mobility with the stillnesses of visual art, unpredictable alternations of silence and sound (so that images can float free), and the intensity of performance. The watchers savour their waiting, loath to leave the reverie that has become theirs.

In a nearby room there’s great pleasure too, and yearning, to be had in the video and other documentation of Jones’ Prediction Pieces (1981-91), unique performance works of a kind and scale no longer seen or affordable in Australia. Fortunately the principles of creation that imbue them are still to be found in Deep Water/Aqua Profunda. Even if performance is filmed, Jones’ attentiveness to nuance means its power is never diminished.

Lyndal Jones, Up to and including…Deep Water/Aqua Profunda, selected works of Lyndal Jones 1997-2002, MCA, Sydney, Dec 8-Jan 28

I was lucky enough to attend the Sydney opening of Circus Oz’s show this January in a new tent, but still with a small dusty foyer area with a folding table set up to sell merchandise and tickets. At first I felt some culture cringe…didn’t it feel a bit daggy after the lush marketing of Cirque du Soleil, with the specially designed floor mesh that covered the entire foyer area, the enormous display of sponsors’ merchandise, the funky drinks area? I felt as if I was back in the 90s (the last year I had attended in 1994, when Sydney was again ringed by bushfires, and we sat around at interval watching the fires to the north, west and south…had nothing changed?)

It’s true, some of it hadn’t changed at all. Tim Caldwell is still hanging from his feet (proving that if you’re on a good thing, stick to it) and encouraging our response in a pantomime call and response. There was still an incredible style of physical humour developed in the juggling acts (between the muscley guy and the weedy nerd), and the tight rope act (which leads to the dunny door and all the difficulties of getting toilet paper from one end to the other), and Anni Davey’s dialogue with her own ‘critical persona’ on a TV screen which she lifts with her own hair! Then there’s the gender funking as girls lift the guys on their shoulders, and the guys dress in tutus. All of it filled my friends and me with glee. But more than that.

After the show, I realised that I felt hopeful and really heartened by the fact that Circus Oz is still doing this work. The fact that the circus exists as a multi-skilled worker theatre, that it still tries to gender fuck with the roles that people play on stage and off, that it tries to be humorous and political where it can. That in this age of globalisation and ‘brands’, of creating slick product for sponsors to engage with, of a government that shits on political correctness and undermines minority rights, that this popular culture product exists does give me hope.

It also highlighted for me how hopeless I feel the arts situation has become in this city and a lot of the country, trying to survive in a city where the real estate and development imperatives make it perilous to continue and develop your craft, where community, independent and political work is frequently overlooked, marginalised and not reviewed in the mainstream. It’s ironic that Peter Sellars’ original intention for the Adelaide Festival, which was a broadbased community festival, was applauded at first—surprising when a lot of the bureaucrats/critics seem uninterested in these agendas—and then when the festival ‘failed to deliver’ a budget returning/slick commercial product, he was made to resign.

Anyway, back to the circus. Speaking to the Circus Oz general manager later, she told me that the Melbourne season had also provoked lots of emotional responses. Perhaps 3 terms of conservative arts policy in this country is seeping into our psyche so deeply that we have started to give up hope, and it’s hard in those circumstances to remember what I originally tried to make art for, to keep developing a popular and original Australian culture, to make political statements and to do things I believe in, rather than just survive the onslaught.

Outside of the security of Sydney Dance Company and Bangarra Dance Theatre and beyond the good works of Omeo Dance Studio (director Ros Crisp will be interviewed in RT 48) and Ausdance NSW (director Gregory Nash, see interview p13), dance continues to be underfunded and undernourished in NSW despite the best efforts of the NSW Ministry for the Arts. The One Extra Company has been particularly brutalised, just when it looked so promising under the directorship of Amanda Card. The company struggles on. Consequently, the moments of interest and excitement in 2001 were largely generated by visitors—Chunky Move, ADT, the SCOPE program at Performance Space, featuring Ros Warby, Cazerine Barry and Lisa O’Neill, and Tasmanian Wendy McPhee’s CENSORED, also at PS. However, there were other signs of life—Ausdance artist forums, the Scrapbook Live series at PS, and the independent dance showing, 5…4…3…2…1 Launch at the University of New South Wales.

SCOPE was a substantial pleasure. In Eve Ros Warby, ever an idiosyncratic performer, added to her distinctive choreography an unexpected dramatic dimension in facial expressiveness and utterance, a disturbing murmur of barely vocalised tension. This intensity was wrought against the delicate curve of one large wall, the straight line of a screen and the Performance Space walls, all picking up Margie Medlin’s probing projections of details of the dancing body, scattering and reshaping it across the space. In Lampscape Cazerine Barry too performed with herself behind a transparent screen onto which images were projected. At first the eye worked hard to pull into perspective and shape the dancer’s body, all tumbling legs. Soon live and the virtual bodies danced fascinatingly against each other in and out of synch like a multi-layered ghost drama rooted in a quaint fairy tale world. Lisa O’Neill gave one of her incredibly disciplined and focused performances in Fugu San, blending ballet and Suzuki, she eerily appeared to float into the space in a long black gown, the insistent speeding tap-tap soon revealed to emanate from her red pointe shoes. A cycle of entrances and exits, strange stage traversals, shifting soundscapes and transformations in appearance made for a hypnotic dance reverie. SCOPE danced its way through multiplying permutations of the dancing body. O’Neill and Barry have both been invited to perform at the provocative and prestigious Live Acts in the UK, March this year. Ros Warby’s Solos will be featured in the 2002 Adelaide Festival.

Hosted by Erin Brannigan and Lisa Ffrench 5…4…3…2…1 Launch was a welcome evening of innovative works, some of them in-progress. Michael Whaites in Driving Me created a deftly pleasing geometry of quick-fire abstract movement against projected abstract imagery on 2 large screens angled towards each other. Julie-Anne Long gave us a first taste of a new work, Mrs Whippy, which proved both whimsical (she arrives in a Mr Whippy van and sells us icecreams) and scary with its subtext of maternal anxiety realised in bizarre personae and projected imagery. Excerpts from a new work by Kay Armstrong were distributed across the night and offered further evidence of a singular talent with a sharp dance theatre sensibility in a work of dark, psychological intensity. Shows like 5…4…3…2…1 Launch might be low budget and depend on the goodwill of the UNSW Film, Theatre and Dance Department, but it is vital that Sydney dancemakers keep the work coming and in the public eye if they are to challenge the presumptions of funding bodies.

Scrapbook Live was a seriously interesting antistatic project, the creation of an impressionistic archive, a set of reflections of performers on their relationship to Performance Space, home to contemporary performance and innovative dance for over 20 years. Clearly a low budget venture, the quality of presentations varied wildly. For those of us who had witnessed much of the history of PS it was an exhilarating and sometimes depressing experience. One room featured a chart of the performers who had worked the space consistently with room for visitors to fill in historical gaps in the record (the curators’ omission of Nikki Heywood was very odd). Spread across the room were hands-on archival items—note books, photographs, scrapbooks, mementoes.

In the second of the early Sunday evening presentations, Pierre Thibaudeau cooked a delicious ‘poor man’s soup’ for all-comers, a recollection of the early days when artists and staff working at PS would gather once a week over food. Later Pierre peered through the big water-filled lens from Eclipse and spoke to video excerpts of powerful images from Ostraka, The Memory Room and Posessessed/Dispossessed, all memorable Entr’acte works. He spoke fondly of production manager Simon Wise’s significant contribution to the realisation of many of the company’s projects.

Introduced by a demented creature looking strangely like Nikki Heywood, Dean Walsh appeared on video from the ‘Bolshoi,’ his presence interrupted by a worker (in hard hat and high heels, of course) who scrawled review quotations across the walls and, transformed into Dean, danced autobiographically as it were against an outline of himself on the wall.

In one of the more oblique, but witty and curiously moving presentations, Sue-ellen Kohler showed slide projections of herself growing into a performer—with family, Barbie dolls, Saturday morning ballet lessons at the church, skinny, with collapsed ankles, double-jointed shoulders. “I went blank and skipped around in a panic and they didn’t seem to know the difference…a valuable lesson.” We saw her posing in the loungeroom, dancing in the garden, “Ballet Vic at 13…The teacher from the Bolshoi made us cry, but it was better than being in the B group.” The evidence of her work was limited to occasional images from Bug and Premonitions some of the most powerful work seen at PS. For those of us who knew…Meanwhile, she falls over in a solo—”I never wanted to be a ballerina anyway.” Anne Woolliams at the ballet school tells her students, “You’ll never be a real dancer until you’ve had an orgasm.” “I bled during my first sexual intercourse…I was quite surprised. I’d been doing the splits since I was 4!”

In archaelogical mode, Alan Schacher showed still and moving images of his work at PS (Gravity Feed having largely worked elsewhere), prefacing his talk with “To remember is to put a dismembered body together again.” He screened fragments of the building, with Ari Erlich onscreen gesturing at spaces, nooks, and walls and the stage trapdoor. Alan showed excerpts from Gravity Feed’s remarkable House of Skin, Lisa Shelton’s Next Steps group shows with Alan lodged above the PS front entrance, for those who happened to notice. In Next Steps 2, Alan worked different locations in the building in a piece about “the performer as a continuously excluded character”, but also inherently about the performative sites of the building’s history.

To the sound of the Mary Hopkins’ hit, Those Were the Days, Julie-Anne Long read from diaries (from 1991-2000, earlier ones having disappeared in a BBQ) and scrapbooks, evoking a strong sense of the busy everyday life of the performer. “Career”, she said, was not quite the right word, also meaning “to rush in an uncontrolled way.” Memories flickered by, a few re-enacted—a 1992 fishnet stocking and frock show with Steve Zane, Shaun McLeod and others; the rondo from Open City’s 1993 Sum of the Sudden; a dance of the breasts from Cleavage (1995).

The artist who has most thoroughly worked PS and over the longest period is Nigel Kellaway who decked out a long room with suspended costumes or patterns or fragments of costumes: “Give me the frock and I’ll give you the show.” As each was lowered, he spoke of the costume, the show and its relationship to the theatre space, whose specifications he knows by heart. With a roll call of names and companies from Mike Mullins to One Extra, Entr’acte, The Sydney Front and The opera Project, the inspirers, like Suzuki Tadashi (“Grotowksi had already crippled my young Australian body”), the costume materials, the reviews, the cop-outs (Hybrid Arts buried in New Media Arts by the Australia Council), Kellaway traced the life of a venue that for him generated an aesthetic process, created “a different, dangerous, supportive world” away from the dance world’s cult of the body. But best let him speak for himself: the full text of Nigel Kellaway’s contribution to Scrapbook Live appears on the RealTime website.

SCOPE, Ros Warby, Eve; Cazerine Barry, Lampscape; Lisa O’Neill, Fugu San; Performance Space, Nov 8-11; 5…4…3…2…1 Launch, hosted by Erin Brannigan & Lisa Ffrench, performers Kay Armstrong, Michael Whaites, Julie-Anne Long, Jennifer Newman-Preston, The Io Myers Theatre, UNSW, Oct 18-20; Scrapbook Live, curated by Erin Brannigan, Matthew Bergen & Julie-Anne Long, antistatic, Performance Space Sept 2, 16, 30. The first of the 3 Scrapbook sessions featured Tess de Quincey, Rosalind Crisp & Shelley Lasica.

I hope you’ve all had a great festive break and are back in the chair, ready for more debates within these pages. In the midst of turmoil in our political climate, there’s plenty of anger seeping into OnScreen. We launch into 2002 with the conference issue. (Why do so many conferences fall around Christmas?) Clare Stewart gets stuck into ‘independent’ filmmaking being subjugated to the glinting dollar in her analysis of the SPAA Fringe; Ned Rossiter attends DISlocations, a conference on new media art, aesthetics and culture, where he argues that we should recognise “that media as a technology is not determined by technical developments, but when technical possibilities coincide with other economic and social imperatives”; Dean Kiley gets excited by fibreculture, a netlist/debate/publication/resource, which “constitutes an overdue, productive, politically-engaged, theoretically-informed and critical—in all senses—intervention” and our new Queensland writer (and filmmaker) Erik Roberts sees a real “paradigmatic shift” in documentary making at Visible Evidence in Brisbane.

According to the AFC, Oz film has never been healthier at the box office and it was gratifying to watch the Golden Globes dominated by ocker accents. (I was particularly intrigued by Rachel Griffiths twirling her Shirley Temple curls in a fluffy pink number.) In our regular column on Australian screen culture, Watchdog, Jane Mills explores the curious phenomenon (increasingly common) of seeing a film that’s Australian-but-isn’t, Charlotte Gray, directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Cate Blanchett. Tina Kaufman asks why so many people are more interested in being filmmakers than making good short films. And Hal Judge confesses to being a Secret Life of Us addict.

Then there’s the profiles: WOW winner Melissa Kyu-Jung Lee is candid on the making of her documentary where she re-enacts scenes with her lovers (just don’t tell her parents); and Garth Paine, Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, contends that “sound is the most innovative of the digital arts—an entirely new genre that can’t draw on the patterns that existed previously” while experiencing the difficulties of getting sound art exhibited in Australia (not surprisingly he’s taken up a prestigious appointment in the UK).

In our next issue, Jane Mills will be having a look at the eagerly anticipated Rabbit Proof Fence, and the accompanying making-of doco directed by Darlene Johnson. We’ll also be doing a feature interview with the Indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen, director Beneath Clouds (and one of the best short filmmakers around), whose film has just been picked to screen in competition in Berlin before lining up at the Adelaide Festival.

Australians take Berlin

A record 7 Australian films have been selected for the Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 6-17). Ivan Sen’s directorial feature debut Beneath Clouds will have its world premiere screening in competition before showing at the 2002 Adelaide Festival. Screening in the International Panorama Section are Tony Ayres’ Walking on Water (also featured at Adelaide) and Nash Edgerton’s short The Pitch, fresh from Sundance. The festival’s International Forum of New Cinema will feature Rachel Perkins’ One Night the Moon and the Australian/Chinese feature Shanghai Panic.

International cast for WA TV conference

The 6th Small Screen BIG PICTURE conference gets into gear at the end of February with international speakers including British producer Verity Lambert (Dr Who, Minder, Rumpole of the Bailey) and commissioning editors from SBS, ABC, Network Ten and the Seven Network. Panellists include AFC chief Kim Dalton, Sue Masters (drama, Ten), Glenys Rowe (SBS Independent), Penny Chapman and Amanda Higgs (producer, The Secret Life of Us, see page 19). Tania Chambers (acting CE, Screenwest) comments: “…[we] will focus on issues such as the changing marketplace for Australian drama and documentaries, opportunities in education and children’s television, and new technologies…we will also be exploring the potential of the Singapore market.” Fremantle, Feb 28-March 2. 08 9228 1999

Australian box office success (finally)

2001 was a strong year for Australian films. According to the AFC they earned 7.8 per cent of Australia’s total box office. While it’s important to focus on issues other than money-making to promote our screen culture, Moulin Rouge, Lantana, The Man Who Sued God, The Bank and Mullet did particularly well to each earn over a million dollars, especially in competition with mega budget Hollywood product. Tait Brady (head of distribution, Palace Films) commented: “The incredible popularity of Lantana is a very encouraging sign that the Australian filmgoing audience is maturing and recognises intelligent filmmaking and identifiable, real Australian characters.”

Super 8 moves on

The new Moving Image Coalition has formed from the remnants of the Super 8 Film Group with the aim of supporting Super 8, 16mm, VHS, DV and sound artists by organising screenings consisting of a curated program and an open screening, starting the end of April at Cinema Nova, Melbourne. Please email to join the group or submit material.

Chilean favourite

Queensland short film Mohamed’s Passion (writer/director Sandra Graham), part of the Extreme Heat short film package co-financed by PFTC and AFC, won the Best International Fiction Award at the Chilean Short Film Festival in Santiago in November. Festival director Teresa Izquierdo commented that the film “was a favourite with both audiences and the jury.” (PFTC, Getting Ideas On Screen)

AFC screen culture funding

The AFC has announced Industry & Cultural Development funding of more than $1.2 million for over 40 film festivals, awards, events and publications in 2002. The Emirates AFI Awards received increased funding with a commitment for 2003-4, as did their touring Cinematheque program. The Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane Film Festivals will now be funded triennially, and WA’s REVelation Film Festival gained a significant increase. Touring will also benefit with 45 regional centres (over 80,000 people) able to see films from a selection of festivals including St Kilda Film Festival, Real: Life on Film docos, Flickerfest, Sydney and Melbourne Travelling Film Festivals, Over the Fence, Women on Women and the Jewish Film Festival

Joining the A list

Melbourne-based writer Max Barry has come to the attention of Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney with his yet-to-be-published novel Jennifer Government. Soderbergh’s company Section Eight has acquired the rights to Barry’s “social satire about living in a totally privatised world”, set in St Kilda. Barry commented, “After having my first book set in America, I’m just thrilled to have found a way to write a story that has something to say about Australia and the US.” (The Age, January 3 2002)

Nurturing young talent

Fremantle filmmaker Sophie McNeill recently won the Triple J Independent Spirit if Award for her documentary Awaiting Freedom. What’s remarkable is that she was just 15, and had never made a film before, when she convinced her parents to let her fly to East Timor with few resources or funds. Let’s hope it gets a festival release soon.

MAFIA hits Sydney

Music and Film Independent Artists (MAFIA) has just announced the first dedicated documentary awards, which will screen and be judged April 7, Chauvel Cinemas, Sydney. Make a 10-minute doco and send to MAFIA by March 7 to be in the running and judged by a panel from ABC, SBS, AFTRS as well as AFI Awards winners. Prizes include equipment, courses and training, facilities, plane tickets and money to make your next doco. Email. Website

Flickerfest: first time Oz winner

For the first time in history, an Australian short won the top prize at Flickerfest. In Search of Mike (see RT44 p35), Andrew Lancaster’s film starring Brian Carbee (which also won a Dendy Award), took the Grolsch Award for Best Film and Audio Loc Sound Design Award for Best Achievement in Sound ahead of a record number of 800 entries. AFI nominee Delivery Day (part of SBS’s Hybrid Life series) won the Adobe Award for Best Australian Film and Inside Film Magazine Award for Most Popular Film. Another Hybrid Life product, The Last Pecheniuk, won the National Geographic Channel Award for Best Documentary.

Sydney Film Collaborators have C I N E R G Y

A new weekly email newsletter is now helping Sydney filmmakers to collaborate in production. With subscriber provided content, individuals can post requests to find people involved in production and performance, as well as keeping up to date with festivals and events around town. It is a great way to generate immediate interest in a project and move it into 'GO' mode. It gives more power to those 'out of the loop' or with few established contacts. It is a free service available from

Dawn of the VJ

As part of its continuing Media.Futures series, Metro Screen is hosting a seminar on VJing, that sampled mix of pictures and sound which is becoming increasingly popular in clubs. Four visual artists, Kirsten Bradley aka Cicada, Sean Healy, John Jacobs and Chair Enda Murray discuss their practice and how to work with digital technologies. Feb 18, 6.15-8.15pm, Metro Screen, Paddington Town Hall, Sydney, $15, tel 02 9361 5318. Email. Website.

DISculture: works on DVD

Digital distribution promises to force major changes to the way films are produced, exhibited and sold. If the example of peer-to-peer MP3 filesharing’s debilitating effect on copyright law for music is any guide, film distribution as we know it could be altered irrevocably. Too broad in curatorial range to be more than a sample of what is possible with the medium, the DISculture compilation includes short films, 3D animation, photography and written works, worth following up if you’d like to see a sample of what is possible in DVD distribution. Edithouse, tel 02 9699 5566. Website

Get with The Program

THE PROGRAM has evolved out of the noise festival, a website designed to showcase creative talents of young people. Regular articles, artist profiles, news and competitions are featured, and work is exhibited regardless of format: text, Flash, MP3s are welcome. Creative organisations are also invited to submit news, event listings and special deals via their newsletter. Producer Krissie Scudds comments: “It’s about providing a space where creative people and creative organisations can connect with interested audiences. Another chance to support artists by giving them a leg up using the web.” Tel 02 9249 6504. Email. Website.

Changes to the Interactive Media Guidelines

As of January 1, the Australian Film Commission has revised its guidelines for Interactive Digital Media. For projects applying for Early Development funding under Strand, the maximum allocation has been increased from $5,000 to $15,000 and under Strand W, the AFC will now match investments of up to $50,000 towards development of projects that have secured either a cash investment and/or a services and facilities contribution. Kim Dalton (CEO, AFC) says that “The guideline revisions will assist to provide a more efficient and direct development path in the lead up to the commencement of the AFC’s Broadband fund (April 2002) announced as part of the Federal Government’s film industry funding package.” More information can be found under Film Development, AFC website.

Political satire an online hit

Okay, it’s a little late, but still worth catching. Hansard, an animated, unofficial guide to last year’s election, features the voices of Perth’s best comics, taking the micky out of our pollies, using Flash and produced entirely online. It’s been a huge success. Producer David Downie reports, “At 27,000 hits per week, we’ve been overwhelmed with the response…the project has been 10 years in development and is the result of the fine collaborative skills of some fabulous minds but working with animation simply lets you get away with so much.” Screening at ABC Online

Melbourne artist Brendan Lee is best known for his compilations of particular moments from mainstream feature films, which he assembles to generate specific, intense effects. Proposing to review “the syntax of cinema going”, his series of video installations exhibited over the past few years have ranged from a looped miscellany of explosions (Boom, 1998), fights (Hits, 2000), outbursts of aggression (Anger, 2001) to random sequences of suspenseful moments (Apprehension of Immediate Danger, 2001). All of these works deploy the common language of cinematic cliché, with the ‘stressed-out’ cinematic body at the core of the visual and sonic bombardment.
Quoting directly from movies is not a particularly original strategy, but it can be used to good effect. Think of the greatest art-film quote of all, Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho (1993), or more recently of Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg’s video Artist (1999-2000). And these works seem indebted to the early 1960s films of Andy Warhol, most notably Kiss, in which a single action is repeated over an extended duration. In all of them, as it is for Lee, humour is a key element.

For some time, Lee has been experimenting with random selections, utilising the potentials of digital video in his installations. Cut to the Chase is a further development in this ‘database’ direction. Moreover, with this installation his work turns explicitly towards the merging identity of cinema and computer games (symbolised by DVD). However, in this work, Lee produces his own footage rather than appropriating existing material. Until we arrive, the projection shows looped footage, with a little speedo at the bottom of the screen showing a constant 60km. Taking a seat on the bench, however, triggers a unique ‘ride’ sequence, as the scene accelerates into a high-speed pursuit. Lee says that Cut to the Chase “seals the viewer into the cinematic space behind the wheel in an action film.” True to its word, it jumps to a sequence inspired by the famous car chase scenes of films such as Bullitt, Ronin and The French Connection. But this is no snippet from any B-grade action film. In fact, the footage of screaming corners is Lee’s own (the camera angles of the footage apparently replicate Bullitt, the Steve McQueen classic, with a chase on the hilly streets of San Francisco that at the time of release was without question the best), and their selection is randomly generated.

Cut to the Chase asks us to identify with the filmic apparatus itself. It’s a formal work, then, all about the lack of narrative closure (underscored by the computerised process of random selection, seen so compellingly in Stan Douglas’ extraordinary Win, Place or Show, 1998, shown in the 2000 Sydney Biennale). If its focus on spectacle and the apparent arbitrariness of cinematic editing and tactics to secure our attention feels a little one-dimensional, the link to computer games is nevertheless a promising direction. Hence the seat rumbling with sound, but also the perverse lack of interactivity in the work. There is neither a steering wheel, nor the character identification sparked, say, in David Noonan’s M3 (1998). Story time here becomes real time, an experience that tickles our desire to control the vehicle, but via a mere skeleton of that most fetishised of teenage pleasures: the real time game engine. In the absence of any narrative denouement, I wanted Daytona-style titillation and spills, the sort readily available at Time Zone. However, as all of today’s mass culture aspires to the condition of a computer game, perhaps punishing the viewer is Lee’s response.

Brendan Lee, Cut to the Chase, First Floor Gallery: 1st Floor Artists and Writers Space, Melbourne, Nov 21-Dec 8

David Branson was the most passionate and inspirational artist of his generation, and he is gone. Once described as the “Mayor of Canberra’s underbelly”, those who have not lived in Canberra can’t possibly imagine the effect his passing last December, aged just 37, has had. The funeral service had some 400 people outside the church watching on video monitors, and the wake went on for days.

David’s early career is synonymous with the rise of the notorious Splinters Theatre of Spectacle. As co-founder and co-artistic director, he was responsible for a body of work that changed many lives—as early as 1994 we estimated that over 1000 people had worked with the company. Add to that all the kids he tutored with Canberra Youth Theatre, the many companies he worked with as actor and director, the audiences, and the work of the groups which sprang from Splinters such as Snuff Puppets and Odd Productions, and you have an artist whose work touched the souls of a multitude.

In 1990, he changed my own life profoundly while I was working at The Performance Space. My colleague Sarah Miller received a call from Bruce Keller, then resident with Jigsaw Theatre in Canberra, urging us to take a punt on an exciting young company from the theatrical wilderness. A few weeks later carloads of actors, writers, artists, kids, dogs and camp-followers arrived and moved into the space for 2 weeks, working, sleeping, eating, fighting and loving.

Sarah and I were smitten; David was their mouthpiece and seduced us into breaking every rule in the book to allow their vision full expression. A return season in 1991 consummated the affair and I literally ran away with the circus, resigning my plum job to join Splinters for the acclaimed work Cathedral of Flesh at the 1992 Adelaide Fringe. Ten years later, I’m still in Canberra.

My memories of David during this time are of an inspirational performer and leader. Pissing from the roof of the Fringe Club during the guerilla performance Spontaneous Combustion, which resulted in several members of the company getting beaten up by Fringe Club bouncers. Contemporary Performance Week 1992 at Sidetrack: reciting passages from Debord’s Comments on the Society of the Spectacle while other members of the company were being led on dog chains. David in a white suit, demanding (and getting) gifts from the audience before they could enter the space (Flowers of Gold, 1993).

When Splinters ran out of steam, David founded CIA (Culturally Innovative Arts) to pursue his true calling, the stage. The work was immediately deeper and more sophisticated. He successfully produced Brecht’s Baal, a role many would agree he was born to play. CIA’s production of I, Fool of Fortune by Jonathan Lees won a Canberra Critic’s Circle award in 1998. He also moved into the world of opera, directing a number of successful productions for Stopera. The lack of decent funding in Canberra meant a move to Melbourne, where he championed the work of writers such as Daniel Keene, Alison Croggan, Graham Henderson and Christos Tsiolkas.

It is a loss for all of us that David never had the opportunity to direct a large, well-resourced theatre company. Working on the cutting edge with meagre resources meant that sometimes his work did not have a full gestation. His last major production, of Wayne MacAulay’s Demons, tied together all the strands of his career and to my mind marked the beginning of his mature work.

I didn’t see so much of him in the last 3 years, as he was always back and forth to Melbourne, but we would never fail to catch up over coffee, or have a beer and a bit of a dance at the Gypsy Bar. The Gypsy, setting for so many of David’s performances and events, closed just 20 days after David’s passing. We will not see their like again.

This poem, Ladies and Gentlemen, is dedicated to probably the most interesting, most creative performer, Ladies and Gentlemen, for those of you that know him, probably the most incisive and vibrant human being in the universe.

You don’t need to see the ubiquitous Falcon
sitting on the elbow of Tossolini’s
or illegally parked beside Café Essen
You just know he’s there.
Because you believe, my friends,
like the Devil, he’s everywhere.

I can’t remember who paid the bill
for the godfather of the fringe.
A man made entirely of myth and blood,
burgeoning vest,
black Stetson,
silk cravat,
cigarette,
a bottle of red under his arm.

It’s rehearsal time
in tight tartan hotpants
and a conspicuous bulge.
Booming “Has anyone forgotten, I am the Director”
He’s bigger than the writhing universe.
I can’t believe
he just stood on his head
He just took off his pants
Yes, it’s the best of the best
opening tonight at a theatre too small.

So dim the house lights.
Release the burning beast!
Unshaven, fulminating, plugged into the electric sweat.
Hit the spotlights in his concrete eyes
dreaming of Darlinghurst, Fitzroy, Berlin.

Oh speak to me in hyperbole
Darling, have I ever told you
how much I love you.
Have I ever told you
how talented you are!
Let’s have it all out
to a noisy house
or the chewing gum on the pavement. Fight the powers
Ladies and gentlemen
Let’s tell John Howard what a little man he is.
And let’s have another enormous round of applause
for a drunken poet
and the leg of a table.

Let’s drink a toast
to a rope dancer,
to an Italian film maker,
to a slice of pizza
Oh I’ve been bad
I’ve been worse than bad!
Okay okay shut the fuck up
…and whip that fiddle.

Planned as a recurring event, REV is the kind of festival that could generate triennial pilgrimages to Brisbane’s Powerhouse from across Australia and around the world, so unique is its offering. Sound culture, in its many but often overlapping manifestations in Australia, has a substantial but mostly un-sung history, very few public venues, a smattering of dedicated radio programs, the occasional publication and a several key festivals we can’t live without—What is Music (Sydney & Melbourne), Totally Huge (Perth) and the sound wing of Newcastle’s This is not art. A new festival that expands the sound culture audience and offers a very particular way of looking at and listening to music is really welcome. Increasingly electronica, impro, electro-acoustic, dj-ing, computer music, various forms of jazz, audio art and sound installations have their own passionate makers and audiences but vie for attention in the public arena. REV will make its mark by offering a significant focus to this burgeoning sonic activity, describing itself as “a festival of sound/installation artists and musical instrument makers that crosses all sound spectrums: real, electronic and virtual.” As the organisers put it, even more specifically: “The festival will celebrate the work of contemporary artists who have moved beyond the physical limitations of traditional instruments to explore new sounds from new sources in their music making, redefining the parameters of what is considered a musical instrument.”

The 3-day festival has been developed by the Powerhouse in partnership with the QUT (Queensland University of Technology) School of Music (the title REV the same as that of their unique graduate music course). The Artistic Director is esteemed instrument-maker, composer and player Linsey Pollak and the Executive Producer is new music advocate and curator Fiona Allan. Pollak’s instrument-making skills and musical inventiveness have led him to use digital technology in developing live shows including his 20 Sets of Headphones and for children Out of the Frying Pan. His most recent production is The Art of Food. Pollak has toured extensively nationally and internationally showcasing Australian instrument-making ingenuity.

To assure itself international footing and to loop Australian sound artists into a larger dialogue, the festival has invited some major figures to play, talk and collaborate—acclaimed UK writer, musician and composer David Toop, seminal US instrument inventor Bart Hopkin and radical UK sound artist, scanner,.who already has a strong following from previous Australian visits. Toop recently curated the Sonic Boom exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, and is a well-known contributor to The Wire magazine. Hopkin is the founder of Experimental Musical Instruments website and journal and produces an annual CD of music created by new instrumental sound sources. Australian composers and sound artists participating in REV include Graeme Leak (on the cover of this edition), Peter Biffen, Mark Cain and Lee Buddle, Lawrence English and Jon Rose.

Sydney-based Allan has been at work on the festival since last August, travelling once a month to Brisbane to work with Pollak (whom she praises as incredibly well-organised) on programming, funding submissions, fundraising and engaging artists from all states of Australia as well as guests from the US, UK and New Zealand. Although a little smaller than intended, given funding limitations, the final program that Allen describes comprises “3 immersive days packed with musical action and dialogue and with the support of the Australia Council, Arts Queensland and the British Council investing in a new concept.” As for audiences, Allan says that lots of the events will be free, encouraging the curious to seriously sample interactive installations. Performances take place at all times of the day and into the early hours throughout the building’s theatre and other spaces.

Between 10am-5pm, some 15-18 interactive installations will be staffed by either the artists themselves, when available, or especially briefed QUT students who will demonstrate, talk about and encourage engagement with the pieces. This seems an excellent idea when you think of the number of new media exhibitions in art galleries where an unguided, puzzled and often irritated audience easily loses its way with new technology. From 5-7pm the artists, like Melbourne’s David Murphy, creator of a percussive circular harp, will play these instruments in concert.

Workshops and presentations will be available in the middle of the day. On the Friday, Toop will talk about the ‘sound body’—his personal relationship to sound technology and music making. A little later there’ll be a presentation from Bart Hopkin. On Saturday New Zealander Phil Dadson will speak and on Sunday scanner and Toop will do a joint presentation.

The group Hubbub Music, from Queensland’s South Coast, will install their awesome Fire Organ outside the Powerhouse. Allan says, “it’s at least 2 storeys high and the flames positioned under the pipes cause [the] resonance” that makes it play. Like the daytime viewing of the interactive installations this is a free event at 7pm.

Also in the evenings at 7pm there’s what Allan calls, for want of a better term, a “roving concert” with an MC for up to 80 people for 90 minutes moving throughout the Powerhouse. It will include, Graeme Leak and participants working with 80 Federation Handbells, Sarah Hopkins on various “whirly” creations and, at the river’s edge, Pollak and ensemble performing with ultraviolet light poles in water.

At 8.30pm in the Powerhouse and the Visy Theatres there’ll be a variety of performances: Leak with a retrospective of his instrument-making, including his percussive briefcase, and Queensland group Unaccompanied Baggage wearing body sensors (also sensitive to nearby audience movement) that trigger synthesizers. From 10pm-1am on Friday and Saturday there’ll be dj-ing in the Spark bar with contributions from scanner and Toop with leading local artists. These sessions are free if you’re already a REV ticket purchaser or cost a mere $5.

Allan says there are “plenty of other layers to REV.” One she is particularly taken with is the 45 minute silent movie (title yet to be announced) that will be screened 7 times in the Powerhouse Theatre, each time interpreted and improvised to by different REV artists. As well, there will be roving performers working the building during the day—Allan is hoping for a family audience that will come to see the interactives and these informal performances. She also points to the importance of the partnership with QUT. Not only will students from the graduate instrument-making REV course act as guides to the interactive installations, but some 5 of those will be their own creations.”

REV is full of promise, a unique, focussed, 3-day new music, live-in festival that can only do good for Australia’s burgeoning sound culture. As with the Queensland Biennial Festival of Music (July 2001, also centred at the Powerhouse), Queensland is again proving a haven for new music.

REV, Artistic Director Linsey Pollak, Executive Producer Fiona Allan, Brisbane Powerhouse, April 5-7

For a couple of years, Julie-Anne Long has been doing the freelance dance, fleeting in shorts, flitting in and out on the national one-off circuit. We had the pleasure of catching her as she lit on an occasional season with One Extra, in collaborations with the likes of Wendy Houstoun and Michael Whaites.

For those who know the work of this idiosyncratic and stylish dance artist, the chance to see 3 versions of Julie-Anne Long in one extended outing this April, will be irresistible. Those who haven’t caught her elegant and witty act should take note.

Not one to elaborate overly on her oeuvre, Ms. Long has begun working on her PhD and now thankfully comes clean in this month’s Ausdance magazine to reveal that her style “is grounded in the aesthetics of transgression, inversion and the grotesque.“ and that her concerns in movement “veer towards the minuscule, the pedestrian, qualities of dance the audience must scan for.”

The cover girl goes on in a probing interview with herself to spill even more beans, defining her work as “Intimate and theatrical, upfront and introspective, juxtaposing grand theatrical gestures with unnerving intimacy and pseudo familiarity, slipping between genres, moods, shifting methods and changing frames of reference” (not to mention costumes!)

You will never see anything quite like Miss XL a contemporary burlesque in which a dancer transforms from demented ice cream vendor (Mrs Whippy) to chronicler of clefts (Cleavage) to the ultimate introvert (The Leisure Mistress). “Never again will I be young and emerging,” says Julie-Anne Long “I find myself in a rather unfashionable spot for a dancer. I’m a submerging artist,” which no-one who has ever seen her work believes for a second.”

Peta Tait has brought together a fascinating collection of essays about a range of live performances which include dance (Meryl Tankard, Chrissie Parrott, Company in Space), performance (Sydney Front, Open City, Lyndal Jones, Peter King, Stelarc), community theatre (Death Defying Theatre), contemporary circus, professional wrestling, Mardi Gras dance parties, butoh-derived work (Tess de Quincey, Yumi Umiumare and Tony Yap), amateur theatricals in the early years of the Swan River Colony, 19th century ethnological shows and even mainstream theatre (John Bell). The premise of the book is to explore the ways in which “physical bodies in live performance present vital and compelling expressions of ideas” and Tait stresses the importance of the commentaries being “responses to the live body and its action as it makes cultural significances, rather than merely extracting authorial thinking—rewriting the intended text—since a body in performance often produces unintended significances.” The extent to which the authors fulfil this challenging task varies considerably and, indeed, some of the historical pieces are obliged to imagine the live body which certainly problematises the notion of ‘liveness.’ However, the differing approaches to the task of performance analysis represented here comprise one of the most interesting features of the book, and raise methodological questions that go to the heart of performance theory and performance making.

The book is published in The Netherlands, which should put Australian publishers to shame, and is the eighth in a series of monographs entitled “Australian Playwrights.” While most of the artists featured would doubtless be surprised or even appalled to see themselves thus categorised, the series editor (Veronica Kelly) is to be congratulated on her attempts to open up the series to include “a broad range of drama, performance, dance and physical theatre being currently devised both inside and outside the now problematic fields of text-based or authored writing.” Maybe the next move should be a change to the title of the series to reflect the scope of this new enlarged field.

The vitality of Australian performance-making in the last 20 years or so and of Australian writing about performance are both showcased in this book, and both are equally impressive. The performances described have often occurred below the radar of official culture, unfunded or underfunded, ignored by the mainstream press, and occupying marginal spaces in the community, but this stream of work, while it has not transformed mainstream theatre and dance, has certainly transformed dominant ideas of what constitutes theatre. New terms have come to the fore to reflect the border crossings and blurred genres from which much of the vitality has derived, university departments of drama and theatre studies are increasingly including the term ‘performance’ in their titles, and even the funding authorities have been forced to recognise the existence of a vibrant current of creative work although they have not yet found a felicitous way to name it: Hybrid Arts is the latest attempt, with its undertones of regret for lost purity.

It is not entirely clear whether the focus of the book is Australian performance or writings about performance by Australian critics and theorists. The subtitle, Australian Viewings of Live Performance, suggests the latter, but in practice neither category seems completely watertight. There is, for example, Sharon Mazer (a New Zealand based American academic writing about American professional wrestling), and David Williams (a UK based academic writing about British, Italian and French equine performances). These 2 pieces are insightful and beautifully written (Williams’ description of the misery endured by the 12 horses tethered for 3 days in a live installation in Rome’s Galleria L’Attico by Jannis Kounellis continues to haunt me), but one can legitimately query their inclusion in a book about live performance in Australia.

The scope of this review precludes detailed comments on each of the 18 essays and, while it is invidious to single out one or two, I cannot resist drawing attention to some personal favourites: Jane Goodall’s delving beneath the surface construction of the native as either hopeless victim or savage in photographs of the ethnological shows that were so popular in the 19th century, in order to point to the agency of the performers themselves in this construction; Julian Meyrick’s exemplary study of the impact of found spaces on the work produced in them and the way he weaves together his own spectatorial experience, interviews with the practitioners and responses by contemporary newspaper reviewers; Adrian Kiernander’s brilliantly evocative, non technical but nevertheless very precise, descriptions of what Meryl Tankard’s dancers are actually doing in their attempts to transcend the constraints of physical and natural laws; Edward Scheer’s combination of perceptive descriptions of Tess de Quincey in performance with long extracts from interviews with her so that the essay permits her to be doubly present; Jonathon Bollen’s mix of personal anecdote, social analysis and intelligent use of critical theory to explicate what he calls “doing dance party” as distinct from “making” dance party; Kerrie Schaefer’s analysis of Sydney Front’s Don Juan which draws on careful description of the work in performance as well as her knowledge of its gestation process and audience response over the course of the work’s several runs.

Having attempted to encapsulate the content of each of the essays that so appealed to me on a first reading, I now realise that what they have in common is the mobilisation of multiple voices (responses from spectators and reviewers, programme notes, interviews with the practitioners, explanatory notions derived from relevant critical theory) together with careful description of the semiotic systems in play in the performances and the writer’s own lived experience of the work. It is in the weaving together of all these different elements, none of which is sufficient on its own, that Peta Tait’s goal can perhaps best be met, and that we can see the beginning of a new discipline of performance analysis. The book includes 30 black and white photographs of the performances being analysed, nicely reproduced on glossy paper, but surprisingly, none of the authors refers to these photographs in their essays. Photography, it seems, is not one of the “voices” being mobilised in this new discipline and it is particularly disappointing that the one “photographic essay” (by Julie Holledge and Mary Moore) is treated so insensitively: the text separated from the photographs and simply included in the table of contents, the photographs presented not as an essay but lumped in with the other illustrations at the opposite end of the book. In this respect, then, the book throws out a challenge to performance makers as well as analysts: is there a use for performance photography beyond publicity and can photographs make a serious contribution to discourse about performance?

Body Show/s: Australian Viewings of Live Performance, editor Peta Tait, Rodopi, Amsterdam/Atlanta GA, 2000

Mr Fuata has a very nice speaking voice. A nice leg. Very fetching in Cottontails. A nice head. Shaven smooth as a baby’s bum. Big eyes. Big lips. Everything very nicely rounded. Embraceable. Charismatic too. He doesn’t have to do much. Just recite his prose poems about his mummy in that voice. That’d be quite enough, thank you. But tonight he’s here there and everywhere, very nicely done, yes, very stylish, new man, new persona. Prancer. Teaser. Cajoler. Manipulator. Natter natter. He’s cocky. He’s confident. He’s a mover. He fairly dances. Corrals all the gay men, and then all the others, up on stage with him. All on view. Ladies night out…but not exactly the Chippendales. If only he’d keep still, lie down!, we could listen properly and play psychoanalyst. So Mummy subsconciously wanted you to be a Fa’afafine, is that it? Is that the gist? Sit still! She queered you good and proper without knowing it. That it? And so did TV, all those fuckable white men: “Fucking white men has never been an option, but a cultural imperative. It is for the benefit of anthropology.” Tres witty! And superstition, “The foreskin has medicinal properties. You (Mother) softly rub mine on your sick eye while I stupidly argue with the girls in the family over how I can’t see the television.” And what you were not, “And after swimming around these strangers’ legs, I swam out from underneath the table and into the midnight streets, realising, for the first time, I can never have what these women had.” And, Jesus, did this happen? “…she would genuflect her stupid knees, sit on her arse on the floor, cross her legs like Buddha—‘what more can you do to please me?’—and I would position my groin like lamb on marble and she would receive…into her eye…Jesus.” And then she, your mother, is ritually beaten because she is possessed by a dead aunt. And your brother and sisters are culturally all over the shop. And you fall in love with a dying man, “Skin decorated with lesions…While my fingers were circling his arse I was the prodigal son realised on a white male pattern…for the first time I felt properly Samoan.” Say again? This is heavy. I can’t keep up. We’re out of time. Make an appointment for…But, my, but you’ve slipped into something astonishing, so climactic, so peacocky, so proud while so loquaciously abject. “I find a ready-poured glass of cold cow’s milk (my favourite of all secretions). I am overwhelmed by your powers of suggestion. You turn me on and I don’t like it.” Who exactly turns you on? Mother? See your own Mother’s Commandments no 9, “Never seduce your mother.” Well, not exactly a nice night out, but so charming a host, so ably playing himself. One more persona in the unfolding life of Brian Fuata, this time high camp, elegant (well-styled Mr Kellaway!), mouth as usual delightfully and so informatively in the gutter. So much to think about. I think you’ll enjoy Fa’afafine. I know I did.

Quotations are taken from the performance texts by Brian Fuata provided by Urban Theatre Projects.

Urban Theatre Projects, Fa’afafine, writer-performer Brian Fuata, director Nigel Kellaway, sound designer Liberty Kerr, dramaturg Damien Millar, lighting & video design Simon Wise, costume Carlos Gomez, concept Harley Stumm; Performance Space, Sydney, Nov 22 – Dec 2

Some editions of RealTime come together with an eerie, thematic coherence, more often accidental when we have to cover such a huge artistic terrain. There are small, intriguing correspondences in this edition, like 2 of our interviewees, sound artist Robert Iolini and performer Paul Capsis, discussing their Maltese backgrounds. Virginia Hyam, Executive Producer for the Sydney Opera House’s The Studio, Fiona Winning, Artistic Director of Performance Space, and REV’s Executive Producer Fiona Allan all address the challenges of supporting new work.

A larger synchronicity, welcome in these dauntingly conservative times, is the number of interviews and reviews where art practice as political activity is invoked—Iolini’s account of working with Big hArt’s Scott Rankin with adolescents-at-risk in Darwin; Mary-Ann Robinson’s review of 4 recent theatre works in Melbourne; Ned Rossiter’s reminder that new media art has to be understood not only on its own terms, but socially and politically; Alicia Talbot’s narrative of the challenges of engaging with communities in The Parks to create Urban Theatre Projects’ Adelaide Festival work, The Longest Night; and, not least, Richard Murphet’s bold feature essay, “Terror, theatre & The Hairy Ape.” Murphet’s personal response to September 11 helps strengthen our resolve to embrace the moral complexities that a New World Order would convert into its own single-minded Terror.

Births
Good news in tough times is welcome, especially when we have to sadly record the passing of David Branson and Nicholas Zurbrugg So it’s with great pleasure and heartfelt congratulations that we celebrate the arrival of Raphael Lin Zhen Dao Buckley, born to composer Liza Lim and Elision Ensemble Artistic Director Daryl Buckley on December 13; and Rosa Scheer, born to Isobel MacIntosh and partner Edward Scheer (academic, RealTime contributor, Performance Space Board Member), on January 12.

Not to forget…Jibshot

Before leaving 2001 behind in the trashcan of history, I’d like to record how impressed I was with Jibshot’s production of Mark Ravenhill’s Faust is Dead at the PACT Theatre (Nov 22-Dec 1). A dark road movie of a play with fine, expressive performances, quality projections and soundtrack, and taut direction from Scott Howie, Faust is Dead is evidence that the Wagga Wagga-based company is a force to be reckoned with. Let’s hope we see more of them. Also see the transcript of the 7th of the RealTime-Performance Space forums, The Secret Life of Touring, a provocative and informative discussion about the challenges to touring innovative performance.

On paper it was a good tour. A week of re-rehearsal in Sydney, 2 weeks in the Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House, then off to New York, London, the Belfast and Aldeburgh Festivals and 2 regional centres in the UK. Work for 9 weeks, with lots of travelling, tight bump ins and 4, 5 or 6 performances each week.

The Theft of Sita company is made up of 24 independent freelance artists and technicians, who were brought together by director Nigel Jamieson and composer Paul Grabowsky in preparation for the premiere at the 2000 Adelaide Festival. Nigel and Paul had presented their idea for a puppetry/music theatre piece to a gathering of festival directors way back in October 1998. Performing Lines had been asked to produce if the project received funds from the Major Festivals Initiative, which it did, and Adelaide and Melbourne had put up their hands to present.

It was to be a collaboration, using a dalang co-composer and some musicians from Indonesia, with rehearsals in Bali and an out-door production in the style of the wayan kulit. It was budgeted with lots of airfares, accommodation and per diems included, to accommodate the many home bases of the potential company. Who else would cast Australian puppeteers from Sydney and Canberra, musicians from Sydney and Melbourne, technical crew from Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney and 6 Balinese puppeteers and musicians? The answer is that the very best people were required for what turned out to be a special show.

Suddenly on the eve of a creative development/rehearsal period in Bali the East Timor crisis erupted. The phone began to ring with a question that would be echoed over the next 2 years. Is it safe to go? Rumours of the antagonism towards Australians travelling in Indonesia were rife, but surely Bali, the sleepy friendly holiday island was safe?

They went, but the trip was not without problems. Recasting the dalang and a change of musicians became necessary. Also a change of schedule for full company rehearsal became obvious. The Adelaide Hills had never seemed so attractive. It had enough power, a large enough rehearsal space, even lodging at the Christian Elcarim Convention Centre with home cooking courtesy of Nigel’s wife, Rosie McDonell. What's more, international festival directors visiting the Performing Arts Market could even drive to the Hills and see rehearsals and that was how the show was invited to the Theaterformen Festival in Hanover.

People often ask how long it takes to land an overseas invitation or the lead time it takes to set up a tour. It varies of course, but in the case of Hanover a representative saw a rehearsal in the Adelaide Hills, another representative saw the full show a few weeks later in the Botanic Park and three months later the show was remounted to open the new 800 seat venue on the Expo site in Germany.

So how did the 2001 tour come about? Joseph Melillo from the Brooklyn Academy of Music was visiting Australia during the Adelaide Festival looking for interesting product that could represent Australia during his Next Wave Festival at BAM [Brooklyn Academy of Music]. The Festival has been described by the New York Times as “the foremost showcase for contemporary experimental performance in the United States”. For the first time Joseph had decided to have a focus on one country and the Australia Council had made a commitment to assist with financial support for his choices. BAM uses two venues, the Opera Theatre and the Harvey (a wonderful 900 seater that was a vaudeville venue). It had been closed for many years and the story goes that when Peter Brook was looking for a venue for the Mahabharata he, and the then artistic director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvey Leichstein, had peeped through a window and seen the decaying old theatre and managed to re-open it. They have been using it ever since.

But Joseph Melillo was not able to see The Theft of Sita in Adelaide. He had already left for Melbourne by the time it opened. Phone calls and promotional material followed, but it was not till Joe returned to Australia many months later that I was able to get an appointment with him to see the archival video–a truly terrible video as it is virtually impossible to photograph Sita and do justice to the amazing puppetry. However, Joe knew Paul Grabowsky’s work and had talked to Robyn Archer so an invitation followed. Sita with its combination of disparate elements, such as ancient and modern storytelling, eastern and western music and Australian and Indonesian culture was a good contrast to Joseph’s other choices for a celebration of Australian arts and culture.

The main stage productions at BAM were to be Belvoir Company B's Cloudstreet, Chunky Move, The Theft of Sita and Bangarra. Dance Theatre. In the other venues such as the BAM Café a series of 10 live music performances would take place; in the Rose Cinemas 30 feature length and short films would be shown, and dialogues and discussions would be slotted between.

We could get to New York but it was a long way to go for 4 performances, so when Lucy Neal and Rose Fenton of LIFT [London International Festival of Theatre] asked us to be one of their first touring projects in the UK, we jumped at the opportunity. The LIFT Festival has been importing international work into London during the summer for many years, but are now changing their policy to work on a year-round basis and include regional venues after a London season.

Rose had seen the dress rehearsal of Sita in the Botanic Park Adelaide and Lucy had come across to Hanover to also check it out. They were typically enthusiastic and so began the applications to the Arts Council of Great Britain to get the extra funding needed to tour this very expensive production. They needed 3 regional venues and although the Belfast Festival had expressed interest that couldn’t be counted. Meanwhile at home I had applied to the AICC [Australian International Cultural Council] for money to cover the airfares. Following the success of the Heads UP program in London it seemed possible that there could be support for another Australian production to be presented there. (As already noted, with company members scattered all over the globe the air fares are not inconsiderable!)

A further stroke of luck. Philip Rolfe, executive producer at the Sydney Opera House had a 2 week space in the Drama Theatre, prior to the New York dates. That meant we could re-rehearse in Sydney, and settle the performance before setting off for overseas. The tour was extending and the musicians were not used to performing the same show night after night. Shelley Scown, the wonderful singer who plays Sita could not leave her family for 9 weeks so a replacement after London needed to be found. One Balinese musician needed to be replaced. The show also needed some refinements in staging as the company performed on a rostra but this would not fit at all the venues we were playing.

When one speaks of a re-rehearsal period of only a week it makes no allowance for the months of prior work the technical and administration staff have to do. How many times did we email the requirements for the gongs which the Balinese play but we can’t tour because of the weight? Even though presenters liaise with the local Indonesian consuls there is always difficulty explaining the pitch and the need for bronze gongs, not other metals. The gongs are traditional but the music played is not.

And the visas. The line in the budget was $7,000 and was all spent. The Indonesian artists required 3–one for Australia, one for the USA and one for the United Kingdom. Not difficult but time consuming to organise when Performing Lines is in Sydney and the artists are scattered around Bali. Previously we have sent money to their bank accounts in Indonesia only to find the Bank charges a fee of 20%. So the connection with Asialink residencies has proved extremely useful. Whoever is in the vicinity of Bali (this time it was Mitzi Zaphir, on a previous occasion Sue Ingleton) drops off required funds. It is known as the Performing Lines International Courier Service. The Australian visa is not difficult to get but the English had to send to Jakarta, by courier at 70,000 rupiah. Must pay in rupiah which is strange as some extras in Bali must be paid in US dollars.

It isn’t a tour if everything goes as you wish / hope it will. Firstly, 2 of the proposed venues in the UK fell through. No regional tour, no special funding from the Arts Council so no UK performances could go ahead.

Therefore no AICC funding for airfares as this was tied to London. To say nothing of the effect to the budget as 5 weeks of rehearsal/pre-production amortisation was lost. Lucy Neal swung into action and a few weeks later the tour was back on. A very well known artist had lost his booking in Oxford and Tish Francis, who runs the Oxford Playhouse was fitting Sita onto her rather small stage. Plus the Aldeburgh Festival in Benjamin Britten country would slot us in, but only for half a week. What repercussions did this have to the finances? Manageable.

Meantime, the trusty Heather Clarke took a production management job with Cloudstreet. She had been Sita’s production manager from the beginning and could still do the tour if she could pick us up in New York. We were lucky that Simon Wise would stand in for Sydney and get the freight on the plane to New York. The turn-arounds were very tight and the nightmares are not about forgetting the lines but whether the company turns up and the set and props don’t.

And then September 11 happened, and suddenly the usual problems associated with touring became completely insignificant. What was happening? Should we go? Was the Next Wave Down Under program to be cancelled? Letters flew backwards and forwards between BAM and the Australia Council, with Foreign Affairs giving political updates on the situation and the media replaying the coverage of the horrifying attacks until they were etched into the psyche. The telephone rang hot. Agents protecting their clients or offering replacements, artists wanting information which we didn’t have, niggling questions about safety and ultimate responsibility. Paul Grabowsky had been trapped in Toronto at a Film Festival on September 11, and had experienced first hand the problems of flight systems that had completely closed down leaving no escape routes.

Joseph Melillo and everyone at BAM urged us to go. We would be safe and well looked after, and it was important that the BAM Festival continue. “Although we have experienced a tragedy in our City, all New Yorkers are united that we shall take the time to mourn, recover and rebuild our lives and the City.”

So the original members of the company arrived in Sydney to rehearse, introducing Sang Nyoman Putra Arsawijaya, the new musician from Bali, and Katie Noonan from Brisbane who would take over from Shelley Scown after London. They were happy to see each other after a break of almost a year, and rehearsals and the Sydney season passed pleasantly. Audiences were down on expectations. Was it reaction to world events, the lack of tourists, the demise of Ansett, the looming election? The feeling that if someone was going to let off a bomb the Opera House would be the target? Who knows?

The season finished on the Friday and on Saturday we were on a plane to New York with the set and props following the next day. There had been much deliberation as everyone you spoke to had a different story. If the freight had to change planes onto a domestic flight in Los Angeles it could take 48 hours to be searched and then would be sent overland by truck. By the time it reached New York the performances would be over. To combat this scenario we were advised to put the 437 kilos of screens, puppets and musical instruments into a 1670 kilo pallet, and though this was expensive we were assured of delivery in time to bump in. It arrived!

Joe Melillo was right. We were greeted with open arms, wined and dined and what was even more wonderful played every show to capacity (900) audiences. We even put 30 cushions on the orchestra pit and these were also taken. The hotel where the Australian contingent were to be accommodated had gone, so we were housed in the very comfortable Brooklyn Marriott. This was only a 10 minute walk to the BAM Harvey theatre so even internal travel was manageable.

The New York Times critic had some problems with puppets that were 2-dimensional, which was unfortunate with a shadow puppet play. One rather felt that he spent a lot of time reviewing the movies, and he did indeed admit that he had never been to the BAM Harvey before. But he loved the “dazzling musical accompaniment composed by Paul Grabowsky and I Wayan Gde Yudane and featuring two knockout vocalists, Shelley Scown and I Gusti Putu Sudarta.”

Congratulations must go to the marketing department as it was very impressive for the entire festival. It was also impressive that LIFT would fly over Lyn Gardiner from the Guardian and Paul Taylor from The Independent to see the show in New York and write large articles about it prior to the London opening.

We played our final performance on the Sunday and were on a plane to London at 9 o’clock the next morning. Many of the Company had travelled in to Manhattan to look at the rubble of the World Trade Centre and were very affected. A heaviness hung in the air which affected people’s sleep patterns and the artists were tired. Australians living in New York were talking of going home. In spite of the warmth of the hospitality and enthusiasm of the audiences we were pleased to be on our way.

Lucy Neal and Rose Fenton had been unable to book a large venue owing to the Dance Umbrella Festival, so from a 900 seater we were reduced to the Riverside Studios which seated only 400. For me, there were memories of taking No Sugar to the Riverside in 1988. This semi-promenade production had used both studios with audiences trailing the actors from one side of the building to the other. Now we were confined to Studio 2 but again each performance was sold out with people clamouring for tickets.

Michael Billington from The Guardian reviewed the show with 4 stars. Michael has visited Australia and understands the politics behind the story. He said “The heartening thing is that two cultures combine to produce both a celebration of theatrical craft and a scathing attack on unrestrained market forces and environmental destruction. This is puppetry with politics and heart.”

The other reviews were equally supportive and the week whizzed by. There were functions with the Indonesian and Australian High Commissioners, workshops for puppeteers led by Peter Wilson and I Made Sidia, forums and seminars with director Nigel Jamieson who was enjoying being home and able to visit his parents. We caught up with designer Julian Crouch, who had worked with us initially but hadn’t toured since Adelaide. Julian noticed big improvements in the show since those early days and it was good to have him joining in the audience discussion groups. People were interested to know how the show had been created and everyone acknowledged how lucky we were to have had enormous financial support from the Major Festivals Initiative.

The UK regional tour followed. Warwick, the Belfast Festival, Oxford and the Aldeburgh Festival. As normal on tour there was a vast difference in venues and accommodation, and the usual ups and downs of planes being over-booked, the weather freezing which makes life uncomfortable for the Indonesians, and the odd problem of the prop coconut going missing. We didn’t mind if someone was hungry but where to get another in wintry Warwick? I had left the tour after London, handing over to our very competent Associate Producer, Karen Rodgers. She arrived home recently and we will be allowed to visit her in the nursing home shortly.

Our thanks to Wendy Blacklock and Performing Lines for allowing us to reproduce this report from the company newsletter.

What follows is the text of Nigel Kellaway’s contribution to Scrapbook Live at Performance Space, Sydney, a series of presentations dedicated to the relationship between performers and the theatre and other spaces in the building for some 20 years (see Regrets & recollections: Sydney dance/performance 2001 in this edition for more on Scrapbook Live). Kellaway has performed in the theatre space with the One Extra Dance Company, the Entr’acte ensemble, The Sydney Front and performed with and directed The opera Project, as well as performing his own solo projects, The Nuremberg Recital and This Most Wicked Body. He knows the space intimately and seems to have exploited almost every one of its possibilities.

For his presentation, Nigel used one of the PS gallery spaces decking out the long room with suspended costumes or patterns or fragments of costumes: “Give me the frock and I’ll give you the show.” As each was lowered, he spoke of the costume, the show and its relationship to the theatre space.

I was born on the 30th September 195….I am an actor.
I have stuffed 20 or 30 dolls with the sawdust that was my blood.
Have dreamt a dream of a theatre in this country.
And have reflected in public on things that were of no interest to me.
That is all over now.

They were the opening lines of a production I co-performed in 1994. It wasn’t on this particular rectangle of floor.

It was in that other space, just down the corridor–12.67 x 22.75 metres, lighting rig at 5 metres.

The walls shifted from a very light grey, and darker and darker, to black over 20 years. It is that space that I wish to celebrate this evening.

In the 20 minutes allotted this evening, I would dearly love NOT to talk about MYSELF, but what has made the Performance Space such an extraordinary centre for the development of movement language over the past 20 years.

But that is not the brief–so I will glance at just ONE history that refers to a performer’s experience of this space.

20 years– the regular phone calls from Mike Mullins in 1983 at 6.00 of a Sunday evening–begging me to volunteer to make pre-show coffee–no kitchen or alcohol–just a kettle, some instant coffee and the gully trap in the courtyard to wash out the cups. (Mike was taking a rare evening off.)

Numerous short appearances, and 33 -35 full length works. (Lost track–the list [of productions detailed by the Scrapbook Live curators] in the other room has forgotten some also.)

Well how about a cliche? Nigel and his frocks (“Give me the frock, and I’ll give you the show!)

Well, actually there are only 9 (that I’VE worn)–and here are the remnants. Hardly representative of the entire opus– but they do comprise a kind of scrapbook–a glimpse–a ragbag.

The first one is hardly a frock–though it’s imbued with similar deviant persuasions…

It’s a kind of skin, a nudity (and that’s another cliche attributed to Nigel’s work–hey, you just put it on–it’s a bit foreign–you hide behind it–and it saves on the design and dry-cleaning budget.)

COSTUME 1: TIGHTS

At 8.00pm on October 14th 1981 some closely focussed lights came up slowly on 4 dancers (2 bare-chested men in flesh coloured footless tights, 2 women in matching leotards). Lynne Santos, Kai Tai Chan and two dancers making their Sydney debuts–Julie Shanahan and Nigel Kellaway.

Ironic, hey? Sounds a bit like a William Forsythe title, but we hadn’t even heard of him in those days.

“Kai Tai Chan is continuing to sharpen his ability to choreograph straight dance pieces, though this work doesn’t reveal much of an advance. The most accomplished dancer is Julie Shanahan, but everyone made a distinctive contribution.”

(Sorry Jill, although I don’t want to abuse your professional distance, I’m probably going to have to mention you on a few occasions this evening–you must surely have one of the longest histories of involvement in and support for the Performance Space. You have been here since that first night of my association with the Space, and probably before then–and there is just no getting away from you!)

And too often, all we have left of a show (as years pass) is a handful of reviews.

Graeme Murphy had recently transformed the Dance Company of NSW into his very own Sydney Dance Company.

Heiner Müller was ripping European theatre apart (though we really hadn’t heard much about it in those days).

We were trying to remember Heidegger’s Phenomenology, Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialism.

Grotowski had already crippled a number of young Australian bodies, but teased them with one brand of enlightenment.

Some of us had heard of Pina Bausch, but it really wasn’t for another 6 months until that full hurricane of her influence was going to hit our shores.

Some of us were still wondering whether Baryshnikov was the greatest dancer ever born (the impossible is so alluring, isn’t it?).

Russell Dumas was playing to 30 or 40 people a year in his occasional Sydney appearances at the Cell Block.

There was an influx of artists and loose collectives congregating in Sydney at that time–some from interstate, some returning from Europe. And some notable locals finding a new voice.

And in Adelaide, at the 1994 Festival, Tenkei Gekijo performed the interminable Mizu No Eki (Water Station). Within a month Nick Tsoutas had Groteski Monkey Choir and several associates climbing ever, ever, so slowly over chairs to peer at a snowy TV screen in this space– call it appropriation if you wish, but we were being oddly activated by the foreign!

COSTUME 2: GIVE ME A ROSE

I survived an extraordinary 4 years with Kai Tai, launched myself as a director and then ran away immediately to Japan–not for the art– for love.

Not a word of Japanese and $40 in my pocket–but love does that to you, at a certain age.

But I was a diligent contemporary dancer and did my compulsory 6 months with Tanaka Min.

Until the fearsome Alison Broinowski (1st secretary at the Australian Embassy at the time) took me on a personal project– off to Suzuki Tadashi (I had never heard of him–neither had anyone else in Australia, except for Keith Gallasch and Virginia Baxter)–and some of Australia’s physical theatre changed a bit–The Suzuki rash, I call it affectionately.

I’m being frivolous, but this frock is the proof: Clytemnestra in Give Me A Rose To Show How Much You Care , January1986. It was all a bit of a surprise for Sydney audiences. I think they were hoping for something a tad more “Japanese”.

Taka, my partner, arrived from Japan on the morning I opened. He stuck with the show through the season. He didn’t have much English, but still managed the box-office and washed the stage floor every night. Cute, eh? Doubt he’d do it now.

But as you can see I practiced the art of serious applique. Don’t laugh–it was an apprenticeship for a long career of tight budgets.

COSTUME 3: WALTZ

In January 1994 The Sydney Front trashed its storeroom—almost everything off to the tip–a cathartic experience–just the odd wedding frock and crinoline survives.

The Sydney Front first applied to the Australia Council through the Dance Board–unsuccessfully. We applied a lot–always unsuccessfully.

Especially when we devised a project (63 actually) we later called The 63 Blessings.

We became, briefly, terrorists, but of a cuddlier variety than our recent friends.

This is a pattern for the costumes we all wore for our first work in 1987–Waltz.

$140 worth of black polycotton clothed all 8 of us. The cast cut them out and Mickey Furuya and I spent 2 days sweating over an overlocker.

Combined with our next work this became The Pornography Of Performance, and with that, The Sydney Front was well and truly launched.

We began with a handful of ancient Greek monologues, and via Peter Weiss, Peter Brook and Heiner Müller we arrived at POST MODERNISM –it took us ALMOST by surprise!

The Sydney Front went to Brisbane–Expo 88–7 fucking months all together in the same house–2 street parades, on stilts, 7 days a week.

COSTUME 4:NUREMBERG

Don Mamouney pronounced me Australia’s greatest clown–in retrospect, that was quite nice–perhaps even accurate!

But, at least I mastered the art of burying a zip–hand stitched–not a bad job at all–for a first try!

Simon Wise designed the lights, Chris Ryan stage-managed, and Sarah de Jong (the composer) arrived with the opening 10 minutes of music at 7.45 on opening night

–but she DID drive me to the airport at 9.00am after the closing night bumpout for The Sydney Front’s first European tour.

COSTUME 5: DON JUAN

The first frocks for The Sydney Front that I didn’t have to sew myself. Thank God–nothing I sew would survive 120 performances

–the show hung around for 3 years. John Baylis and I drank a lot over those years.

We were both apprehended, after one performance, by a security guard close to our hotel in Soho, London, as we emptied our bladders on an apartment wall late one night. Threatened to call the police. We were of course outraged by the prudery. “Fucking Poms” we spluttered.

We may have been derelicts, but we had some seriously good reviews in our pockets.

COSTUME 6: FIRST AND LAST WARNING

Hey, there are 200 of these [slips worn by the audience] stored between my and Clare Grant’s roof cavities in Newtown.

We even invented a size 28 (had them especially designed for Eugene Ragghianti, Leo Schofield, et al).

Mine was a size 12, and I can still squeeze into it (perhaps not the prettiest sight–though it probably never was).

I was feeling a bit shitty at that time (had no idea in those days what “anxiety disorder” meant) and demanded that I was not going to perform–well at least not until the last 10 minutes when I could have the stage totally to myself (what a prick!).

I sang a song and then reminisced about all the famous people I’d met (I was practicing the “embarrassing moment”). Nureyev, Pope John Paul 1st, Frank Thring. They’re all dead now.

Which leads me to reflect on where my peers from 1981 are now. Most of us are still alive but not many of us are still regularly practicing. Australia is not that comfortable about performing artists over the age of 40 tackling anything too adventurous. Try to name 5 contemporary performance artists actively creating fulltime, in Sydney, over the age of 50.

COSTUME 7: THIS MOST WICKED BODY

The work that I quoted at the beginning of my presentation was from This Most Wicked Body, 1994.

I incarcerated myself in the space for 10 days–nearly 240 hours, and danced, shouted, flirted, ate, fucked and slept a little.

I toiled over the presentation of a person I was not. The work was, rather, about what a space, THIS SPACE, could (might) create and nurture–a troubled man, a man in crisis, a man possessed.

It was a celebration of a very special theatrical space–a space in which the wonder and beauty of the body can be shown in all its grubbiness–boldly, no apologies– a body that can say “I hate myself”, “I hate you”–and then say sincerely and humbly “Thank you”.

Jill Sykes wrote: “Kellaway delivers all this in a deadpan voice, varied only by the number of decibels. His body is the more eloquent of his communication skills, emerging here in its most specific form of ballet, with its symmetry and strict turnout, and the inward-turning irregularity of butoh.”

(Sorry, Jill. I’m only quoting the irritating bits from your reviews. You’ve also written enquiringly and positively about my work over the years–and for this particular work you drew out many of the essential dilemmas posited.)

What did The Performance Space represent? Sarah Miller [former Artistic Director, currently A.D. PICA. Perth] and I were both serving on committees of the Performing Arts Board of the Australia Council at the time. I reflected on and argued for what HYBRID practice meant–it all seemed second nature to US–how come no-one else seemed to be quite cottoning on? We wanted recognition for not only OUR process, but one that was emerging all over this continent ……. and it was soon tucked away under the banner of New Media.

What a cop-out! I was nurtured by an environment in this space that allowed me to explore beyond one particular sphere. This was not just a dance space, it wasn’t just a gallery, or a theatre space. It was a place of dialogue. And that impact on individual artists doesn’t happen overnight–it takes years–many of them quite unconsciously–you learn new processes–slowly.

COSTUME 8: TOSCA

My first opera Project frock–Annemaree Dalziel designed–and I only got to wear it for 10 minutes.

What does The opera Project want? An ensemble of artists–our peers–those we share knowledge with. It has to be flexible–that suits both the artists and the funding bodies. Perhaps what The opera Project has succeeded in doing, if nothing else, is to draw mature artists back to the Performance Space on a regular basis– back home.

A pyramid, grounded on this floor, and yet in relationship to the extremities of the blackened space and the imagined beyond.

They were built by humans–with vision and skill. But they weren’t created in a moment–it took hundreds of years of transferred knowledge.

It’s always an issue when one makes work about culture, rather than about society of the distilled “NOW”. Performance Space has, over the years, balanced both these issues.

I am in an environment where I am drawn to talk to people. People even talk to me!

I’m an artist enchanted by 19th century opera, the movies of Luchino Visconti and his ilk, point shoes, good Italian tailoring…

COSTUME 9: EL INOCENTE

What a tragic rag–I made it–I don’t do pretty these days–I do drab–it’s so much less stressful.

Poor Katia Molino and Regina Heilmann– they had to wear identical costumes— but then, of course, those two women would look beautiful in anything.

Due to certain vagaries in the levels of government funding, an extraordinary patience was demanded over 3 seasons (2 of them developments) and 18 months by the Performance Space and its audience.

After the eventual bona fide opening night this year, Tess de Quincey asked me when the trilogy might be performed again. I immediately assumed that she was referring to our Romantic Trilogy (The Berlioz/Tosca/Tristan). But no, she was talking about the 3 showings of El Inocente–all a bit different, and all staged in a single evening, demonstrating a process.

I thought the idea ridiculous (as well as impossible), but I have to acknowledge that for so many people associated with this space, the “process” is incredibly important–and there is belief that “process” can be celebrated and performed in a satisfying and theatrical manner.

Colin Rose in The Sun Herald would beg to differ: “the dullest, most humourless and most pretentious hour I’ve spent in the theatre for many an evening–Kellaway makes a ridiculous spectacle of himself … and a question for Kellaway: does the word “tosh” mean anything to you?” Frankly, Colin, NO. But top that for inspirational comment – perhaps only James Waites in RealTime …

The dance world, too, is a hideously vicious world, where-ever you might be. It promotes a culture of the body, and that is an intensely personal vision. Young children are drawn into this culture, and gaze endlessly at their image in the studio mirror–a scary inward vision. This is a culture of “me, me, ME!”.

I have listened to dancers scream for 30 years about the lack of support and camaraderie in their profession, and then watched them stab a colleague in the back. I’ve done it myself.

The Performance Space introduced me to a sometimes different world–a dangerous world, but a potentially supportive one. Any dance artist who has been associated with this space is a privileged one.

My anecdotes are personal– My work is public–That is all that matters. My work acknowledges various extra-theatrical issues–but it comes back to one simple concern–my work is about a body (sometimes several bodies).

That space (out there!) has allowed me to move that body and my imagination. I have been a musician, an actor, a dancer–a body. Only THAT room would have permitted me such freedom.

I have worked many other spaces that have insisted that I stand still– that I define my practice in a brief sentence. It’s too easy, as you tour your work or processes to other contexts, to appear radical and fresh in that foreign climate with its different histories and experiences. But the demands are actually greater when you strive to entertain/provoke a similar/familiar audience over 20 years. It’s not just preaching to the converted–it’s attempting to invigorate an often jaded palate.

I’m a notoriously lazy person, but this space has demanded that I keep moving.

And so to you and a thousand artists (some of whom I’ve never met), those who have contributed to this extraordinary space: I very occasionally hate you, but more often I love you.

freezer uniquely incorporates a performance installation within a dance party, a hyper-enriched brainchild born of the Salamanca Theatre Company and ¡Hard On!. Yeats asks, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Good question. In the realm of freezer, to observe is to participate. The audience is no longer itself; we are inseparable from what we embrace.

freezer comments on a neo-technologised cycle of life. At the core of the performance is an anxiety over the human race’s current quest to preserve and prolong life. Our concerns have evolved into an unhealthy zeal for genes: cloning is the modern way to conceive a self. An image of Dolly the sheep watches the music-enraptured crowd, imperturbable, down to her very (cloned) cells. Video screens attempt to enwomb the audience with seemingly random text and image. Facts drip down: 16 million sperm cells in a freezer, $500,000 for a new hand.

The aural layer is epic in its ambition. Opera singer Georgia Bowker as Echo sings her aria, competing and melding with DJ Heath’s beat. At the performance’s peak, the crowd erupts in sweaty euphoria, enamoured by this bold artistic stroke. Elsewhere, a further mythic element becomes evident in a silent troupe of red-skinned, branch-haired people moving infinitesimally on white plinths, still points in a roomful of mayhem as the crowd surges in variant whirlpools. A White Man (Matt Cracknell), powder-coated in an eerily brilliant pallor, scrambles towards the top of a pyramid of Red People, reaching an unnamed pinnacle. Later he is seen with one hand outstretched towards the audience, beseeching, Narcissus-like, as the Red People climb down from their dais and dance among the mortals.

freezer ventures an integration of various artforms, a risk that manifests in a defiant encroachment into the audience’s space. Live images of anonymous dancers on the floor are captured, projected and magnified on surrounding screens. The eye looks back and sees itself, doubled. Everyone becomes part of the spectacle, a confusion of near-oblivious performers, individual skin cells incorporated into the body of dance. Some partygoers might not have taken any notice. Subtract the live performance and it’s just another dance party. One indelible image is left: a media-fed-and-bred generation slowing in its dance-tracks to watch the screens scroll enigmatic and almost voided words: AMPLIFY. MODIFY. REPEAT. REMIX.

freezer, *Hard On! & Salamanca Theatre Company, writer/director Ryk Goddard, designer Greg Methé, performers Lilly Armstrong, Laura Purcell, Kelli Jayne Lynch, Amelia Cadwallader, Jody Kingston, Sarah Duffus, Jo Richardson & Cheryl Wheatley. Hobart City Hall, Dec 7-8

When Georg Buchner died of typhoid in 1837, his play Woyzeck was an incomplete jumble of pages. That mess of paper was eventually worked into a famously Expressionist production in 1913 which inspired Alban Berg's opera. This tale of a German soldier's descent into madness and his murder of his wife has come, through those powerful productions, to represent the disturbing underside of Modernity.

Robert Wilson's version of Woyzeck, with music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, throws the pages back up in the air. When they land we're in Coney Island, although the German Expressionist style remains intact. In the 20 scenes of this production we get the grotesque together with the burlesque; we get carnival, love and murder: we get Wilson's distinctive take on the modernity of Woyzeck.

Unlike the earlier Expressionist versions, Wilson's focus is not on the individual's spiral into the dark pit of madness. It's rather on the machinery of a social order that could reduce a man to such a desperate state. And 'machinery' is everywhere: in the minimal, angular sets, including large arrows dropping behind the characters; in the mechanical running-on-the-spot of Woyzeck himself; in the inhuman figures of the 2 doctors (male and female joined at the hip) to whom Woyzeck has sold his body for medical experiments. These leering exponents of bio-tech represent the forces of progress preying on the weak; they also help situate Woyzeck's plight within a recognisably Modern social apparatus.

Woyzeck's fate is extremely moving in this production, perhaps surprisingly given the cavalcade of bizarre and grotesque imagery on display. The script, written by Wolfgang Weirs and Ann-Christen Rommen and developed at Copenhagen's Betty Nansen Teatret, foregrounds the relationship of Woyzeck and his wife Marie, who prostitutes herself to the army's Drum Major. But the key emotive element is undoubtedly the music. Waits and Brennan skilfully exploit the simple melody of “Coney Island Baby”, injecting pathos into the lovers' tragedy. Even the murder has a gentle beauty to it, as if Woyzeck can find no other way to express his passion.

Throughout, the moral universe of Woyzeck is superbly evoked by the songs and by Wilson's direction, which harnesses his surreal imagery to the linear narrative of Woyzeck's story. The prologue, for instance, is a carnival led by a giant, with a chorus of “Misery's The River of the World”. The doctors lead one musical number with the refrain “God's Away On Business”; the devilish Drum Major gloats to the hapless Woyzeck that he has “plucked another man's rose.”

Wilson's Woyzeck is a remarkable synthesis, and a successful one. It takes the dark side of Modernity on a trip to Coney Island, somehow emerging with a musical full of beauty and dread.

Woyzeck, by Georg Buchner, director Robert Wilson, Odeon Theatre, Paris, Nov 29-Dec 9

Composer Richard Vella’s performative concert Tales of Love has been newly produced at the Parramatta Riverside Theatres with Trenet, Piaf-Dumont, Adam de la Halle, Purcell, Satie, Wagner, Schönberg and Monteverdi supplying the raw material for Vella’s arrangements which are effectively entwined with and framed by his own works including the engaging Colour Music series. Compared with the provocative, sometimes hilarious 1990 production (devised by Vella, John Baylis, Annette Tesoriero, Nigel Kellaway) this is a genteel affair, but no less appealing (if not as tightly framed) for its more meditative and less ironic stance. Beyond the excellence of its performers, mezzo soprano Karen Cummings, baritone Didier Frederic and The Seymour Group, the triumph of the production was in the polymorphous transformation of the theatre–any of its spaces becoming sites for the longings, laments and joys of love, and the reversal of expectations.

On arrival, the audience are led past dressing rooms from which recorded music flows, then outside to the loading bay where the sound system of a wrecked car tinnily broadcasts a pop love (“I am calling you”) and, nearby, red wine has been spilled on a the table cloth of a one table restaurant setting. Trouble. Backstage, seriously passionate tunes embrace the audience before they are led to their seats. Looking down onto a small orchestra and, dimly, into a vast theatre space, they realise they are on-stage–a certain vulnerability and openness follows. Soon, singers appear mid-auditorium, on balconies, and amidst expressionist forests and beneath a fairy light heaven as associate director Neil Simpson’s lighting alchemically mirrors love’s many visions. The 2 night season was too brief for such magic and such creative investment from Vella and Simpson and their team, but the Paramatta Riverside is to be congratulated for supporting the venture and attracting a responsive audience.

Calculated Risks Opera, Tales of Love, original music, arrangements, direction Richard Vella, associate direction, lighting Neil Simpson, design Ina Shanahan; performers Karen Cummings, Didier Frederic, The Seymour Group; Parramatta Riverside Theatre, Parramatta, Sydney, Jan 18,19

After the lights went up after Intimacy, the woman sitting next to me said in a conspiratorial tone, “you can tell that was written by an English man. A French man would never write love scenes that way.” And a friend argued vehemently, “Why does sex always have to be about the woman pleasuring the man. Why must we continue portraying this myth of the vaginal orgasm being the be-all and end-all…a little clitoral stimulation wouldn't go astray.” But hey, this ain't the Hite Report, and when a French man does write and direct a similar scenario in a French fashion, we end up with the soufflé A Pornographic Affair. And, Patrice Chereau (French director of Queen Margot and Intimacy) did co-write the screen adaptation from British writer Hanif Kureishi's short stories.

Kerry Fox's character Claire just would not work if she was pleasured by Jay (Mark Rylance). Her almost-anonymous weekly sexual encounters are as much about performance, even abnegation, as satisfaction. At one point he tries, and she brushes him off: “don't worry.” Like Samantha Morton's Iris in the brilliant Under the Skin (Carine Adler 1997), she is working through some kind of detachment, or even grief, expressed as lust. If she were after love, she wouldn't be getting carpet rash in a grotty flat with a man too disconnected from the world to even speak. She wants to be the one doing all the work, manipulating his body into poses, consumed by their silences, disappearing out that door into the crowded market. In a pivotal scene, in the dreary hall where she takes drama classes and works through her own frustrations, she breaks down and hurls “I've lost someone” at Betty (Marianne Faithfull). In a later scene, Betty responds in an Emily Dickinson moment, “I died once too.”

Much has been made of the explicit nature of their sexual tryst. But the film is interesting because the sex is boring. And it takes up a third of the film. In life, it's hard to admit that we all look so ordinary in those moments when we're meant to look, well, sexy. Hollywood brings in body doubles to cover for the wobbly bits. The opening scenes of Betty Blue set a new standard in how we all wanted to look while getting it on and getting off. A friend once said that she liked David Cronenberg's Crash because it was boring–it was interesting because it was boring. I've grappled with this idea for years but with Intimacy I finally saw what she means. In most other films, sex is boringly boring. But with Intimacy I was satisfied.

The male characters, Jay and Kerrie's husband Andy (Timothy Spall), are particularly strong (in their weaknesses). Estranged, in every sense, from his wife and children, Jay is an alien in almost every environment he encounters except the bar where he works. As he drives in the London traffic he screams “that's a bus lane you cunt.” He is physically always opening and closing doors in the film and, like Tom Cruise's Dr William Harford in Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick 1999), never seems to have the right combination to the padlock. Children are the key for him. Boys are delirious, wondrous beings. At the beginning, fresh from a bath, his son declares to him “I love everyone”; and Kerrie's son is a font of wisdom, watching her performances in The Glass Menagerie at a “theatre stinking of piss” every night, already understanding more about her needs than either her husband or lover. At his lowest ebb, Jay sits down next to his son and asks in an adult manner, “do you have a girlfriend you like at school?” then, seriously, “how's it going with her?” The audience laughs because his need for reassurance from a child seems ludicrous, but is it really? We never get an answer but who knows what it might have offered Jay. Children are always the moral centre too: his guilty masturbation in the bathroom interrupted by his son who has wet the bed; his angry rant at Kerrie disrupted by her son: “Hi Jay, mummy was good tonight wasn't she?”

It's at these moments where the intimacy of the title works its way magically into the subconscious, continually defined and redefined. After intense sex, Jay sits in a chair and watches Kerrie sleeping. Just a glimpse, but the audience feels uncomfortable, voyeuristic–far more than watching them make love–and when Kerrie wakes, we know that Jay has trespassed. And, as the couple gradually discover each others' lives, less clothes are shed in passion. As if covering up is more revealing. Then there's the acting classes, where participants perform being-in-love, like Kerrie does in her waking world, like we all do at some point in our everyday lives. So, the film asks, where does intimacy really lie, and is it just a conjuring act?

Patrice Chereau's film is the beginning of a dialogue that I hope will be taken up by filmmakers in the future. Less cold and formal than Catherine Breillat's Romance (that it's often compared to) and more oblique than British realism like Mike Leigh's, it's a major insight into the forces that shape us, with death-defying performances from Fox, Rylance and Spall. I'm wrapped in its cocoon and I don't want to stop thinking about it. And I guess that defines intimacy, for me.

Intimacy, director Patrice Chereau, co-writers Anne-Louise Trividic & Chereau, based on stories by Hanif Kureishi; distributor Palace Films, currently in national release.

As it has been for the last 11 years, the Flickerfest International Short Film Festival launch party is held inside the Bondi Pavilion, a long adored community venue for everything from yoga to children’s parties. On this occasion it’s one of the windiest of Bondi evenings in living memory; enormous gusts hammer the doors and windows with such fortitude that most guests don’t brave the famed balcony. The Olympic volleyball era (during which the Pav was commandeered by the state government, the building closed to the public and a large section of the beach scraped out by bulldozers) has passed, and things haven’t changed unduly. Better office facilities here and there, newer doors maybe. In an era of barely legal privatisation and near-sighted sell-off, the fact that the Pav still exists for use by Flickerfest is more comforting than it should be.

The more polite variety of social photographer snaps local celebrities; in typical Sydney style everyone else downs beer and ignores them; the crowd moves inside the endemically musty screening room and Bronwyn Kidd, helmswoman and Artistic Director, announces this year’s program. There are the usual sections: Australian and International competitive, various masterclasses and workshops, plus a special tribute to Hitchcock. Kidd also mentions that 2002 will usher in a first for the festival; an online program dedicated to computer-generated and digital short films, for which punters will be able to vote on the website. Also this: the films will be available for viewing online. Speeches over, the auditorium darkens and a selection of 2002 shorts is screened. As ever, there is a very audible whirr as the projector cranks into life, also the creak of seats decades older than the people sitting on them. There’s something about the conscious choice not to mask the decrepitude of our surroundings that is also comforting.

Ideas regarding the consequence of putting films online have been bandied about for some time now. Some filmmakers have either embraced the digital coding and uploading of their work as a further means of distribution, others have rejected it outright on the basis of its inappropriateness to the medium both technically and creatively. And while the recent, culturally important ‘tech wreck’ has temporarily (but perhaps not literally) put paid to fears artists have re the potential evils of corporate colonisation of their work, there is still a discussion worth continuing about what viewing film out of its original context can mean. When, for example, does a festival stop being a local, shared and site-specific event and start to become something other? Does putting a few shorts on your website prefigure a major paradigm shift? Probably not, says Kidd.

Putting films on the website, she argues, is simply one way of broadening awareness of Flickerfest, reaching interested audiences and filmmakers who are physically remote from Bondi and “introducing a new generation to the festival. But obviously it’s completely different to actually being here [at the Pavilion]. Flickerfest is a community event. We have flags flying on Campbell Parade–there’s a huge awareness and support for the fact that we’re here now. People prefer to come together and share the experience–they don’t really want to sit in a little room looking at a little screen waiting for a film to download.”

Hence the fact that the international Flickerfest program is packed up and taken from Byron Bay to Gunnedah (with 12 country and capital cities in between) over the course of 2 months. This isn’t just some kind of post-festival wanderlust, nor is it simply a concession to publicity mongering until enough people have a broadband connection. Kidd is committed to defeating what she recognises as elitism within the industry–a commitment which extends to providing access geographically as well as virtually. This recognition of a prohibitive hierarchy is part of the reason for the including films shot on DV, or rendered entirely from computer. “35 mm is an elite form of filmmaking. Hardly anyone can afford to do it. But now with DV we’re seeing a whole new range of films and filmmakers emerging.”

And is the technology altering the kinds of stories artists want to tell? “No. They just get to do it more cheaply. Although the films we’ve featured on the website are largely dialogue free, because they’re quicker to download.” An afternoon’s offline viewing of the online program is testament to both diversity and unification through new media. A great number of the films are silent, or feature minimal dialogue, but beyond that there’s not a lot of similarity between crack, a rough-as-guts mockumentary about a support group for men with trouser problems, Synchronicity, an eerie wordless PC-generated cyberdance, and Les Grenouilles, an RMIT student’s musical animation featuring 2 lovelorn, ice-skating frogs. And at the risk of sounding like a soft Left nostalgic, there’s something very comforting about that.

Flickerfest 2002, 11th International Short Film Festival, Bondi Pavilion, Sydney, Jan 4-12; for touring dates visit their website

On my desk are 2 texts–a play by Andrew Bovell titled Speaking in Tongues and a screenplay, also by Andrew Bovell, titled Lantana. There's also a third text, the film Lantana, directed by Ray Lawrence. I almost wrote “by” Ray Lawrence.

The writing of the story of Lantana is fascinating, and goes to the heart of how films are made, and how texts are shifted across forms of representation, in this case from a series of short dramatic ‘sketches’ to a play, then a script which became a film.

Adaptation is as thorny an issue as the vine which became the name of the film–it is a labyrinth of power asserted and surrendered, of the requirement of faithfulness often betrayed in the face of expediency (a standard claim against the film-industry-as-whore), and a perverse fascination with the transformation process. The regeneration scenes in even the worst horror films are often the most riveting–we are fascinated by the process of transference and the interference with universal powers it suggests.

During the lengthy story development Bovell says he was influenced by the films of Robert Altman, and it’s possible to sense this in the narrative twists and deceptions (for both characters and audience) that survived the adaptation process and make the final film such a clever piece of genre trickery.

But the origins of what has become Lantana go back to 2 short dramas, Whiskey and Distant Lights, performed in 1993 at The Stables in Sydney. When asked to make a third piece to accompany them by Griffin Theatre Company Artistic Director Ros Horin, Bovell merged characters from the existing works and placed them into a new and larger drama, Speaking in Tongues, which Horin successfully directed for Griffin and Melbourne's Playbox. The characters we know from the film are all present in the play and there were, in the ‘merging’ process, some significant changes. These are at the centre of what can be called the story development, that search for the core meaning which will motivate and validate the existence of characters and their relationship to each other.

Firstly, Leon becomes a policeman investigating the disappearance of Valerie. In Distant Lights, Valerie is a woman who leaves messages for her husband on their answering machine. Two people who are not functioning as a couple frequently communicate via such technology. It saves having to talk to each other. But then Bovell had a form of textual epiphany–the focus would not be the wife but the husband. Bovell says in the Writer's Note introducing the script, “I distinctly remember the moment of discovering that this was not a story about a man who came home to find those messages at all but a story about a man who had been home all the time and heard those messages but failed to act.”

This is precisely the moment when writers know the story has shifted and taken on its own sustaining power. The story is really about 'moral weakness', a universal theme. In the film it is hidden from the audience for most of the story. Thus the film pretends to be a genre piece, recognisably a police hunt for a missing person, which then evolves into a murder with the audience deliberately mis-directed as to who the killer might be.

Yet, when considering the core premise of the play, the killer is, in a moral sense, Valerie’s husband because he did not prevent her death when he was in a position to do so. This now centres the question of adaptation on the differences in form between theatre and film, and a risky assertion–confirmed by Bovell in his Writer's Note–that a film could not be made based on the concept of moral weakness, but that a play could successfully present such an idea as its core.

This has something to do with the mode of presentation, but more significantly with the differences in the underlying rationale for financing a project. Bovell says, “It has been difficult to classify the film according to genre and its complicated multi-plot lines made it a nightmare to pitch to investors…Lantana is part mystery, part thriller and part journey through the labyrinth of love.”

The core experience of film writers lies in this realm of what will be seen as a story and what will not. Lantana is testimony that the core idea (of a play) can be subsumed into the text of a film without ‘loss’. The film is even more emotionally charged because it has a moral centre of such depth.

Lantana, screenplay by Andrew Bovell, Currency Press, Sydney 2001; Speaking in Tongues, by Andrew Bovell, Currency Press, Sydney 1998

With a 17-year career as a dance artist in the UK, an MA in Arts Management, 2 years as Program Manager at the London Dance Umbrella Festival, and then 3 working in theatre and dance at The British Council, Gregory Nash needed to keep moving. In January 2001 he took up the position as Director of Ausdance NSW.

Overseas, Ausdance is perceived as a very sophisticated organism, a dynamic network of professional service organisations working hand-in-hand with the profession. On arriving I found that it’s not so well integrated and in fact there is quite a lot of variation in management style and programs between offices. Ausdance is a pretty unique organisation nonetheless. The NSW office is the largest in the network and the best funded ($150, 000 from the NSW Ministry for the Arts in 2001). When I arrived there was a full-time staff of 4 great people and a very diverse portfolio of projects: a regional outreach program, the Dancers etc employment scheme, publications, and conferences.

But it became quickly apparent that we were in major financial trouble, so much so that we looked likely to close on May 31. The board and I needed to work quickly on a survival strategy and to convince the Ministry that we could continue to deliver a service, but within more pragmatic parameters. The Ministry awarded us a one-off stabilisation grant on condition that we restructure. I spent most of 2001 dealing with the implications of that —and with all of the instability and lack of security that comes with that process.

Since July 2001 we have had to make 2 staff members redundant, one of whom was the manager of outreach projects. In doing so we needed to communicate that the outreach work hasn’t stopped. Our 2 principal outreach projects in Western Sydney and Northern Rivers are now at the stage where they can be locally managed. Meanwhile Broken Hill Arts has made an application for funds to take on the project begun in the Far West by Jeff Meiners and Virginia Ferris and an Ausdance team last year.

Once I had a chance to really look at the organisation’s work the biggest surprise was that the independent dance sector didn’t really interface with Ausdance NSW—other than the ones employed by Dancers etc—and perceived it to be an organisation for teachers. The Ministry funds Ausdance to be a service provider for dance in the broadest sense. It is not an education organisation and, if it were, it should surely be funded by the Department of Education and Training. The difficulty is that it began as an association of dance educators and the stated aims and the national constitution are still largely biased towards education. Given that the Ministry for the Arts is the largest stakeholder in what we do, and its expectations are in relation to artistic activity, it’s time to revisit the mission and do some work on perceptions.

I always understood education as participation in artistic projects across the entire community spectrum, not specifically schools, although I never got a good feel for where Ausdance’s focus was.

That’s a classic Ausdance scenario: what does it do and who does it include? The answer so far has been anything, anywhere and anybody. It was clear to me that we could not sustain that financially, and an organisation without focus cannot realistically deliver against objectives. How can we possibly focus our work and aim to demonstrate integrity, thoroughness and rigour if our program is just a free-for-all?

One of the ways we have developed in the last year is by bringing on new board members. The board of 12 is elected from and by the membership every year and provide skills (legal, financial, strategic) that complement the existing dance expertise. At the July AGM last we had 30 members turn up—more than 3 times the attendance in 2000. They had a lot to say, which is great. I have no problem with being challenged and find this level of discussion and confrontation a very stimulating process. Out of that meeting has come some new connections, ideas and directions for the organisation.

I’ve heard people say that you’re a very talented, personable man in the wrong job.

I guess that’s a kind of compliment. Curious that no-one says any of this stuff to me! I spent my first few months here asking for feedback to what we were doing, creating consultation. The people in the dance community that I hear are upset with the directions we’re taking don’t tend to call or write. They seem to gather to mumble in corners. We had a series of consultations in May last year and the best attended—and with the most feisty interactions—was the one targeted at independent artists. I suspect that my biggest critics are the people who have sat on the sofa for years moaning about this or that but never really doing anything pro-active themselves. These people are not a dynamic force in the organisation or in the constituency and I am an advocate of action not rhetoric. Interesting that there’s a perception that the directorship of Ausdance NSW is not a job for a talented or personable man…

You’re quoted as saying that independent dance is a priority for you. How do Sydney Dance Company and the Opera House fit in to the picture.

Well firstly, the support of infrastructural development for independent dance is Ausdance NSW board policy in 2002, not my private whim, although it does sit well with me given my background. The independent dance sector in the UK is politicised, organised and well regarded by the mainstream.

I have worked at our relationship with Sydney Dance Company (SDC) because they too are members of Ausdance and have equal rights to attention as anybody else. The company is an important and influential player in the NSW and international dance community. And I don’t believe that independence needs to equal isolation. It’s surely time to move on from the separatist politics of the 80s. I have worked at building a rapport with companies like SDC, Bangarra and the Australian Ballet because their disengagement from Ausdance ultimately works against the development of new and independent work. SDC has partnered with us on a 2 week choreographic development workshop for professionals in December and will support this substantially by giving 4 studios rent free. This collaboration is as much about their wish to interact with the wider dance community and to nurture the development of talent within the company’s ranks, as our wish to provide a great professional development experience in an ideal setting.

Similarly, I have been talking to the Opera House about dance programming. Any time I appear to be ‘sleeping with the enemy’ I’ve actually got an eye to the rewards we will all reap from greater collaboration. I suppose there’s the fear that this will become so apparently glamorous that our work will only align with what one of our members wittily described as ‘consecrated artists.’ But I think there has to be a certain amount of that, because you need the people who get public attention to in turn bring attention to the artform or the work of the organisation.

Have you noticed any significant differences between dance in Australia and the UK?

The area of policy-making for dance just isn’t as advanced. Ausdance, for example, has aims and objectives that were written 25 years ago which have never been reviewed. We’re formulating a dance policy for Ausdance NSW which will hopefully inform a dance policy for NSW and I see Ausdance NSW as a principal conduit between artists and the funding agencies. Dance UK, a kind of sister organisation to Ausdance, is frequently contacted by the Arts Council, the regional arts bodies and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, to consult on policy. It feels confident in doing so because the membership of Dance UK is the artistic community of the UK—although it too has to represent too many different constituencies. I think that sort of role has been seen as being too audacious for Ausdance and there is a tendency here to keep your head down and not make too much noise in case it’s perceived as vulgar and pushy.

In 2002 the Ministry funding will support a minimal staffing structure—me and 2 part-time admin staff. Money that’s released from full-time posts will be used as seeding for 5 specific projects. Thankfully there’s no let up in people coming to us with ideas, but not all of those ideas can work—our projects this year have to be clearly focused on agreed objectives and have tangible outcomes. We get a lot of requests to organise one-off workshops. I turn these down as the time and resources they consume do not justify the poor take-up. But if, for instance, somebody came with an idea for a performance project over a 3-month period, targeted, say, at carers of small children, and the long-term aim is to set up a performing company of parents and children, that’s interesting because it has longevity, legacy and develops a specific area of practice.

In 2002 we’re running a series of twice-monthly admin training workshops for dance artists looking at budgeting, basic employment law, contracts etc. We’re also presenting a monthly seminar called Talking Dance (March 7, Spreading the Word with Karilyn Brown Director/Audience and Market Development, Australia Council) where key figures in the arts will talk about policy and current issues. We have to make sure there’s a regular platform for artists to learn, contribute, discuss and develop. We have turned the newspaper from a bitty community bulletin into a bi-monthly magazine which is informative and promotes the concept of networking regionally, nationally and internationally. The feedback has been really good and advertising has doubled, so clearly more people are seeing it as a way of getting their message across. Responses from some key cultural providers, like Sydney Festival or the Opera House, has been particularly good as this is a new engagement. I get emails from presenters and artists overseas saying they had no idea this really interesting stuff was going on in NSW.

I talk about creativity being the central spine of our work, and then the spine radiates these other wonderful things like community participation, educational interface and audience development. We’re working for and with a broad constituency of theatre-based dance artists, community-based dance artists, innovative teachers and others who, if they are moving their work forward, are carrying the whole constituency forward. By doing so they provide access and opportunities for everyone along the route, and that has to be a good thing.

Ausdance NSW, Pier 4 The Wharf, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, 2000,
tel 02 9241 4022 fax (02) 9241 1331

Melissa Kyu-Jung Lee only has one VHS copy left of Soshin: In your Dreams, the documentary she made about her parents coming to terms with her decision to become a filmmaker. Her parents have given all the rest to friends. From a strained relationship, leaving home at the age of 15, she has done them proud, graduating from the Australian Film Television and Radio School with the Film Australia AFTRS Graduation Award and Community Relations Commissions Award for her documentary A True Story about Love. Her films are winning prizes in Australia and abroad, and she is regarded as one of the bright new talents of Australian filmmaking.

Her 3 films produced while at AFTRS have a common theme of peeling back layers to seek the truth. In Secret Women’s Business, women shed the accessories that construct their public identities when they bathe naked together at the Korean bathhouse in Sydney.

Lee’s most intriguing documentary yet is A True Story about Love. Ditching the planned project about Korean-American documentary filmmakers, she instead returned from the United States with material which ended up as a documentary on her personal relationships. She did not dispense entirely with her interviews; their comments throughout the documentary provide critical perspectives on her relationships and the ethics of her filmmaking. While Lee is at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival meeting filmmakers celebrating an Asian-American identity, in her personal relationships she is discovering the complexities within that community. She has an affair with one of her subjects, Richard Kim, a Korean-American documentary filmmaker, then later becomes involved with his friend, the Japanese-American actor Mark Hayashi. She is torn between her sense of “coming home” in being with a Korean lover, and her mixed feelings about falling in love with a Japanese man, a relationship she knows her parents would disapprove of.

You work through your relationship with your parents in Soshin: In Your Dreams, and come to an understanding, but the way they view you is obviously still an issue.

Oh, it’s ridiculous, because I’m 30 and I still can’t tell my parents a lot of things because I’m scared I’m going to get into trouble.

Yeah, they are very proud, but at the same time that puts this new pressure on me to be what they want me to be, a successful, ethical and politically correct filmmaker.

A True Story about Love brings to mind comparisons with the ethical dilemmas in documentary filmmaking which were raised by Dennis O’Rourke’s Good Woman of Bangkok.

Our conversation revealed even more complex layers when Lee told me that 90 percent of her documentary was re-enacted.

I didn’t decide to make the film until I actually left San Francisco. I was still having a relationship with Mark long distance but I was in New York to interview some other filmmakers for my original idea and then I thought, oh, I can’t do this, this is so fucking boring, I’m just sick of talking about identity with filmmakers, and I thought what had been happening in my personal life with Mark and Richard said far more about identity in a really personal way.

I was in New York and I thought, okay, I’m going to forget about this project that I’m doing, I’m going to make a film about what happened to me in San Francisco. So then I rang Richard and Mark and asked them if they’d help me make the film and then I wrote a script and Mark was actually my script editor. I’d write the script, email it to him, he’d give me his comments, I’d email another draft etc etc. Then I flew back to San Francisco and shot all that stuff that you see.

In the documentary you’re seeing things as they evolve, but that’s not exactly the case; in a sense you’re replaying what happened and looking back at it from a different position.

It’s a different level of truth I suppose. All that stuff happened but I wasn’t shooting it as I was going along, it’s just presented that way and so the bit where I’m in bed with Richard, I mean how would I shoot that, and so Mark shot it.

You must have known more than 2 people in San Francisco. Did that make it more confrontational?

Well I did know other people in San Francisco but Mark wanted to learn more about cameras, so he and I were the production team.

It was hell. I had a really bad time. It was just the worst experience I’ve ever had, to the point where I cried every day. I had abandoned that (original) project so I was coming back with a completely different film and I didn’t know whether that was acceptable or not and I was really in love with Mark and the filmmaking process was putting enormous strain on our relationship.

My impression was the opposite because of the comment you make about questioning your intentions in getting together with Mark.

Well that was also in my mind. I think that in the film I paint myself, my character, as more of an exploiter, I play up that side of it. But there was this whole other side of it, I was feeling really vulnerable, I was really in love with Mark and didn’t want to lose him but also had the pressure of coming back with the film.

In the shoot were you mainly re-enacting things that happened or shooting what was happening then and there?

It was a kind of combination. We were shooting to a script and we’d say, okay, we’re going to do that scene where you got jealous about Richard and you got really angry and told me to leave. And we would start that and just improvise and sometimes it would take us on another tangent.

Richard called me one day and he just joked about it. Mark thought it could have gone deeper into the issues. My external supervisor at AFTRS showed it to a friend of hers who doesn’t know me and her response was “What a bitch.” I can understand that people might have that reaction, but in the end I think once [a] film is made, it has a life of its own. One of the most exciting things about A True Story about Love for me is that people hopefully end up with questions at the end of the film rather than answers.

Going full circle back to your parents—how do they feel about A True Story about Love?

I’ve been putting it off, I’m still trying to find the right time to sit and show it to them. I mean they won’t be happy about it. My sister saw it at last year’s WOW, [the film festival organised by Women in Film and Television] and she said, “I think it’s a good idea you don’t show Mum and Dad” (Laughs).

A True Story about Love, director/writer/producer Melissa Kyu-Jung Lee, Australian Film Television and Radio School, featured in competition at Flickerfest short film festival. It has won a range of awards including the Zonta Emerging Filmmaking Award at WOW (see Virginia Baxter's review), and First Prize (Ogawa Shinsuke Prize) in the New Asian Currents section at Yamagata Documentary Film Festival in Japan.

There’s little I like more than disagreeing with mainstream movie critics, and nothing I like less than writing a review of a film that has contributed nothing to my love of cinema or, in my view, to cinema as a dynamic artform. More bluntly: I don’t see the point of a review that merely endorses or, conversely, negatively criticises a cultural product or artform when the nation’s print media provide so little space for the cultural appreciation of that artform, particularly when its provenance is Australian.

By all accounts, in a column dedicated to critical writing about the Australian screen, I shouldn’t be writing about Gillian Armstrong’s Charlotte Gray at all, since I found it disappointingly nondescript and it’s not even strictly speaking Australian.

It’s impossible, however, to ignore the number of Australians in key creative roles: director Armstrong, editor Nicholas Beauman, director of photography Dion Beebe and star Cate Blanchett. Whether they contributed something specifically ‘Australian’ by virtue of their geocultural backgrounds is, in my view, dubious. But it’s probably why many Australians will see it.

It’s also why I saw it and, while finding it both dull and forced, it offers a useful place from which to enquire into the relationship between the dominant and national cinemas.

The aesthetic contributions of the DOP, editor and lead actor make it possible to avoid the auteurist trap of analysing it only in terms of ‘A Gillian Armstrong’ film. Its mixed production and financial provenance (Scottish, British, US) provide a distance from indulging in either of the two dominant modes of Australian film criticism which Tom O’Regan terms “debunking” and “remythologising” (Australian National Cinema, London & New York: Routledge, 1996).

In her informative monograph, The Films of Gillian Armstrong (The Moving Image, ATOM, St Kilda, 1999), Felicity Collins writes that these 2 modes of criticism result in creating Australian cinema as the “bad” or “good” object. The former longs for our national cinema to resist the gravitational pull of the dominant aesthetic field. The latter, as practiced by Jocelyn Robson and Beverley Zalcock in their book Girls Own Stories: Australian and New Zealand Women’s Films (London: Scarlet, 1997), involves appraising Armstrong’s films as progressive reworkings of classical Hollywood movies.

Charlotte Gray is, potentially, a crowd-puller. A beautiful, young Scottish secretary (who types the words of others—geddit?) is strong-minded and therefore sexually appealing. In 1943, as a result of her liberal, middleclass upbringing, Charlotte has Romantic, Francophile sensibilities: she knows her Stendahl and Proust, despises the Vichy Government and identifies strongly with heroism in the form of the French Resistance.

The quest for her first and only true love gives rise to her desire for self-expression. She volunteers as an agent and is parachuted into occupied France. Here she makes some literally deadly blunders, fails to save 2 winsome young Jewish boys, and falls for a handsome Communist resistance fighter (Billy Crudup). All with fake accents that beggar belief (wouldn’t the Nazis have noticed a group of French people incapable of speaking French?).

The film is not unremittingly awful. I admired the cinematography (Dion Beebe), one of the performances in particular (Anton Lesser), and liked the plot (woman finds her own voice risking life for love as an historically sanctioned terrorist) and the underlying idea (subtly risk-taking, anti-sentimentalising director transforms ultra-safe, sentimental novel).

Many movies have offered less and yet provided far more—Brief Encounter, for example. To be fair, there are also movies that have offered much more and delivered even less—The English Patient springs to mind. Less is often more. This is a lesson that filmmakers ranging from Frances Coppola’s first cut of Apocalypse Now to Rachel Perkins’ recent bittersweet One Night The Moon, seem to know almost instinctively. The concept does not inform Charlotte Gray.

Armstrong is not incapable of subtlety. In Little Women, a film that gives nostalgia a fine name, she successfully resists cliché, wresting the story from its literary roots and, as Collins explains, quietly says something “about cinema’s appropriation of authorship and voice, writing and performance, genre and style.” She can draw upon a knowledge of both dominant and national cinemas to offer films with their “own ways of seeing and thinking and feeling.”

This is not evident in Charlotte Gray, which drums up a storm with Blanchett’s gale force performance of a woman lacking the introspection that we know she can deliver from films such as Elizabeth, Oscar and Lucinda and even The Shipping News (in which she is superb). Blanchett’s solo performance leaves a vacuum in a film requiring an ensemble approach that is rarely filled.

Sebastian Faulks’ novels (Charlotte Gray is the third of a trilogy) are intensely romantic stories written by someone who appears to lack an understanding of Romanticism, which featured new forms and structures, especially those that challenged readers’ traditional expectations. Julien Sorel, the Romantic hero of Stendahl’s The Red and the Black that we see Charlotte reading in the opening sequence, was certainly aware of the void created by his moral indeterminacy (neither black nor white, but grey, you might say).

This spills over into Armstrong’s film with its heroine who claims “good must triumph over evil” but which disconcertingly lacks awareness of its absent moral centre. All that the world-shattering events represented or referred to ever signify is a series of episodes in the pages of Charlotte’s personal book of self-discovery. Both Hollywood and national Australian cinema can achieve more than this.

Charlotte Gray, director Gillian Armstrong, distributor UIP, opens nationally in May

DV soothsayer Peter Broderick’s key-note address at SPAA Fringe left the audience savouring the taste of New Digital Freedom while swallowing the hyper-syncretic rantings of a peachy preacher who didn’t seem attuned to the irony that Independence is now a Hollywood by-product. President of US-based Next Wave Films, Broderick channelled a course through the recent history of digital cinemas, assimilating a disparate collection of films and filmmaking practice into the general rubric of New Digital Cinema (for list of films see: www.nextwavefilms.com/ulbp/bullfront). A self-help guru for filmmakers disenfranchised by the American Studio system, Broderick’s motivational lecture celebrated the impact of DV on traditional filmmaking models without exploring the more problematic aspects of self-financing and access, essential tenets of DV practice as upheld by Next Wave Films.

A company of the Independent Film Channel (managed and operated by Bravo Cable Network), Next Wave Films is a decidedly sticky phenomenon. More a leaking, sugar-syrup residue than a wave, it offers an “alternative universe of filmmaking” in a paradigm that posits New Digital Freedom in an antithetical relationship with Hollywood (see: www.nextwavefilms.com/metaphor). Next Wave simultaneously (and in contradiction) presents itself as a training ground “created to help exceptionally talented new filmmakers launch their careers” through that dreamed-of portal to Universe LA.

Unlike the Danish movement Dogme 95 (which inspired it) there is nothing renegade about Agenda 2000 (Next Wave’s digital cinema funding program). As the difference in nomenclature suggests, Dogme was/is a philosophised, collective approach towards a new filmmaking practice made possible by technical developments, while Agenda is a commercially driven response to Dogme and other DV practices that have subsequently emerged. Next Wave’s focus on scouting for new talent, providing finishing funds and promoting output, suggests a simple motivation towards maximising profits while minimising investment. As an operational mode, this hardly embodies the spirit of New Digital Freedom.

The Independence-is-Next-to-Godliness attitude which sustains the cult of the new and emerging filmmaker is widely supported in Australia by the activities of IF Media (publishers of IF Magazine/Inside Film and producers of the IF Awards), Popcorn Taxi, Tropfest and various other short and long film festivals. Despite aligning themselves with the spiritualism of New Digital Freedom and the dirty glamour of Guerilla filmmaking, these organisations also sustain a filtering system that benefits funding agencies and industry (SPAA) proper. If the multitude of wannabe filmmakers are conveniently encouraged to self-fund, using unpaid cast and crew etc then the agency or producer (like the Hollywood Studios) is free to perv from the wings, ready to assimilate “exceptional talent.” In this framework Independence is complicit with (or a by-product of) the commercial industry.

SPAA Fringe contributes further to the filtering process: pitching itself in the language of Independence, “invent your future”, while producing a conference in which the “telling it like it is” approach overshadows the “imagine how it could be.” The conference brief, to “demystify the fundamentals of development, funding, production, post-production, marketing and distribution” provides limited scope for innovation and is designed primarily to re-institute current practice. Ironically, as the conference progressed, Broderick’s oracular pop-fizz (of which he was veritable fountain as both panel and audience member) became a progressive, refreshing antidote to the acerbic, anecdotal dryness of the same-old pantheon of local experts whose prime purpose is to tell all the wannabes to be just like them.

“HDTV: the future is now” convener John Collette (Digital Media, College of Fine Arts, UNSW), in a brave attempt to counter the religious zeal of the oracle, contested “The future is never now, now is only ever now.” His fellow panellists John Flemming (AAV), John Bowering (Lemac), Martin Gardiner (Planet X) and Dominic Case (Atlab) seemed determined to prove that “now” should only ever attempt to emulate the past in a session that never made it beyond high technical definitions and ruminations over HD’s capacity to replicate film. Any genuine engagement with the possibilities of the new medium (aesthetic or otherwise) or discussion of HD’s position in relation to the low-fi end of Revolution DV was sadly absent (as Broderick pointed out from the audience).

The documentary panel was supposed to focus on the very relevant topic “new technology and new markets: exploring the future of documentary.” While John Hughes (then Commissioning Editor, Documentary, SBS) articulated the changing scope of new documentary forms with a concrete example and Rob Wellington (producer of the Native Title Revolution CD-ROM) discussed the potential of forms which encouraged “the user to find their own stories”, the response from other speakers was surprisingly tepid. Facilitator Susan MacKinnon’s (Film Finance Corporation) final summary of the discussion was a disappointingly retrograde: “the technology is irrelevant, what matters is a good story.”

The funding bodies did their annual show-and-tell on recent policy and funding initiatives. The AFC’s National Digital Access Initiative, a program designed to supply mobile digital production equipment through the Screen Development Organisations in each state, is a proactive attempt to address issues of access in relation to DV. It also conveniently overshadows equally pressing issues to do with the ever diminishing focus on short film funding and the move away from active, responsible development of entry level production. ScreenWest was the only agency, Federal or State, to articulate a position which remotely encapsulated the spirit of New Digital Freedom and to provide a funding strategy for the development of DV production.

The panels that attempted nothing beyond “telling it like it is” were ultimately the most satisfying (which of course says nothing for our capacity to “imagine how it could be”). Simply pitched at an audience of filmmakers who need concrete information and case studies to inform their own practice, “Know Your Music Rights” and “Marketing Tools” were engaging and relevant forums. Vincent Sheehan (producer of Mullet) did an excellent job of facilitating the potentially dry discussion on music rights in a manner which encouraged the audience to be very active (few of the panels left adequate time for questions, a big oversight in a conference designed for new and emerging filmmakers).

The most invigorating moments of the conference spanned the spectrum of emerging (the Fringe Pitch) and established (Jan Chapman’s closing discussion). Craig Palmer’s truly inspired (and winning) pitch for Wheeler & Bent, a television series about 2 physically challenged cops, was a bitter, sarcastic take on the whole pitch process and cleverly gave very little away about the actual project. Palmer’s perfectly sustained comic critique of standard commercial practice was echoed in Jan Chapman’s intelligent and generous conversation with Laurie Zion that closed the conference. For Jan, “Independence is something you fiercely hold onto.” It is not, in other words, a place you hang out until you find that elusive portal to Universe LA.

SPAA Fringe 2002 needs to work on its pitch: provide a productive training model which sustains industry entrance, or actively and aggressively pushes for new forms of Independent filmmaking. Both these options can be packaged and sold without recourse to the easy and overused hype of New Digital Freedom and Guerilla Glamour; and without exhausting Peter Broderick’s welcome by using him as a key guest 4 years in a row.

SPAA (Screen Producers Association Australia) Fringe, The George Cinema, Melbourne, Nov 12-14. www.spaa.org.au

The Golden Eye Awards at the University of Technology, Sydney, for student work from the media arts program, is always an enjoyable event. The awards for last year, held in late October, featured lots of guests, impressive judges, an entertaining MC (director Graham Thorburn, just announced as Head of Directing at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School) and some good speeches. And the films were great. The program was packed and the range of production was exciting, from serious documentary through to wacky multimedia, everything made with a sense of experimentation, inventiveness and love of the medium that more than made up for the obviously tight budgets. Innovation, film knowledge and resourcefulness were there in equal measure. There was even a full length documentary, Jewel in the Garbage (Janine Jones), made in the Middle East with a sense of great commitment. Prizes were awarded for drama, documentary, experimental, and new and convergent media, and for direction, cinematography, soundtrack, art direction, editing, and script, and organisers had obtained sponsorship for prizes, mostly in kind. It was a good night.

Meanwhile, the juggernaut that Tropfest has become rolls inexorably on. A full-page story in the Sydney Morning Herald on some of the filmmakers working on this year’s entries mentions that organisers are confidently expecting over 600 works to be especially made for the event this year—600 that will be narrowed down to 16 finalists. There have been some changes of personnel; festival founder John Polson has taken a sideways step, with Fashion Week director Simon Lock coming on board as executive director, but everyone seems happy, the publicity machine’s in full gear, the sponsorship drive is reaping results, and the audience keeps getting bigger—more than 100,000 people watched the festival either live or in simulcast last year, and they’re talking 300,000 by 2004. Well, perhaps not everyone’s happy—there have been a number of comments about the sameness and predictability of the films leading to audience burnout, and with sponsorship not meeting its targets last year, this year might be even tougher.

Tropfest is not only the biggest and best publicised of a raft of such short film events, it’s also the biggest generator by far of films. It sometimes seems as if every suburb, organisation, major event, and even neighbourhood cafe is running a short film festival—IF magazine has just compiled its calendar for the first half of this year, and has between 40 and 50 short film festivals, awards and competitions listed. There’s the 15×15 Film Festival (make a 15 minute film in 15 hours), White Gloves, Quick Flicks on the Central Coast of NSW. Most of these events attract 40 or 50 entries.

Paul Harris, director of the St Kilda Short Film Festival, says, “we get a lot of films from Tropfest and they’re mainly sketch comedy films—they tend to be the kind of films that are made by friends as a lark—and they have a certain house style, a quirky, offbeat one theme-ness, a certain sameness.”

He believes that Tropfest is potentially a fantastic idea for a short film festival, but thinks that to encourage better quality films and more diversity there needs to be the perception that it’s a festival that takes in all sorts of filmmaking practices. “But perhaps there’s something about the event, that huge audience, everyone out to have a good time, that’s conducive to the success of the one-joke film, conducive to watching a comedy. Even the judges seem to be having the same kind of night as the audience, and they don’t really take the films seriously. If you screened more serious or subtle films you’d probably get people calling them boring.”

The St Kilda Film Festival is Australia’s oldest stand alone short film festival, and this year will be its 19th. In the last couple of years the festival has received about 500 entries, from which about 150 films are selected for screening over 6 days. “We probably see about 200 to 220 that we’d like to screen, and it’s that last stage of the decision-making process that’s really hard. We select on quality, and there are quite a lot of films that are good without being excellent,” says Harris. He estimates that about 100 films come from students at AFTRS, Victorian College of the Arts, UTS and other film courses, and is pleased that there’s some particularly exciting documentary work appearing. “Every year we get about 8 or 10 productions from the Footscray City College, where they have been made using very scant resources, but they show a lot of potential.”

Then there are a substantial number of films made by established or up-and-coming filmmakers with the assistance of state or federal funding bodies (there’s some good work coming out of South Australia, he believes, where the SA Film Corporation appears to be very supportive), and another large group made entirely independently, often on credit card, including about 30 to 40 films which come from Tropfest. “There seems to be a circuit of these sorts of films, but it’s a bit harder to tell if they were made for some of the other competitions, or just made.”

The short film awards that have been part of the Sydney Film Festival have been sponsored by Dendy Films for 14 years (previous sponsors in their 32 year history were Benson and Hedges and Greater Union), and the numbers of films entered have been growing every year, with 268 entries last year (entries close this year on February 18). The fiction category has been the main area of growth, and had to be divided into short and long fiction in 1995 to try and cope. Last year there were 136 entries in the short fiction category. Jenny Neighbour, Manager, SFF Programs, estimates that Tropfest films make up from a third to a half of those entries, “but we get a lot of student films, and a number from more established filmmakers as well,” she adds. “The entry fee of $25 is probably a bit of a deterrent. We also get about 30 to 40 films entered in the festival proper, where there’s no entry fee, that are probably Tropfest or other such competition films.”

“You realise there is this explosion of low budget short filmmaking happening when you see ad after ad in every Filmnet, of people looking for free crew and free cast members. We’ve even had calls from people wanting to know what kind of film to make to get into the festival!”

This year, for the first time, the Sydney Film Festival will be pre-selecting in some categories of the Dendy Awards. “The numbers of entries we’re getting make it very difficult for the judges, who give us their time and enthusiasm, to do a proper job—there’s just so many short films you can see over a weekend, the way these awards are structured. It’s asking too much, so pre-selection just has to be the way to go.”

Once upon a time people wanted to become filmmakers because they had things to say; now it seems that they just want to become filmmakers. And the digital camera has made filmmaking more accessible than ever. But it takes more than a camera to make a memorable film; that’s why a night like the Golden Eye Awards holds so much promise for the future of filmmaking.

Golden Eye Awards, University Hall, University of Technology Sydney, Oct 19; Tropfest 2002 screens nationally Feb 24

Morphologies took not only the form of an exhibition of new works of art for show, it consisted of a series of aesthetic propositions. At its most challenging, Morphologies sought to suggest that moving images were viable within the realms of fine art, whose static and spatial nature traditionally distinguishes it from the more linear, temporal arts of music and literature. The 3 presiding questions with technological and new media arts is first, whether it is a passing fad, and second, whether it is a separate genre, or third, whether it simply continues aspects of previous genres in a new way. Bridging, or solving this—at least for the short term—is interactivity. The question is, is it really as inclusive as we would have ourselves believe? More than any institution in the world so far, ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie), the gargantuan centre for new media arts in Karlsruhe in Germany, has been responsible for enabling media arts and its attendant debates to flourish. While staking ambitious claims for a still emergent genre, Morphologies represented the institutional nexus between ZKM artists (including 2 of its directors, Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel) and Australians who have recently worked there.

In the Black Forest region near the Swiss border, Karlsruhe is situated in the region of Baden-Württemberg whose capital, Stuttgart, is home to Daimler-Benz, and one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. Karlsruhe, a relatively minor city, is nevertheless graced with several significant collections and buildings to house them, beginning with the state museum, a rococo palace completed in 1785. The art academy in Karlsruhe is remembered as the place where Anselm Kiefer was a student and where Baselitz once taught painting and Stephan Balkenhol sculpture. And the argument for a centre for new media arts was no doubt bolstered by Karlsruhe having one of Europe’s largest institutes for computer sciences. By virtue of all these factors the founding director, Heinrich Klotz, persuaded the city to put up DM 154 million (at least 165 million in today’s Australian dollars) for the renovation of a former munitions factory built in 1919. Dreamt of in 1985, realised in 1988, the structure redesigned by Peter Schweger is so large that the megalomania of Wilhelmine Germany is not forgotten: the facade alone is the length of 6 Olympic swimming pools.

ZKM houses the Institutes for Visual Media and for Music & Acoustics, a Media Museum whose purpose is to show recent examples of new media experiments and historical antecedents side-by-side, and a Museum for Contemporary Art whose main purpose is to place examples of new media together with those of painting, sculpture, photography and object-installation. For a long time, by policy and example, this museum was unmatched in its vision to reorient and restructure visual awareness to the increasingly digitalised future. The main departments are complemented with a variety of visual and audial reserves embodied in the Mediathek, boasting comprehensive interdisciplinary material that links art, music, literature and the moving image. Finally, ZKM has offered long, short and intermittent residencies for artists to develop their work and to take advantage of the sophisticated equipment and assistance. The collaboration SKAN shown in Morphologies began with 2 Australian students developing their practice in this environment. They are the youngest of a great many Australian artists who have availed themselves of the technological milk and honey that ZKM appeared to have in abundance. Only funding constraints of late, and some internal wrangling between the 2 museums, has slowed the progress of such programs.

Klotz envisaged his ‘Digital Bauhaus’, as it has been called, as the place that elided and renegotiated fixed ‘isms’ and laid the ground for the established definition of new media as a fluid and boundary-disrupting tendency. Whether this is so is open to question, but I am inclined to the idea that too much openness in certain hands has its commensurate dangers. Klotz repeatedly insisted that the essential criterion was quality—needless to say; but with a policy of openness this can be a standard devilishly hard to monitor. And this unresolved, gapingly open area contributed to Klotz’s downfall.

The principal hallmarking of Morphologies is not only technological art (because, depending on where and when you are in the world, new media can mean a voluminous amount of things—a catch-all for all that breaks with the norm), but interactivity, a principle that seems to be gaining notice. Now, I am genuinely guarded, if not sceptical, about interactivity—in an exclusive and an overarching sense. I might ask artists and curators (and an acquiescent public) at this point whether they are drawn to the notion of interactivity as a result of economic rationalism which says that we need to seek out avenues that openly encourage and involve public awareness (since we are all now ‘accountable’ in one way or another). This is a philosophy of enforced inclusion, something of a draconian democratisation.

More often than not, with interactivity, viewers are lulled into believing that they are creating something for themselves, when the permutations conceived of by the artist are relatively limited. In such cases, the success or failure of a work can be determined quite quickly for the way that such limitations are taken into account and woven into a tight aesthetic fabric. At worst, the choices themselves, constrained as they may be, can inhibit the work’s cohesion and cause it to disperse and founder, the viewer giving up early on this random choosing, not knowing where choices and combinations may lead. Artists and curators need to keep in mind that the inclination of the viewer to participate in a work of art can be limited. Making art is about choices—intuitive, refined and reasoned choices all at once—and everyday viewers are perhaps not that interested in integrating their own choices along with the work they have come to see and consider. On the other hand, interactivity can be a powerful tool to penetrate an artist’s personal logic of assembly. The viewer literally moves within a variety of frames, much like inhabiting the artist’s dream for a short while. The feeling of being active brings with it an unusual degree of confidence; viewers are led to believe that they are partaking directly in the artist’s methods. With the viewer presumably responsible for shuffling through frames or images or structuring the work’s tempo and rhythm, so far, interactivity involves 2 approaches: the installation modifies according to specific triggers activated by a viewer’s movement; or, through voluntary prompts, the program—and supposedly the work of art—is the raw material for the viewer’s own realisation. Overall, Morphologies largely enabled the latter.

The 3 works that stood out were by Susan Norrie, Agnes Hegedüs and Ian Howard, for they clearly exemplified solutions, problems and strategies which interactivity has provoked and inspired up until now. All 3 suggested very strongly that interactivity is a form of collage but whether the artists discerned this intentionally is another matter; the 3 works shared the political intent which made, and still makes, collage—with its collapsing of spaces, languages and styles—so sympathetic. Hegedüs’ Things Spoken was a series of identities coupled to their favourite or most meaningful objects, whetting the viewer’s curiosity, ultimately remarking that the personal importance of things is both arbitrary and permanently foreign to anyone else. It was the most literary work, better suited to a website. As a CD-ROM, it sat rather coldly within the gallery. (The exhibition was accompanied by an independent publication dis(LOCATIONS) with DVD, intended as a portable, personal, digital micro-exhibition.)

Ian Howard’s SweetStalking was an elaborate grid of images each in a recessed frame comprising other distorted images. Each frame was an emblem for a brief scene, so that the viewer could independently compose a broken sequence. The overly disjointed nature of the work was compensated for by the intriguing and, in places, poetic nature of the scenes.

Susan Norrie’s Defile was a cogent piece, surprisingly harmonious with her non-time-based works. The line between political and non-political work is always anathema, since the most oblique can carry the most forceful message, delivered by stealth. Norrie’s work is characterised by a dramatic coupling of the most obvious with the most abstruse. On one level, it was about birds that had been incapacitated through damage done to the environment but, on another, the viewer was made into a kind of vivisectionist, a clinical observer, allied to technology rather than nature. Since the viewer was made to skip and edit the work and was given the power to alter the speed of the scenes, a certain push-and-pull was inescapable: the necessary abstract uselessness of art vs the moral imperative in images that are provocative and emotive.

As a kind of climax to the entire exhibition was Dennis Del Favero’s Angelo Nero or dark angel—about the Sydney boy, agonised by his father missing in service in the Balkans, who brought a gun to school—that inescapably spelled out the media arts to be ‘hot’ in McLuhan’s sense of the term, wrapping viewers up in its mysteries and, in this case, arresting them within a psycho-sexual drama that we willingly repress or ignore. If the eeriness of Warhol’s Death and Disaster series lies in alerting us to how desensitised we have become (thus ‘cold’) to tragedy processed by the media, then Del Favero mobilises an authentic terror withheld by the media, one that we prefer to relegate to the realms of fiction.

Morphologies, curators Nicholas Tsoutas & Nick Waterlow, Artspace & Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Nov 22-Dec 15

Peter Weibel, Panoptic Society 2001
interactive DVD-ROM, ZKM & Interactive Cinema Research, UNSW

Over the past few years, one is increasingly able to detect the emergence of empirical approaches to the study of new media as the current dominant paradigm. The empirical desire to fix all that is virtual into concrete is coextensive with a certain weariness or distrust of the excesses of ‘postmodern theory’ that came to characterise much work in media and cultural studies and contemporary art during the 80s and 90s. Work carried out in sociology, international relations, and architecture has also taken this empirical turn.

These fields all share a desire to ground their objects of study, to retrieve them from the ravages of speculative ‘theory’ and, in doing so, perhaps begin a process of reconstructing disciplinary identities. Arguably, all of this coincides with the perceived displacement of national and local communities wrought by communications media such as satellite TV, the internet, and the mobile phone. Very real displacement across social scales accompanies the structural transformations of national and regional economies in a post-Soviet era in which populations have become increasingly mobile at transnational levels as professional or unskilled labour, as refugees, or as tourists.

It is the task of empirical studies to describe and analyse these various transformations, yet to delimit such work to the scholastic mode of production is to overlook the ways in which such research corroborates the interests of capital which, in the corporatisation of universities, finds the current empirical paradigm as the new frontier of rationalisation. Researchers, or information workers, in many instances are providing data analysis that has commercial applications in ascertaining consumer habits and, in the case of new media studies, there is the attempt to foreclose the myriad ways in which users engage with media forms and content. It’s all quite desperate. And it’s all related to a quest to capture markets.

What, you may ask, has any of this got to do with (dis)LOCATIONS, a conference on new media, aesthetics and culture? Well, quite a bit I reckon. To dislocate something is to put it out of joint, but this movement corresponds with a relocation in some other place, space or form. Herein lies the commercial interest in new media. The speakers at (dis)LOCATIONS all conducted an empirics of new media in so far as they engaged in describing the various forms, objects, experiences and artworks that constitute new media. It was at the level of analysis, however, that my doubts crept in, for here I saw the key problem of an empirics of new media aesthetics: the failure, in a number of instances, to understand that the aesthetics of artworks, software applications and technologies are conditioned by social relations as well as the theoretical paradigms through which analysis proceeds.

Continuing his work on media archaeology and post-media or software theory found in The Language of New Media (2001), Lev Manovich (see interview) focused on a very particular idea about what constitutes the materiality of new media, and hence aesthetics. In excavating a history of the present for new media, Manovich’s work is important in that it maps out recent design applications, animation practices, and compositing techniques, for example, that operate in discrete or historically continuous modes. However, his approach assumes form as a given yet forgets the socio-political arrangements in which media forms are necessarily embedded in, and which imbue any visual (not to mention sonic) taxonomy or typology with a code: ie a language whose precondition is the possibility for meaning to be produced.

The aesthetic that constitutes a code is only possible through a process of articulation with modes of practice, of interpenetrative moments, of duration. The political dimension of aesthetics is manifest in the power relations that attend such processes, and in order to undertake an analysis of such assemblages, attention would need to be paid, as Manovich intimated, to the institutional settings of new media and their uses, be they in the office, at home, or in networked gaming arcades, for example.

The papers by Anna Munster and Darren Tofts provided exemplary instances of locating what I would call a processual aesthetics of new media. For Munster, this consisted of situating the internet within “an ecology of contagious information” of “glitches” and “relays” that constitutes net affects within “networked or distributed culture”. Her thesis on hate sites on the web was particularly fascinating in that it contested the doctrine of fluid identities that still characterises much theorisation of cyberculture. Munster gave an account of the way hate sites reproduce the institution of the family, with different members possessing generational literacies of hatred. At one level, the sites perform a pedagogical function for younger members of a family not inculcated into a culture of hatred against others. At another level, a literacy of design emerges as users distribute the symbolic codes and language of hate within a network of secrecy.

Tofts, more than any other speaker, displayed an acute sense of the presence of an audience within the conventions of a conference setting. This was no slap-dash paper, but a finely executed performance that extended the architectonics of a 45 minute paper segued with 6 tracks—Captain Beefheart, John Zorn, and the loony toons of Carl Stalling, among others—into the realm of the audience, creating a poetics of recombinatory, co-evolutionary aesthetics that are dis/integrated within “disjunctive media”. The filing card system used by Nabokov can be situated adjacent to Beckett’s “oxymoronic tension” and Pierre Boulez’s “multi-linear system” of (re)composing music; the “calculated discordance” of Beefheart with Zorn’s “block structures”, all relocating as lessons in not just a prehistory of digital media but a recombination of a media continuum, or what Tofts calls the “Zurbrugg effect”: that which mines “a trans-historical rather than epochal model of the avant-garde.” (See Obituary: Nicholas Zurbrugg, p12)

Roaming the stage with a clip-on mic, James Donald brought it all back home in the closing session, invoking Walter Benjamin on aesthetics as disorientating and the limits of the communicable as one experiences the kaleidoscopic affects of metropolitan life, conditioning the need for (new) media forms such as cinema in Benjamin’s time, or text messaging in ours. Finally we were reminded—and it was a pity other speakers weren’t around to hear this—that media as a technology is not determined by technical developments, but when technical possibilities coincide with other economic and social imperatives. Here was the much needed antidote to Chairman and CEO of ZKM Peter Weibel’s earlier satellite delivered paper which, quite bizarrely, maintained a transmission view of communication coupled with peculiar ideas on neuro-electrical perception as the basis for best understanding new media technologies. Weibel’s technically impaired audio delivery was further corrupted by the noise of old technology: a sliding semi-legible overhead transparency along with the jittery distractions of the Karlsruhe located camera operator.

As unfashionable as it may be, I do like a sense of closure to public fora. I find it handy if at least a few of the threads of a conference can be recombined, and I think such a practice presents a pleasant challenge to speakers. Instead, the final word left me (and I think others) with a sense of having been hijacked from a discussion that could have been, but did not happen. Ian Howard chaired the session and for one reason or another (probably the dictates of a last minute program amendment) decided to invite Jeffrey Shaw up as a respondent, but then proceeded to ask him to summarise some of the key intentions and aspects of his art practice and experiences as Director of the Visual Media Institute at ZKM. Given that he was in many respects the showpiece of the event, we’d heard and seen quite a bit from Shaw throughout the symposium, and even he looked rather indifferent about such a request. Here was a man on the brink of being relocated.

(dis)LOCATIONS, The Centre for Interactive Cinema Research at College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, in conjunction with Cinemedia /Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne and ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany; Cinemedia at Treasury Theatre, Melbourne, Nov 30-Dec 1 2001

I try to opt out of definitional disputes by telling myself, and a succession of po-faced sceptical students, that it’s the interpretive mode, not the hotspot clickability—the writing/reading processes, not the networked product per se—that makes stuff hypertextual. Living in Aphasia is a case in point.

Lucy Francis has used the most transparent of interfaces: a top frame with each letter of the title hyperlinked, each node with 2 sections of differently-typeset text squashed round the screen’s edges by a large Flash (more/less-) interactive animation. So far so unhypertexty.

But it uses the documentary-collage history of a fictional South-East Asian country, in a fugue of ironic voices, to allegorise aphasia, a mental disorder where language comprehension and memory—vocabulary, syntax, semantics, contextual cues—are impaired, and the reading experience is hyperhypertextual. Interpretation, translation, culture (toxic-)shock, xenophobia, hystericised stereotyping, postcolonial historiography, and the Kristevan abject are all mobilised and linked here. The styles and genres slide between pidgin Kontiki-tour-brochure to nostalgic oral history, from national/folk mythologies to affectless diagnostic notes.

These are dangerous territories (aside from the gratuitous if delicious possibility of One Nation as a confederacy of Wernicke’s aphasics). Mawkish didacticism lurks and occasionally intrudes, the riptide tonal shifts of satire and empathy are sometimes mismanaged and some of the collisions don’t work. For instance, when an over-lyrical poem is juxtaposed with major head injuries (okay, some creative writing teachers would appreciate the connection).

More often the result is a deft catachresis in 2-ply writing: the fictional voice, then clinical/medical commentary or exegesis, each metaphorising and sabotaging the other, played off in the central interactive animation. It’s prismatic with allegorical connections and layers, but from compact, simple writing, mostly eluding the pitfalls of didactic overstatement or hectoring, overburdened metaphors. It’s not possible, as an engaged reader, not to track extensions of colonisation practices to the psyche and mental illness as discourse and discipline (Foucauldian too)…discovery, naming, mapping and proprietorship, institutionalisation, expropriation, the vicious circles of disempowerment, demonisation, alienation, etc.

Yet the visuals and animations are picturebook naïf and slick-smooth-perky, the language satirically disclaiming depth. Almost incidentally you begin to notice the chilling aptness of some of the animations, like the jail cell with its erratic monocular vision, skittering across the screen, peristaltic, preventing full context, language devolving and twisting, exasperatingly on the edge of always-deferred coherence.

This is often a reader’s first impressions of Mez, who is—um, yes, well, er, a prolific multimedia poet and net artist? “Net.wurker” is her own term. She writes in a cryptic-but-decodable, fissured, Joycean-cummings and rhizomic language dubbed “mezangelle”, forcing the reader to puzzle out and open up possibilities even before any technical interactivity/multimodality a la Flash kicks in. A brief taste, where she writes about her initial web encounters:

this net.wurked reality ][& by this i’m n.ferring a state of passive flux, where my hands first crab-crouched a keyboard & slid ova a su.Pine mouse, waiting 4 a con][cussive][nection hit][

Java Museum is showcasing a cross-section of her work 1995-2002. The scope and depth, the reflexive prescient analysis, and the sheer intricate, exquisite, evocative, enigmatic verbal nanotech—extraordinary. Explore it. She’s woefully under-reviewed/funded/analysed and oddly underappreciated in Oz. Check out her new work, Monitored. It’s a kind of condensed manifesto: the corporeal in (not just versus) the machinic, the visceral emotion phrased in coded calligrams, the vividly-dramatic underneath the fixed text. It consists of crossword-Scrabbled diagrams using individual keyboard letters, which on rollover unfold into poetry, soldered on circuit/chip schematics in glorious Mondrian colours. The word-total’s tiny but the rabbit-hat trick with interpretations and proliferating readings is amazing, clued in by the sonogram/ultrasound pulse and the expanded-title “S][ervo]all Monito.red][heart] [Beats”.

The essay is the antonym of mezangelle. Both Linda Carroli and Adrian Miles have produced work that makes thermodynamics out of critical-versus-creative writing, despite the often-reductive textualism of academic discourse (linguistics as a critical Esperanto) and its limited set of rigid ratified teleological print genre types.

Carroli plays more ‘traditionally’, intimating a simple book-ness with “Contents”, which turns out to be a word-cluster, each activating a pop-up with text-chunks from a digressive Montaignesque ‘essay.’ They seem self-evidently closed but are networked by hotlinked words and cross-indexed footnoting, and by the ruminative voices that thread in and out of narrative, quotation, allusion and modulating rhythms of imagery (poetic and graphic).

More radically, Miles is attempting an interactive research poetics, using the model of blogs (web-logs) and essayistic structures but using “vogs”: low bit-rate networked videos that assume and anticipate interactivity within the video stream/s, using Quicktime. With a Scandanavian straight face, he’s also set out a praxis manifesto. The goal is to take the torsion between text and multimedia and instead of limiting their relationship to one of illustration, explanation, formatting, digression or scaffolding, to make it genuinely synaesthesic, unpickable. It’s ‘writing’ towards an interactive desktop video vernacular, the written, verbal, visual, sonic cinematic, multipath and narrative elements in flux: personal, experimental, performative, self-aware in all senses.

Again, the logistical design is familiar, intuitively modular and simple, but the relational layerings, the densely-allusive and cumulative diaristic associations, the competing timelines and analogic (I made that up: argument by concretised analogy) powered by an intriguing verbal-visual interactivity…these are both complex and addictive. It’s capable of sustaining voyeuristic narrative and Oprah confessional pleasures as well as the mise-en-abyme meta-critique, close-focus film analysis and essayistic forms of his Glenn Ford Searching project.

PS: For a productively focused list dealing with net.wurk art/writing, complete with international guests and scaffolded discussion topics, join empyre, set up by Melinda Rackham

There’s a kind of Virilio-vertigo acceleration that virtuality lends to a developing online community…and if its remit is also its language is also its constituency is also their profession…then you add academia’s Blakean-mill publishing pressures, plus a core of prominent voluble new media thinkers and outworkers, you end up with, well—fibreculture.

It was founded as a mailing list in January 2001 by David Teh and Geert Lovink to allow critical/speculative and ideologically-engaged debate around new media arts, theory, politics, policy, education and culture. As the year went on, it expanded its subscription-base (300+) and phase-shifted at fast-forward through list, website, archive and editing/feedback forum, then offline into a public debate, conference and book publication.

As a discussion venue, it’s been hyperactive, capacious but also determinedly on-topic, threads unspooling with unusual focus, measured and generous with argument, references, snapshots of current research, useful forwardings and painstaking feedback. It’s impossible to convey the range here, but it can flip, in one day, from competing histories of independent anti-globalisation media, through to the usefulness of Slavoj Zizek’s uber-psychoanalytic pomo-postcolonialism for analysing multicultural rhetoric and systemic racism in Australia. Go visit the archives: it’s an exceptional cumulative resource.

Towards the end of 2001 the list convened itself as a peer-review forum for participants to post articles intended for collation in the Reader, shifting up several gears, ploughing through more compacted academic text than an overdue-thesis-ed doctoral student on speed. The process lasted 6 weeks, the editing 2, printing the Reader only another fortnight, during which time a full-scale debate and conference was organised. Any given component of fibreculture’s proliferating activities would be welcome, but given the momentum and quality of the outcomes, the whole shebang (to use the technical term) is a remarkable achievement.

fibreculture being such a paradigmatically virtual network, most of the fibreculturalists (fc-ers?) only met for the first time at the Public Debate. This may explain a certain logistical flux, and perhaps, at a stretch, Victor Perton, who is the Victorian Shadow Minister for Technology, Innovation and Glib Technodeterminism. Before he said “we could talk about this all day” (at which point I fled), he gave a very-slightly reheated generic Powerpoint presentation, overstuffed with utopic rhetoric, featuring both an un-ironic use of a Bryce Courtenay quote and the apparently-conclusive evidence of his Mum, who lives in Doncaster (plush and Tory) but nevertheless did herself up a website chronicling her recent trip to India, bless her. Dale Spender as Jehovah’s Witness. Got people talking though.

But this was an aberration: the majority of the papers (and the interleaving formal-but-brief responses, setting up a dynamic that could have been usefully extended into more effective wider discussion to give the word ‘Public’ in ‘Public Debate’ some scope) were solid. Matthew Allen on the uses, abuses and recuses of virtuality was coruscating, and fortunate in Esther Milne as his respondent, who was elegant-structured, deft, and witty in suturing Allen’s critical issues to her doctoral focus on email as epistolary remediation. Tom Worthington, as the self-proclaimed un-academic anti-jargon geek with Palm Pilot, responding to Perton, was admirably decorous in addressing all the issues Perton should’ve. The Arts/Culture and Education sessions were as pragmatically realpolitik as the earlier ones were intellectualised and thematic, working as complements and sketches for the conference and Reader to fill out.

The conference per se was more like a series of unexpectedly-well-organised postgrad seminars, informal and structurally-fluid, with core groups of speakers addressing set themes, drawing from their peer-reviewed papers but not rehashing them, followed by whole stretches of actual, real, live discussion of the kind that’s always promised at Big Time Conferences but then evaporates. The opening session was my favourite, with everyone introducing themselves and their areas: a new-media-academia version of a Babylon 5 council, gathering for the first time a galactic diaspora of ex-alien and once-anomie-ed species, all going Oh my god, I’m not alone!

The publication (echte print, complete with early-edition typos), springboard for the conference, final stage in the peer-review process, is a bit Gutenbergly overdetermined: it’s a “Reader”, it’s the “Inaugural fibreculture Conference Proceedings” and it’s “An Inventory of Australian Net Culture, Criticism and Theory.” And yes, irony aside, it is. One of the most focused and functional texts to come out in Australia to provide prismatic analyses, rather than just a snapshot, of the topography across the different competing disciplinary and theoretical territories. Trying to yank out any given piece for more-detailed critique or especial praise makes me feel like a conflicted eisteddfod judge.

It was officially launched by Lev Manovich, the recently-lauded author of The Language of New Media (see interview), who adroitly maintained his Slavic Wellington-bear persona throughout, albeit while magisterially slicing through debate. The Reader, fortunately, preserves something of the flavour of this debate, and the listserv interaction, by including collaborations, manifestos, interviews, position papers and dialogues (as well as reproducing quoted posts on the flyleaves), the articles (subsequently?) more condensed and concentrated than the usual over-anxiously over-footnoted loquacious fare. A cross-section? McKenzie Wark, Anna Munster, Sean Cubitt and Scott McQuire are all their usual rigorous, risky, incisive selves, Ned Rossiter is terrific on analytic borderlands, agonistic polities and discursive historiography, Guy Redden is devastating on utopic deterritorialisation and net.activism, Chris Chesher’s superb at typographies of institutionalisation and disciplinarity in media studies. Oh dear, perhaps I liked the book too much. Incipient nationalism?

The inevitable ‘What next?’ session and debriefings continued online after the meeting wound up, canvassing: soliciting a wider diversity of new media producers, artists and activists to leaven the academica; stepping up policy advocacy; a further series of Readers; a free ‘un-academic’ uni-distributed fibreculture newspaper; curatorial or logistics support for a net.art forum or online exhibition; setting up or facilitating collaborative and community-based offline projects; developing a directory of courses about, or using, new media; and liaising with existing organisations to construct a portal web database of current artistic and research projects.

Regardless which matrices of these divergent possibilities it decides to develop, fibreculture’s agenda already constitutes an overdue, productive, politically-engaged, theoretically-informed and critical—in all senses—intervention.

fibreculture, “Digital Publics: A Debate”, Melbourne, Treasury Theatre, Dec 6, 2001; Inaugural Meeting, Melbourne, VCA, Dec 7-8; Hugh Brown, Geert Lovink, Helen Merrick, Ned Rossiter, David Teh, Michele Willson (eds), Fibreculture Reader: politics of the digital present, 2001.

In 1997, as the result of a successful campaign by Aboriginal activists, the preserved head of an Aboriginal man once displayed in a British museum was returned to Western Australia. Considering this triumphant restoration, Derek Kreckler made the logical progression to a new consideration: where was the body? It could be, he thought, anywhere—underfoot somewhere in Perth, perhaps buried by a roadside waiting for unsuspecting council workers to dig a little deeper…This uncanny notion translates to Kreckler’s ostensibly sunny pictures, most literally in the nature strip and roadside series. Whilst the viewer is not alerted to the story of the souvenired head or the discarded body, its associated unease is hinted at within the odd occurrences of the carefully staged images. In nature strip’s overgrown lot, 2 council workers stare at some discovery hidden to the viewer; whilst working on roadside’s median strip, some event causes one to take a stagy swing at the other, an odd altercation that nevertheless goes almost unnoticed amongst the oblivious passing cars and picturesque bottlebrush.

More blatantly disquieting are the occurrences of the paired bookshop 1 and 2. In the first image, a young Aboriginal woman reads aloud to 2 attentive children as other patrons browse the shelves. In the second image the children are gone and the patrons are felled, one prostrate man oddly attired in heavy boots and pink satin slip. The young woman is seemingly the cause of the destruction: her back to the others, she pulls a book from the shelves with a knowing smile…The more commonplace scenes of brightly-clad council workers engaged in desultory activity also exhibit this sense of narrative, which is particularly enhanced by the arrangement of the photographs in relation to one another. In nature strip 1 the shovel-clasping worker turns towards the other to inspect some discovery yielded by their excavation; in the second photograph he has turned away again and stands, shovel in one hand, the other held over his chest, in traditional gravedigger’s pose. The 2 images work according to classic Eisensteinian montage theory: that which the viewer sees in the first image they then project onto the following, ie, having seen the workman study the hidden find, his subsequent pose is interpreted as reflective. If, as Kreckler originally planned, the images were reversed, the ‘contemplative’ image becomes merely a picture of a council worker standing idly, important only as a foil to the action of the adjacent photograph. Such thoroughness characterises all Kreckler’s images, from their careful composition to their deliberate arrangement and display. It is the artfully staged shots, faultlessly rendered detail—maintained over a considerable depth of field—and the intriguing tableaus that present intimate takes on the seemingly everyday that relates the images, rather than their being merely a presentation of odd occurrences.

For not all the images suggest strange stories: in freezer and salon, the same young woman who appeared in the bookshop series now selects produce from a supermarket and visits a hairdresser without any attendant disasters. The decidedly ordinary events do contrast the obvious peculiarity of the bookshop photographs, and the viewer wonders at the possible relationship. A plausible though tenuous and simplistic correlation seems implied by the exhibition’s title—The Looking and other outcomes—and it is tempting to rely on the explanation this seems to offer, to read into all the photographs something to do with ‘looking’ (scouring the frozen foods, scrutinising a shampoo label). Yet this act is not such a simple one, suggests the title, which posits the act of looking, of searching, as an end in itself. This idea is befitting Kreckler’s carefully composed world where foregone conclusions are overturned and the very idea of conclusion foregone.

Interestingly, it might seem that looking has come to a conclusion in White Pointer, an installation work which draws on the scientific practices of examination and discovery, and its structures of classification and explication for both its themes and substance. In contrast with the sometimes obscure photographs, White Pointer draws determinedly on the factual, its subtitle explicitly explaining to viewers: “you are listening to the sounds of humans observing fish at the New York Aquarium.” The work displays spotlit wall panels copied verbatim from the original explanatory texts of the aquarium, listing the common and scientific names of the housed sea-life, physical descriptions, and the locations in which they might be found. Through 2 white-draped, wall-mounted speakers, recordings of people viewing the creatures in their ‘home’ in New York are transmitted. Thus the very people who were initially inspecting a collection of sharks become in turn the objects of interest for the audience of Kreckler’s own White Pointer. There to inspect the natural curiosities that were collected, organised and displayed for their interest and edification—and according to the same structures that once placed a man’s severed head on display—the aquarium visitors became curiosities in themselves. No recording equipment was visible, but whether the “sounds of humans observing the sounds of humans observing…” features in a subsequent Kreckler work remains to be seen…

Derek Kreckler, The Looking and other outcomes, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA), Adelaide, Nov 2-25

Banks are not defined by their aesthetic savvy, are they? Okay, sure—there’s the bucolic green withdrawal slip, clearly referencing 19th century evocations of the picturesque; those richly synthetic hues and fibres of branch carpets which quote from pop-art celebrations of plasticity; and not forgetting that sublime moment of transcendence when one finally hears a human voice while phone banking. But irony, startling colour and the pathos of narrative make this form of banking a properly aesthetic encounter. The Bank Book, as Helen Frajman’s foreword remarks, is not a collection of film stills. Rather, the project began as an invitation from the film’s producer, John Maynard, “to engage with the making of the movie” in a less commercially driven manner than usually the case with the film stills imperative. Through the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Maynard invited 4 photographic artists onto The Bank set to document, intervene with and comment upon relations between the media of cinema and photography. As Daniel Palmer notes in his introduction, “we do not need to have seen Robert Connolly’s film to appreciate these photographs. They exist…as a parallel project, with the photographers operating in the classic artistic role of ‘outsider.’” So although The Bank Book is not about adaptation—‘the book of the film’ in a Jane Austen/Amy Heckerling sense—it is about translation. Indeed, a visual arts review is always a translation since it is produced by that tricky process of ekphrasis: “the verbal representation of visual representation” (W.J.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Matthew Sleeth’s beautifully rich and cinematic images function simultaneously to pique and confound ekphrastic desire. In particular, the first photograph in his Light series makes expression a central trope by foregrounding a pair of gesticulating hands. Yet, straightforward communication is rendered problematic and the aporia revealed as (literally) veiled meaning since a billowing curtain obscures the backlit figure. Sleeth’s images—all chiaroscuro aesthetic and film noir sensibility—self-consciously explore the complex relations of photographic media, narrative construction and film genre. Instead of dames with slash-red mouths posing in cinched-waist dresses, Sleeth locates the technology of film noir as the object of scopic lust: long slender flood lights; dark ‘alleyways’ of thick cable; cameras bathed in shadow and reflectors drenched in rain.

Reflection is a dominant motif in Danielle Thompson’s intriguing yet incongruously named Brevity series. Bringing fresh perspective to reflection as one of photography’s oldest semantic devices, the first photograph is a study in screen iconography. Actors David Wenham and Greg Stone are shot through a car windscreen appearing fractured and fragmented. In a lovely metaphor for the filmmaking process, Thompson’s image is not so much concerned with reflecting the realism of narrative cinema, as it is to critique its underlying assumptions. And her photographs look beautiful. While the term ‘brevity’ captures something about the spontaneous nature of Thompson’s work, this title belies her lyrical articulation of very different rhythms. Measured and mediative portraits of the actors function almost in counterpoint to other blurred and ephemeral images. As if to dwell on the temporality of this series, one photograph foregrounds an inverted ‘SLOW’ traffic sign.

Translation as re-presentation is a central thematic of Peter Milne’s (no relation, just an ex-husband) photographic art practice generally and is specifically at play within these images. His witty collaboration with Helen Frajman titled Amended Shooting Script is a re-working of The Bank’s original screenplay. The film script has been physically chopped up and juxtaposed with flash-lit black and white photographs of the cast and crew at Anthony LaPaglia’s farewell party. By superimposing snippets of fictional narrative onto ‘real’ interactions, Milne and Frajman bring 2 spheres of representation into uneasy collision. A tension emerges between those who would translate print into image (the cast & crew) and those who attempt to interpret the interpreters (The Bank Book photographers). And as always with Milne’s photography, this series has a haunting quality: an initial laugh followed by what Roland Barthes calls the ‘punctum’: those unexpected and disquieting moments of photographic art.

One of the troubling and compelling aspects of Max Creasy’s work, as Palmer notes, is the almost total absence of the human form. The series Flats subverts key assumptions about the generic demands of narrative realism by leaving out ‘characters.’. Instead, Creasy gives us a self-referential and playful translation of the ontology of character itself. In one of his images, black and white PR shots of the stars are taped to a wall inviting us to join the game of the mise en abyme (photographs of photographs of photographs ad infinitum). In place of the usual stability we expect of realism, Creasy gives us vertigo: the metaphor of infinite regress is enacted by the refracting and reflecting mirrors, screens and windows appearing in his images.

The screen as translation technology functions as an overall thematic for The Bank Book. Yet, as is always the case with ciphers, this is not a transparent or innocent process. A point dramatically made by Thompson’s image of David Wenham and his stunt double, these artists have produced an enigmatic study of photography and its others.

The Bank Book: Photographs by Max Creasy, Peter Milne, Danielle Thompson and Matthew Sleeth, edited by Helen Frajman with an introduction by Daniel Palmer (M.33: Melbourne 2001), 104 pages, 260 x 240mm, $55.00, ISBN: 0 9579553 0 8. Ordering information: email, tel 02 9319 7011.

Words can barely do justice to sense-alias, a medium-scale 2-person installation displayed recently at Sidespace. Tricky Walsh’s specially created, meticulously constructed objects are unique and laden with rigorous symbolism. Equally important is Boo Chapple’s integral soundscape which incorporates, as discrete elements, everyday sounds recorded around the Salamanca Arts Centre—traffic noise, oral history on the centre’s previous incarnation as a jam factory and its inception as an arts centre, plus recordings of footsteps on the centre’s wooden stairs.

A prosaic collection? By no means. These sounds are engineered with skill and imagination: the data quantifies the traffic flow in adjacent areas over 24 hours: it is mixed and overlaid with foghorn sounds, musical versions of these timbres played on clarinet and cello, and sounds from a nearby building site. Fastidiously recorded and processed with the technical expertise and creative awareness these women share, this work is surprisingly subtle, insinuating itself on one’s consciousness.

The oral history recordings that emanate from Walsh’s sometimes anthropomorphic sculptures are very engaging: the tales, the class issues that emerge, the idiosyncrasies of speech, plus the occasional engineered slow moment or swelling up of sounds. The footstep noises, combined and amplified, are broadcast intermittently and sound like a troupe of very busy tap-dancers. All these sounds are “little fragments of history” (Chapple).

Visually, the installation’s groupings of Walsh’s 5 complex sculptures represent a “condensation of the senses” (exhibition notes). A large latex lung, seemingly ‘breathing’, investigates breath, pulse and smell. A striking ziggurat of wood and lenses encapsulates visual stimulus. A third work, in muslin and resin (this is a truly multimedia exhibition) examines pulse and electrical impulse as the transference of the sensual. Then, fabric and speakers form the internal recording device for information overheard: “the inner monologue of the space.” Lastly, plaster ‘bones’ are the symbolic receptacles of information.

As Walsh explains, “The sculptural elements deal with sensual interchange with our environment and the way our senses take in experience and store it as memory. This experience is then relayered onto our understanding of the present in a perpetual reciprocal cycle.” sense-alias expresses place: specific places as well as a more general sense of place. It operates as an entity that filters, responds to and transforms place through sound. It is an installation/exhibition that attempts many things and succeeds at most. It is not necessarily, at first viewing, easily read, but this is because there are so many ideas being explored, some in deeply philosophical ways. There are so many subtleties and nuances that the work repays a second or third viewing. It is not conventionally aesthetic and is certainly not installed like a typical exhibition. It is gloriously disconcerting, bathed in an evocative red light that is just sufficient to enable you to negotiate the gallery space.

sense-alias, sound sculpture by Boo Chapple & Tricky Walsh, Sidespace Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Nov 26-Dec 1

Globalisation is creating a world economy and global popular culture that breaches borders and nation states. In its latest production of The Antigone Sketches Part I and slip synthetic spaces, IHOS Music Theatre Laboratory (IMTL) slips between myth, historicity and Marinetti’s Futurist Theatre movement to convey the impact of psychic repression and social exploitation in the nation states of Thebes and Elizabethan England.

The Byzantine Orthodox tradition of form and aesthetics dominates the movement, sound, colour and voice of The Antigone Sketches. Directed and designed by Jindra Rosendorf and Constantine Koukias, this piece situates the audience in Thebes as we engage with the contemporary ethical resonance of Sophocle’s tragedy.

To begin with the end. Antigone hangs herself. Creon (Alfie Lee), the king of Thebes, has declared Antigone’s slain brother Polynices a traitor and left his body outside the city walls. Creon has forbidden his burial and orders the death of any citizen who defies this edict. Antigone has secretly given Polynices a ritual burial transgressing King Creon’s authority.

The story is conveyed by a chorus (Matthew Dewey, Alex Dick and Tom Hogan) commenting and interpreting the drama. Bare-chested and in white boxer shorts they sit in separate bathtubs, hands red-lit to the wrist. They orate, intone and betray, although a lack of unison in relation to the leader’s voice indicated under-rehearsal.

In the maelstrom of Antigone’s story, Antigone Missarvidis’ dramatic voice rises as a high pitched counterpoint constituting both question and threat to Creon’s edict. Image projection provides fragments of Greek text. Safety resides in uniformity and the complicity of the chorus, alternately seduced and intimidated by Creon’s authority.

When Antigone hangs herself the chorus ritually lights candles, announcing her death in an explosive bathtub percussion. This is a powerful scene. The sound assaults our senses while the stage is swathed in mist.

Damien Wells’ strong lighting design is steeped with blood and menace. The tragedy of Antigone is the compliance of a self-same populace, who deny her dissenting voice and action. Compassion is silenced by laws and sanctions issued by the powerful.

Guest director Christos Linou continues the theme of state-sanctioned repression and its impact on populations in slip synthetic spaces. Hugh Covill’s edgy, electronic sound design is thoroughly synthetic in its encompassing intensity.

Textual excerpts from Shakespeare’s sonnets and the activist Emma Goldman present Elizabethan England in a period of global expansion. The populations of nation states are coerced or usurped by the bureaucratic machinery of empire and mercantilism. Elizabeth the First (Georgina Richmond) strides her stage with stylised pomposity. Her all encompassing authority will not tolerate subversion or questioning of the corporatism and class structure which maintain her royal power. “God is everything. Man is nothing,” Elizabeth intones, accompanied by Glenn Schultz’s flugel horn and Joe Cook’s trombone.

This is not anarchist theatre in the tradition of Marinetti’s Futurists. The production is overloaded with metaphoric images reflecting the great divides of power, gender and wealth emerging as a consequence of 16th century globalisation. Seljuk Feruu’s scenography and costume design enhance Linou’s metaphors: hessian poverty, slaves compulsively jumping to exhaustion, imprisoned frogs, a sausage necklace, blank pillow-faced executives and a cage of steel spikes, recalling Kafka’s In the Penal Colony with the machine’s tortuous inscription of state laws on flesh.

Hugh Covill’s sound design is a highlight of this production. The score’s resonant silences make way for other sound sources including the queen imperiously banging her staff while the barefooted or rag-bound feet of slaves provide a shuffling counterpoint. The queen’s notion of free speech competes with the babble and hearsay/heresy of the streets.

The concluding sequence of discordant plate shattering; a queen dispensing red paint with bodies falling into this spill of red; grey-suited corporates, their necks weighted with ingots and the crashing of stage-flats, left the Peacock performance space a wreckage.

slip synthetic spaces takes the neuroticised territory of despotic monarchs anxious to maintain their authority as the starting place for score and story. This production is a poignant reminder of the consequence for subjects refusing obeisance and our implication in the choristic conformity of the heralded economic benefits of globalism’s advances.

This latest production provided an opportunity for the IMTL to extend their theatrical experience in association with a visiting composer, director and scenographer. While strong in theatrical effects, the question remains: does slip synthetic spaces generate any frisson, new momentum or insight into contemporary music theatre practice?

To paraphrase the frontispiece of Antigone, these questions are to be continued…

The Antigone Sketches Part One, designer/director Jindra Rosendorf & Constantine Koukias, performers Craig Wood, Alfie Lee, Jack Benson, Antigone Missarvidis, Matthew Dewey, Alex Dick, Tom Hogan; slip, director Christos Linou, composer Hugh Covill, performers Benson, Georgina Richmond, Dewey, Wood, Dick, Rachel Guy, Hogan, Holger Saile, Ainslie Keele, Debra Jensen, Rhonda Niemann, Madeline Swann, Peacock Theatre, Hobart, Dec 7-9, 2001

1996 FBi Benefit. A group of painfully young boys loaded a marimba and vibraphone onto the stage and attempted to compete with Silverchair belting out from the Hordern. I feared for their safety. The punters were at first bemused but by the time they ripped through the theme from The X-files there was moshing and general uproar and the band Prop had arrived.

Since then Prop has added members to the line up and fine tuned their unusual aesthetic to become one of the most interesting live electronica acts in Sydney. Highly skilled musicians, the boys from Prop fluidly slip in, out and around genres, using everything from jazz, funk, classical, dub and muzak. But what gives Prop its idiosyncratic sound is the ways in which they exploit the connection between minimalism and electronica (trance etc). At last, 2001 saw the release of their debut CD Small Craft Rough Sea (Silent Recordings).

Small Craft Rough Sea could be perceived as a concept album—each track guiding the listener through a musically speculative, if boyishly idealistic, journey in space. Track one, Nebula, is aptly named. With a beguilingly simple melody, the vibraphone creates a heady feeling of suspension, supported by a liquid baseline, lightening gravity’s hold on our aural world. Track 2, Landing, undercuts this nebulous world with earthy tones and swings into easygoing action playing with textures of dry marimba, a drippingly fluid vibraphone and icing sugar glockenspiel. With Mount Zero we have liftoff, Prop at its best. With Reich-like repetition, the piece builds on itself, overlapping marimba, vibraphone and keyboards, with a satisfying consolidation when the drum and base kick in, magically building into a high energy burst of rhythmic, mesmeric hammering that Prop does so well.

It feels like the tuned percussion is de-emphasised in the middle tracks, making more use of electronic sounds and drums. Care for Them (also found on the Silent Recordings Sampler) offers an easy-listening interlude, with rhythm responsibilities falling to a unfortunately tinny drum track, but offering the tuned percussion more melodic freedom, yielding a hyped muzak feel. Solo Trip is a real highlight in its satisfyingly solid fusion of genres—creating a jazz/funk/fantasy/noir track that shows real compositional strength.

We return to a more traditional minimalism in Low—an 8 minute piece based around a marimba riff, seemingly repetitive but subtly ever shifting. Magnetic Highway/Remora is an energetic 13 minute epic, with pulsing base, soaring synths, driving drums and electronic glitches, topped off with splashes of tuned percussion. Magnetic Highway is an excellent frenetic dance party piece which rhythmically drains itself to become Remora, a rockdrumming chill out number. Portal is the fast and furious culmination of all the energy of the album, with RSI inducing high-velocity hammering and a repetitive synth horn line, like Phillip Glass on speed. The final track, Sirius, as if completing a cycle, is gentle and undulating, calming and conclusive, if a little functional and less inspired than its precursors.

Having seen Prop perform, I eagerly awaited the album. The physicality of the musicians playing the tuned percussion live is fascinating and produces an unusual energy. The recording process offers Prop more opportunity for blending between the acoustic and electronic instruments, for tweaking and fiddling, particularly as pieces were recorded in a studio and then worked on over a period of time in the group’s various home set-ups. They judiciously manage to stop just short of overproduction, though I found some of the synth sounds a little too charged with 80s sentimentalism—amusing in a retro way but veering the space journey somewhere known rather than to a place of limitless sonic possibilities. However, the journey that Prop takes us on is a captivating and rewarding one, with beautiful compositional shifts, rhythmic roller coasters and mesmeric moments.

Small Craft Rough Sea, Prop; Dave Symes, Jared Underwood, Jeremy Barnet, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes; Silent Recordings. Prop will be appearing in Sydney at The Basement, Feb 15, Bellingen, Feb 28, Byron Bay, March 1, Brisbane at Zoo Bar, March 2; The Studio, Sydney Opera House, June 9, 2pm & 6pm.

Frank Theatre’s Retrospective 1993-2001 was celebrated in Brisbane for 3 important reasons: first, and against the current grain, Frank has developed and sustained itself as an ensemble company; second, with a unique style and by creating its own international networks, it is forging a viable intercultural theatre that is regionally based; lastly, its base is Brisbane, where it both trains local talent and provides a visionary model of non-commodified sustainability.

Their venture has restored a sense of adventure to theatre, restored the body to its primacy in space, unmediated by media, and remains a folk theatre that reflects its audience and in turn serves it—perhaps like the original Pram Factory? This reciprocity was warmly evident on opening night. Partly this is a reflection of the Suzuki method that assimilated and returned the origins of Chinese and Japanese popular theatre, partly it is a measure of the very Australian bloody-mindedness and theatrical acuity of Frank’s progenitors, Jacqui Carroll and John Nobbs. These 2, in mid-career transformation from, respectively, choreographer and dancer to director and Suzuki Company of Toga guest actor, brought their rigorous background in dance to the Suzuki physical actor training method.

Suzuki Tadashi’s theatre writings note that the Japanese expression for a clumsy actor is a ‘daikon actor’, ie no matter how you eat it, a daikon radish absolutely can’t hurt you; or, in other words, such actors have no character, nothing to distinguish them. Suzuki would prefer that the term ‘radish actor’ became one of approbation—“These days we have all too many actors who have so much personality they can make you feel very ill indeed.” Instead his method produces almost pure ‘expressionistic’ acting, gestures and intonations taking the place of words in awakening the emotional responses of the audience, in a play of actions in which the movement is the body of the play, the story being only the frame. Costume and music are also important signifiers.

Frank aims to present “new, classic theatre” represented in its repertoire by The Romance of Orpheus (1993), The Tale of Macbeth: Crown of Blood and The Tragedy of Oedipus (1995), Romeo and Juliet…a gathering of ghosts (1996), Salome (1997), and Heavy Metal Hamlet (1998). Rashomon (2000) is based on the Kurosawa film classic. As the titles indicate, these are adaptations of received texts in the Western canon. In Suzuki’s terms, they have been ‘requoted’, a concept that has sometimes led to misunderstandings in the reception of Frank’s work. Nevertheless, the method has generated extraordinarily memorable performances from Brisbane dancers and actors: Lisa O’Neill as Salome, Caroline Dunphy as Ophelia, Lorne Gerlach and Emma Pursey in their interpretations of Lady Macbeth.

The result has been a theatre that registers colour, vigour, energy, excitement, violence, bawdiness, humour and satire, heroism, villainy, astuteness, loyalty, wisdom, stupidity, pride, arrogance, honesty, gentleness, robustness. A theatre sometimes achieving existential insights of an austere sublimity—a powerful world of feeling, experience and action not unlike Brecht’s where it is the social persona that is the dynamic force and centre of interest.

This retrospective fittingly rounded off a period of retracing Suzuki’s method of classical adaptation. The finale, Doll (a sketch for Frank’s upcoming adaptation of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll), prefigures fresh creative concerns (nearer to home), as does the invitation to perform one of Croatian playwright Kkrleza’s plays at the 7th International Youth Theatre Festival—MKFM Pula, Croatia 2002. For followers of Frank’s remarkable odyssey, it was back to the future.

Frank Theatre Expo: Retrospective 1993-2001, director/choreographer Jacqui Carroll, John Nobbs, company members Lisa O’Neill, Caroline Dunphy, Emma Pursey, Leah Shelton, Conan Dunning, Luc Mollinger, trainees Stephen Bradford, Ramsay Hatfield, Clayton Fry, Tracey Kay, Julie Marich, Yuu Matsuyama, Leah Mercer, Rachel Ross, Annette Schoenberg, Melissa Stichbury, Neridah Waters. Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, Nov 30-Dec 8, 2001

Garth Paine is a Melbourne-based sound artist whose recent ‘immersive’ audio-visual environment, Gestation (exhibited at RMIT Gallery in December), is a development of work he undertook as the Australia Council for the Arts’ New Media Arts Fellow at RMIT University in 2000. Paine has a long history of developing responsive installation works, having designed sound and interactive exhibitions at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and the Immigration Museum, while his installation work Reeds (with Chris Langton) was presented by the Melbourne International Festival in 2000. He has also been commissioned extensively in Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany, producing compositions and sound designs for over 30 film, theatre, dance and installation works in the last 10 years—including Belvoir Company B and Company in Space.

Gestation is a playful work, using real time sound and vision generated from the movement patterns made by visitors within the installation. There are no mouse clicks here, only pure sonic viscerality. In an empty room, you wave your arms, move your elbow, run around, and the resulting sounds are like aliens breathing (thanks to software the artist has written which uses video sensing to translate light intensity onto sound algorithms). It’s a kinaesthetic experience, this ambient-generative sound space, turning the body into a forcefield of energy. And it doesn’t stop there: a secondary gallery displays a large video projection of real foetuses in the frame of an ultra-sound grid (from videos collected over 5 years, and animated by Kat Mew and Clint Hannaford). Enough dynamic visitor activity in the sound chamber generates ‘new’ foetuses.

There are 2 legs to my practice: the compositional work, less improvisatory and more considered in its forms, and the interactive installation works. I’m interested in contextualising new media in the human domain, and especially in placing the human body as the central ‘controller’ of the generation of any output. Furthermore, while I define certain aspects—the aesthetic and the general scope and functionality—the work creates an individualistic and momentary response. I’m interested in interactivity not as a triggered response of pre-made content, but in content made in real time, responding as streamed data, constantly changing according to the input it’s receiving from your behaviour.

In order for new media art to become culturally important, it has to reflect something about the human condition. And to be relevant enough to be collected into cultural institutions and have broad public exposure, the technology should be transparent (at international festivals of electronic arts you see a lot of technical feats without any point). Gestation is actually an explicitly humanist statement—it moves beyond the sense that your behaviour patterns are generative of your environment to those behaviours actually generating ‘new’ human life. It’s a statement about the connection between responsive and interactive work, and the human context in which it’s placed.

Is there also a connection to the ‘docile bodies’ produced by surveillance? After all, the work uses security camera technology.

No, there’s nothing recorded so there’s no capturing of the body for observation in another environment. I think of the body as the central ‘catalyst’ from the perspective that in our lives if we want to express something we use our body. Since sound is such an abstract and emotive form, I would hope that Gestation produces external and internal reflection; which is what I think art should do.

Are the sounds in Gestation entirely produced ‘on-the-fly’ in real time, or does it use samples?

The more recognisable—the baby giggle and breath—are generated from spectral analysis files of original sounds, resynthesised and reassembled for particular activity in the space. There’s a light level of evolutionary sound; a level of memory generates slight variations when it comes back to rest. A little movement of the arm creates a nuance that’s specifically yours.

I understand the work is not a commentary on technology and reproduction, so I’ll gloss over the sexual politics or any unintended foetus-fetishising in the act of viewing the ultrasounds. Nevertheless, it’s striking that unlike a lot of contemporary art, there’s no sense of your work trying to alienate the visitor—it’s a comforting, utopian space, dare I say pre-oedipal.

The sound chamber is supposed to be womb-like. The mind-body split is so embedded in our culture—their interrelationship is more interesting to me than deconstructing. Sound is the most wonderful and powerful medium in the sense that it’s fluid and viscous, so you sort of mould it. It’s about densities and textures, you can pull it apart, form it into shapes. I think of it as quite a physical, visual thing. And yet, rather than an image, a detached and abstract thing, the sound physically enters your body, it enters your ears and vibrates your organs. You are not separate from sound but totally immersed in the ‘fluid.’

Fluxus artists Earl Brown and Morton Feldman and others were interested in making their sound work very plastic, establishing a structure as a composer where every performance would be different. Similarly, I’m interested in getting out of the way, not imposing pre-made content on people, but creating a set of mappings that allow each person to generate their own performance—their own experience.

In Gestation, sound is the media of connection between the sound gallery and the video. With ultrasound, sound is applied as a way of visualising the otherwise invisible ‘information’. So in this case, the activities that create this audible environment in turn allow you to visualise the lifeform you’ve created in the second gallery.

Finally, what about your experience of being a sound artist in Melbourne?
I find it frustratingly impossible to get support for exhibiting here in Australia. There are the equipment challenges, and so on, but my works are exhibited overseas quite a bit. In 2002, Gestation will be shown at Florida State Art Gallery, and I have a show in Paris (people seem to tune in). We need a research centre that supports the exhibition of sound art and the development of techniques and approaches to sound art. Sound is the most innovative of the digital arts—an entirely new genre that can’t draw on the patterns that existed previously (it’s only since Cage that ‘found sound’ has become acceptable as a compositional object). We’ve had to find ways of exploring digital sound—textural density and so on—whereas in visual multimedia, the paradigms have continued within an essentially filmic model.

Gestation, Garth Paine, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, December 10-21 . Garth has just been appointed Lecturer in Music Technology at De Montfort University in Leicester.

Last December, Brisbane’s South Bank and the Queensland Conservatorium provided a relaxed, hospitable ambience for the 2001 Visible Evidence Conference, a 4-day event that brought together 60 documentary theorists from North and South America, the UK and Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Organised by Griffith University, convened by Dr Jane Roscoe from Griffith’s School of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, and sponsored by the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy (CMP), Visible Evidence IX was a rare opportunity to participate in a challenging multi-disciplinary discussion about an international screen genre as old as the cinema itself, one that continues to excite passionate minds.
Leading the charge, Michael Renov, Jean-Luc Lioult, Malin Wahlberg and Gillian Leahy traced the discursive boundaries of the documentary avant-garde. The challenge of combining creative experimentation with documentary authenticity (Lioult), the “expressive and phenomenological impact of temporalisation in non-fictitious films” (Wahlberg) and the legacy of pioneer avant-garde filmmakers in Australia (Leahy) served to contextualise Renov’s assertion that through an act of critical reclamation, “the documentary field can be enlarged and re-energised.”

A way of transcending the old dichotomy between lyrical and didactic documentary schools was outlined in John Hookham and Gary MacLennan’s paper, “Magical Transformations: Aesthetic Challenges for the New Documentary”. It proposed a renaissance of magic realism and the poetic documentary tradition’s attempts to “discover” the genuine complexity of life-as-it-is, and to express it with “exuberance and sincerity.” Novelist Beth Spencer advocated the cross fertilisation of fictive and factual in the research and writing phase of her work as a highly experimental stratagem which aims “to explore the place where emotion and intellect are inseparable.” In an historical paper, “Captain Bligh’s Chronometer”, Daryl Dellora (The Edge of the Possible, A Mirror to the People) revealed his current research findings for a fascinating historical documentary work in progress.

Evening screen seminars included Norwegian scholar Gunnar Strom, and artist-filmmakers Lee Whitmore and Dennis Tupicoff’s presentations on the irrepressible capacity of animation to distil the essence of the actual. A conversation with documentary filmmaker John Hughes and US documentary theoretician and author Michael Renov at the Tivoli Theatre was another highlight.

Finally, one evident sign of a real paradigmatic shift in documentary form emerged—the work of the Labyrinth Project at USC’s Annenberg Centre for Communication. The research initiative, directed by Marsha Kinder since 1997, is pushing the creative and conceptual boundaries of interactive (non-linear) narrativity in new, evocative directions. Mysteries and Desires: Searching the Worlds of John Rechy and Tracing the Decay of Fiction: Encounters with a Film by Pat O’Neill both demonstrated the existence of largely uncharted psychological and cinematic potentials of interactive interface design to inform as well as ‘touch’ the seeker.

By integrating the visual principles and narrative experiments of early film avant-garde (Vertov, Ruttmann, Lye, etc) and the temporal distortions of French new wave auteurs (Resnais, Rivette, Marker, etc) with unpredictable, sensual forms of interactivity, the Labyrinth Project is consciously reclaiming the dream state as a primary model and mode of multi-dimensional, reality-based, cinematic communication.

Despite the cultural and commercial implications of Big Brother and its ilk, anyone who attended Visible Evidence IX would be hard to convince that we are entering a ‘post-documentary’ era. The weight of submitted evidence suggests that, more probably, the ongoing hybridisation of the documentary medium is a response by filmmakers not only to new technology but to more inclusive, emergent, definitions of ‘truth’ as the living synthesis of intimately related environmental and human events.

The more we see the screen as a mirror
rather than an escape hatch, the more
we will be prepared for what is to come.
Hugh Gray, What is Cinema? Selected essays by André Bazin (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1967)

Visible Evidence IX Conference, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, Dec 17-20, 2001

Busy, overworked artists will feel like tearing out their hair before they finish page 5 of a new publication from the Australian Business Arts Foundation (AbaF)—called Business Arts Partnerships—because it is long-winded, repetitive and poorly presented. Resist! Buried in the bureaucratic language is a great deal of very useful information about how arts organisations can win cash and in-kind support from Australian companies.
Many artists and arts companies have tried and failed to get businesses to back their activities. Their failure is hardly surprising. AbaF’s executive director, Winsome McCaughey (a former Lord Mayor of Melbourne) points out in her foreword that business support of the arts in Australia is “abysmally low”, with just one per cent of companies supporting the arts, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The most recent figures put the amount at $29 million, compared with $281 million in sponsorship for sport.

AbaF’s job is to increase business support for the arts. AbaF evolved from the Australia Foundation for Culture and the Humanities created in 1995, following a $3 million donation from the man who started Australia’s biggest private company, packaging giant Visy Industries, Richard Pratt. Pratt, whose personal wealth is $3.3 billion according to Business Review Weekly (May 2001), is a well-known arts supporter, in the past spending an estimated $10 million a year on personally selected arts organisations. AbaF operates at arms length from the government within the portfolio of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

For arts companies that do manage to secure corporate partners, the results can be spectacular. In 1999, after Global Arts Link (formerly the Ipswich Regional Art Gallery) teamed up with Queensland Government-owned electricity company, CS Energy, visits to the centre jumped 460% in 12 months, from 16,000 to 90,000 a year! The chief executive of CS Energy, Richard Cottee, is also delighted with the benefits of the partnership. Cottee says: “We have offered money and in-kind support, and in return we have gained brand recognition. More importantly, we are demonstrating what kind of business we want to build—business that develops relationships with the community.”

The Australian Chamber Orchestra and computer giant IBM also have had a successful partnership, as have MICMusic (Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition) and car-maker DaimlerChrysler.

The booklet promotes the idea of partnerships—not sponsorship—between cultural organisations and businesses. Sponsorships are one-sided relationships, essentially a donation that typically pays for a one-off project, according to AbaF. Partnerships are reciprocal, long-term relationships based on benefits for both sides.

The booklet builds its case for taking a partnership approach to raising money from businesses. It then outlines how cultural organisations can build up their own business case to win a partner, suggests how to find an appropriate partner, how to present the deal and, if successful, how to manage the relationship.

In the centre of the guide are some very helpful examples of what the authors of the guide (who are not identified) are talking about. This is especially important given that the writing in the guide is sometimes complicated. Take, for example, business needs, defined as: “the requirements that must be met for an enterprise to be able to produce business outcomes.” Then, business assets: “the resources that the enterprise uses to meet its business needs so as to achieve its business outcomes.”

What is missing from the definitions, and from the guide as a whole, are more actual examples taken from arts organisations themselves, of what the authors are trying to explain. While there are a few inspirational quotes from company CEOs and arts organisations, the publication would have been brought to life (and made easier to understand) with the use of case studies: short real-life examples summarising the experiences of arts companies that have successfully attracted partnerships.

And the guide could stand much less foreshadowing of what is to come in the next section or paragraph. That said, the guide’s overall structure is good, and the information presented is well thought out and comprehensive, such as the section about managing the partnership.

Despite the difficulties, skim-reading this guide is NOT recommended. Important—nay, astonishing—facts are among its paragraphs, essential information for anyone planning to embark on a corporate partnership. Take this little bombshell sitting quietly at the bottom of page 7 about the “real” cost of raising private funding: “Some experienced [arts] organisations report that it can cost up to $5 for every $6 of private funds raised.” That fact certainly jerked my highlighter into action.

At the back of the booklet are some useful appendices, including further reading and relevant websites, and some statistical data about the arts.

Hopefully, the companies targeted by arts organisations for support will have read AbaF’s companion publication, The Business Case for Cultural Investment, prepared specifically for the business sector by Australia’s fifth largest accounting company, Arthur Andersen.

For more information and copies of Business Arts Partnerships, visit
their website

Nicholas Zurbrugg, academic and poet, born February 1, 1947, died Leicester, England, October 15, 2001.

Nicholas Zurbrugg, who tragically died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 54, made an invaluable contribution to contemporary art and cultural theory, and more specifically, to the study and promotion of the postmodern multimedia avant-garde. Nicholas, as an academic, critic, poet and a tireless promoter of postmodern creativity and thought, was a peerless innovator and contributor to our local cultural and intellectual life.

But Nicholas’s inestimable legacy as a highly energetic and groundbreaking author, conference organiser, curator, editor and artist needs to be measured in substantial global terms. Such were the dazzling and prolific aesthetic, cultural and theoretical interests of his life and oeuvre. He was someone who touched many different people in many different contexts.

Nicholas’s sudden death left many of his friends and peers with the painful realisation that no longer will our lives be graced by his playful pun-encrusted erudition, compassion, lucid and self-questioning intelligence and zany, surreal humour. Nicholas’s horizon-breaking quest to explore the experimental arts in their own terms suggested a courageous and far-reaching capacity to connect fluxus artists with theorists, language poets with sound artists, video artists with filmmakers, performance artists with philosophers.

Born in 1947, and educated at the universities of Neuchatel, East Anglia and St John’s College, Oxford, Nicholas was a brilliant student and a generous and popular teacher who consistently refused to observe the niceties of the modern university. Whilst he was a student in Switzerland, Nicholas was the editor of his own cult journal, Stereo Headphones, which was dedicated to concrete poetry. Between 1978 and 1995 he was an academic of comparative literature at Griffith University, after which he became Professor of English and Cultural Studies at De Montfort University, Leicester, England. There he also became Director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts.

At Oxford, Nicholas did his PhD on Proust and Beckett, which was published as a book in 1988. Among his other numerous publications were The Parameters of Postmodernism (1993), Jean Baudrillard: Art and Artefact (1997), The ABCs of Robert Lax (co-edited with David Miller, 1988) and Critical Vices: The Myths of Postmodern Theory (1999). Forthcoming are William Burroughs and the Postmodern Avant-Garde and Positively Postmodern: The Multimedia Muse in America: Interviews with Contemporary Avant-Garde.

Despite his popularity as a teacher and colleague, after 17 years at Griffith University and 4 frustrating attempts to become an associate professor, his pioneering achievements were recognised abroad at De Montfort University. There, like here, Nicholas endeavoured through lectures, conferences and exhibitions to unite critical theory with creative practice. He always strove to forge new connections between generations of artists and artforms. In this context, he was unique.

He loved to mix with artists, poets and novelists as he felt a profound affinity with them. No-one, to my knowledge, personally knew so many artists, thinkers and writers central to the unfolding narrative of postmodern techno-creativity. Kathy Acker, Laurie Anderson, JG Ballard, Jean Baudrillard, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Orlan, Michael Snow, Stelarc, Bill Viola and Paul Virilio were among his friends. Nicholas perfected the interview form as a means of appreciating the complex ideas and forms of the new media arts.

He continuously and equally supported both the more established and recent figures of the new experimental arts: he was always loyal to his creative and theoretical peers and open to exciting new cyber artists like David Blair and filmmakers like Ned Zedd.

Throughout his career, Nicholas was always interested in exploring the deeper meanings embedded in modernism and postmodernism as they relate to the ways artists use new technologies in their work. He exhibited, time and again, much critical valour in championing unfashionable academic and curatorial causes and a pragmatic speculative knowledge of the new media arts that was truly comprehensive in scope and experimental in nature.

In his recent books, especially Critical Vices, Nicholas advocated the compelling necessity to define a new criticism of postmodern technological creativity. He rightly criticised the theorists of the 1970s and 80s who were limited by their inappropriate critical languages, pessimism and non-reflexive critical laziness. Nicholas wisely urged the necessity of returning to the demanding tasks of analysing, observing, interpreting and evaluating the multimedia arts of today in order to appreciate their significance in our lives.

All of us will dearly miss him. He was a very good friend of mine. A brother, a mentor. I will miss his contagious laughter, sparkling intelligence and abundant generosity of spirit. There is not a day that passes that I do not think of him.

Obsession, catastrophe, haunting—contemporary dramaturgy turns on an event which subverts the system of things. A rupture in which the contours of the incident—its wave frequency—replay interminably without repetition. This is not merely a psychological condition but the inverted theatricality of social disaster.
The Secret Room project of Cuoccolo/Bosetti risks representing the catastrophe of the female subject and her disastrous existence. Its recent production Room of Evidence is the prequel for the successful and prolonged season of The Secret Room (RT40 p12), a dinner party performance of confessions. A prologue has however its own dramaturgy. We meet the characters, locate the settings, hear of the subplots and likely scenarios. It is also an event.

Room of Evidence begins with a journey through the city in a mini-bus. An enigmatic driver takes a small group of 8 through streets that he resites in the realms of history or myth. Here is where a grandmother gave birth to 12 children; over there is where the flooded river turned back the army. And through a lighted window in a charming Carlton cottage we can see where the hero spurned his young mistress. On one night, this was the room in which a woman on the bus watched her unsuspecting boyfriend in front of the television. This is the mise-en-scène of discovery, the mapping of unsuspected territory.

Then there is the arrival—an empty house, the CD player, a nature documentary on television, books and other personal possessions scattered around the different rooms. It is a modern house, white and sterile—objects have not quite found their home. The adventurous ones proceed upstairs to survey the horizon. OOPS—there is a shower running! Someone is in the house!

The emergence of the woman is primal. She of the white bathrobe, the image of Psycho interrupted. “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” she demands. Invasion, violation, threat—we are all guilty. This event re-enacts the violent meeting of viewer and subject. Over the next long while, we negotiate our relations as audience to her, the female actor performing the woman at home. She is beautiful, tense, provoked and yet, gracious. She accommodates our awkwardness.

There are 3 more stages—the room where she shows us the family album, the photos, the old school books, the scrawled letters, the coded messages from an older man to a woman he has shamed. The script is already written. The performer Roberta Bosetti is strangely detached through this scene. As a moment in dialogue with the audience however it opens up collective associations with childhood.

Then there is the room with the bed. My favourite part of this more private encounter is the bicycle wheel whose dynamo revs up an illuminated Madonna. It recalls my first night in Italy when my boyfriend and I were given refuge in a church hall that we shared with a similar icon through the night. Even without this personal memory, there is something peculiarly ironic about the sexual pulse of a young girl being relayed through the luminosity of the Holy Virgin. But this is not a room of sweetness but of disclosure. Particularly for my group: very tentative, incomplete and a little embarrassing. There is too much left unsaid, but then that happens too.

The final scene of parting occurs in a room of paired shoes. Here the woman can try on her outside personas. There are many possibilities. She will escort us to the door and wave good-bye. She looks wistful.

Director Renato Cuoccolo talks of this project as a new theatre, where the boundaries of life and art are blurred. Can you imagine having a performance with a small but paying audience in your home every night? And he also talks of the precision with which different audiences reproduce their response to the drama of a woman alone. By crushing perspective, we are implicated in the figure of Bosetti as the feminine, whether lover, muse or enigma. The project reminds me of Ingmar Bergman and his relationship with Liv Ullman—there is the same intimacy of observation, the same stuttered telling and the same tension of suspended desire. It is as if the theatre has become simultaneously cinematic and unconscionably personal. And our role in the woman’s story remains an open question, to be further tested as The Secret Room becomes a trilogy later this year.

Room of Evidence, director Renato Cuoccolo, performer Roberta Bosetti, secret address, Carlton, Melbourne, opened Nov 12, 2001

The performative history of terror was first rehearsed in thought as myth. Hesiod…describes the birth of this terror from a curious union: the marriage of Kytheria and Ares, eros and war. The conjunction bears a malignant fruit, the twins Panic (Phobos) and terror (Deimos), the stage stars of the theatre of war…
A Kubiak, Stages of Terror

I have over the past few months been haunted by 2 images. One is predictable enough: ‘Ground Zero’ it came to be called, the compacted remains of the World Trade Center towers. I did not experience it at first hand. The image that haunts me has been mediated by TV, framed by it, reduced to a manageable size, and was repeated sufficient times over the days succeeding the attack to ensure that it lodged securely in my mental image bank. (For a time CNN used it as a bridge to sashay out of the latest instalment in its ‘War Against Terror’ and into an ad break.) Still it was an image of undeniable potency: shot from above, the tangled mass of steel, concrete, glass, and presumably, though invisibly, human remains were swathed for weeks in a mist of smoke and dust, such that it looked like an ancient marsh filled with rotting material but seething with emergent life.

The second image was more particular but has recently begun to conflate in my imagination with the first. The Wooster Group’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, opened in Melbourne only 5 weeks after the September 11 attack, while the wounds were still red raw. It took place in a metal construction 2 levels high, which surrounded, dwarfed, and finally trapped the humans working within it, much as the metal remains of the Trade Center trapped the bodies of the workers within, or indeed much as the once-standing towers trapped the humans who worked within them in the ceaseless engine of production.

Yank, the protagonist of The Hairy Ape, believes that he controls the machinery of the liner on which he is chief stoker:

Hell in de stokehole? Sure it takes a man to work in hell. Hell, sure, dat’s my fav’rite climate. I eat it up! I get fat on it! It’s me makes it hot! It’s me makes it roar! It’s me makes it move! Sure, on’y for me everyting stops. It all goes dead, get me? De noise and smoke and all de engines movin’ de woild, dey stop.

The ontological contradiction at the heart of the play is there unknowingly in that last sentence. A man may think that he moves the engine but it is actually ‘de engines’ that move ‘de woild.’ It was the ensemble skill and the conceptual brilliance of the Wooster Group that they were able to use the very illusion of representational theatre to reinforce that essential paradox. All aspects of the production—choreography, sound design, lighting, stage management—worked to develop the illusion that the metal construction could be made to move, could be shifted, could be ‘worked’ by the humans working on it (a couple of times, Willem Dafoe as Yank with seeming superhuman effort ‘lifted up’ the enormous grid with a roar of triumph—the reference was of course to King Kong and his even more illusionistic filmic brethren). In fact the set remained implacable, unchanging throughout and what we were most aware of was the sheer skill necessary for the actors to survive on this dangerous construction.

What did change, however, were the locations that the set represented throughout the play: stokehole, promenade deck, Fifth Avenue New York (the World Trade Center once occupied the bottom end of Fifth Avenue), a prison and finally the monkey house at the zoo. Wherever Yank went, whatever aspect of the world he encountered it had the same shape, made of the same material, needed to be negotiated in the same way—so that finally the set became experientially what it already was conceptually and metaphorically; an image of the world itself, the engine that will seduce us to believe in our own power but will finally trap us and crush us to death.

In the November issue of Interview magazine is a remarkable photograph of Ground Zero by Bruce Weber. The mound of rubble towers above the firemen, policemen, ambulance men (the current working class heroes—the Yanks) most of whom stand, for this moment at least, immobile, facing the impossible task of peeling back the girders and concrete that have crushed their fellow humans. In the surrounding mist, almost indistinguishable from the skyscrapers that hover in the background, are a series of tall wooden scaffoldings lining the skyline. Are they part of the original construction or have they been placed there to hold the rubble in, to stop it spreading across the city? They are Brechtian in their insubstantiality, bits of stage machinery to remind us of what had been there and of how unreal the whole sham of the specular actually is. Two pages earlier at the start of his photo essay, Weber has a view of Manhattan from the sea, as we remember it, the twin towers still dominating the downtown skyline. Now it is here, now it is gone. Presence/absence.

The relationship between these 2 states is what Anthony Kubiak sees as “the implicit dialectic of the stage.” And the heart of that relationship, the shift from being to non-being, he names as “terror”.

Terror, the threat of non-being, is what calls life into question and so gives it its reality.
Terror is what, in the catharsis of danger and pain, re-presents life as life.

Kubiak’s book is called Stages of Terror (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana). It was written in 1991. It is an attempt, no less, to write a history of theatre as terror. More than that, it argues that theatre’s ability to name that terror at the base of life has always been one step ahead of the society in which it has played. That the culture of perception which it has engendered in all its forms has, far from mirroring its society, found ways of developing for that society an understanding of the terrifying interplay between power, production, coercion, ideology and identity—an interplay that is based upon the application of terror and its close allies, violence, pain and panic. This may seem to be a bleak reading of theatre and of history itself. I don’t think so. It is bracing to witness with clarity the powers that cloak themselves in all sorts of coercive masks within our society and it is true that theatre above all is the artform that can, that has and that should reveal those masks—even if it does so (as in Restoration comedy) by applying them even more rigidly.

Terror lay at the centre of The Hairy Ape. The visit of the rich society girl to the stokehole of the ship is a moment of ontological terror for Yank, the stoker—simultaneously he becomes aware of who he is, of who he isn’t, of who made him what he is, and of how hoodwinked he has been. None of this operates at the conscious level; terror this deep is unsignifiable, unspeakable (captured acutely in the Wooster production in a moment of long silence in which all that moved on stage were Dafoe’s eyes as he tried to register the implications of her presence) but it is there and it drives him to his own futile terrorist attack against New York and to his final annihilation in the zoo, crushed in the arms of the ape. One imagines that for Eugene O’Neill that form of death suggested a man succumbing to the fatal strength of his own primal power. In the Wooster production it is clear that it is Kate Valk (who played the girl) who wears the monkey suit—here, the real power over life and death lies in the hands of the oppressor, and whatever is repressed will return to destroy you.

Four days after the attack on the twin towers, Patti Smith wrote: “Once, in another century, I penned with arrogance, ‘I am an American, and I have no guilt.’ Now I feel compelled to utter, ‘I am an American artist, and I feel guilty about everything.’ In spite of this I will not turn away. I will keep working. This I perceive as duty. As I pray to God that in days to come, I will not awake and rise with the blood of the Afghan people dripping from my hands” (Interview magazine).

Well, we have witnessed how little effect her prayer has had. State terror has launched all its self righteous power pitilessly against a people redefined as the enemy because their home was the supposed source of an act of anti-state terror. At the time of writing, the central protagonist, ‘The World’s Most Wanted Man’, has slipped through the holes in the net, which is to be expected because we need to ‘want’ him more than we need to have him.

All this is constructed reality, pretence, feeding our desires for Violence while it distracts our attention from how much the new world order is oppressing us too. Theatre has foreseen this pretence: “The history of theatre also seems to tell us quite plainly that what is seen is in essence false because what is seen is inessential. The ‘ocular proof’, then, is always a lie, because it is always infected by the desire to see, and to see what one desires” (Kubiak).

How can our theatre respond to such bleak times? With empathy? “I’m not persuaded by those who insist that theater’s proper corrective to these ultra-ironic times is a return to empathy” (Alisa Solomon, “Irony and Deeper Significance”, Theater, vol 31, no 3, New Haven Connecticut, 2001). With harmony? “Even when the purgations of terror are explained in terms of the pleasure they produce, the final result of that pleasure more often than not seems to be something like stasis, stability, or harmony (Harmonium, sister of the terrors), a ‘harmony’ that functions as a cloaking of violence” (Kubiak). It is, finally, the excoriating force of theatre’s perception of the masks of terror that is our truest ally in confronting them. “Just as pain and terror both cause and effect each other, so, in its articulation of terror, theatre operates as both cause and resistance to that terror and oppression” (Kubiak).

The Hairy Ape, Eugene O’Neill, The Wooster Group, Melbourne Festival, The CUB Malthouse, Oct 19-Nov 6

Four recent Melbourne productions dig into hot political issues around diversity, exploitation and conflict. Using humour and acknowledging complexity, this kind of work reinvigorates contemporary, issue-based theatre.

Beyond the Gate of Heavenly Peace centres on young Chinese people in Australia trying to study, work and survive. Some are ‘illegals’, with expired visas. They change names to make it harder for immigration officials to locate them. ‘Johnson’ and ‘Lincoln’ share a flat with 2 young women. Amongst them moves an older man, the spirit of China, the Australian goldfields, the past of all Chinese.

The writing is strong and phrases are memorable: “The Chiko roll was invented by a Chinaman out for revenge.”; “Maybe we are better people in a foreign country.” There is no simplistic veneration of freedom or democracy contrasted with the repression of China. Characters are complex, not good, not what they seem, apart from some 2-dimensional Anglo characters.

Judy, a self described “Chinese princess”, lost a lot when she came to Australia to make something of herself. She collects the rent, does the shopping. She has contacts. Yet Judy tips off immigration when one of the others has an expired visa. Why? There’s less competition when there are not so many of us. She is ambivalent about returning to China, but cynically founds a ‘Melbourne-Chinese Pro-democracy Movement’, to which she has no commitment. As a result, she is accepted as a legal migrant. Playing the system works.

The rhythm of Beyond the Gate is the slow, regular beat of conventional theatre, with few changes in pace. However, a striking live music combination of violin and electric guitar works with the performers and video backdrop of Tiananmen Square, soldiers, and Melbourne freeways in the rain, to yield an insight into lives lived quietly, out of sight. This was director David Branson’s last work [see Obituary page 12].

Polyglot’s High Rise—a puppetry adventure was based at the Carlton Housing Commission flats. High wind and belting rain drove Sunday night’s outdoor event indoors. Many performers and the bigger puppets remained outside. A lot was lost in this transition but the energy and engagement of all those involved was infectious, the audience drawn into a world of coping with adversity. Outdoors in Melbourne is like that.

A crowd of mainly non-residents jammed into a smallish space to see this classic community theatre piece: stories collected from residents dropped into a narrative device. A child chases her scarf one evening as it blows through various flats in the high rise. Stories are told by local gems like Johnny Shakespeare and Ernie Sims. Clusters of school children with wooden pigeon-puppets flap by as the scarf blows on to the next point. Brightly coloured wooden boats sail through as stories of dislocation from all over the world are told. The same old stories, but fresh and intense because they are true. You know the child is telling his mother’s story of walking across Somalia. You know he was born on that journey and his mother really lifted an abandoned child from the road and placed it under a tree because she couldn’t carry two. (A collective cringe as this child says his mother will never forget what Australia has done for her. So grateful. We’re probably all thinking of the others, the ‘queue-jumpers’.)

High Rise—the music, stories and puppetry—seemed to be owned by these people. Few teenagers, but that’s a different project. Perhaps the next step is to build something beyond these narrative devices which allow the telling of individual stories. Is there a new story that can be built and told through a project such as this?

Melbourne Worker’s Theatre’s Magpie program notes suggest another classic community project, earnest and didactic: a “reconciliation play”, exploring contact between Indigenous and non-indigenous people. However, beginning with loud Mambo (Mabo) music and jokes, the audience is drawn into a complicated world of hilarity and blackness, past and present.

There’s Captain Cook in full naval regalia, standing pompous in braid and hat, gazing into the distance, completely naked below the waist. Elsewhere, children prepare for an Australia Day parade. Little Moses wants to carry a spear. The teacher insists on clapping sticks. His friend ends up in a grass skirt, the ‘gentle natives’ amongst the awful cardboard tall ships and swagman’s hats. As we watch these snatches from times past and hear jokes from the MC—the black/white Magpie—we hear a terrible story. A middle class man (Henry) and his wife stumble into their lounge room, half drunk, in shock. He was driving. They hit someone. They panicked and fled. He drinks more. Should they call the police? They are immobilised by guilt and fear of the consequences of the terrible thing they have done. They left a young black man dying in the gutter. They try variations on the story: I wasn’t drunk. He stepped in front of the car. He was dead before we got to him. Someone else will stop and help.

Two stories interweave. This haunted couple react to the accident as we learn about the man killed. He was Moses and he had a life.

The action takes place in numerous sites, at times diluting the intensity through its distance from the audience—not so for audience members dragged on stage to sit in the “cheap seats”! Magpie generally avoids clichés. Moses does a stretch in prison, but just as you fear the vision of him hanging by a sheet, there’s a surprising turn. He argues with an inmate who wants a cigarette. Moses says the man should say sorry first. He refuses. They banter and fight. Fucken this, fucken that. Resigned, Moses hands him the cigarette packet. He takes one and then chucks the packet on the ground. They look at each other. The white guy picks up the packet, throws it at Moses and mumbles “Sorry.” These were electric performances pushing old arguments and tensions in new directions. The depth of exploration of these urban Australian lives includes full black/white humanity in what could have been political diatribe. Even the Anglo characters are interesting.

Secrets is the annual performance of the Women’s Circus. Eleven years on, people come out on a cold night and pay to sit in a big windy shed to see a play about sexual abuse. What does that say? We can handle politicised theatre when it is like this. A row of old offices high up at the end of this huge shed is painted as a little set of suburban kitchens. Doors slam. We hear shouting and see the peeking through blinds, seeing what goes on but saying nothing. Keeping secrets.

Below, the huge space fills with masses of women belting around at full throttle. Chants and songs blend the wildness of kids’ music with that sinister edge to childhood innocence in a world of dark secrets. Two beautiful clowns are old style ‘50s Mums’, trying to get on the trapeze without showing their undies, clutching handbags and gloves: feminine modesty as a historical joke, a physical gag. There are the benign, friendly adults on stilts towering above the kiddies in gingham dresses in the schoolyard. Then there are the other adults who come at night, in the dark: “There is a small spot on the ceiling and I am not here.” Women’s stories of abuse are told simply and elegantly in narrative or physical form. Stunning images include black figures hanging from blood-red tissue, spinning in huge space. Another image is of a woman climbing the backs of others and falling, defeated. A later mirror image of this event shows a joyful ascent and release as her body is supported, thrown into space, trusting, caught and held by others. Even the riggers and techies bring a physical beauty of their own in the fast and easy competence with which ropes are flung, dropped and caught up again. This circus has always been physical and political, but is developing their style of sophistication and patterning, evident in the writing and performance of Secrets.

To roll along on waves of laughter as you understand the losses of urban Aboriginal people; to bounce with joy at the physical exuberance of women who have been abused and told their tales and learnt to fly like children again. Old-style didactic theatre is too heavy handed for this stirred-up cultural mix. A newer, politicised theatre has caught up with the present again.

Beyond the Gate of Heavenly Peace, director David Branson, writers John Ashton & Jian Guo Wu, performers Lorraine Lim, David Lih, Warwick Yuen, Virginia Cusworth, Minming Cheng, Phil Roberts, Fanny Hanusin and Ronaldo Morelos, Carlton Courthouse, Nov 7-24; High Rise, a puppetry adventure, Polyglot, Carlton highrise flats, Nov 17-18; there will be a version of this project performed at North Melbourne Town Hall in 2002; Magpie, writers Richard Frankland & Melissa Reeves; director Andrea James; performers Lou Bennett, Richard Bligh, Syd Brisbane, LeRoy Parsons, Bernadette Schwerdt, Maryanne Sam, Melbourne Worker’s Theatre, ArtsHouse, Nov 15-Dec 1; Secrets, writer Andrea Lemon, director Sarah Cathcart, Women’s Circus, Shed 14, Melbourne Docklands, Nov 22-Dec 8, 2001

Fiona Winning is Director of Sydney’s Performance Space at one of the most difficult stages of its provocative history as home to artistic practice that doesn’t fit the standard categories. Winning was a theatre worker and actor in Queensland working with the Popular Theatre Troupe and La Boite, moving towards a more community-based practice in the mid 80s with Street Arts. Sydney became her home in the 90s. She worked as Artistic Co-ordinator of Death Defying Theatre (DDT) from 1990 to1995 collaborating directly with culturally diverse communities in Western Sydney. Winning also made connections between the company and members of the performance community working at PS. After freelancing she became Artistic Director of Playworks, the national women performance writers network. And then in 1999…

I believe that it’s an important conceptual and physical space for the development of hybridity. The community around PS was a vital culture I wanted to work with, be an integral part of.

I’ve learned a lot in the job about making strategic choices because the reality is that there’s less money than there used to be and prices, like rent, have increased at the same level as the rest of the world. So we’ve had to make choices about focussing our resources on particular areas of practice, like performance, which has such a history here.

The other learning curve—and one I hadn’t expected to be so important—is the political arena that you have to operate in. The DDT thing had a far more specific agenda than a national organisation like PS. For example, at PS you’re not just responding to the Small to Medium Performing Arts Sector enquiry, but also to the Myer Visual Arts Enquiry and Marketing for the Visual Arts research and to a range of others because there are all these worlds we operate in as well as performance—new media, visual arts, community, satellites like antistatic and Pacific Wave.

We’re mostly dealing with the representatives of politicians. We’re not a large cultural institution. We don’t have the profile or kinds of colleagues and friends who are powerful in the business or political sectors. We have an active board involved in talking to a range of people—it’s partly about a series of networks that interlock into a bigger conversation. What I love about it is the diversity. It’s certainly argumentative. I like the engagement. While I have to take responsibility for a lot of things, I don’t have to take responsibility for making the art. The artists do that.

Some people might say I’m a meddling producer. So I care about the outcome and how they got there but ultimately it’s the artists who….

There’s lots of good stuff coming up but one of the issues about where we are now is the number of artists who are operating under extraordinarily difficult conditions. A lot of experienced artists are struggling to get 1 project up a year, so imaginations and practices are inhibited and diminished by the current economic climate. Rosalind Crisp (choreographer, Omeo Studio) talks about a time 10 years ago when a community of dance practitioners who lived on the dole or part time work could sustain their training and subsidise the work that they put on at Performance Space. It’s much harder now with the expense of living in this city for young artists to do that.

And the performance world has shifted. There are less opportunities for training and with that comes diminished opportunities for developing new work. For me, the PS is now at a point where we’re trying to offer strategic interventions for people to practice given that they’re not necessarily able to find the funds to produce work.

A residency program, which I’ll fill you in on later. There are a couple of programs that are specifically about professional development and training. Doing things like The Museum of Fetisihised Identities (2001) which engaged local artists in a different kind of process with Guillermo Gomez Pena. There are the forums that we’ve done jointly with RealTime that invite people to come and converse on a practical level around particular issues. This means they’re feeling part of a culture, in touch with what the issues are, and it means that they touch base with other practitioners and talk. They’re small interventions. They won’t solve the problem. It’s like a Depression. Keeping people fed. One of the other interventions is more and more co-production agreements with independent artists and small companies. Not only do we want to support artists but it’s good for us because we want to have good works in our program.

If these artists are getting less funding, less often, what ‘s the impact on PS?

It’s hard to have a high profile program. There’s less on, and when it’s on its only on for 3 or 4 days instead of 2 or 3 weeks as it once used to be. There’s the impact on audience development but also the technical challenge of getting things in and out within a week. More of a worry is that it makes it harder to compete with everything else in town. We can say we have this fantastic work that’s exploring contemporary ideas in new ways and all of that but it’s hard to make a splash when you’ve got a marketing budget of $1,000 and a short season.

One of the ways the PS used to run was that there was nearly always something on, so people would think, oh it’s Friday night, what’s on at PS? Last year we did manage to have a very busy series of seasons. This year it’s tougher to do that so we’re having periods that are specifically seasons of work, over 6 or 8 weeks, and then there’ll be periods where we’re not anticipating putting anything in the theatre other than developmental works. So the space will always be active.

In an ideal world you’d have 2 spaces, one for development and one for productions. What is missing in a year? What would it take to make a difference?

5 more projects that got up, but they need to get support from both levels of government. One of the things that’s happening to a lot of artists is that the different visions of the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts means that in any one round some artists are getting one but not the other grant. So they’ve got half of the money or less to realise something. Sometimes they’ll wait till the next round to try to get the extra half. In the case of the NSW Ministry that’s only once a year so you might be putting a work off for 18 months for another opportunity to pitch it. That’s often when we co-produce.

So 5 more fully resourced, ie $50,000 or up per project, performance or dance works a year would make a difference. And some commissioning money to produce a couple of works a year. The other thing that would make an enormous difference would be for us to create a touring circuit between contemporary performance venues in Australia. We’re seriously impoverished in not being able to see some of the work that’s coming out of PICA or Powerhouse or Dancehouse and vice versa. It’s just madness. It’s not just a matter of money to get the touring thing working. But it would be great if each of, say, 4 organisations was able to tour 1 thing, ie 4 things between us per year and that would mean that we were getting 4 extra works in our space: it would make an enormous difference to us and the artists. That’s also the case for the visual arts sector, sharing exhibitions between contemporary art spaces.

This year we’re waiting on money that the government might provide for our rent. They’ve committed themselves to working with us on finding a space. That’s great. The question is how and when it’ll happen. They’re likely to respond to a range of urgent requirements by housing a number of organisations together. That’s a fantastic opportunity. The question is where, and who will the other organisations be. It makes good sense in terms of audiences for us to be in the same precinct as other contemporary art organisations.

We don’t want to be in a position though where we’re venue managing a beautiful building with lots of multiple spaces but lose our programming and producing roles. It’s essential we continue to mount an extensive and meaningful program that is designed to support artists and artform development and audiences.

There’s the antistatic dance event this year. There’ll be another Intersections—they’re both training and talk events—and a really exciting initiative called Time_Place_Space 1 which is a hybrid performance workshop we’re doing in collaboration with the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council, Charles Sturt University and the city of Wagga Wagga.

There’s also the Performance Space Residency Program. Six inter-media collaborative teams of artists have been awarded residencies. Each group is posing conceptual and technical questions. Some are new collaborations testing an idea, others are pre-existing, pushing into new dimensions, some will culminate in a work-in-progress showing, others are researching a process.

Layla Vardo and mik la vage will build a multi-timbral, MIDI activated, marimba-style instrument that’ll be designed to produce acoustic sound, trigger samples and control a number of stand alone electronic devices. They’ll explore the potential of real time audio/visual performance with this.

Lalila is a new collaboration between electronic sound composer Etienne Deleflie, digital artist Katherine Gadd and performer Bronwyn Turnbull. During the residency they’ll investigate the improvisational possibilities in the real time mixing of sound, video and physical performance. It’s a 3-way dialogue following a narrative of memories and re-occurring daydreams.

Trash Vaudeville and Azaria Universe will explore the interactive possibilities between large projected animations, live bodies in aerial motion and spoken word. Live, sound and visual media artists Victoria Spence, Jas Sweeney and Andrew Forster are investigating the use of digital technologies in live work driven by the urge to keep live art alive and vital. Version 1.0 ,who did Second last Supper here in 2001, will continue to develop their improvisational process as they make their new work questions to ask yourself in the face of others. Video artist Samuel James and performance group Shagging Julie will develop a performance installation using public environments as a theatrical platform.

Other work coming up includes Gary Carsley curating an exhibition with performance artists Monica Tichacek (RealTime 43, p12) and the King Pins creating works for that. We’ve got Robert Gober and Gilbert & George works in there as well. We’re continuing the collaboration with festivals wherever we can—Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Gay Games Cultural Festival, Carnivale.

So, with all this nurturing and creativity but against the odds of underfunded artists, an over-expensive building, the suspense of waiting for additional state funding and the saga of the continuing search for a new home, how does 2002 look for PS, in a word…or two?

It’s a make or break moment for us. But I have to say I feel very optimistic…a year of good art, strategic work and big results.

Alicia Talbot makes passionate speeches with a fluent, bright-eyed fervour, head cocked, a touch of defiance, brisk. Unapologetically she self-edits anything that sounds like missionary zeal, ‘healing’ for example, when talking about performance with and for a community. Her pitch is determindedly political, with a hint of Western Sydney-upwards-inflection? Or somethiing rural? Performer, director and Artistic Director of Bankstown-based Urban Theatre Projects, she is hard at work, shuttling between Sydney and Adelaide, working on the Sellars’ dimension of the 2002 Adelaide Festival: her productions with UTP, The Longest Night and Cement Garage.
The Longest Night is about Bernie the homeless young woman from Cement Garage having her baby and getting a housing estate house. One day her friends rock up to say hello. And they stay and they stay and they stay. And it is one long night…I guess if Cement Garage is about survival, The Longest Night is about change and day to day challenges. I remember some people who didn’t like the Cement Garage felt that the characters started off as homeless young people and ended up that way…there was a cycle without every really filling in the gaps. For me, that’s kind of the point. But I thought, well let’s give her the resource of a house and a pension, and the responsibility of her child and getting on with her life.

We originally devised The Cement Garage in collaboration with High Street Youth Health Service in 1999, and there was a Western Sydney tour in 2000 co-produced by Urban Theatre Projects and HSYHS. Angharad Wynne Jones, Associate Director Adelaide Festival saw it, and suggested we make a proposal for Adelaide Festival 2002.

We pitched the idea of The Longest Night to the festival and asked them to fund the production of a new work by Urban Theatre Projects. The team would create the work in-residence in an Adelaide site that was populated by disadvantaged young people…They matched us with The Parks Community Centre…it was a really great match, to have The Cement Garage in-residence in a homeless service and then to make The Longest Night in-residence in a housing estate, apparently the poorest postcode in SA. We also got a Western Sydney Artists Fellowship to do a creative development of the new show at High Street Youth Health Service [Parramatta]. So that knocked down the amount of residency time we’d need in Adelaide. Then confirmation came for the festival commission. We met up with the Parks community in late May 2001 and spent a couple of days meeting the community.

The Parks Community Centre covers 4 suburbs. It’s a whole 70s conglomeration of Whitlam-Dunstan-inspired buildings and initiatives which includes a health service, youth service, arts and crafts complex. When we knew we were coming we set the agenda, and found out who the key people were, the managers of the different services we’d be working with and set up a number of meetings with them over 2 days, just to get a snapshot of the place. After those 2 days we realised there’s no way we could do this project on the time line set out for the Adelaide Festival. These services don’t necessarily collaborate on site. They have different operating philosophies and agendas. This is not to say that they haven’t worked together in many ways but we wanted to work with the community centre as a holistic entity.

What we try to do before bringing the [creative] team in, is to build a really strong foundation where people know who we are and what we’re doing and know we’re on this journey and that we’ve got this finite deadline. And not just the young people but also the staff, security, cafeteria, the cleaning and the grounds people, the site manager for council—the team has made connections with them all.

There’s a large African community at The Parks: Somalian, Ethiopian, Sudanese. The first time it was arranged for me to meet those young people in May, nobody came. The second time I went and we set up a meeting, 5 young men came. Then the third time I asked them, what would you like to do, how will we get together. And I said, what about a meal? The next time I came we advertised “Dinner with Alicia” and we cooked a big halal pot of beef and then had to order vegetarian pizza and I think 30 young people came and it turned into a bit of a dance, a blue light disco. So the next time, we set up a blue light disco. On one visit Shannon Williams, one of the performers from Sydney (an MC in the hip-hop band South West Syndicate) did some rapping and some workshops. And the next time the whole team came. We also ran a full day drama workshop because they’re so interested. In one corner there’s all these people breaking with Morgan (Lewis) and Shannon. In the middle of the room there are young African women doing acrobatics with Lucia (Mastrantone) and Bernie (Regan). Carlos Russell, Rose Ertler and Caitlin Newton-Broad are out on the dance floor. Celina McEwen, a researcher from the University of Technology Sydney, Centre for Popular Education, was leading capoeira in another corner.

So what comes out of that process? Are you focussing on their lives, their needs, their problems? Or is it focussed very much on what you’re going to do.

I don’t think we can solve social problems. I’m not a welfare worker. I can support and listen to young people and encourage them to hook up with one of the youth or health workers who are also closely involved with the collaboration. The aim within those environments is to come in with this artistic process that goes, we’re here now, this is where we’re going and these are some of the steps we’re going to take. I think I’ve worked out the process takes about 9 months so it’s kind of like a baby, I reckon, the gestation period.

I have a framework of questions. Generally we don’t work on personal stories. We work on a common interest based on some sort of popular culture. Rather than saying, oh you’re in detention so let’s do a show about life in jail, or, you have a mental illness, let’s make a show about that, it’s more like, what are you listening to, what are you interested in? And that’s the point we come together. As one young man said to me recently, as I tried to explain how we worked, oh you’re interested in my social and political opinions and ideas about the world. We consider them to be experts and dramaturgs in the process.

To me it’s like Sigourney Weaver in Alien. She’s just an ordinary girl on her spaceship doing her own thing with an ordinary group of people. And then this extraordinary thing known as an alien comes along and she responds in an extraordinary way. In a community, the people I’m working with have extraordinary circumstances that fluctuate in and out of their everyday lives. The way they respond is to be extraordinary people and develop coping mechanisms to get through each day and negotiate their lives.

It’s not about the moral judgements of right or wrong or can you please do this so I can show you the error of your ways. We start on a one word conceptual brainstorm and go from there. And I guess people do talk about their lives in some form of disclosure. But we aim to set it up really clearly so they can protect themselves in the discussion. I can’t remember who coined this phrase but I’ll repeat it: “It’s about a generated fiction that’s based in reality.” So together, the artistic team and the young people who are involved in this collaboration generate something that is without back story but is very much focussed on now and where you’re going and looks at how you negotiate your way through everyday life.

From the very first day of rehearsal we start with a formal consultation. That’s when we have about 10 to 12 young people who are paid for their time and expertise because they’re consulting and they’re coming up with ideas. So 20 people are sitting around the room, an artistic team of 10, and 10 young people. We’re all paid to be there so it is some kind of level playing field. We might start with a concept like ‘belonging’ and ask “what do you understand ‘belonging’ to be?” And I’ll ask them to just come up with one word. Someone may have written “housekeys”, or “my cap” and might say “my cap makes me feel like I belong because it’s the only thing I know is mine.” And then more and more words come up. And inevitably there are numerous drugs up there. I’ll go okay, why does dope make you feel like you belong? And people start to talk about the relaxation and the freedom. I ask, why is it good and all these words come up and then we’ll maybe talk about what’s not good about it, and another pile of words comes out. And before you know it we’ve got whiteboards full of words and images. We take that into the rehearsal room next day and we set up some kind of improvisation that, for example, might start with your centre of gravity. Where is it? Is it really low. Think about what substance you might have taken. Does it take your head up high or does it take your weight down low. As the performers start taking that imaging through it starts an action, an exploration from the team on stage. And they’ll start to make some offers. From that process a huge amount of material will be generated and maybe one kind of direct set of actions. And we might call that block “Substance Night” or “Waiting” or it might even belong to the original word, say, “Housekeys”. Boom. Up it goes

The next time we see the young people in a formal capacity it could be 2 days or a week later, depending on how much money we’ve got. If I could I’d have a formal consult twice a week. Usually, it’s once a week. But at least one or 2 of the young people will have been around in the rehearsal room while we’re developing stuff and they’ll feed back directly. And it’s all dramaturgical questions. People will stand up and say, I don’t understand the relationship between Carlos and Bernie at that point. And they start to feed ideas and details and characters’ paths into the process. Or I’ll say, what’s happening here? And they’ll explain it. But at some point we always tussle too because it’s a collaboration. We don’t go with everything they suggest. Just as everything that we create, they don’t go with. And for me the process is this: you take an artistic team and put them in residence. That destabilises your artistic team if they’re really working in residence, and it’s an open door. The young people or the community are also destabilised because there’s this new, wacky kind of, force—you know what teams of artists are like. Neither group has a platform they can hold onto. And within that we have to go forward in a real collaboration. That’s the process that we try to encourage and support and facilitate.

Someone offered to show us the theatres—you know, they’ve got these 2 beautiful red velvet theatres—and I said I’ve heard that from the Wingfield Dump you can see all of The Parks. Why don’t we go there? We drove up there and decided it wouldn’t work. But after walking around, The Parks with Harley Stumm [Executive Producer Urban Theatre Projects], Janine Peacock [Production Manager, Community Liaison for The Longest Night], Mathew Ives [The Parks Arts and Function Complex Coordinator] and Jeff Creek [Site Manager of The Park Community Centre], we zeroed in on the Motor Maintenance Workshop. It’s got lathes and a vehicle hoist and stuff so we’re taking those out. It’s a very long building. Half of it will be the performance area and in the other half we’ll put in raked seating. So you’re in this one long lounge room. Outside the workshop is a big carport and garage in a big wire enclosure—so Cement Garage outside, Longest Night inside. The staff of The Parks Community Centre, the Parks Community Health Service, The Parks Youth Service and the Parks Arts and Function Complex and Adelaide Festival have all played a role in negotiating the use of the Centre as a hub for Adelaide Festival 2002 activities, and in particular the site based residency for The Longest Night.

The South Australian Department of Human Services in association with Adelaide Festival have also contributed extra support to assist with additional hours for youth workers throughout the process.

Is that because in the process people’s problems manifest, and they have to be dealt with?

The artistic process we undertake generates a great deal of fictitious material about day to day living for a group of friends in a housing estate in Adelaide’s Western suburbs. Some of the images may reflect aspects of young people’s lives and lived experiences, and this can be confronting for them and they may need support such as transport, or half an hour for someone to find them a bed for the night. The process has to be flexible and well supported by the staff of the collaborating services and agencies. These workers become integral to the process, both in the support and facilitation of young people’s participation, but also within the creative and logistical organisation of the entire project.

I love Urban Theatre Projects. I’ve never worked in an arts organisation. All I’ve ever wanted to do was to make theatre. I only went into directing because I knew I couldn’t make a living as a performer getting my gear off. It didn’t sell well in rural Australia, in fact it nearly caused a riot in a bar in Tasmania. I love Western Sydney and I thrive on making work in collaboration with communities and artists, it pulls together into an exciting and challenging process. I love the variety of the work and the diversity of the people who make up the many parts of each process. I certainly feel the weight of the responsibility: the work before me that Fiona Winning, Harley Stumm and John Baylis created in collaborations with team of artists and communities over the last 10 years has been quite astounding, as well as the long and impressive history of the company.

Our big community participation project later in the year has the working title Mechanix and it’s a collaboration with Joey Ruigrok van Der Werven [set engineer with Stalker and The Marrugeku Company] Simon Wise and Richard Montgomery [both widely experienced production managers and lighting designers] and all the miracles and illusions that they generate, along with acrobatics and movement from Lee Wilson, and sound and music from Liberty Kerr and Reza Achman. This is building a show that is designed not only for performers and artists but for tradespeople and tinkerers and older people in Western Sydney, and for inventors and the CFMEU. We’re looking to do a show which asks: what if you could engineer your identity with the perfect contraption, something that constantly evolves and changes, what would it be and what would be your place within that? It’ll be a bit of a wild journey. I really am interested in big spectacle.

Urban Theatre Projects, The Longest Night, March 2-10, 7.30pm; The Cement Garage, March 6 & 9, 11.00am; Machine Maintenance Workshop, The Parks Community Centre, Adelaide Festival 2002

Virginia Hyam was Artistic Director of the Melbourne Fringe for 5 years. She’s now the Executive Producer of the Sydney Opera House’s The Studio, an intimate, flexible, ultra-comfortable venue located between the Playhouse and Drama Theatre on the western side of the building. It’s a venue with great potential, something only occasionally realised in its first couple of years. However, with the full-on commitment of the Opera House and the considerable energies of Hyam and her knowledge of the innovative edge of Australian performing arts, an ongoing program has been curated that should draw new audiences to the building and create a viable space for the increasing number of Australian artists on the road. A lot will depend on making the Opera House attractive to younger audiences, which involves issues of access, staff attitudes, places to gather after shows, foyer ambience and, especially on developing a personality for The Studio. Hyam’s program for the first 6 months of 2002 is a strong one, filling a significant cultural gap in Sydney’s artistic life between the mainstream and the cutting edge of Performance Space. But what of the character of the program?

Accessible, fun, high quality, diverse. I’m really trying break down the whole notion of what The Studio is in respect to artform. It’s actually just about contemporary work. So it has a pretty eclectic personality. Some work like that of Machine for Making Sense has a niche audience, but I’ve tried to go for a broader audience base and hopefully develop a crossover in taste—you know, ‘I really enjoyed that cabaret work, I think I’ll give dance a go’.

You could say that it’s a diverse audience you’re after but that’s not quite right is it?

The investment that’s gone into The Studio is to offer an alternative inroad into the Opera House. So a younger audience who go to clubs or to movies but who might not think to go to theatre—I’d be hoping that we’d attract that sort of crowd. Certainly the work is targeted in that sort of 18-35 demographic. But it’s also about attracting the early-30s age group. And, in line with that, the prices are kept as low as possible. So you can say, ‘I’m having a night out at the Opera House and my ticket is costing me $25’.

As we move into the second half of the year, there’s a focus on Asian work and the music series. The aim there is to attract that more diverse cultural audience as well with the style of work.

Well, comedy is really accessible and that’s why I’m really keen to have it in the venue but I’m also keen that it doesn’t turn into a stand up comedy venue because it’s such a beautiful performance space. I’m more interested in theatrical comedy, like Russell Cheek and Paul Barry’s show, Tall-Dog and the Underpoppy. A show like Meshel Laurie’s Whore Whisperer you could put into the cabaret or comedy category. Sleepless Beauty will certainly have a comedy element to it. It would have to with Christa Hughes!

There’s an audience who might be expecting a different sort of cabaret than you have here with shows like Paul Capsis’ Capsis vs Capsis.

That’s why we’ve written “No Show Tunes” on the publicity for Sleepless Beauty. Another function of the cabaret program is that it’s a chance to involve people like Imogen Kelly (Gurlesque) who performs more on the underground circuit.

Good to see Melbourne choreographer Phillip Adams’ Upholster in there. The Dance Tracks season hosted by Lisa Ffrench with choreographers Kirstie McCracken, Lisa Griffith and Michael Whaites is heavily music focused.

It’s electronic or live music. Again, I’d be hoping that people who come along to Dance Tracks will then think, I’d like to see Ballet Lab.

When The Studio was set up there was quite a strong emphasis on new music and contemporary classical. New music remains an important part of your program but unless it’s Synergy or Taikoz, who are both in your program, it’s very hard to sell in Sydney. You’ve got everything from the Tibetan singer Yungchen Lhamo through B(if)Tek, Machine for Making Sense, to prominent British sound artist Matthew Herbert.

What started out with new music is now new music and a whole range of other things. I’m just trying to integrate it into the rest of the program and hopefully enthuse people to look at it in a different way. So a group like the [contemporary classical] Ensemble Offspring I’ve incorporated into the Studio Music Sessions on a Sunday side by side with Matthew Herbert.

Great to see they’re playing works by Finnish composers Kaija Saariaho and Magnus Lindberg. The Finnish revolution goes on.

The Prop (see page 32) and Pivot collaboration is a really interesting one, part of the program of collaborations that we’re trying to do. We’re trying to explore different mediums of music and to find a point of contrast to what’s already going on in other venues around Sydney.

In your brochure you say “Swing with The Studio scene.” Now, a scene is a very difficult thing to establish especially within the formal constraints of The Opera House.

The first step is being able to take drinks into The Studio. That’ll make it easier. Changes at the Opera House over the last 12 months have already been quite radical anyway, just with the change of caterers. And all the new bars that have sprung up around the Opera House are going to help too. As well as other Opera House programming, we too are looking at front of house and getting to understand our audiences better. It’s not like The Studio is working in isolation, it’s one stream of that change, building accessibility and making it less of a highbrow place to be. Of course, it will always be that for some people—and that’s fine. It’s just opening it out as well.

You’ve also got the website and “opportunities to sharpen your critical knives”—what’s that about?

We’re building up a membership base which gives you the benefits of all our sponsor partnerships of course. But there’s also the opportunity for critical feedback on the website and the chance for people to feed in to the direction The Studio is going. I think what we have to do to be successful is to be current, relevant, to be responsive to a degree so that people can write in and say, look I saw this amazing band in Newcastle, have you heard of them?.

Then you’ve got the ticket packages. How important are they in your strategy?

You can buy 5 tickets for about $100. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. We don’t see The Studio package as some kind of subscription series and we don’t want to go down that road.

What’s in it for artists, do you think? There are people in the program who are well-known and a lot who are not.

The key thing I’m trying to do with artists who are not known is to provide a higher profile and to support their work, whether it’s in development, or giving them presentation funds to actually put it on. You’re supporting artists to get their work out to the best production levels that we can provide. I’m interested in using the space to its absolute capacity. At the moment it’s a testing ground to see how we can accommodate artists within the space. It’s not just a place to put on a show. I’m hoping it’s more than that.

It’s a curated program in which some shows are pre-existing but with others you’re playing a producing or co-producing role. For example, Gretchen Miller’s In Four Four.

Really important. Dance Tracks 2 (Albert David, Jason Pitt & Bernadette Walong), Christa Hughes’ show—they’re new commissions. Then there’s producing works with other partners. There’s one coming up in the future which The Studio, the Brisbane Powerhouse and a Melbourne organisation are co-funding. So, we’re really trying to build a network. Christa’s show is also going to the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. As many arms as we can have to further opportunities for artists to present their work, the better.

It is a big role. But that’s what’s exciting about the job. I think if it was just about running a venue and putting on shows, it wouldn’t be to the capacity The Studio’s up to. I guess though what I have to break down is the notion of people coming to me and going, “We hear you’ve got a million dollars in there, just give us $50,000.” And I’d say, “Well I’m sorry I can’t quite do that.” The way that I’m working the budget is in partnerships and supporting people as they’re going for funding which is crucial for these shows to be able to get up.

I guess the work I did at the Melbourne Fringe has been a great informer of what I’m interested in, the work of independent artists. Prior to that I was Project Manager at Carclew Youth Arts Centre in South Australia. So emerging artists were very much my focus there. I worked too with the Adelaide’s Come Out Festival. My interest has always been at that developmental end and seeing ideas supported and nurtured to realisation. I guess this position is a bit of a combination of those two and now the opportunity to work with artists who are really well established and doing amazing work.

Robbe-Grillet is considered one of the most innovative novelists of the 20th century, challenging conventional narrative modes and abolishing fictional elements such as character, plot and chronological time in favour of repetition and absence of emotion. His novel Djin is inherently subjective, lacking any one specific point of view. Time expands and contracts within this changeling tale, exploring themes surrounding the dislocation and disorientation of the self, identity loss, multiple personalities and recovered memory. As the audience is encouraged to grapple with these relatively complex ideas explored through an almost impenetrable plot, it gradually becomes apparent that in the Lindsay Vickery opera Rendez-vous, based on Djin, and its characters refuse to yield their secrets readily.

Fragments of the plot are gradually revealed through comical stories and far-fetched tales of intrigue and strange occurrences. As the stories become wilder, the audience grows suspicious, not only of the characters (especially those who relish a good lying competition) but of the synthetic and deceptive nature of the narrative itself. It is left to the audience to piece this puzzle together and construct their own version of the plot, potentially changing their role as passive consumers to producers of meaning. While it is sometimes difficult to keep up with the twists and turns of this tightly woven story, one can’t help but feel part of an elaborate mystery. After all, apart from the monochromatic darkness, paranoia and romantic pessimism, the first thing one expects from homage to film noir is taut, if tortuous, plotting and Rendez-vous certainly delivers!

Led by a fine, burly-toned saxophone and languorous cello, the prologue sets the scene as a foreboding male voice resonates through the hall. An uneasy yet fascinated audience begin their journey into an intriguing Parisian underworld guided by the crooked characters that dwell in its seedy ambience, shadowed by an industrial horizon. Anticipation builds as the prologue ends with a sense of melodrama from piano accordion and violin, gradually moving into some interesting percussion work. The sound of a dripping tap echoed by slow chromatic scales performed on piano cuts icily through the still and intense atmosphere. The expressive power of the common chromatic is made evident in this mesmerising sequence. One feels almost afraid to breathe.

The range of vocal styles explored (from naturalistic dialogue and heightened speaking, to unaffected singing and finally to full operatic delivery) helps translate the text by placing emphasis on specific phrases of the dialogue. As the pace and depth of expression change erratically, the audience is less likely to de-focus. In an impressive display of range and flexibility, all 3 performers switch seamlessly from one vocal technique to another. This is in part due to Vickery’s skills as a librettist. His adaptation of Robbe-Grillet’s novel proves that subtext, ambiguity and the limitations of language can be effectively explored in musical theatre.

Dressed to kill in the archetypal noir dress code of trench coat and trilby, beneath a furrowed brow and through his resounding baritone, Andrew Broadbent gives a brooding, charismatic performance as Simone Lecoeur. Simone, also known as Boris, the bewildered schizophrenic anti-hero, is an iceman melting as the structure of his world begins to disintegrate. Kathryn McCusker plays the mysterious and alluring Djin with dramatic intensity, balancing a lyrical tenderness with mild robustness to great effect. Finally, Taryn Fiebig in a striking performance, captures the chameleon-like character of Marie to perfection. Her voice and personality range from hilarious, spritely wild child to enchanting, cabaret songstress.

The virtual set was constructed by Vikki Wilson and Rick Mason of Retarded Eye. Taryn Fiebig, Borivoje Kandic, Jett Black and Maxwell Vickery were photographed in gritty, black and white footage intimating European history and French noir, adding another dimension to Rendez-vous’ surrealist world. Through what appears to be a blend of archival and original footage, Retarded Eye’s creation is bewitching and bizarre, filling the hall with its haunting ambience. B-grade sci-fi images and fairground ferris wheels add to the cold and intense images of industrial machinery, typewriters, deserted alleyways and cryptic photographs. This virtual world blends well with Duncan Ord’s lighting which, in keeping with the style of film noir, creates a strikingly sharp contrast between light and shadows. Lawrie Cullen-Tait’s set and costume design melds elements from different genres and plays with the duality between new and old, drab and colourful, real and surreal. The industrial scaffolding ablaze with dripping candles is a striking centre piece, reminiscent of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti’s Industrial Symphony. The single projection gives a clear sense of the world being explored, however, to be fully submerged in this dark fantasy does still require a stretch of the imagination. Several screens (smaller if need be) could be erected to create an extra dimension to the work. Director Talya Masel plays quite freely with the allusions and illusions of the theatrical/filmic medium with humour and a literate imagination.

Rendez-vous is a gripping theatrical experience. Vickery’s creation is a unique and intrepid fusion of artforms and genres supported by his cutting edge musical score.

Rendez-vous: an Opera Noir, Rechabites Hall, Perth, Nov 21-25. See our interview with Lindsay Vickery

With the mainstream Adelaide Festival, like Ophelia, now celebrated with maimed rites, it is left to Katrina Sedgwick’s dynamic Fringe festival to restore the full ceremony. One of the most innovative sections is in film and digital media, curated by documentary filmmaker Heather Croall. Drawing on 3 main sources—Mirrorball, Digi-Docs and Flicker—around which workshops and forums converge, she has signalled her energetic presentation in its overall title. Shooting from the Hip takes its ammunition from the old and the new, the analogue and the digital. So it is not surprising to see as much attention given to the revival of Super-8 film as to the coolest cuts of band-bites for Fat Boy Slim.

Born 7 years ago from the Edinburgh Festival, Mirrorball now glitters as the highlight of music video. With Spike Jonze’s success and international commissions, it has encouraged young directors to move from promos to features. I must admit immediately to having some reservations about its links with consumerist capitalism and throwaway gloss. Chris Cunningham is typical. Having worked on special effects with Clive Barker and Stanley Kubrick, he decided to “switch from using one side of (my) head to the other.” Simply translated, this appears to mean that he would allow sound to lead him towards whatever visuals appeared, to let the library of sound in his head grow into the cacophony of visual noise that pollutes Times Square, Shinjuku and the Pompidou Centre. (It’s no accident that most of Mirrorball’s commissioners are French and Japanese.) At its worst, his productions are adolescent tantrums of screaming violence. They work in short grabs, but the longer they rage the more intolerable and indecipherable they become. Nor do they always correspond to his intentions. Any critic ought to be suspicious of an artist who can come out with statements such as, “It’s only something that people pick up on, y’know what I mean?”

Cunningham shows one of the dangers of crawling into bed with the ad industry. His best and latest work has started to confront the dilemma. Hired to use marching cheerleaders, for example, he gradually and spitefully (his word) takes it over the top until the product and the spuriously sexist method of marketing become parodies.

There is an even greater sense of the No Logo approach in the work of Michel Gondry. Both visionary and aesthete, he plays with altering the horizontal and vertical planes of the ‘box’ into which he turns the frame. An entire apartment block becomes both a cross-section of urban life and a dislocated Rear Window. His palindromes approach brilliance. A splitscreen of 2 girls performing the same actions is in near perfect synch, except that one is moving forward in time and the other backward. Like a verbal palindrome, it can be read either right to left or vice-versa. As features such as Run, Lola, Run and Memento have demonstrated, this kind of experimentation is vital to the development of the cinematic apparatus. Gondrys’ masterwork is a clip in which a book starts printing itself as it’s read, and then erases itself and its readers back to a forest.

Mike Mills shares Gondry’s love of graphic design, especially comic strips. In his cut ups, balloons issue from dogs’ faces and Sexy Boy is a giant monkey. “He’s great!” the dogs affirm. Hating banal band promos, Mills hijacks bad commercials to overload their kitsch component. If he thinks a song is pretentious he ‘perverts’ it. He has literally turned several boy bands into dolls, for example. Either the promoters don’t get it or they laugh all the way to the bank.

The Flicker component from LA perhaps requires a context unfamiliar to ad watchers. Super-8 shooting depends on either an immaculate eye for the long take, or editing the delicate little strips with skills usually possessed only by brain surgeons. Because the stock comes unstriped for sound, it is often associated either with home movies, on the spot footage, or fill-ins required by television researchers on programs showing the biography of a figure like JFK. But in the hands of Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas the medium has been a constant reminder that such footage is always the history of nations. Flicker founder Norwood Cheek, shows how much this inheritance has been continuous since the 60s. He will be providing hands-on workshops in Super-8, a medium easily crushed by high-tech advertisers, but abjectly sought by those same clients when they need it, in the name of ‘home movies’ and, therefore, actuality.

The Digi-Docs component, from Banff in Canada and with the support of the AFC and Cinemedia, reveals the latest part of the margin which is pushing its way towards the centre. With the advantage of inbuilt sound and minimal intrusion into the set-up, these little monsters can plague immediate documentary more stealthily, and reserve for future use the bizarre and the political. Want a feature doco about LP fanatics? Try Crumb’s Alan Zweig with his feature Vinyl. And for more encompassing uses it would be hard to beat Peter Wintonick’s Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment. This is real technology for the masses, from activists to Third World workers and journalists.

What each of these components has in common is a genuine sense of the interactive: not just computer stimulus/response automatism where you click on a Klingon and are rewarded with an explosion. Ken Paul Rosenthal will be on hand to show just how to handle those damn finicky strips of Super-8. And beside the Boy Bands, what about the Girl Directors? Andrea Richards has written a book on the subject (Girl Director: the guide for the first time flat broke filmmaker), and is making herself available in workshops catering for local adolescents as well as international big-timers. This lively Fringe will have free outdoor screenings. The workshops are cheap and participants can submit their own VJ concepts. To get a glimpse of the webpage connections, slick design, and using a long spoon to eat with the devil, type these URLs in your browser: www.bluesource.com [link expired] and www.shynola.co.uk [link expired].

Adelaide Fringe festival, Shooting from the Hip: Mirrorball, March 8-10; Flicker, Feb 23-26; Digi Docs, March 15-16, The Cinema, L5, Union House, The Hub, Adelaide University.

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