Australian
and international
exploratory
performance and
media arts

October 2002

Nightshift 's latest incarnation has increased the work magnificently in scale, complexity and duration, and is magically immersive in Artspace's largest gallery. On opening night, guests disappeared into the darkened space for long, satisfying reveries, wandering amidst the large transparent screens, intrigued by the flickering images reminiscent of peep shows, silent movies and film noir, but uniquely something else-a curious meditation on dance movement and sexuality. Images multiply and enlarge across the space with a photographic intensity and viewers become a shadowy part of the picture themselves in this intimate walk-in cinema of desire. The addition of extended movement passages to the original enigmatic glimpses of McPhee and a more audible and developed sound score confirm Nightshift as a major work in new media arts.

Nightshift, Wendy McPhee & George Khut, Artspace, Sept-Oct 14

RealTime issue #51 Oct-Nov 2002 pg. web

Alin Huma, image for L’Eccentricite, a fashion installation event conceived and curated by Dragana Spasich

Western Australia has a new biennial festival. The name isn’t new; the Artrage festival has been an annual event in Perth since 1983, surviving on hard work and tiny budgets to provide local artists with space to be seen and heard. However, over recent years many in the arts community have felt that the organisation was failing to renew itself, becoming insulated and embattled. Whatever the truth—and perception is everything—it is wonderful to report that, like all good ideas, Artrage isn’t going away, just turning around. And the person behind or in front of the wheel (depending on where you like your directors to sit) is Marcus Canning, 28 and happy to be here.

The appointment of any festival director is an act of faith, signalling support for the preferred models, practises, and affiliations of the newly appointed person. Canning brings to Artrage his experience across a range of artforms and communities. He studied Fine Arts at the University of Western Australia, and has a history in performance and installation. He has demonstrated strong commitment to visual arts through his involvement in the establishment and running of the jacksue gallery, a very active artists’ space that survived through the 1990s. Having worked with both the children’s festival Awesome and the Lookout Network of Regional Festivals, he understands the organisational imperative. And as someone who has performed in Artrage, he knows its core responsibility to local work. You get the idea from talking to Canning that he knows lots of people, lots of people know him, and he likes to talk. In his short time as director, he has been able to re-establish communication with existing art spaces. At the risk of simplification, his ethos seems to be the more art, the better.

Change was always on the cards for Artrage, but the shift from an annual to biennial event is a big move. The recommendation pre-dates Canning’s appointment, but he is right behind the new model. “The move to a biennial model radically challenges the organisation and the annual festival cycle, and it allows us to use that off-year to deepen and grow our role as a support agency and production house.” Along with this new cycle comes another way of programming, including a series of creative partnerships and projects unlike any previously undertaken by the festival.

Perhaps every festival is beset by the apparently contradictory demands that it both stay home and build a centre, and get out and serve the wider community. Canning is very aware of these twin concerns, and keen to demonstrate that a festival can do both. At home in Northbridge, he showed me Artrage’s new multi-purpose venue, The Bakery Arts Centre, secured thanks to core sponsor, local utility Western Power. While only the Breadbox Gallery has opened, the level of activity suggests that there will be no trouble meeting the October festival deadline. Local artists will be well served by this space, which will be managed and operated by Artrage throughout the year.

Canning is keenly aware that change must be articulated to Artrage’s former and potential constituents. “When I first started,” he says, “we had just got the building and I was really keen that we make a statement to the arts community about where Artrage was going, which is why we opened the Breadbox Gallery space.” In my brief stroll through the James Street premises (“Perfect placement”, says Canning, citing PICA on the eastern axis of James Street and Artrage at the other) I saw that much of the renovation of this shell had been completed. Look forward to The Window Box (installation window), and The Black Box (80-seat performance space).

And if you’re wondering where the dough is coming from, or imagining this is another budget-sucking exercise in empire building, there is everywhere a comforting meld of high-energy DIY and low-budget know-how. Along with participants in a Work-For-the-Dole program coordinated by Artrage, volunteer friends and artists are pitching in, eager to see another local multi-use venue for rehearsal, exhibition and performance in a city with a severe shortage of affordable, accessible space. “This is a solid resource,” says Canning, “and we have to make it pay for itself; that’s where we can be entrepreneurial about the use of the space. A space is a very precious thing. We want to drive it so it is about continual activity. When a festival comes about it ends up being the culmination of streams of activity, and this space will be a focus for that, but also a point of departure.”

The heart of this year’s festival will remain the Bakery. Across the road, the local park, Russell Square, will be reborn as the Moon Garden, home to a free open-air festival. However, creative partnerships in 2002 take Artrage out of the comfort zone. The City of Swan will partner a Satellite Festival in Midland (20kms inland from the CBD), coinciding with the UK National Review of Live Art (brought to Australia in collaboration with Brisbane’s Powerhouse, RT 50, p35). Amongst other events, Kate MacMillan will curate Urban Anxiety, bringing together a group of local, national and international artists. It is intended that the exhibition will then travel to each of the participating countries.

New spaces and places dominate. On the Queen’s Birthday, with partner Perth Zoo, Simon Pericich and Thea Costantino’s cardboard caravan (first seen at PICA’s Hatched 2002) will be placed amongst the card-crunching orangutans, high up on their new architect-designed enclosure. “There is an element of awe-inspiring fantasy here,” says Canning.

He is particularly excited about Artrage’s partnership with Pride. Together they will co-produce a range of events, including a one-day forum, Beyond Border Panic, with activist artist Deborah Kelly. She will also work will 10 local artists to develop new work for projection during the Pride parade.

While Canning is keen to ensure that Artrage 2002 is identified as new and different, he is aware that the tried and true processes of inclusion must continue. This year hopeful artists put forward proposals, as they have done for years. But don’t be surprised to see visitors from planets other than Perth mixing with the locals. “One of the ways to support local work”, says Canning, “is to bring people in, but always to give local people access and methods of engaging with those people.” So while Artrage 2002 will bring national and international artists such as Space Invader (France), Deborah Kelly (NSW) and electronic artists Funkstorung (Germany) to Perth, funding for these events is coming from sources outside those committed to the core support of local artists. “From the outset,” says Canning, “we have tried to look at ways to extend Artrage’s activities, and build on the notion that festivals are a time when the arts find ways to renew themselves in unexpected spaces.”

And don’t expect Artrage to disappear when the 3 weeks is over. Marcus Canning hopes that the festival can use that time to grow and feed local work, through seeding events and bringing mentors on board.

It is an energetic, imaginative and above all, achievable vision that is being articulated by a new director—everyone is looking forward to Artrage, and you can’t do better than that.

Artrage, Oct 15-Nov 4, Perth

RealTime issue #51 Oct-Nov 2002 pg. 39

Genesi

In the online edition of RealTime 50 I wrote that at last Melbourne has a festival where local artists have been given deserved prominence side by side with some unique overseas and interstate productions. The last festival in which Melbourne artists enjoyed such visibility was Barrie Kosky’s 1996 Adelaide Festival.

Robyn Archer’s 2002 Melbourne Festival is centred on text ie language in performance, the next one, on the body, and the third, on voice. If you’re expecting a season of nice plays, forget it. Archer’s choices and her vision of text in performance are as wide-ranging and provocative as you’d expect from her Adelaide Festival programs. She deals another blow to the myth that postmodernity has been the ruin of language. Here it comes embodied in dance, puppetry, music, physical theatre, installation, multimedia, contemporary performance and, yes, plays, but what plays.

The profoundly disturbing, not-to-be-missed Societas Raffaelo Sanzio make their first Melbourne appearance with Genesi, from the Museum of Sleep. Ivan Heng’s 140 minute solo about power and gender, Emily of Emerald Hill, comes from Singapore. The 150 minute virtuosic adult marionette work , Tinka’s New Dress, has Ronnie Burkett creating and voicing 37 characters. From Berlin’s Hebbel Theater comes Total Masala Slammer, Heartbreak No 5, an erotic adaptation of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. There’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, adapted by Michael Gow from the novel (QTC/Playbox), and the Pinter version of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (VCA).

In an interesting piece of programming from (as Archer sees it) our much neglected southern hemisphere neighbour, Argentinian writer-director Frederico Leon presents his play 1500 metres above the level of Jack (centred on a performer in a bathtub of the water for the hour), and curates a mini-festival of recent Argentinian cinema.

An exploration of the rich possibilities of contemporary theatre is evident in a handful of very intimate performances designed for small audiences. It includes the Canadian STO Union & Candid Stammer Theatre’s Recent Experiences (you’re inside the set with them), 3 works by US actor-writer Wallace Shawn (My Dinner with André) performed by local actors in small spaces, and IRAA Theatre’s Interior Sites Project, an all-night stayover theatre experience for audiences of 7 only. Gertrude Stein’s Dr Faustus Lights the Lights (St Martin Youth Arts Centre) gets a rare airing, and Daniel Schlusser, Evelyn Krape and sound artist Darrin Verhagen take a tough new look at Medea. And there’s more, from Five Angry Men, The Keene/Taylor Project, NYID (with David Pledger writing as well as directing; see interview), Chamber Made Opera (libretto by Duong Le Quy), Back to Back Theatre, Company in Space (text by Margaret Cameron; see interview), Arena Theatre Company, novelist and playwright Joanna Murray-Smith and composer Paul Grabowksy teaming to create music theatre, Helen Herbertson (her magical Morphia), Trevor Patrick (dancing with some fine text) and work-in-progress showings from others including RantersTheatre .

From Sydney come 2 multimedia experiences that also work with text in interesting ways: Kate Champion’s impressive dance theatre work Same same But Different; and Sandy Evan’s Testimony, a powerful and beautiful big band multimedia tribute to Charlie Parker to a libretto by American poet Yusef Komunyakaa. From Berlin there’s Uwe Mengel’s murder mystery installation, Lifeline, where you become an active investigator. From the Kimberley region of Western Australia comes the passionately debated Fire, Fire Burning Bright. Premiered at the 2002 Perth Festival and presented by an all-Indigenous cast, it’s the idiosyncratically told story of a massacre early last century and its impact. There’s also a visual arts program (featuring Susan Norrie and Nan Goldin), a National Puppetry & Animatronics Summit and a timely national symposium on “The Art of Dissent.”

I met with Robyn recently and asked her about the focus on small to medium companies and productions in her 2002 Melbourne Festival. Was it a budgetary decision, was it heroic? How would the works fare up against international talent when they are mostly brand new works? Was this about what Australia now has to offer the world?

Robyn Archer: Speaking to you a couple of years ago in RealTime, I really thought it was going to be a couple of easy years for me. It was just when I’d backstepped out of the Gay Games—mainly because there just wasn’t enough money to do what I wanted to with Asia-Pacific gender-bending stuff. I thought it was back to my own work. Then when Melbourne came knocking I really had to think, do I really want this or not? And probably what made it worth doing was the challenge of a completely different city that needed another look at its festival. What was patently obvious was that the joint was overflowing with really inventive artists, really good people like David Pledger, Hellen Sky, Michael Kantor, Kate Cherry, IRAA, Back to Back, Arena, all those companies. I had lunch with 5 or 6 of them and said, well, what would you want a Melbourne Festival to be? And Michael Kantor instantly said, “In the perfect environment where we were all creating our own work, with the financial resources and the venues we needed to make our best work, we would only want the Melbourne International Festival to bring inspiring international work. The fact is that’s not the environment we’re in.” There was this feeling that there were a whole lot of people out there having immense difficulties making the work they wanted to make. I regularly used local Adelaide companies during the 2 festivals I was there. In Melbourne it’s times 20. It’s a bigger city. But also, it’s true that alternative theatre really blossomed down in Melbourne through La Mama and the APG (Australian Performing Group) and that whole thing. And it does seem there’s a residue of that drive here.

It’s a different kind of milieu now isn’t it, more contemporary performance, physical theatre, multimedia, new media, music theatre?

It’s not primarily playwriting. That’s interesting because in the Buenos Aires scene Federico Leon comes from and in Tehran where I was in February, what young, adventurous, bold, courageous artists do is write plays and put them on. In some cases the play is absolutely the thing. But I looked at the strength of the projects here (and there were many more than I’ve included) and I thought what a great basis to have in an essentially theatre-based festival. If you’re looking at text-based work, you could invite the world. So I thought, okay, my criterion would be I’ll invite something that I can’t get here, that audiences don’t actually see in Melbourne, not necessarily something bigger and better.

You’ve got something like 20 new Melbourne performance projects including some works in progress.These companies are usually lucky to get a new show up each year. If they get it headlined at a festival that’s very good for them—we know that the capacity of the small to medium companies is to tour internationally. Many carry the flag for Australia already.

Absolutely. I was singing in Zurich recently and it was amazing to see 5 or 6 Australian shows there, admittedly one of them was Elision’s opera, Moon Spirit Feasting, and the other The Theft of Sita. On the other hand, Moon Spirit is the product of Artistic Director Daryl Buckley’s amazing persistence and comes out of a new music ensemble which by any other standards would be seen as small and doing wildly out-there new music.

A French dance festival in Val du Marne in November is featuring Sydney-based artists Tess De Quincey, Rosalind Crisp and Gravity Feed—Gravity Feed’s first gig overseas.

That’s the festival we’re doing an exchange with for 2003, bringing out some French companies that otherwise wouldn’t come here, and we’d love to be able to invite Ros Crisp as well. I personally can’t imagine that there will be an invidious comparison between the Australian and the international guests at this year’s festival precisely because the work I’ve invited is set on totally different premises. Total Masala Slammer and Genisi are just right-out-there, large productions built on individual genius. You couldn’t say that either of them fitted into any mould. It’s not a kind of international theatre—they’re one of a kind. I’d say the same of Ivan Heng and of Ronnie Burkett. It isn’t like bringing the Royal Shakespeare Company. And I feel they have more in common with a number of individual Melbourne artists.

What can be the future for the companies in your festival other than continuing their local existence with a new show every year or two?

There’s an increasing audience for Australian work overseas. I think we’re on an incredible cusp at the moment. And whether we capitalise on that is entirely to do with attitudes on the way our international push goes. There have been several big bangs of umbrella-ed Australian work like at BAM (New York) for instance and the Expo thing that I did in Hannover and the Heads Up thing in London. My gut feeling at the moment is that we’ve done enough of those. The market is already there, forged for example, by the exemplary work of Maria Magdalena Schwaegermann (Hebbel Theater, Berlin; Zurich Festival) who came to Australia several times, did her research well at a really intimate level, simply talking to artists. Her recent Zurich Festival had 5 Australian shows including Melbourne’s Museum of Modern Oddities. So it wasn’t just big things. William Yang was there. Paul Grabowsky and I did some cabaret. And Michel Caserta has invited to the Val du Marne dance festival artists that he likes and it’s not a particularly a commercial mob. I’ve been saying in a number of quarters that I really think supporting the ‘natural’ invitations is the way to go and increasingly getting the information out about what is available, rather than what I call the“sheltered workshop” approach. We don’t have to proselytise any more. I get the feeling that now a lot of international presenters are looking for what they can invest in. And most of those presenters are more interested in small companies that don’t cost so much to tour.

As ever, Archer is an eloquent spruiker for her festival, and a very attractive festival it is, as well as a provocation to those arts festivals in Australia that persistently refuse to headline all but a few local artists and companies and, when they do, often lose them in the small print.

This year’s Melbourne Festival wasn’t about me commissioning anybody to do anything. It was really just a group of very good artists busting to get the next project up and the festival being the way that could happen. And I think it’s safe to say that many of those projects would be unrealised in their entirety and some would simply have been much smaller versions if we weren’t able to give cash assistance and the help it gives to sit in the festival brochure.

In the past there’s always been a few standout shows a year that draw interstate visitors to the Melbourne Festival, but in 2002 I feel the pull of the whole program, a unique opportunity to see such a display of Victorian performance talent at one time in the context of distinctive and provocative international productions and considerations of the reinvigoration of language in performance.

Melbourne Festival, Oct 17-Nov 2. www.melbournefestival.com.au

RealTime issue #51 Oct-Nov 2002 pg. 40

Dogtroep, Camel Gossip 2, 1993 Amsterdam

Joey Ruigrok van der Werven is one of the unsung heroes of Australian contemporary performance. He has brought to his work with the internationally well-travelled Stalker and Marrugeku companies his own box of tools, considerable technical expertise in construction, rigging, contraption-making, pyrotechnics management and strong design sensibility along with a collaborative spirit nurtured in the Netherlands. He was first a props maker in repertory theatre and then, more significantly, head technician and team member with Dogtroep, the renowned Netherlands’ performance company. RT spoke with Joey during the preparatory stages for Mechanix, “a mechanical ecosystem of contraptions”, a spectacular new work in collaboration with the local community for the Bankstown-based Urban Theatre Projects.

How has your background shaped your work in Australia?

I’ve been living in Australia for 5 and half years. There was a lot of creativity in making the props for repertory theatre but not in the shows and what people did with the props. I was always disappointed. But in Doegtrop everyone contributed. I was part of the team, one of the creators of images, apparatuses and effects. I was also the main technician. Every member in Dogtroep has to come up with scenes. You become a creator—it’s not like someone saying can I have this or do that. Musicians, sculptors, welders, performers, inventors, dramaturgs, all have to come up with their own scenes and they can be very hi-tech—motors, pistons, sprockets, fireworks, lots of lights—but also very very lo-tech, like props made out of bamboo and paper.

Just before beginning work on Mechanix, you were in Newcastle staging the first run of Stalker’s Incognita. How has that developed?

In the creative development stage we developed some of the rigging and some of the flying and some of the work on poles. We took these to the designer Andrew Carter. I’m the builder of Andrew’s designs, but the collaboration with him is like I’m part of the design team, which is fantastic. Incognita is inspired by the outback of Australia. We told him about the structure of the show, that it possibly had a house, possibly had a rig and that we were inspired by Arthur Boyd paintings and Drysdales—maybe Boyd more for the content and Drysdale for the images. Also very inspiring were Drysdale’s photographs…beautiful.

Andrew made the design, I built it. There’s a house and we have to rig off it. So a lot of the work was developed by setting up and rehearsing the show. For example, there’s some things that have to be destroyed—corrugated iron which breaks off, the performers have to rip it off. It’s not like something you can just draw and design, you really have to do it, to see if it works. There’s a lot of that in rehearsal, trying it out, me building it. The house is the rigging. There’s a tree clump and a house and between there’s a tightrope wire, and from the house there’s 2 guy ropes which makes the whole thing rigid but it looks very flimsy. When I went to the engineer—I have to calculate everything of course because people swing off it—he said, “Ooh, it’s more difficult than the Olympic stadium, construction wise”, and he meant it. Sometimes when you look at a structure you can see the internal strength, and in this one you don’t—it really is in the rigging and the guy wires. This set has to be able to travel by plane, so we’re restricted by weight because of too short a time between festivals to ship it. It worked okay.

Incognita is set in the desert, and Geoff Cobham, the lighting designer wanted the really sharp shadows you get from the movement of the sun. So he wanted a light that would move in that way, 5 metres high, coming up behind and over the audience and then sinking. Everybody always told him, No you can’t do this, and I was the first one who said, “Yes, let’s do it!” Even though I thought we’ve got too much to do. But if you’ve got a lighting designer you have to give him the opportunity to be creative. I think it works—it’s on a trolley with a 4 metre arm with a big counterweight.

On paper Mechanix looks exciting and ambitious. We don’t see this kind of work in Australia.

It’s very ambitious. At a forum, Alicia Talbot, the Artistic Director of Urban Theatre Projects, heard me speak about my work with Dogtroep in Amsterdam. That triggered the possibility for a fantasy she’d had for a while to make a performance with local community members using contraptions and machines as the main players. This is what we’d been doing in Dogtroep and it is one of my specialities. So she invited me to talk about a show in which community members would come up with the ideas, the basic design for the contraptions and I would work closely with them. Also I would become part of the direction, as a co-director with Alicia. That’s a new thing for me. It’s also daunting because we rely on the community members to contribute with their ideas and also their time to build things. So it’s up to us to create the environment for them to feel free to imagine.

We’re up to our third meeting with them and they really inspire me a lot. We have to guide them, see which ideas can work, put some people together. We also have a number of core artists. Reza Achman, the musical director, is a percussionist from Indonesia with a World Music background, working with community members to make sounds, drumming and atmosphere. The composer Liberty Kerr is the sound director and is going to make a soundscape with gadgets and horns and secondhand stuff we found. I hope she’ll use her cello—in the end the show is about the emotions, a visual spectacle is never enough—and the cello is the opposite of hard metal. Simon Wise is doing the lighting: he also likes making things. Lee Wilson will be movement director creating a movement vocabulary to go throughout the show and built on reactions to the contraptions, some of which will be static, some mobile.

What kind of venue is ideal for this type of work?

First we looked at old railway sheds and found an amazing place, barren, there was just soil and a roof, but you would have had to bring in all the infrastructure. Then we thought, let’s do it smack bang in the middle of Bankstown in the plaza, occupying the whole area. Bump in for 2 weeks, have lots of people seeing us preparing. But then we found another space, a State Rail freight depot where we could build the contraptions. The building itself is small but there’s a lot of open land around it so now we’re thinking we’ll do it there because we can build the work and perform it in the same place and it’s close to the railway station. We might start with a parade from the plaza to the depot, it’s only a short walk.

Is the show about contraptions and their inventors?

The theme is about how living in Bankstown, in a suburban area, is not easy. On average, people have a bit less income and less opportunities. We thought if you live there and you run up against society what kind of machine would you build to make life better. Instead of a narrative about telling and explaining what your problems are and what your solutions are, now the machines have to speak for you, explain the fantasy. I hope we can do it without the inventors having to use words, a number of them have already expressed that desire.

To get the whole process going rather than starting blank, I’ve created a central structure, a theme around which the people making the contraptions can hook on or jump off from and get inspired. The buildings in Bankstown are very low so I thought of building a tower—a house with 3 levels in which stuff happens—and a crane that can move easily in the space, but that’s all I’m going to tell you now. I’ll make the crane—all the cranes you hire are too heavy and too strong. Tonight I’ll make a drawing and then go to the engineer again. We’ve got a full 9 weeks to create a world and a performance.

Urban Theatre Projects, Mechanix, venue TBC, Bankstown, Sydney, Nov 27-Dec 8, Tel 02 9707 2111 www.urbantheatre.com.au

RealTime issue #51 Oct-Nov 2002 pg. 42

The formalistically expansive Explorations season sits well alongside the predominantly naturalistic scripts fostered at La Mama. Lloyd Jones’ latest piece of self-conscious ‘non-theatre’, Discontinuities [in 3 parts]—though not actually part of the program—acted as a challenging prologue. His deliberately shabby event was almost operatic in scope, addressing the failure of reason, US global dominance, and youthful self-destruction and disempowerment by using a collection of fragmentary scenes and devices. Michael Kieran Harvey, playing jagged, modernist electric piano and musique concrete, concluded this impressively apocalyptic triptych, which marked Jones’ 40th year at La Mama.

Musical experimentation also played a part in John Britton’s Cyclops Alley. Australian electronica legend Warren Burt provided an evocative score of low-key electro-chords, supporting Britton’s venomous descent into urban darkness. The writing closely resembled early 20th century misanthropy as exemplified by Céline or Drieu la Rochelle. Unpaid sex in a filthy alley with a desolate prostitute led the narrator to proclaim himself an indomitable god who walked the earth, wreaking his emotions upon those he encountered.

Though Britton’s gruff yet precise, glottal recitation and writing were exemplary, his direction was less assured. A young, largely non-speaking cast joined him, occasionally falling into cliched mime-like poses or mutually supportive lifts common to Contact Improvisation. They were most effective when acting as mute witnesses to the narrator’s inspired ravings. Cyclops Alley nevertheless successfully recreated the emotional landscape of nocturnal urban desperation, sketching a portrait of contemporary citizenship in the wake of S11 and Tampa— a radically atomized ‘community’ overseen by the God of Hate, not Love.

Sarah Mainwaring has performed in many of Jones’ events: she delivered a striking monologue in Discontinuities. Mainwaring’s performance in her Foreign Body possessed a similar unalloyed beauty. Director John Bolton’s almost moralistic ethic of honesty as the essence of good theatre was evident here. The scenes constituted a patchwork of skits, poetic musings and deferred details of Mainwaring’s upbringing following a childhood car accident which left her with a brain injury. Her speech was extended but not labored. Her words dolloped forth, treacle-like, before leaps of quickened enunciation added drama. Her movement had a similar quality—drawn attention to through references to her difficulty in putting on the cuffs designed to aid her recovery, as well as merely being part of her general bearing. Tremors came and went, strength in one arm seemed particularly difficult to control. Mainwaring’s confident concentration, however, shifted these dramatic nuances into a realm beyond both pathos.

A forceful “No!”, sharply delivered as her mother attempted to dress her, eloquently conveyed the trauma of her early years. She forced spectators to consider the experience of one day awakening with a different body, a different mind, both of which seemed recalcitrant. Mainwaring’s character passed through this crisis by voicing an almost formless, poetic longing which echoed her psychophysical status, crying out for the “monstrous moon” not to abandon her. The unresolved yet contented quality within the performance suggested that the character overcame this challenge by retaining this formlessness, this resting between states. Bodily tensions were not resolved; they simply came to coexist. When she gazed at a photo of the exquisite Linda Evangelista, reflecting on the “poetry cascading down her well defined form,” this was neither melancholy nor tragic, but rather signified an empathetic identification with Evangelista’s pleasure in her own physicality.

Lynne Santos and Peter Trotman also explored psychophysical perceptions in Songs of Entrapment. The performance had a strong sensorial quality, Santos at one point calling for “smell music” to dance to (Phillip Glass’ Dracula). It was a performance haunted by memories, by yearly rituals, the texture of an aged letter, with a Gothic ambience evoked through rich descriptions of a wide, empty mansion. Songs was so narratively cohesive, relating a redemptive encounter of a mad, sensual woman (Santos’ skill at ecstatic dance serving her well) with a dryly ritualistic hermit (Trotman as a gauche, shocked WASP), that it was hard to believe that all but the framework was improvised. Trotman and Santos have collaborated before, and Songs showed that they are developing a distinctive aesthetic, comparable to a denser, verbally-rich version of fellow exponents of improvised “eccentric dance”, Born in a Taxi. The pair’s presence in Explorations helps ensure that strongly physical performance will always remain part of La Mama’s d aesthetic.

Explorations, La Mama, July 3-28; Discontinuities [in 3 parts]: Beyond Nothingness, What Lies Ahead? Last Judgement at the Oval Office, La Mama, June 20-30

From the time we first meet Alicia in her dressing gown in the foyer, being asked if we have any ‘special requests’ for the evening, and are then moved upstairs to be presented with her naked body in a display cabinet with a brown paper bag over her head, we’re apparently being offered this woman for the fulfilment of our fantasies. She’s the faceless female behind the glass, like a sex worker in Amsterdam, although already preparing for her ‘final exit.’

We then move into her intimate and plush boudoir, kitted up like a brothel complete with silken cushions and a real fluffy puppy. She’s now the charismatic fox we’re all watching as she firmly coerces us into paying more for the show. Soon we are slipping coins and notes into her purse like men in a strip club—competing for the privileges of her sexual attentions and our public face. The hostess tells us that she will play out and indulge a number of fantasies for the gentlemen and for our entertainment. She excites the audience before it is clear, perhaps,what the full implications of this relationship will be.

Any initial embarrassment born as a reaction to her sexual showcasing manifests itself in spunky flirtations from the men she chooses for short role-plays. It seems like this is the show for everyone that’s ever wanted pillow talk with a prostitute, but has been too PC and theatre-going. The dominant stance is soon dropped and in its place a pervasive romanticism drives the feminine role into instant surrender on the slightest exchange. She gets an audience member to ring her mobile phone and then gushes a power-draining exposé of her obsessional thinking. Asked what word comes to mind when we think of ‘love’, we answer ‘intimacy’, ‘close’, ‘sex’, though this soon contrasts with the more Lacanian notion the show has in mind of ‘offering something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it anyway.’ Alicia won’t ameliorate any longer; Joni Mitchell soon segues into Leonard Cohen. The men are still talking dirty on command, stroking her hair, complicit as ordered. Meanwhile she’s demeaning herself further and further, becoming more and more abused and debased in ever more submissive roles—as she demurs, “I hope this was the experience you wanted?”

After her hands are tied behind her back and her collar latched to window bars she tells a story of a birthday present to a boyfriend in which she promises to reply “I will with pleasure” to every his request. The boyfriend gets two of his mates over to use her as a piece of sexual furniture, for oral and anal in a classic pornographic menage a trois pose. He stands and watches, while she considers her ultimate act of love without realising that he will instead leave her, presumably because of the depravity of her self-sacrifice. After this Bataille-like monologue she asks if someone from the audience will come and untie her. A man rushes over, tenderly loosens the ropes and releases the catch—male roles leap out on cue.

The show ends with a demonstration of the limits of this audience/performer interaction. Closing her eyes Alicia asks if anyone in the audience will love her, put their arms around her? There’s an awkward lull, a sudden complicity with all the other rejections—it would take a bigger masochist than Alicia to stand up at this point. What if a woman did? The show has so far been hardcore hetero, the relationship has always been orientated.

If there is a linearity to this narrative of romantic decline and victimhood, then as the audience leaves after the performer has not returned to bow for her applause, Alicia as sex worker remains indifferently talking on her mobile phone outside the studio room. Perhaps sex work is suggested as the character’s only way to become a defiant operative in the sexual exchange. This never-ending performance is vintage Talbot, and memories from her other performances remain—monologues on oral sex in utes, the audience eating chocolate from between her thighs, and a blurring of the boundaries of performer/performance when she once showed her (real?) scars. Talbot’s work often seems to re-suggest formative teenage experiences of sex, where ‘healthy’ boundaries and lines of respect are not clear. Part self-destructive relationship spinning in the same old tight cycle and part, almost glorious, homage to the psychosexual, I Love You xxx mines heterosexuality along its glimmering schisms—where masochistic female strategies and sadistic male rebuttals are not in fact a perfect match. Explicit about the potential violence and possible arrestations of such desire, the performance leaves it up to the audience to consider any reconstructive possibilities for themselves.

I Love You xxx, writer-performer Alicia Talbot, director Nigel Kellaway, lighting Simon Wise, Performance Space August x – September x. I Love You xxx was created by Alicia Talbot and John Baylis as part of a Performance Space residency in 2000.

Two young people on the street, alone, separate, voices in the night. He (Leon Ford) has a secret. When he was child he killed his father. Did we hear this? We’re not sure, especially when nothing more is made of it in the first act. An urban boarding house. A sad landlady (Lynette Curran) addresses someone who seems not to be there. An old man (Martin Vaughan) is forced to share his room with a newly arrived country boy (Damon Herriman). The boy introduces himself to the reticent old man with the probing speed and bite of the baddies in Pinter’s Birthday Party. The young man on the street stalks the young woman (Rita Kalnejais). They meet. He exudes a quiet malevolence, equating himself with “a reptile, sunning itself.” She wanders because she fears sleep paralysis. She is searching for her demons, “to kill them.” The old man conveys to the country boy his hopeless dream of youthful independence as embodied in his Ford Mercury, his loneliness in his mysogyny—of the landlady he says, “she sucked my life out.” The ‘ghost’ she addresses is her dead husband, the father of the young man we first saw on the street. The country boy meets the young woman in the park, they fuck, he loses his wallet, she finds it, gives it to the old man who removes the money in order to educate the country boy in the evils of womanhood. By now I feel like I’m watching a Daniel Keene play with a plot. And the plot is not very good and gets creakier in Act Two.

However, I’m enjoying van der Werf’s way with language, a grim poeticising spiced with blunt wit, and also the manner in which he builds his night cosmos so that we must work a little at putting together characters and events. However Act Two loses the play’s sense of mystery as plot takes over. The business of the wallet is worked over. The old man collapses and dies, finding brief conciliation with the country boy. The young man reveals he killed his father. Well he didn’t really, but perhaps he could have prevented the suicide. It’s far too late to treat this revelation as thematically or dramatically significant. Once again in an Australian play, the outing of a secret stands in for the real need to get it out in the first place and then explore the consequences. Young man to his mother: “I couldn’t speak for months, don’t you remember?” She doesn’t appear to. As for the young woman, she doesn’t seem that important in the end. In the language of dramaturgy she hasn’t really been given a trajectory of her own.

For all my irritation with the way plot sinks Presence, the production is nonetheless quite an experience. The play has something and that something has been realised by strong performances and fine direction. Van der Werf’s expertise in creating exquisitely uncomfortable, tense exchanges between pairs of characters is a great strength. The dialogues between the old man and the country boy (excellent performances from Vaughan and Herriman) generate a very real feeling that words will run out and violence ensue. Ros Horin amplifies this with a carefully choreographed awkardness, a sense of personal space invaded, a failure of intimacy, something that goes beyond this shared room into the lives of all the characters. It’s a claustrophobic night world, well and truly cut off from all the other realities we deal with in everyday life—a deadly, closed circuit. Presence has real presence, though I was never sure to what end. Cast and director clearly believed in it, bringing great conviction to bear, a reminder of just how powerful the Griffin theatre experience can be.

Patrick van der Werf, Presence, director Ros Horin, actors Leon Ford, Damon Herriman, Rita Kalnejais, Martin Vaughan, Lynette Curran; Griffin Theatre Company, The Stables, Sydney, Jul 5-Aug 3

The latest initiative from Hobart’s is theatre ltd, Boiler Room, was the culminating performance following a participatory 4 day multimedia event that featured workshops and cross-art collaborations. Improvisational artists including the avant-garde music collective the Freedivers, Ryk Goddard, Helen Omand and Jo Pollitt, performed extended improvisations in an interactive space designed by installation artist Sean Bacon. As a pilot project Boiler Room aligns Hobart with current national trends which are re-orientating and re-energising improvisational practice.

Improvisation connotes a movement away from the constraining frameworks of delineated performance while denoting an absence of closure. This apparent paradox is partially resolved through the resonances established by the improvising artists as they modulate space and time to explore the tensions between structure and freedom. What emerges ideally are performances in the moment that enable insights into the vicissitudes of our contemporary culture.

The improvisation practitioners modelled both technique and a finely honed capacity to maintain or relinquish the impetus for an idea. Text, sound or movement was generated from their open-ended presence in the space. Boiler Room was accessible as performance. For the spectator, the insights and understandings are both negotiated and generated through entering and exiting at any point in the space-time continuum.

Sean Bacon’s design incorporated a large screen that split the space with performers traversing either side of the divide. An aluminium can rolls and the subtlety of the sound spills into the silence. A small digital camera captures drummer Josh Green scratching and riffing on metal kegs from behind the screen. He is unseen, yet we apprehend his presence through the digital images before us.

In front of the screen, Jo Pollitt moves against her projected image accentuating the here-yet-not-here aspects of her virtual/actual presence. This interplay between the visible and non-visible generates a fascinating conjunction between the ‘kinematic’ potency of the image, with the dancers’ and musicians’ corporeal presence and absence separated by a scrim (skin) of screen.

Ryk Goddard, through a combination of language and physical improvisation, provides a paean to genial craziness. His verbal skill with its blend of nonsense, paranoia and humour provides a wry social commentary that is politically informed yet without party line divisions. He cunningly reveals our addiction to the 10 second grab line which re-presents the world as a fiction. Despite his verbal ad-hocracy, Goddard offers enough of an obscurely nuanced through-line to chart the terrain of his particular journey.

Mathew Clare provided a visual highlight with a lipstick camera placed inside the bell of his saxophone, projecting a series of chiaroscuro images. Dancer Helen Omand simultaneously explored the rotating rim of gleam surrounding the bell’s silent black void. Perhaps this sequence provides a summation of is theatre’s Boiler Room and the opportunities for improvisational artists to move onto new ground and into the realm of each other’s practice. Here is the moment. Sounds from silence. Movement from sound. Dare to dive.

On the internet you can now listen to radio from anywhere in the world, anytime of the day. While this offers occasional treasures, such as a lost fragment of Glenn Gould, it does not have the same kind of mystery you find on radio that comes via the airwaves. It is sometimes reassuring to return to a familiar institution like Radio National and re-discover the pleasures of programming that goes beyond international and covers instead the weird expanse of Australia.
For those unable to live in the nation’s ‘centre’, Radio National connects us with its worst and best. On week nights, the arts chat-show The Night Club is inflated with that chummy Oxford Street bravura that reaches for the popular jugular, leaving the subtleties (and ratings) behind. But on Sunday evenings, The Night Air reflects a more Glebe-like way of engaging with history, surfing the archive for odd turns of meaning. For those who’d prefer to visit Gomorrah, rather that live in it, The Night Air is a weekly dose of the readerly Sydney sensibility.

As well giving us a Sydney fix, The Night Air has re-invented the medium in a bold and visionary way.

The Night Air is valued-added radio. It draws from primary sources such as Radio Eye and the The Listening Room, to produce themed programs such as “Going Bush”, “The Biff”, “For the Birds” and “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” The Night Air is broadcasting for the Google age: each of its themes is fed into the radio search engine like an encyclopaedic I Ching that creates mysterious combinations.

The Bastille Day episode illustrates the power of the program as an audio envelope. “Liberty” began with “Fugitive Promises” produced by John Jacobs and Cathy Peters. This segment was drawn from otherwise predictable sources, including a Martin Luther King speech, the Mabo decision, recordings of demonstrations. But these elements were deftly contextualised by music and cross-fades. Following this was a sermon by the Australian film maker Paul Cox on the importance of art. To younger ears, Cox can sound smug in his distaste for the mainstream. But with The Night Air treatment, a futuristic sound track was heard in the background, making his words seem more explorative and less Cox-centric. Similarly, an episode on the ‘Marsellaise’ by Kaye Mortley would have seemed quite breathy if isolated in a Radio Eye time slot. But linked with items like Robyn Ravlich’s East Timor recordings and other freedom songs, it added to a chorus-like political theme.

“Liberty” was a substantial achievement. Often in public media, we become so attuned to flippant ironies, that calls to action can seem embarrassingly naïve. The Night Air managed to present a serious message in a way that was palatable to sophisticated 21st century ears.

The Night Air can take occasional wrong turns. The choice of music can sometimes be too literal. A recent program “Poison” featured rather too obviously the Alice Cooper song of the same title. Whereas the Sunday morning Background Briefing producer Tom Morton shows how effective music can be as a subtext that adds a new dimension to the main theme, rather than a throwaway cliché.

One of the dangers of an archival program is that it settles for retro kitsch (Skippy soundtrack) rather than go all the way to the past ‘as another country’. In these cases, The Night Air is often saved by Brent Clough, whose mellow voice invites the listener into the mystery. Rather than beef the program up with a radio personality, The Night Air links items with ‘sound bridges’. Signature phrases like “breathe it in” help relieve the sometimes manic crossing of themes.

The ultimate The Night Air experience for me was during their “Going Bush” episode. After the 9 o’clock news break, the program re-commenced with a Gregorian chant. At the time, it seemed an ecstatic moment of programming genius. The idea of putting something medieval into the Australian bush had real imaginative daring. It was only when the next Gregorian track started that I realised they had begun playing Mary Nicholson’s excellent musical program Nocturne, which normally begins at 10 o’clock. It was a mistake. Naturally, I felt disappointed. But looking back now, it seems more a positive reflection of The Night Air’s power to charge otherwise familiar material with new possibility. Perhaps The Night Air could follow where chance has led them.

The Night Air reminds us that radio can be an art in itself. With time, I hope it will gain a little more confidence in that art and treat its themes a little more dialectically. There’s a lot of air left in the night.

Lordy, Lordy, Praise be to Jesus. Cut your throat now life doesn’t get any better than this. Topology. Corridors of Power. Brisbane Powerhouse. On the program tonight is a collection of Aussie tangos circa 1997—The Keating Tangos—initiated by Russell Gilmour after the political demise of the Blacktown Domingo. These tangos are short, a couple of minutes at most, and are delivered in pairs between the longer pieces. First up, only some mother from the wrong side of the House couldn’t love The Scumbag Tango, lyrical and perhaps even a tad sneaky. Or straight out of a Leunig nightclub comes The Sweetest Victory Tango, busy sax with a doodley piano solo to demonstrate heartfelt emoting.

With a couple of tangos under the belt Topology move onto Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover by Michael Daugherty (US). Sing Sing is clever. Daugherty drops in cliché after cliché: glissando strings like sirens, the most appalling saccharine Home of the Brave/Battle Hymn of the Republic maudlin nightmare trash. Except it’s not cliché, maudlin, or trash. It’s witty and resonant. Beautifully played. Clever. And over the top is the voice of Hoover, our father.

Post Sing Sing and it’s another couple of tangos. Richard Vella’s Tango for micro-economic reform is sad, majestic, a little furtive and world weary. The Mabo Tango: The Lizard of Oz from Robert Davidson is up. Poppin’ bass. Slab piano. Following is David Lang’s (US) Cheating, Lying, Stealing. “Ominous funk” it says on the score and that’s what it sounds like. There’s low down staccato sax for starters and then a piano figure. Up the register and oriental mourning breaks in courtesy of the viola and sax. Spatial percussion on car brake drums either side of the stage and the piano carries on regardless. A friend leans over and says “Hate to lose my place in the score.” That sort of piece.

Even more tangos. Tango Republic is all salon music, God Save the Queen, ABC themes and cucumber sandwiches. The Placido Tango is slimy, themed for Lotharios of regret.

Next is a Topology rendition of Pat’s Aria from Nixon in China by John Adams. It’s a gem, and I keep noticing what a great touch Kylie Davidson has on the piano.

Last before the half time break is another piece by Robert Davidson, Big Decisions: The Whitlam Dismissal. Davidson is a master at capturing the rhythm and pitch of spoken voice, and using it to structure music. In this case a bunch of statements from various worthies presiding over the last gasp of Crash Through Or Crash. So the piece is chunky, where a spoken phrase is a chunk. And it’s polite. “Well might we say God Save the Queen …” as drawing room farce. Kerr’s Cur as strictly fairground.

Polite and farcical. And looking back, giving The Dismissal a bit of the Then and Now, it’s true. No-one stormed the streets, threw TVs through shopfront windows, or overturned cars and set them on fire. It was raised voices and heated discussions and going home to crash into failures that have stood the test of time.

After the interval is Airwaves. I’ve reviewed this before. (Topology and Loops, Queensland Biennial Festival of Music, RT 45, p31). Good to hear it again.

Fibreculture

Networks of Excellence? 2nd Annual Fibreculture Conference, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, November 22-24. http://www.fibreculture.org

Getting Enough Fibre?

What do you get when you fill a museum with the nation’s brightest new media artists, theorists and educators for a weekend of debates, discussion and brainstorming? Find out when fibreculture converges in Sydney for its second annual conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art (November 22 – 24). Following the success of last year’s meeting, and as the lively fibreculture list goes from strength to strength, this year’s event promises a program bristling with fresh ideas on the cultures and politics of new media.

Fibreculture at the MCA

This year will see a special focus on public network policy, alongside the community’s usual fascinating collisions between art, IT and politics. After a screening of recent new media works on the theme of border transgressions (curated by Anna Munster), the event will kick off with an evening public debate on the theme “Networks of Excellence”, investigating the role of the latest “Centre of Excellence”: National Information and Communications Technologies Australia (NICTA). Is NICTA playing to Australia’s strengths? How do its activities in computer science research relate to broader knowledge—of media-makers, artists and other ‘creatives’? Where are the spaces to address the ethics and politics of innovation?

Panels at the 2-day ‘round table’ conference will feature discussions such as: Convergent cultures of new media; Who says online education is the future?; Assessing the great challenge of open source; Globalisation and the net. Broad participation is a goal of all fibreculture activities; so too at the conference—expect punchy panels, short presentations and a lively floor. No sermons allowed.

Fibreculture is expanding the traditional models of academic collaboration and publishing by involving the entire list community, in a kind of open-source model, with a greater transparency of the processes of intellectual labour. This year’s meeting will see the launch of 2 new publications: a refereed electronic journal to support the public policy debates; and a free fibreculture magazine–exploring the cultural, political and philosophical dimensions of new media. (To contribute work, join fibreculture now and watch www.fibreculture.org).

What is fibreculture?

Fibreculture began as an e-mail discussion list in January 2001. In the last throes of ‘New Economy’ boosterism, the economic skies were still blue, ‘new paradigms’ grew on trees, and all our institutions—governments, businesses, the media and even universities were poised to snap up their share of the Fast Money. However, few were carrying the notion of networks as public infrastructure, as public assets, as public space.

While a lot of net-related research, criticism and theory was being done in Australia, it was happening largely in isolation. The list began as a nexus for the exchange of this far-flung idea-work, and within a year there were over 300 subscribers, an invigorating off-line meeting at Melbourne’s VCA, and the first fibreculture book, Politics of a Digital Present, a wide-ranging inventory of net criticism and theory.

Fibreculture is an independent, evolving network for thinkers, writers, new media artists, activists, teachers and policy makers. It initiates events, publications and dialogues, and fosters these through an unmoderated mailing list with over 500 subscribers, predominantly in Australasia. The list is administered on a no-budget basis by a team of facilitators across Australia and New Zealand. It is maintained as a completely open channel alongside all of our activities. It remains a non-institutional, certified public space.

The languages of net-criticism

From the beginning, fibreculture faced the linguistic challenges that emerge within convergent media spaces. It’s difficult for a list with a largely ‘arts/humanities’ background (that’s enough discourses already!) to engage propeller heads and programmers. Although many subscribers have university affiliations, the list has developed its own ‘tone’ of discussion in a sort of liminal zone: neither conversational nor academic. We encourage subscribers to post more substantial stuff: articles, reviews or research papers. A separate announcements list (::fc::announce::) is dedicated to up-to-date postings about new media happenings.

A trawl through the list archives (see the website) reveals a wide range of approaches to network politics and new media cultures. Recent threads have included: the perils of ‘cyber-junk’; ‘globalisation from below’; all you need to know about blogs; cybersquatting and culture jamming; taxonomies of spam; and debates about online education and broadband policy.

For all its diversity, the fibreculture network is a collaborative space in which to develop ideas and projects. Every new subscriber means new opportunities so visit the site, come along to the meeting, and sub into the network!

Fibreculture facilitators

Fibreculture’s 24 page Networks of Excellence? will appear as a supplement in the next edition of RealTime.

Prefiguring Cyberculture

Eds. Darren Tofts, Annemarie Jonson & Alessio Cavallaro, Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History, Power Publications, University of Sydney, Australia, MIT Press, USA, November, 2002.

Reading this book is an exercise in reconfiguring how we see how we are in this formation called cyberculture. In the process, readers enjoy what binds the authors and editors together—the capacity to be surprised in the belly of the monster. Donna Haraway

Prefiguring Cyberculture looks to literature, science and philosophy for antecedents of the informatic culture of the late 20th and 21st centuries. Within 3 thematic sections—broadly, artificial life, virtuality and futurology—leading philosophers, media theorists, critics and historians of science were asked to examine seminal texts that anticipate key aspects of cybercultural theory and practice, such as Descartes on the mind/body split, Plato on the cave, Turing on thinking machines, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Philip K Dick on androids, William Gibson on cyberspace and Arthur C Clarke on the technological future.

The many contributors include Mark Dery, Margaret Wertheim, Gregory Ulmer, Erik Davis, McKenzie Wark, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Wilson, Scott McQuire, John Potts, Russell Blackford, and Zoe Sofoulis. In addition, cyberculture artists Stelarc and Char Davies explore how cybercultural themes have been taken up and critiqued in the electronic arts.

Culture and Technology

Culture and Technology is a comprehensive overview of theoretical developments and debates concerning new media technology. Its emphasis is on the creative uses of new technologies. Chapters include “Digital Aesthetics”, which considers developments in intellectual property, the changing status of the image, and other ramifications of digital media. There are also detailed discussions of technology, thought and consciousness; virtual ecologies; war and sovereignty; cyborgs and information technology; and the various forms of science fiction. Artists discussed in the book include Robyn Stacey, Patricia Piccinini, Stelarc, Rosemary Laing and Nigel Helyer.

Very Strange Weather

Very Strange Weather is a one day conference and symposium addressing artists’ use of media technology to create environments as alternative spaces or as commentary on existing social/cultural spaces. Speakers will consider the ways artists create media ecologies, expressed as dynamic and emergent environments.

Presenters and speakers include: Blast Theory (UK), Robyn Backen, Ross Gibson, Martin Friedel, Edward Scheer and Andrew Murphie.

Future Active

Ian Meikle, Future Active, Media Activism and the Internet, Pluto Press Australia, 2002

“Like Naomi Klein’s No Logo, this is a fine book which may end up being in the right place at the right time.”
J ean Poole (see review).

Femmedia 02

Femmedia 02 is the multimedia program of the WOW International Film Festival organised by Women in Film & Television and screening this year at the Paris Cinema at Fox Studios, Sydney October 17-20.

Curated by Danielle Karalus, creator of the interactive CD-ROM Shocked (see page 17) which lets loose your worst fears about medical intervention, the program includes:Tatiana Doroshenko’s Shot—“In this game, some of us find there is no such thing as looking”; Emma Byrnes Constructing Cyburbia, one of a number of works on the city theme; Stand Your Ground, an interactive documentary on an inner-city arts project by Julie Masterton, Michaela Pegum and Tandi Rabinowitz; and Zoe Horsfall’s The Wedding, “a black comedy about the happiest day of your life.” In Fate 187, Kate Davitt plays with interactive cinematic narrative.

Interactive web-based works include Melinda Rackham’s intimate investigation of viral symbiosis in the biological and virtual domains, Carrier (www.subtle.net/carrier); Homeless by Rose Hesp (www.abc.net.au/homeless) which offers the vicarious experience of “one homeless day around the clock, around the world.” From the US Jody Zellen conjures an ever-changing Ghost City (www.ghostcity.com) and Krista Connerly collects those accidentally intimate moments we all experience on public transport in Transitory Contact. Isobel Knowles (Australia) invites us into her Shockwave shopping gallery at http://ik.rocks.it [link expired]. Animations include The Way to Venushill, a road movie completely produced in Flash by Sabine Huber (Germany) and The Nerve Game by local girl with her finger on the button, Van Sowerine (see page 5) in which you’re invited to “Watch your stress and depression rise to levels never seen before. Watch yourself collapse, then explode!”

This year’s WOW Festival is put together by the team at WIFT led once again by the indefatigable Jacquie North and looks as generous as last year’s with a huge range of features, documentaries and shorts.

Like the best of modern dancers, Bebe Miller watches movement intently. At her Melbourne workshop presented by Dance Works in June this year, the New York choreographer asked the participating dancers to “take the idea of weight being at risk and allow an interruption to happen.” She wants them to avoid the familiarity of their known dance vocabulary, or its beauty. “How does an interruption become a staccato pattern? Why is that dissolving gesture a continuous thought rather than a break with form?” The dancers struggle with these ideas in their improvisations. Katy McDonald has one foot curved under while another foot is flat, then she flips her body over like a tensile cat. Miller responds with a series of strategies to intervene in the phrasing of movement-hair-pulling, visual or aural distraction, speaking in one ear, manipulating body-parts.

Later in conversation, Miller explains this idea of interruption, as both an aesthetic and political act. She is interested in the ‘civilian body’, a body available to the dancer outside her training but which becomes buried in the habit formation of dancing. “It is only when we know that we have habits that we can use them. Why is the habit of ‘light touch’ always about the same temperature and the same weight in relation to the task at hand. If you change that, then what do you feel? Or resist it? And what if you follow through?” This habit change involves utilising the pedestrian to interrupt the codes they have as dancers.

Political dimensions of being seen as dancers with civilian bodies are linked to interruption. “Studio practices have myths about equality and about mood as if you accomplish what you need to within given rules. But I’m not here to make everything equal. Two men together carry a charge, 2 women, black and white – we live in this world where those things are real so I try to let that be visible.”

I ask Miller where choreography is going in the 21st century? “I think we’re in the middle of a 40 year shift and time is not on our side. I feel there is a path towards relevancy. I went to Eritrea in Northern Africa a couple of years ago for 3 weeks. I’m in a foreign environment and I had this sense of them looking at me intently while I’m looking at them intently. They are looking at someone foreign inside something familiar, so we have a different point of view in terms of intensity. What is that about? Is that something that I can capture in dance? As I work on it, it occurs me to that that difference of gaze is political. It shows up in Ohio, it shows up in Pakistan and Palestine. What seemed like a foreign adventure is in fact localised. So the choreography is about how I can use the home environment, not recreate an African experience. It is not just about race, it is about vibrating in a different way. That is the ultimate test of globalism, can you allow that body vibrating differently to be next to you.”

Her voice in class says “go-girl”and “Yeah! Yeah! “and “oh, hello” when she sees an interruption that vibrates. In watching, Bebe Miller shares this potential for dancing to create physical or psychic change even though she does not know where the choreography of civilian bodies might go in the future.

Fortyfive Downstairs, once a gallery now a gallery and performance space, hosted a winter collaboration between art and dance, entitled Focus 4. During its season, the space was arranged by placing 4 installations side by side, and nightly cameos in a vestibule. Its audience was led into each constructed situation to bear witness to the dancerly component which brought alive each installation. Dancers and artists integrated their work to differing degrees, with some constructions necessary to the dance, some complementary, some autonomous and others a hindrance.

Stephanie Glickman’s movement bore great allegiance to Michael Sibel’s large, steel sculpture (a conical monkey bars). Glickman sought inspiration from the limitations of bounded space, climbing, weaving, and swinging from steel bars. Here, installation offered an aesthetic puzzle, which provoked Glickman towards a bold clarity of exploration. By contrast, Benjamin Gauci and Louise Rippert seemed to mirror each other: both working in a minimalist sense, whether with white ceramic shapes and flour, or repeated circular movement leaving floury traces. Together, a sense was created of gentle but insistent assertion. Marc Brew’s collaboration with a wheelchair produced some beautiful inversions, where it could have been either chair or body as installation. Brew’s dialogue with his own body suggested the kind of play with structural givens that Glickman found in Sibel’s sculpture.

Glickman, the curator of the show, wrote that the dancers and visual artists did not know each other before working together. As might be expected, such a risky venture is likely to lead to contrast as much as integration. Naree Vachananda’s very personal and moving work was framed by but not particularly connected to Anna Finlayson’s mural collage, whilst Benjamin Gauci’s strong, balletic composition positively crashed through Louis Rippert’s hanging fabrics.

The variety of relationships between artist and dancer taken collectively offer food for thought as to the range of ways in which one form might collaborate with another. Not forgetting that Merce Cunningham’s own option was to combine at the very last minute, allowing different elements—music, lighting, sets-to freely juxtapose.

Tracie Mitchell’s recent work, Under the Weather, was quite different in texture to the above. Although it combined video and dance, there was a sense of an authorial aesthetic, emerging from a single perspective. From dark beginnings, a video triptych blinked and winked, creating a powerful portraiture of urban existence. Dancers emerged from the shadows singly or together, drawing elegant lines. The set fanned out from a recessed centre, suggesting that something was being aired, turned inside-out. Dancers ventured then retreated, hidden again by shadow.

There was a section where each dancer performed solo. Carlee Mellow’s work was striking, precise, quirky, repeated just enough to gain familiarity with her vocabulary. It was also enjoyable to watch Mia Hollingworth and Shona Erskine move through what appeared to be their own material subjected to Mitchell’s careful direction. Sadly, the piece ended before the 3 dancers were able to come back together. So much had been created and established that a desire was born for hiatus and closure. Instead, the piece gently fell into shadow, leaving an opening where before there was none.

Focus 4, Stephanie Glickman & Michael Sibel, Nicholas Mansfield & Andrea Meadows, Benjamin Gauci & Louise Rippert, Naree Vachananda & Anna Finlayson, Marc Brew, and Amelia McQueen, at Fourtyfive Downstairs, Flinders Lane Melbourne, Jul 26 -Aug 4

Under the Weather, choreographed and directed by Tracie Mitchell, performed by Shona Erskine, Mia Hollingworth and Carlee Mellow, music by Byron Scullin, Gasworks, Port Melbourne, July 23-27

Hold that deadline. Other cultures from ours experience time and the detailing of events, and hence, meaning, differently. In particular, there is a concept of “thick time”, a Balinese term for when events and significances line up in a particularly dense overlay of resonances (John Broomfield, Other Ways of Knowing, 1997). I begin to wonder whether, in improvisation, “thick time” becomes a condition of performance: from the initial, tentative setting-up of an idea, or partnership, through to the layered, richly-confluenced zone of thought and action that looks and feels expanded, hugely spacious, where the span of a single breath is wired to so many options (and organs), words, shudders and slides, that one is not holding, marking time, but that it holds you. Helen Omand says: “The best improvisations are when it seems like the score has already been written in space/time, and the body makes it manifest” (RT 45 p11).

To improvise is to enter a zone approaching the infinite that is yet bounded with finitudes: muscle, step, language, wind. In their finer moments, the most seemingly divergent practices-from Grotowski’s “shedding of resistances” to the classical acterly “training up” to form-also whisper each other’s virtues, hugeness meeting the particular (or vice versa) in multitudinous intimacy. I observe the final session of Precipice in Canberra-not, alas, the fall of the incumbent rulers from their parliamentary spire, but a 4-day improvisation jam, now in its 9th year-and reflect on some of the “givens” of the artform.

Trust. Trotman and Santos in partnership reveal an intimacy that is verbal, physical and structural, with structure a distinct body with its own edges joining in the play. Their interplay seems helix-shaped, diverging, converging, holding their differences in a brilliant interweaving. Santos, glowing-eyed, ‘redeems’ them from the edge of chaos, insisting on the unity of their ‘two becoming one” whilst Trotman falls off a cliff with the other billion into which they have already multiplied. Two gaspingly beautiful moments where their two distanced bodies turn as one.

Ghosts. They show their training, as performers do when they improvise. Trotman and Rees-Hatton through Al Wunder’s Theatre of the Ordinary sharing a tendency to separate words from movement in alternation. Trotman’s words left gasping, arms grasping; peculiar and particular, a quaintly-disjuncted relationship to impulse recognisable as a TOTO influence, yet here ignited with a special resilience and wit. Rees-Hatton belies her maturity with hops and skips, an adult dancer partaking in an all-day lollipop.

Hitching on the glitches. Ryk Goddard plays tag and chasings with patches of light which cut out just as he arrives. An at times harrowing biographic discursion on finding and keeping home, of an identity teetering and lurching away from stable balance. Both verité confession and postmodern artifice, the bravely darkest and most personified piece of the session.

Possible vs impossible, known vs. unknown. Barnes and Bonnar tease out the tango form, decaying, redeeming, querying and quarreling with it as their feet wickedly flick and sashay. A delicious turning-over of a form that already leaves itself open to unturn, tickling at (in)competencies and (in)complicities. His solid body helps her into a backbend, drags her metres across the ground; their roles reverse, she’s surprised to be caught in an impossible expectation to do the same.

From intensified abstraction…. In a butoh-based slaughterhouse blues, Pemberton, O’Keefe and Hunt alternate slack-hipped mimickry of cattle-men with Body Weather incursions into the muscles of slaughtered bovine souls. Blood on the hay, buttocks jammed in corridors. Kimmo Vennonen’s soundtrack veering from literal to a blood-journey through the internal nightmare.

…to dissolution. We emerge in late-afternoon wind and light to Alice Cummins’ silver hair reflecting the agedness and deepgnarled beauty of the courtyard’s central tree. At times her relatively still body seems to sprout from it, at times nearly fall like a leaf, or suspend from within it like a limb; thence dance along its skin, a difference of time and density. Cummins afterwards expresses her consciousness of being the final performance of the weekend. In what way might such consciousness interfere? The show must go on, but performances stop, do they? Cummins’ performance aptly softened the rhetorical edge of the season’s title with a grace and heart that rendered time thick and thin as water.

Precipice, Peter Trotman, Lynne Santos, Lee Pemberton, Anne O’Keefe, Victoria Hunt, Kimmo Vennonen, Sarah Bonnar, Gary Barnes, Ryk Goddard, Noel Rhees-Hatton, Alice Cummins; lighting: Mark Gordon. Australian Choreographic Centre,

In Cooked, the first of her dual photographic installations recently exhibited at Sydney’s Stills Gallery, Pam Kleemann uses liquid light emulsion to transpose images of human bodies onto stainless steel and aluminium cookware.

The black and white images coalesce with the silvery surface grain and their miraculous form has the resinous immanence of a freshly greased cake tin. Cooked sets up a buffet, the red caterer’s cloth over a long table on which are the empty cooking vessels and utensils; a casserole pot, pie dish, platter, fry pan, 7” bain marie dish, fish kettle, pizza tray, scoop, saucepan. The images within give a liminal sheen to the domestic grade surfaces, as the viewer recognises a hair braid, a vulva, ear and hoop earings, scalp and wart, podgy baby’s foot, a palm. The images are mainly external body surfaces, their folds and follicles, rather than internal viscera, and there’s really only a mild effect of attraction-repulsion. Overall the experience of viewing is quite palatable and seems deliberately unfetishistic. This isn’t high quality silverware and doesn’t raise the spectre of a naked chef. The confluence of metal and flesh usually associated with a more mechanistic, technological, medical or military aesthetic is also refreshingly disrupted—as the images provide more of a bodily geography or ecology, surreally in situ.

In her notes to the exhibition, Kleemann makes reference to the global economy of body parts, and she mirrors that capitalist and imperialist carving up by divvying up and unusually framing her bodies within banal apparatus. The images and objects suggest gendered individuals from domestic family contexts (rather than any illegal trade in Third world body organs), and are depicted here as offering a poetic resistance to the corporate, colonial, consumption of flesh writ large in our culture.

Hairball Café the second installation, announces itself as an ironic and playful performance. The artist has prefigured the position of the viewer as a café customer. The central motifs are ‘hair’ and ‘food’, and Kleemann serves up photographic plates of “Meaty Hairballs served on a bed of Twisted Angel Hair”, “Map O’ Tassie Burger served on a Sea of Squid Ink”, as well as hair print table cloths and napkins. Such parodies of nouvelle cuisine in a Paddington Gallery seem at first a bit too overburdened by middle-class pop humour, as if assembled for a mimetic Donna Hay shoot. Yet the installation is therefore free of any real Naked Lunch pretensions: where the artist is in a position to see what’s really at the end of your fork—and is suitably accompanied in the notes by quotations from Don Delillo’s novella The Body Artist, along with interesting trivia about hair and abjection. These foodie images have a perfection about them and appear less lubricant than the images in Cooked. Although, as Kleemann notes, she is playing off the fact that hair removed from the body usually “becomes foul, disgusting, repulsive, dirty, unhygienic, gross. Especially when it might have strayed from another’s body, and found its way onto your napkin, into your food or your mouth.”

In Hairball Café, the photographer’s process of baking (this time colour) photographic images onto objects references an Italian funerary tradition which imposes images of the departed onto graves and crockery. Kleemann divorces this technique from its original functional use in producing objects of memory, and without using portrait photography, she still captures the more kitsch elements of photography’s application in producing unique collectables.

I left the exhibition conscious of the difference between contemporary art’s bodily reliquaries and the more traditional, though equally quirky. Last month at flea markets in Rome I picked up some old tarnished pieces of tin, each with a raised area forming the image of a body part: legs, arms, lungs, distended belly and emaciated ribs. Discarded from their Catholic context, they immediately appealed to my aesthetics formed by reading Zone books and the current ubiquitous fascination with the corporeal and iconographies of the body. My Italian friend told me they are called ex voto, and offered to a saint after a healing miracle. We then went to see the Capuchin monk cemetery with pelvic bone chandeliers, skull graves and miscellaneous bone trompe l’oeil.

I used to think sound art was about the sound of sound. After engaging is a crash course of events and recordings, I discovered that, similar to more traditional music, a lexicon of noises generated electrically and digitally, has emerged that one can become accustomed to, begin to absorb as naturally as equal tempered tuning. So experiencing a sample of What is Music? events, I came to the (perhaps belated) revelation that more than just being about sonic textures, sound art is often about discerning the (sometimes apparent lack of) relationship between the modes of production and the sound they make.

Saturday night at The Studio, Sydney Opera House, offered a program jammed with different methodologies of making. Jim Denley opened the evening in acoustic mode, playing a saxophone and contact mike. Circular breathing, he created a gurgling drone textured by mouth clicks, tongue tocks and breathy grunts. At one stage the only sound you hear is the scraping of the mouthpiece over his stubble. The performance appears to be an exploration of air within the curls and corners of the instrument, an internal examination of the instrument itself. Joyce Hinterding, tuned us into the ether with aerials, computer and mixing desk. She created an increasingly dense carpet of drones out of electrical hum, tuning into higher tones and buzzes, tapping into slower, loping waves that chopped up the air around us.

Robin Fox and Anthony Pateras launched into a sonic maelstrom, Fox on computer and Pateras virtuosically pounding a small keyboard and activating changes through a breath activated mouth piece. Then just as suddenly the chaos pared back to a respite of a metronome looped and effected. Pateras then took to the strings of a deconstructed piano with kitchen cutlery, chopping and impaling the notes further manipulated by Fox. Toshimaru Nakumura and Sachiko M created a cool, quiet world of machine made sine waves, electrical pings, and pulses. There was no layering, just pure tones introduced for a few seconds and then removed. Binary, on/off. Phantom tones and warm hum of air conditioning. All moments controlled and measured.

Ottomo Yoshihide dragged us back to gritty earth with an improvisation for guitar and record player. He used the guitar to generate drones, occasionally moving into a rock-god lick of suspended notes, pumping up the overdrive, creating loops that hit the torso and kept cycling long after. (I am told it was an Ornette Coleman standard and must admit to ignorance on this one). Finally he threw a cymbal onto the turntable creating a manic carrillion, your head stuck inside the bell. Some couldn’t handle it, others stayed to the bitter end mesmerised or paralysed by its delicate obnoxiousness.

A regular feature of What is Music? is caleb k’s impermanent.audio—this year at PACT in Erskineville, creating a kind of rock concert feel compared to the intimacy of Hibernian House. Ai Yamamoto (Japan/Aus) on laptop (also running visuals) created a dense yet delicate sonic landscape with cascading streams of sound-notes and noises rippling over each other, constantly descending. Her palette of sounds is exquisitely created, concise, crystalline yet full bodied. She manages to produce under-rumbles with no grit in them. It is a stunningly “pretty” sonic universe. Anthony Guerra (Aus/UK) cycled feedback round the speakers, round your brain, with pops and glitches keeping the space unpredictable. He fused the sound into a massive perverse growl, both beautiful and ugly, which eventually pulled back to where it began. Snawkler started with acoustic samples, fingers on the fretboard of a double bass. Their use of samples is like unfinished thoughts of multi-streams overlapping, clashing, overriding other frequencies, a kind of cutup orchestral chaos out of which sonic thought bubbles arise. Their second piece using gamelan samples is a beautiful exploration of glassy and metallic colours. Günter Müller (Switzerland) and Tetuzi Akiyama (Japan) provided an improvisation, interesting in the uneasy differences of sound production. Müller bowed small gongs and metallic objects and played with the overtones, while Tetuzi Akiyama investigated (again) the sonic qualities of an electric guitar—running a metal ruler over the strings, applying things to the velcro strip attached to the body-nothing more than an exploration of the exploration. SEO performed with a joystick, and created sounds that seemed to have lost their video game. Standing in front of the audience, shoes off ready for action, he toggles the stick with full bodied gestures, manipulating loops of hysterical voices and agitated intonations that accelerate and escalate like a car race. I’d be interested to hear works with other sample palettes. Toshimaru Nakamura, played once again, but solo, in a similar vein to the studio night, with simple tones, emphasising the negative aural space—the trains to Erskineville, the sneezes. At the end of a program of such dense sound moments, his work was like a cleansing of the aural sphere.

In only 8 years Oren Ambachi and Robbie Avenaim's what is music? has become a vital celebration of Australian sonic explorations, exploitations and manipulations. After the hangover, activities will continue in dark corners, warehouse and white gallery cubes around Australia, spurred on by the growing sensation that there really is something significant going on here, beginning to impress itself on the Australian cultural psyche and the international scene. Many sonic loving (are we batlike?) creatures await, ears back, for the next instalment.

what is music?,The Studio, Sydney Opera House, Sat July 21, impermanent.audio, PACT, Tues July 23.

Dante Alighhiere’s The Inferno is a remarkably visual work that records the poet’s imagined pilgrimage into the vortex of the damned, phrased in 100 Cantos of 1292-style vernacular Italian poetry. It is the first work of the Divine Comedy trilogy, written after he had been exiled, a victim of the political chaos and corruption of medieval Florence. Hence it paints a vivid picture of Dante’s yearning for the earthly triumph of human potential in an era of deep injustice, corruption and unfettered greed. It’s not surprising then that such a subversive, political allegory still holds much currency today.

It was this model of symbolic retribution that inspired composer John Rodgers to create this modernist, sonic epic for Australia’s national contemporary music ensemble, ELISION. Appropriately they chose to present The Inferno as an installation, placing numerous performers throughout the abysses of Brisbane Powerhouse’s main theatre with grand-scale video projections (by Judith Wright) at each end of their netherworld.

Throughout most of his journey down through the Circles of Hell, the pilgrim Dante had the benefit of the poet Virgil as his personal guide. However, despite such unfettered access to the “voice of reason” even Dante ultimately required further assistance in navigating those deeply complex terrains (provided by Beatrice,symbol of Divine Love).

Anyone who takes on a work like The Inferno is nothing if not ambitious. While attempts at direct illustration are undoubtedly futile, plenty of well-signed guide posts are required to avoid audiences feeling like lost souls groping to “see” horrors in the darkness, such as the Vale of Suicides, the marsh of the Styx or Cocytus, the frozen centre of Hell. Rodgers describes in Real Time 36 (‘Sacred Geometry’, p. 43), how he went about structuring an “architectural” spectrum for audiences, visualising “each instrument’s sound world” as “a microcosm of Hell.” Tactics he employed included electronically generated drones, extreme degrees of distortion and the construction of complex arrays of “multiphonics.’ These were skilfully produced by ELISION’s manipulations of instruments as diverse as slack-stringed violoncellos, bowed polystyrene boxes and water damped Cretales, and, impressively, a flute and oboe cast from ice leading to an audio-visual meltdown. However Rodgers admits in the same article that “most” audiences would miss his numerous Dante-inspired “details”, yet still remain satisfied by a work that does “not need to have any relationship to Dante’s poem”.

Whilst Rodger’s composition offered a generous viscerality it lacked the deep visual sensibilities of Dante’s words. Hence I looked to Judith Wright’s accompanying video text for my guidance, given its significant placement and physical magnitude. Subtly timed interactions of sound and image have undeniable power within new media performance allowing audiences to vividly ‘picture’ for themselves. However with the visuals provided I frequently struggled to conjure up Dante’s incendiary visions of corrupt contemporaries, tortures beyond the pale or indeed much of his imagined geographies.

Suffering therefore from a disorientating blindness, I gratefully alighted upon Murray Kane’s poetic essay in the accompanying program: “‘ How will I recognise Styx’, I asked? ‘Sullen Strings choking on fumes of spite’, he replied matter of factly”.

In the early 90s there was a possie of us all hurtling ourselves through the air and swinging from things, but some of us got a bit tired, a bit hurt, had to get jobs, and it seemed like the Sydney aerial scene went into hibernation. But since 1999 Aimee Thomas and Shelalagh McGovern have been determined to make things, mostly dangerous looking things, happen with their creation of Aerialize-Sydney Aerial Theatre.

Big in Japan was their annual celebration and fundraiser. Described as a night celebrating Asian influences on Australia, the Newtown Theatre was gorgeous decked out like an old music hall with flowing red silks, origami sculptures and a huge scenic backdrop framing the live musicians, Entropic and Deepchild. The majority of the work was a celebration of strength and skill, which the artists had in abundance. Highlights included Suzie Langford’s Cloud Swing routine Tokyo Clouds. Compared to the trapeze this apparatus allows for a gentler physical gesture, making Langford’s death-defying free falls all the more surprising and breathtaking. Susan Mitchell performed an invigorating web spinning routine, Kamikaze, with great strength and precision, and the Urban Spin duo between Langford and Mitchell showed a maturity in their skills and performance presence-they make a good team. Under the Sea, performed by Shelalagh McGovern, was an elegant and gutsy swinging trapeze routine with heart-stopping drops to foot hangs at peak swing, accompanied by guitarist Antonio Dixon and blues singer Mari-Jon Berna, who has one of the most soul-satisfying voices around.

Fortunately, a few of the pieces attempted to push through the showy style that inevitably arises from apparatus and skill-oriented work. Bernard Bru’s Sakura was based around a well developed clown persona and involved an elaborate routine of innovative climbs to the ceiling to release a gentle flow of sand-perhaps a meditation on time and Zen. Playing with the gestural translations of cartoons like Astro Boy, Meika Kiven and Charmaine Piggott pushed the regular trapeze tricks-half angel, foot hang, one armed hang-into refreshingly new shapes and constructions creating an integrated relationship between apparatus and performer. In contrast, Hiroshima by Genevieve Moran, with text by John Hersy, though elegantly performed, did not create a significant connection nor juxtaposition between the physicality of standard ‘tricks’ performed on the lyre (hanging hoop) and the text-one of the difficulties to be worked through when pushing physical performance into more narrative ground.

The most interesting work for me was Simple Terms. Catherine Daniel appeared on stage in simple day wear (no glitter to be seen), looking for her partner. Casually she ran through her complex routine on silks, chatting to the audience, flirting with a boy in the audience. Eventually Jessica Paff arrived and they performed a sophisticated, though still casual routine, on the one silk, continuing the conversation. The underplayed, anti-theatrical nature of the this work was refreshing and suggested a different conceptualisation of aerial performance. I hope they continue investigations in this style.

Big in Japan was a celebration of skill more than of Asian cultural influences. Many of the references were slight, a red sun Tshirt here, a kimono there, which considering the enormous influence of Asian performance training systems (Suzuki, Butoh, Bodyweather) on Australian contemporary performance seemed a little naive. Now that the skills are there and developing, it would be great to see an increased engagement with material on deeper and more conceptual levels-admittedly difficult in such a tricks based medium but something to strive for as Aerialize continue training Sydney performers to swoop, dive and fly.

Big in Japan, Aerialize- Sydney Aerial Theatre, Aug 29-Sept1, Newtown Theatre, Sydney.

A broken tree, each segment labelled with a number. Standing among them Koon Fei Wong silently accounts for each piece on her air calculator. Pale and willowy in little girl dress, the performer is nevertheless powerfully present. Plagued by nightmares, trauma of collective memories, she strives to embody her visions in fragments of language and gesture. The tiniest of wrist actions takes our attention, it animates an arm that floats out from the torso. From the side of the stage Liberty Kerr on cello and Barbara Clare sampling sounds, underscore or interrupt with their own murmuring utterances. Images spill onto the stage. A pile of bodies, dead arms reaching out to be held. Fei chops at her arm, repeats “Long or short sleeves? Or sleeveless?” She stands on a dismembered trunk, “I’m great. I’m terrific.” A proud little smile dances on her lips, in the corners of her eyes, while those same muscles reveal the lie. She speaks of bloodied bones in snow, the colour moving between elements, red to white to brown. In the elusive way of dreams, events drift apart from physical sensation. Remembering her child self as helpless witness to violence, she detachedly describes events in voiceover. Meanwhile her naked body grasps at the sensation in ineffectual movement, shuffling awkwardly on her buttocks from one side of the stage to the other. Finally she falls and falls and falls. And exhausted, she re-assembles the strewn fragments of the tree.

Koon Fei Wong came to Australia from Hong Kong 5 years ago to study Aeronautical Engineering. Thankfully, she lost her way and wound up at the School of Theatre Film and Dance at the University of NSW. Fei was also a participant in Tess de Quincey’s Triple Alice project in Central Australia, a profound experience which triggered some of the thoughts on dislocation and identity she explores so powerfully in this performance.

Teik Kim Pok in generic T, BVDs and white crew socks ponders his place on the map of cultural identity. Whether in Singapore or Australia, clearly being Teik Kim is not enough…”In a past life, I may have yelled ‘Long Live Chairman!’ Today I yell, ‘Long Live (fill in name of Western popstar)’.” And why have his parents only ever called him Daniel, a moniker officially registered nowhere? Taking stock of his upbringing and its effect Teik Kim tosses round possible identities, re-modelling himself, parading for us on a black and white runway. It’s a nicely judged performance, a blend of seriousness and fun that keeps the audience guessing. Along the way, he asks us to take a look at each other, to shake hands while resising eye contact. Finally uncomfortable in the suit, he discards it for a clearer match for his cultural confusions, where else but in the enigmatic persona of Michael Jackson-the black man who could pass for white, maker of his own idiosyncratic moves. Teik Kim flicks the switch to vaudeville and at last, utterly convincing to himself and his audience, with jutting pelvis, single glove, hat concealing features, he slides a slippery moonwalk to “Billy Jean.”

These 2 impressive short works were created as part of Teik Kim Pok’s and Koon Fei Wong’s research as Honours students in the School of Theatre Film and Dance at University of NSW. Both have also engaged with the contemporary performance community in Sydney for the last 2 years with earlier works seen at PACT Youth Theatre, Urban Theatre Projects, Performance Space and Belvoir Street.

Dis(re)membered, performer Koon Fei Wong, sound liberty & bc from magnusmusic, project supervisor Clare Grant; Post-Op Chamber Piece, performer Teik Kim Pok, sound Michelle Outram; Io Myers Theatre, September 25-28.

The paucity of international contemporary dance companies touring to Australia (a handful at arts festivals aside) was brought home by the visit from the UK of the Akram Khan Company and the excitement and dialogue it generated. The company was also resident at the University of Western Sydney and presented different programs at the Sydney Opera House and Brisbane’s Powerhouse.

In her handy summation of Khan’s career and philosophy, “Clarity within chaos” (Dance Theatre Journal, Vol 18, No 1, 2002), Preeti Vasudevan reports that the 28 year-old Khan was born in South London into the Bengali community there, dancing from 3 years of age and beginning with kathak, classical dance from northern India and Pakistan, at the age of 7. At 21 he decided to train in contemporary dance and, subsequently to work at its integration with kathak. Khan says in the interview, “What I’m exploring is kathak, the dynamics and energies of kathak. It is kathak that informs the contemporary.” He conceptualises this classical dance as clarity and contemporary dance as chaotic-not in a sense of formlessness, but, somewhat akin to Chaos Theory, in terms of the invisibility of its borders. “It is an unfortunate misconception that [contemporary dance] has no boundaries. the difference is that you cannot see them…[but] you know [they] are there…”

Khan continues to perform kathak in the UK and India, but his fame has primarily emerged from the contemporary work with his company, a powerful perpetual motion motor whose collective speed reminded me of nothing less than the minimalism of Steve Reich and Philip Glass-with their enormous, continuous flow of notes that for all the rapidity of their playing conveys a transcendent, subtle shifting of states. There are significant changes of pace and form in the 3 sections of Kaash (the 2002 work presented in Sydney), but the overall impression is of a mesmeric totality incorporating intense solo moments (Khan, reciting and demonstrating movement instructions from kathak focused on its gestural vocabulary) and remarkable collective harmony (a precision rarely seen in this country). From within this flow, which like Chaos Theory’s companion Complexity suggests a system working at optimum but ever on the edge, come strikingly memorable moments as dancers rapidly traverse the stage, spin and come to a sudden, curiously unabrupt halt, a sheer stillness, or, a little later, with the rhythms of the movement still in their bodies, an almost indiscernable rocking.

The contemplative blend of unleashed energy and overarching form is embodied too in Nitin Sawhney’s musical composition for Kaash. The dance corresponds closely to its rhythms, ecstatically in the bursts of tabla-driven propulsion. The viscerality of the percussion is layered with sustained notes sounding like they have been scraped from the edges of small gongs and cymbals, sometimes reverberating in harmony with the pulsing, barely stilled bodies of the dancers. It’s a composition that, like the dance, fuses the classical and the contemporary with confident ease.

The context for Kaash is an open performing space forward of a huge work of art by Anish Kapoor-a painting of a framed, huge black hole. In the Kapoor manner it’s often difficult to see where this emptiness begins, the line between presence and absence constantly shifting and blurring, a state amplified by transformations of colour and density wrought by a superb lighting design.

This is no mere backdrop. Not only does it provide a parallel to the shifting energies of the dance, but it also reflects the thematic preoccupations of the choreography. Khann says, “‘Kaash’ means ‘if’ and I am basing it on the concept of Shiva. Shiva in Hindu religion is the destroyer and restorer of order. Shiva in Hebrew means the number 7. Seven is close to the rhythm and music modes of Indian classical that works with energy…What if you put a dancer in an ice cube and then the energy is released when the cube melts? That’s what Shiva is about” (Vasudevan).

Nor is Kapoor’s painting ignored by the dancers. In a work that is otherwise highly formalised the opening and closing moments of Kaash have the kind of abstract theatricality you’d expect from Saburo Tehsigawa. We arrive in the theatre to find a performer gazing into Kapoor’s creation, in turn therefore directing our own gaze, initiating the contemplation that follows. At the end of the performance one of the dancers becomes totally preoccupied with this vast, beautiful but disturbing portrait of sheer flatness and depth, his body swaying left to right, almost as if to fall, to be caught by his comrades in this dangerous reverie. Blackout.

I hope that this visit will inspire a producer or an arts festival director to bring the company to Australia again; in the meantime we can only be grateful to the Sydney Opera House, the Brisbane Powerhouse and the British Council for giving us a rare glimpse of a work of bracing and contemplative totality and cultural resonance.

Fiona Cameron has for some time been one of the most striking presences within Chunky Move, her tall, statuesque pose breaking down into low, complicated, interwoven positions with disarming ease. She has produced several of her own works, notably Looking For a Life Cure (2001), in which she explored the near schizophrenic internalisation of contradictory states within modern life. Her latest project is a pair of duets dealing with urban alienation and the distance between individuals, performed at various informal locations (indoors and outdoors) within Melbourne.

As always with these much in demand dancers, Cameron and partner Carlee Mellow move with such elegance, poise and confidence(as well as with a touch of self-deprecating humour(that their merest physical inflection is eminently satisfying. Cameron is all jagged discomfort to Mellow’s absent-mindedly musing traveller, the knots they tie each other up in taking on a mood of accidental combat. Composer Luke Smiles adds a sense of sonic complexity, jumping from hip-hop loops to hyped techno flourishes, as well as more abstract digital fields and soundscapes (horns, motors, coffee-machines; a cacophony of urban samples).

The dance itself is somewhat slight both in terms of overt content and choreography. It is predominantly the performers’ dramatic nuances that bring it to life. The first piece is an extended joke of how when one is on public transport, one can end up with one’s foot over the ear of a neighbour, despite one’s best efforts to avoid physical proximity. This is a fun little dramatic sketch, but that is all.

The second dance is more provocative, depicting Cameron as a city dweller who has learnt the physical regimes and moves one must go through to avoid chance encounters. To draw on Public Enemy’s hip-hop terminology, Cameron’s character has been rendered “niggatronic,” or robotised in body and psyche (if not race, given that Cameron is white). Like break-dancers, her character moves to the subliminal beat of contemporary, urban capitalism(yet unlike B-boyz, her character (as opposed to Cameron the choreographer) does not consciously manipulate these movements and feelings so as to dramatise her condition. Mellow by contrast seems to follow John Cage’s exhortation to consciously react to the random sounds and textures which surround one in urban life. Not so much stopping to smell the daisies, she pauses to hear the music of the city and pay attention to the other individuals who move throughout it.

Cameron’s dance-theatre scenario of 2 movers who respond very differently to the barrage of Smiles’ sounds encourages such reflections(particularly for those familiar with hip-hop preachers like Chuck D or Kodwo Eshun. It is nevertheless an uncomplicated work in itself, depicting a simple exchange between the characters leading to a comic resolution in which Mellow leaves Cameron reluctantly holding the hands of 2 co-opted spectators. The production was disappointing in the limited way it interacted with or was consciously situated within the spaces it was staged(beyond dealing with the broad theme of urbanity. Overall Inhabited was a thoroughly enjoyable, interesting, short performance which nevertheless did not amount to anything substantial. One hopes therefore that this curious divertissement represents a taster for more impressive full-length works to follow.

“I ain’t goin’ niggatronic; smart enough to know that I ain’t bionic.”
Chuck D, from Public Enemy, Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age (NY, Def Jam, 1994)

Inhabited, director/choreographer/performer Fiona Cameron, performer/co-choreographer Carlee Mellow, co-choreographer Nicole Johnston, music Luke Smiles. Various locations, Melbourne, Aug 2 -Sept 1

Phillip Adams’ Amplification (1999) was an intensely focused study of damaged physicality and desire. His new work, Endling, however is stylistically closer to Adams’ Upholster (2001), employing a jump-cut, mixmaster approach to develop something akin to an absurdist opera. Musical references identify which aesthetic tropes are evoked and assaulted in each of Adams’ scenarios: bucolic neo-classicism for ballet, Modernist dissonance for empty angst, Ligeti for 2001-style fantasies of rebirth.

Adams treats culture and art history as a bazaar, plundering them for ironic details and unlikely, kitsch amalgams. While Upholster is ultimately little more than a choreographically-complicated, funny and sexy divertissement, leaping from the Karma sutra to furniture upholstery, the grab-bag historicism of Endling charts a more coherent and thought-provoking path through the detritus of high and low culture.

Thematically, Endling deals with issues of animality, with the dancers both applying anthropomorphisms to the biological elements they engage with (a fox stole looks back, quizzically, at Stephanie Lake after a brief, sexualised encounter) as well as becoming animal themselves. The early section has an almost hysterical energy, flinging bodies rushing from one scenario to another with a pathological illogicality reminiscent of Lake’s own Love is the Cause (2001). This explosion of themes and movement soon stabilises into a more measured approach however, with Adams increasingly framing and posing his events into lightly moving tableaux.

The comic bizarreness of Endling had me thinking of Grand Union dance theatre or ‘the World’s First Ever Pose-Band’ from the 1970s. Adams has remained close to a maniacally Pop-art sensibility. The Pop reference is also significant in that the humour he develops, while strong, comes from a sense of irony more akin to Warhol’s flat persona than the Chunky Move productions he and several of his dancers have worked on. This is intensely serious play, the characters attempting new rituals for a world where animality-whatever it may signify-is at best attenuated and difficult to encounter. The performers stretch out a massive cowhide between them like a trampoline and rearrange glass-eyed fur wraps upon it, as though testing a form of neo-paganism-but like everything else in Endling (as opposed toAmplification) no desire, satisfaction or ‘primal force’ is evoked. These are rituals which fail to produce a religion. Like Adams’ own approach to culture, the characters of his drama burrow through material without settling anywhere.

Endling can therefore be read as a critique of Martha Graham’s primitivist works such as Into the Labyrinth. Unlike Graham (or even Stephen Page in reappropriating Graham devices), Adams is not suggesting that references such as bullfighting allow us access to a primitive, pre-civilised state. Animality is finally seen as nothing more than a mirror held up to humanity, a projection of human concerns, and not “Nature untamed.” For Adams’ characters, to be animal metaphoricises social marginality, sexuality, or (in a lingering duet between Byron Perry and Toby Mills) homoeroticism. Ultimately the stuffed animals the dancers play with, or the projected footage of the last Tasmanian tiger, preserve a distance from both performer and audience, remaining objects which play in our (human) imagination.

Balletlab, Endling ‘Self-Encasing’ Trilogy: Part #1, choreographer Phillip Adams, primary design Sally Smart, lighting Paul Jackson; performers Michelle Heaven, Stephanie Lake, Toby Mills, Byron Perry, Brook Stamp, Joanne White. Dancehouse: Balletlab, company-in-residence, Melbourne, June 12-16.

The setting is familiar and so are the people. Someone fills your wineglass and asks if you’re having a good time. Faces you recognise stop and say hello, while new acquaintances smile as they pass by. You even look at the art every now and then (just to remind yourself why you’re there). We expect it all to mean something but it rarely ever does.

Memories create the basis for illusion and constructed landscapes offer limitless possibilities. Nothing is ever as it seems in the photographs of Rebecca Ewer. Closer inspection will reveal the truth. Simple scenes are sometimes just that, but reality is always open to interpretation. Watch this space.

Works from Ewer’s The Gallery series have recently been shown in the 5UV window and Adelaide Central Gallery.

The phenomenal growth of communication systems promotes somewhat idealistically the view that geographical and social boundaries are dissolving. However, negotiating interpersonal relationships is still fraught with miscommunication. Contemporary existence relies upon disentangling systems of social, historical, political and personal bias and can leave us subject to preconceptions and psychological instabilities. It is the fragile dynamics of human interaction that tends to undermine our conscientious desire to get along, leaving us, potentially, a bit myopic.

At times then, it seems necessary to adopt a particular viewpoint and defend it and Ricardo Fernendes, writing in the exhibition catalogue on the work of Singaporean artist Mathew Ngui, acknowledges that this can have a polarizing effect. He states: “Everyone chooses his position, be it conniving or rebelling.” The slipperiness and fallibility of systems of communication is demonstrated in Ngui’s cleverly devised installation in Adelaide’s Contemporary Art Centre. As in previous works it is layered with complex metaphors for human activity and the subjectivity of perception.

Precisely planned out in its choreography of materials, Ngui’s installation uses technological devices to negotiate and invert perceptions of the real. Two video cameras on tripods at opposite ends of the room are trained on a forest of PVC pipes inscribed with hand-painted and unintelligible markings. Innocuous looking scraps of timber are placed against one wall and along the gallery floor. When the viewer looks through the video eyepiece the forest of pipes appears as a flat wall and the markings form into a coherent text describing the action of sitting upon a chair. When viewed from a precise vantage point the apparently random bits of wood suddenly coalesce into a chair or rather a perspective ‘drawing’ of a chair in space.

In an empty gallery the PVC and text are coolly totemic. However the static image through the eyepiece is interrupted when visitors pass between the pipes as they navigate their way through the room. This destabilizing of perception is further heightened when the viewer moves to the back room. Here, the relayed wall of text, together with taped sounds from the video cameras, is now projected directly onto the gallery wall. In a performance video Ngui observes, interacts with, and seats himself upon the representation of the chair as seen in the first room. Under surveillance, the viewer has participated unknowingly in the work and becomes an integral part of it.

Multiplying possible viewpoints through the use of multisensory devices and strategically placed clues, Ngui reminds us that reality is a construct, subject to flux and interpretation. Electrical conduits and PVC piping suggest systems of conveyance but interpretation of the objects requires a willingness to ‘see’ beyond the obvious. The viewer is led by recognition and misrecognition of vision, sound and text to investigate the ‘logic’ of spatial and social realms. Trompe-l’oeil illusionism provokes shifts in pictorial space by introducing ambiguous imagery that appears to fluctuate from the real to fictive. Ngui’s work provides metaphors for the perception of multiple physical realities and provides a parallel invitation to explore the complexity of the emotional realm. The transmission of the personal and the emotional are equally susceptible to misinterpretation. Fernendes underlines this emotional capacity in the exhibition catalogue stating, “It is an open space for poetic, logical and metaphysical interventions.”

Mathew Ngui, Tell Me Where I Stand, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australi , July 12-Aug 11

At a LaBasta! gig, someone is deliberately butchering Beckett’s Waiting For Godot with her ultra-dry, self-interrupted delivery. Before the shadow puppets come out, someone else forces a What Is Music? flier into my fist. What Is Music? When is that? Somehow, I get to an under-promoted, but nevertheless packed gig at an old, rock’n’roll pub. Toshimaru Nakamura’s superb No-input mixing board CD is ringing in my ears.

W.I.M? festival co-director Rob Avenaim is first up, making scratchy noises and false-foley work. It reminds me of Pauline Oliveros’ latest CD (In The Arms of Reynolds, Lowlands Distribution, Belgium), but not as good. He drapes his long hair off stage to be replaced by Tetuzi Akiyama, who takes a metal bow with custom microphone pickups on either end to a static acoustic guitar and begins to saw. Zzzz, zzzz. Wow. It all builds to this high-pitched nastiness as he provokes things with his free hand, holding blunt knives and plastic brushes. Almost too many (dis)harmonies. Luv those Japanese minimalists.

Next up is Julian Knowles, having a subdued, fun time behind his laptop—dull to look at, great to listen to. He takes us on a wild ride, from the gritty atmospheres of contemporary digital soundscapes (what would we do without Pro Tools?), then sheets of aggressive, sparkling, scintillating neo-electroacoustics, asymmetrically off-the-beat drum’n’bass, fluttering bass-drones, and more. I haven’t heard such a stylistically expansive palette since Battery Operated toured.

The big deal of the night is up next. I’m not keen. I’m not an Oren Ambarchi fan, his guitar hum is too damn quiet. Same problem with digi-man Phil Samartzis. They’re joined by Günter Müller, who, by rubbing 2 microphones together, or skimming them across cymbals, kicks up quite a din right from the start. Ambarchi and Samartzis respond in kind. Did I just see Ambarchi play an actual note? His guitar sounds particularly dark tonight, ghosting the styles of his peers, while deep, resonant hums emerge from Müller, and Samartzis caps it off with loud, crinkly, micro-exclamations. I remember Pierre Schaeffer’s statement of composing for “the astonished ear.” Well, my ear’s feeling pretty astonished.

After that unexpected delight, Nakamura takes ages to set up. A technical problem? We never know, but an icy draft in the pub is making the audience decidedly restive. When he finally plays, he proves disappointing. Sure, it has a rough aggression lacking in his CDs, a playful expressiveness, but these short phrases seem a bit like pointless noodling. Where are the exquisite, ringing loops captured on CD (No-input mixing board, Tokyo: Zero Gravity, 2000)?

My blood is slowing to ice as the last act, Voicecrack, set up, in the middle of the room, a table covered in cheap electronic doohickies: toys, bike-lights, clapped out scanners, and a heap of photoelectric contraptions. In near darkness they start manipulating the number, intensity and periodicity of light sources flickering onto the light-sensitive devices. A huge wall of industrial noise emerges; the kind of sound that would make Merzbow proud. The Swiss duo’s work fits well into Nietzche’s Germanic ideas about Dionysian chaos uniting life and death. I listen for 20 minutes, but their annihilating sound hasn’t warmed up the pub. I scatter for home before I turn into a pillar of salty ice.

What Is Music?, Corner Hotel, July 16; Waiting for Godot, versioned by LaBasta!, Meyers Place Bar, July 7.

It is opening night at the Schauspielhaus in Vienna’s 9th district. The foyer is packed with vibrant yet reserved Viennese for the second season of Paul Capsis’ Boulevard Delirium. Viennese are a very diligent theatre going lot with the city boasting 45 theatres for a population of 1.7 million. There is no need for programs to develop new audiences or to attract young people—it is a core aspect of a culture that has spawned the likes of Mozart, Strauss and Klimt to mention but a few. The minister for culture, who was in attendance on opening night, is the third most powerful man in Austrian politics. It is not surprising that one of Australia’s most challenging and talented directors Barrie Kosky has taken up residence there as the director. With an annual budget of just under 3 million (AUD), a core staff of 10, a box office income expectation of just 5% and 3 month rehearsal periods he says it’s like a dream come true.

The house lights dim and Capsis appears spot lit in front of a lush red velvet curtain, his burlesque character in total harmony with the theatre’s historic ambience. Top hatted and tailed, he launches into a sumptuous rendition of 'Windmills of My Mind' which segues seamlessly into the wrenching 60s classic 'Anyone Who had a Heart.' The audience is transfixed.

From this intimacy the curtains part to reveal the full complement of the musical ensemble. Capsis is in his element, he is singing the blues-and how! The songs are raunchy, and the Viennese bristle. Relief comes climactically through the heartfelt ballad 'Little Girl Blue'. Capsis then evokes Garland and we are her audience in Carnegie Hall. Kosky’s delicate orchestration allows us an intimate insight into this vulnerable persona. Through classic standards such as ‘The Man that Got Away' and 'Get Happy', Capsis is able not only to interpret Garland but also to add layers through his unique renditions, from pop to punk and back again.

The Viennese swoon to Marlene’s appearance in their native tongue, only to be caught off guard by a strident Streisand attacking them with 'Don’t Rain on My Parade.' And before our next breath, we are praising the lord in a fervor of gospel evangelism.

With a twist of his hair and the placing of a flower, Billy Holiday makes her entrance. Close your eyes and the similarity is remarkable, the characterization sublime.

A Capsis show is never complete without Janis hitting the stage; her reckless hair and loose presence throw us into a free love euphoric Woodstock affair. The audience go ballistic. Capsis and Kosky cleverly exploit this dynamic by catapulting us into a sensational version of Queen’s 'We are the Champions', the poignancy of the rock ‘anthem’ touched the heart and soul of the audience. Capsis exits leaving us chanting for more. We are appeased by a beautifully stark rendition of 'Summertime' before he concludes with the edgy and provocative 'Home Is Where the Hatred Is.'

Broadway Delirium is the culmination of the Capsis experience, combining his favorite characters over the years in a fresh interpretation. Kosky’s clever staging, lighting and direction create a richly dramatic journey, the essence of which lies in the brilliant placement of songs. Backed by a very agile and tight band led by musical director Roman Gottwald, the electric combination of Kosky and Capsis results in a dangerously sophisticated and stylized cabaret. The Viennese loved it.

Paul Capsis, Boulevard Delirium, director Barrie Kosky, musical director Roman Gottwald, Schauspielhaus, Vienna, Sept 6.

I refer to Solrun Hoaas’ “An Australian Blindspot “ in RealTime 50. As the Festival Programmer for REAL:life on film I feel it is important to respond to some of the criticisms raised by Hoaas in relation to the dearth of Asian programming at this year’s festival.

Since its inception in 1999, REAL:life has attempted to redress the balance of anglo-centric programming within the Australian screen culture industry with a culturally diverse program of documentary films in terms of origin, content and style. While I agree that documentaries from the Asian region did not adequately feature at this year’s festival this was by no means due to a disregard for the promotion of the cultural, social, political or personal issues represented through Asian documentary or the styles and sensibilities of Asian cinema. This was, in actual fact, a result of the limited submissions received from Asian filmmakers both internationally and locally.

Out of the 10 international titles that screened at this year’s festival, REAL:life featured documentaries from the USA, UK, Japan, Iran, Romania and France. While most of these films were co-productions with UK or USA-based filmmakers it is important to note that over the past 3 years REAL:life has showcased documentaries from all over the globe including India, Israel, Lebanon, China, Slovenia, Ethiopia, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Taiwan, Cuba, Egypt and many more. The 13 Australian titles selected to screen in 2003 featured culturally diverse stories from the parochial to the international. A number of these addressed issues within the region including the aftermath of the East Timor declaration of independence, the impact of the 1984 Indian Sikh riots on an Indian-Australian family and Korean-American cross cultural identity.

With the growth of the festival, greater resources and better access to international titles, REAL:life looks forward to featuring more Asian documentaries and is currently researching potential titles for inclusion at the next festival.

Desert Rain uses a combination of virtual reality, installation and performance to problematise the boundary between the real and the virtual. It places participants in a Collaborative Virtual Environment in which the real intrudes into the virtual and vice versa. It juxtaposes the real, the imaginary, the fictional and the virtual as a means of defining them. Blast Theory

Blast Theory, the UK new media performance and installation group is coming to Sydney’s Artspace in November to present Desert Rain. Six audience members at a time, physically separated but electronically connected, will actively experience a task—they have 20 minutes to find their target. The setting: the Gulf War. The targets? Find out when you play Desert Rain.

As we fearfully anticipate another war in the same region, the product in part of America’s unfinished business with Iraq, its response to terrorism, and its post Cold War assertion of itself as empire, the arrival of Desert Rain in Australia is painfully appropriate, especially given our government’s support for the US and the severe limits on information by which to make any judgement about what is happening.

Although Blast Theory are skeptical of Jean Baudrillard’s theoretical position, they are nonetheless “influenced by [his] assertion that the Gulf War did not take place because it was in fact a virtual event.” They cite Paul Patton’s observations (about Baudrillard’s speculations) that “while televisual information claims to provide immediate access to real events, in fact what it does is produce information that stands in for the real…As consumers of mass media, we never experience the bare material event but only the informational coating which renders it ‘sticky and unintelligible’ like the oil-soaked sea bird.” Desert Rain, say the company, is not designed to demonstrate a theory, rather “to accept its significance in informing our view of the relationship of the real to the virtual and especially in its assertion that the virtual has a daily presence in our lives.”

Those who have experienced Desert Rain variously describe it as challenging, involving, sombre and exhilarating. One reviewer called it “A complex and elaborate treatment of war in postmodern society.” Another wrote, “I can guarantee that you will come out of it changed and humbled.”

When they were in Sydney a few months ago planning the tour to Australia, RT spoke with 2 of the members of Blast Theory, Matt Adams and Ju Row Farr.

MA At one level we regard technologies as tools available for the creation of work…like a paint brush we can use creatively for self expression. But there’s also a sense in which we’re trying to reflect the environment in which we live. It’s easy to see it as faddish but it’s difficult to do that if you recognise the level of technological change in westernised countries in the last 10 to 15 years that has entered our lives. It seems to me that for artists not to be responding to the way in which technology is shifting our sense of space and place and our relationship to the world seems quite unusual.

JRF I don’t get fascinated with how it works or desire to be a deep level programmer. I’m interested in the personality of the technology, what it may do or not do well, as something we as a public now understand, its language, for example using a remote for turning the TV on, but also we can tap into that as a tool for an art work. Mechanically we understand a lot. How can we use that literacy to subvert the use of the technology?

MA It’s an oxygen we breathe. You watch TV and the language of editing is an intrinsic part of your experience and understanding from 2 to 3 years of age on. How does it change your understanding, your faith in the nature of being, when you witness 500 or 1000 fictional kisses before you have your own first kiss?

MA We did quite a lot of work around pornography, a more graphic sense of a similar thing. What is it to understand your sexuality when you see sex from the outside as well as experience it from the inside? That sense of distance is of interest.

The work we’re doing now with wireless technologies came out of a fascination at how the city is changed by having devices with you all the time which means you never really leave an electronic sphere. Mobile phones are the first devices that yield a ubiquitous sense of presence. There are people we know for whom it is an absolute presence…it never leaves their sides.

JRF Tech is also really good fun, partly in relation to popular culture where you feel you can do anything—it’s a play aspect we’re into. We take a strand out of that because we know it’s fun, not just to think it’s a deeply meaningful tool.

MA They are very liberating, aren’t they? In a multiple sense, for example George Soros’ distributing photocopiers in Eastern Europe in the mid 80s was genuinely liberating in terms of how information was then distributed in a sort of samizdat network. In the same way Playstation has a great sense of fun that you inhabit as a car thief or a killer. In this sense I would never have had any experience of graphic design but for a computer which lent itself to graphic design and allowed me, as a total amateur, to play with it and gradually accumulate skill.

MA I believe that games can be very serious so there’s a sense in which we are about play, in the way that in Kidnap we were pretending to be kidnappers and people who were kidnapped were pretending to be kidnapped. But there’s a point at which the line is crossed…so that what you’re doing is very difficult to distinguish ontologically from a real kidnap. That’s a fascinating thing. It’s true of sado-masochism: highly ritualised, very dramatic, structured around an archetype, clichés and imagery, and yet it is absolutely real within a certain sense….It’s a constant fascination for us, the line between reality and fiction. To what extent is George W Bush playing the role of President?… We’re increasingly savvy to those modes…they’re artistic expression. Our work looks at that slippery boundary and where playing games, fiction and pop culture bleed into important social and cultural definitions.

JRF We learned in making Kidnap (RT 27, p30) that we became one level of the audience, even though we were the kidnappers…We were like a front row audience held by every breath and move of the performers—the kidnapped. The whole audience thing spun around for us in that work and because we had a live chatroom for the online audience to speak to the kidnappers, we were somewhat the pawns in the situation. Their comments implied we were there to be directed from the web to do something: “This is boring…nothing’s happening…” Things we hadn’t anticipated hit us in the back of the head. It was before Big Brother—we’re big fans of reality TV.

MA The tedium of Kidnap, of watching people passing the time contrasted with the media reality. The web provides the opportunity for the sheer sense of duration.

JRF We were on the ground in Can You See Me Now, the audience were online. They were pursued online. We ran a ridiculous number of kilometres. We weren’t fit enough for the online players and had to develop strategies on the ground to go after people. The next stage is to put us online and the public on the ground, but we’re going to totally change the format because we don’t expect the public to be running with 100s of pounds of kit across roads—one for safety and 2 for the cash value of the kit.

MA Artistically we always knew it was a straightforward proposition—it’s a chase, it’s not artistically sophisticated. But we were interested in seeing if we could get a sense of presence between the street and an online player, that it would be sufficiently compelling as a chase and that’s what we established and felt significant, as well as covering a whole load of technical hurdles. We can take it further, to a different level of exploration of the city for the public, opening people up to their surroundings, or being able to interact rather than only chase them.

Whether you’re spectating or engaged is something we’ve been interested in for 2 or 3 years. An Explicit Volume, the interactive installation we made last year using pornographic imagery taken from the internet and put back into book format, was built around that sense of what level you’re implicated through the consumption of culture. There was a BBC doco on the Paedophile Unit and the arrest of people for downloading from the net—that was their offence. Are they responsible for the production of those images by the downloading of them, is [the inference] that at one remove you are responsible for the rape of children? It’s an extreme example but it parallels consumer issues like buying Nestlé products [in the context of] Nestlé and Third World mothers.

Blast Theory is one of a number of prominent British performance companies, including Forced Entertainments, Desperate Optimists and the guests of Time_Space_Place (Wagga. Wagga, September, see RT52), Robert Pacitti (of the Pacitti Company) and Leslie Hill and Helen Paris of curious.com (see page 21). Blast Theory have been producing performance, installations and television/cinema works since 1991 in the UK and Europe. Their video work TRUCOLD was part of the 2002 Biennale of Sydney.

Desert Rain represents a rare opportunity not only to see the work of a significant British company but to experience a unique interactive installation where the audience is at the centre of the performance. Performances are on the half hour from midday until 9pm. You are promised a brief, but intense experience.

Desert Rain, produced by Blast Theory with University of Nottingham, ZKM (Karlsruhe), KTH (Stockholm), NOWninety9 (Nottingham) & DA2 (Bristol). Artspace, Nov 12-23. See p7 for booking details. Presented by Artspace, dLux media arts, Macquarie University and RealTime with the assistance of the British Council and the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council

New Media Scan 2002

This edition of RealTime is mostly devoted to our annual survey of new media and multimedia arts. While this encompasses a wealth of recent and forthcoming work in all artforms it puts page space at a premium. Consequently you’ll need to turn to the web to find a number of reviews of recent shows (see page 47). You’ll also find in this edition our Prizes & Projections preview of the annual film industry Emirates AFI Awards.

More new media arts & issues in RT 52

New Media Scan 2002 flows over into the next edition of RealTime with Part 2 of both our new media performance survey and Christine Nicholls’ overview of the Indigenous new media arts scene. In a significant development RealTime will host fibreculture’s 2002 publication of essays and reviews. Last year they produced an impressive book, this year there’ll be a 24 page fibreculture insert in RT 52 (December-January). A limited run, stand-alone edition will be launched a few weeks before at fibreculture’s annual national conference at Sydney’s MCA (see page 18).

Dancing on a knife edge

The results of the last funding round of the Dance Board of the Australia Council confirmed just how appalling the situation has become for the small to medium dance sector, not least in New South Wales. Triennial funding has been put on hold as the Board meets to work out how to handle what is clearly a crisis. Meanwhile the report from Rupert Myer on the Federal Government’s inquiry into the contemporary visual arts has finally been released, recommending a raft of proposals including an additional $15m a year for artist grants and infrastructure support as well as tax concessions. The latter could have ramifications for all the arts. Now the hard work really begins in persuading the Federal Government and the States through the Cultural Ministers Council (and presumably in partnership with the Australia Council) to agree to the proposals, or to see if they realistically add up to sufficient support. We’ll look at the issues and developments in RT 52. KG

The great thing about new media art is the way in which it can draw on a whole range of inputs and sensibilities from multiple areas, resulting in works that can’t easily be broken down into one medium. This should produce weird, idiosyncratic and hard to define hybrids. However what seems be happening is that new media artists are producing work with themes that can be too easily categorised, compartmentalised and pigeon-holed, the inverse of much of the promise of new media arts as a shape shifting medium of hybridity.

Bio-technology, artificial life, the impact of technology on nature, surveillance, genetics, the nexus of science and art etc etc… Such topics are probably music to funding body ears and you can bet the next curated new media event you attend will have some poetic piece about the impact of technology on nature (yawn). While there is no doubt some interesting work is being done in these areas, I for one would genuinely like to see some new themes emerge in new media art beyond well established agendas.

Revenge of the nerds

There was a time in the mid 80s when artists fanatically quoted lots of French theory, mostly Baudrillard and the hyper-real. This was more than just art, it was art informed by the discourse of contemporary critical thought and Postmodernism. These days new media artists often talk about their work like those artists talked about theory, badging and validating what they do with cultural and social value with one word—science. It’s more than just art, it’s all about the convergence of art and science. I am all for taking new media into new and interesting terrain, but at times it seems that art-science collaborations are the only game in town (think, ConVerge and BEAP as recent examples. See pages Rackham and Jones).

Sure there’s a lot of weird shit going on in the real world of bio-technology like cloning and gene therapy, but real life is a hell of a lot freakier than most things new media artists come up with. When Stelarc grows some new internal organs from pig tissue, give me a call.

The nexus of art and science reaches its extreme in Artificial Life, so much of which takes itself far too literally. The notion of creating ‘worlds’ is always a bit problematic. All this mimicking of life-like behaviour hurts my brain. I failed science and maths at school so maybe I am missing something here. If you’re going to create life, don’t just illustrate reality as a technical demonstration or an illustration of your programming skills. Do something interesting with the concept. After all, reality is cheap real estate, it’s everywhere.

A safe bet

Recently I attended ACMI’s (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) presentation of visiting US artists Amy Youngs and Ken Rinaldo. Some of the work was really playful and interpreted Artificial Life in unusual and interesting ways. But then it hit me as their presentation unfolded, new media art often seems to implicitly be about informing and educating its audience of the important ‘issues’ at stake. This pedagogical tendency embraces the idea that art must be responsible and all about producing objects of virtue, from Bill Viola to local artists like Patricia Piccinini, or in critic Dave Hickey’s words, “Art that is good for you” (Air guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy, Distributed Art Publishers, 1997).

After reading a bunch of statements by new media artists waxing lyrical my brain starts to hurt again. The argument that themes of biotechnology, synthetic nature, genetics etc are culturally significant and compelling ones is not the problem. What worries me is that new media artists are using basically prefabricated and already culturally validated themes to begin with, in other words, safe bets. It’s an exciting time for new media art, it can redefine the game, once it can get beyond the conventional modes of thinking about the inherent ‘goodness’ of art and realise that art doesn’t have to pay lip service to the ‘important issues’ or be socially redeeming to be interesting.

Please don’t call me a new media artist

These days the visual art crowd are picking up all manner of technology (that’s if they can get gallery assistants to turn on the power). The recent Biennale of Sydney had a variety of interesting works that could loosely be described as new media. They didn’t all plug into a wall, but many resulted from collaborative processes and often straddled myriad media forms, including digital animation, plasma screens and CD-ROM. Many would argue this is not ‘true’ new media, as it doesn’t connect with current discourses and research areas. So what? The looser and more open the definition of new media art the better.

New media art at various international institutions has finally come into its own within the parameters of the visual arts: San Francisco’s MOMA with its 101010 Art in Technological Times show of web work; the Whitney Biennial has a Net Art section and web art featured at the last Venice Biennale.

Meanwhile much new media art is locked into a very specific way of thinking about technology, art and its cultural value. This is odd for an area that is still developing. Exhibitions curated specifically around new media tend to ghettoise artists and artforms. Favourite international new media art events like Ars Electronica, ISEA and Siggraph embody the problem. Having participated in some of these events in the past, I am simply not interested in presenting work in such a narrow context. There’s also a conservative sensibility at such events which sees artists as more interested in the advances in technology than in advances in art (they are not the same thing).

Something wicked

Artists taking new media arts into exciting dimensions and beyond familiar territory include Vanessa Sowerwine with her installation Play with me (Next Wave, CCP). The work is an interactive video installation where the user, sitting inside a cubby house, controls the actions of an animated child. Adult bodies hunch over a screen and make the kid drink Drano or provoke a hissy when choosing the wrong response. With its freaky overtones, the user becomes implicated in the actions of the child. It is a refreshing angle on interactive art, perhaps a perverse and screwed up parody of Artificial Life.

US artist Charlie White’s highly memorable and totally mutant, digitally composited photographs depicting a haggard alien crashing parties in suburbia, could also be seen as a trashy version of Artificial Life, but with none of the baggage that is often associated with the area. While not strictly new media, but worth mentioning here, is Austrian experimental filmmaker Martin Arnold, known for his hyper-edited films such as Alone: Life wastes Andy Hardy (1998). Arnold’s work-in-progress involves developing software to erase actors from famous movies scenes, the inverse of the Hollywood wet dream of bringing actors back from the dead. Arnold plans to kill ‘em off once and for all.

With the Australian Centre for the Moving Image about to open in Melbourne, it’s a great time for the media arts in Australia. Hopefully ACMI can function as a showcase for this kind of work. While ACMI have clearly spent lots of money to keep the interior designers happy, I hope it has the vision to present not only the prestigious international movers and shakers, but also work that doesn’t easily slot into curatorial agendas—work that is problematic and hard to characterise; that’s new media art for me.

The world wide web, digital and other new technologies have the capacity to transform the visual arts and artistic practice on a global scale. This has already begun happening in this country and in other parts of the world. Consider Patricia Piccinini’s high profile in the international art world on the basis of her digitally modified creature-compositions. There is a rapidly growing literature responding to the utilization of new technologies in contemporary artistic practice, most of which enthusiastically embraces this phenomenon. Much of what is written borders upon evangelical in tone.

Like the globalization of capital, with which these new media are imbricated, technologies have the potential for positive and benign outcomes but also for less socially beneficial consequences. These new technologies certainly have the capacity to liberate—for instance, the www can inexpensively provide hitherto unknown artists with instant, large audiences for their work. Similarly, minority groups, for example Indigenous peoples all around the world, are able link up in ways that have not been possible in the past, thereby advancing their political, social and cultural agendas. But the same technology also has the capacity to facilitate theft of the intellectual property of others on an unprecedented scale. This has implications for art generally, and for Australian Indigenous art especially, because of its disproportionately high level of return to the Australian economy by comparison with other Australian art. The vulnerability of Indigenous art to copyright theft is exacerbated by the remote location of many of its practitioners.

“Borrowing” imagery from Indigenous art is not new. For years now, considerable numbers of non-Indigenous Australian visual artists, both professional and amateur, have been influenced or inspired by Indigenous Australian art, and have been incorporating Aboriginal imagery or motifs, media, colours or quasi-Aboriginal “styles” into their work. The same applies to (predominantly) non- Indigenous business people, especially those in the textile, clothing and floor covering industries. Usually the influence or appropriation stops short of the actual theft or straight-out copying of Indigenous imagery. Often the influence is as vague or generic as incorporating an Aboriginal ‘look’ into a work, by including quasi-Indigenous imagery into the designs of carpets, tiles, T-shirts or even bath mats or teatowels, resulting in an indeterminate ‘Indigenous’ influence that can not be attributed directly to any specific regional artistic tradition.

Throughout Indigenous Australia, particular designs, patterns, iconography and imagery are owned by Indigenous artists, and therefore subject to the strict rules of Indigenous intellectual copyright. Up until comparatively recently Indigenous art was considered by unscrupulous non-Indigenous business people as ripe for the pickings, and Indigenous artists had comparatively little legal recourse in the event that their sacred imagery was appropriated or stolen for commercial advantage.

Outright theft of Indigenous imagery iconography still occurs. The underlying motive for this is usually financial gain. In response to this situation, Vivien Johnson, working with a group of students of Indigenous art at Macquarie University, has assembled a website and CD-ROM broadly relating to this subject. These accompany and extend Johnson’s earlier catalogue, Copyrites: Aboriginal art in the age of reproductive technologies: Touring Exhibition 1996.

Initially one enters the House of Aboriginality online or via CD-ROM. The house has been constructed as a literal, and also in a sense, figurative domicile. One visits each of its rooms in turn (for example, the bathroom, lounge room, bedroom) encountering a plethora of Indigenous imagery and designs on bedclothes, bathroom décor, and even on objects like coasters and ashtrays, which the web design enables you to scrutinize more closely. The contents of the house exemplify the full gamut of appropriation of Indigenous imagery. The House of Aboriginality makes a powerful visual statement that strongly reinforces the pervasiveness of the practice of “borrowing” Indigenous imagery. It seems that no object is too banal, nothing inviolate, nothing that can’t be value-added via visual expressions of Indigeneity.

On the same website, there is also a good deal of hard information and excellent, accurate background material on comparatively recent court cases that have been fought and won by Indigenous artists whose imagery has been stolen and reproduced on, inter alia, banknotes, carpets and fabric. The work is educational, entertaining and really drives its point home. Vivien Johnson’s excellent research and the clarity of organization underpin the success of both website and CD-ROM. They would be particularly useful as resources to use in secondary schools as they cover a range of subjects, from the social sciences, to Legal Studies, Australian Studies and Indigenous Studies.

Indigenous Australian artists are themselves skilled practitioners of the new technologies, and now becoming increasingly comfortable working in new media. This in turn may eventually help to address the more negative practices highlighted by Vivien Johnson and her team. Artists who have been working in the area for some years now include the Warlpiri digital artist Simeon Ross Jupurrurla, Jenny Fraser, Christian Thompson, Jonathan Bottrell- Jones (who has just won a major NSW travelling grant), and Brenda L Croft. Most notable of all is the remarkable Rea, whose pioneering work in this area deserves an article of its own. Part 2 of this article (RT 52) will survey the work of these and other Indigenous new media artists.

This year, the second intensive workshop of the National Indigenous School in New Media Arts (NISNMA) is being held in Adelaide at the Ngapartji Multimedia Centre (Sept 23 – Oct 11). The school aims to provide an intensive learning environment for Australian Indigenous artists to acquire skills in new media and multimedia production, catering for a wide range of students from beginners to those with advanced skills in the new media.

In an email interview, overall organizer of the school, ANAT Director Julianne Pierce, described the long-term purpose and benefits of the projects as providing Indigenous artists with the skills to consolidate and advance their practice. By creating an environment that is responsive to artists’ needs, she says, the school will ensure that an optimal learning situation is achieved. Participants will learn skills that they will be able to develop, as well as gaining confidence in the practice of new media arts. However, the focus of the school is not only on technical skills, but also on the generation of ideas and interest in the field of new media arts.

Pierce goes on to explain that participants have quite different expectations regarding outcomes, ranging from a desire to tell Indigenous stories from a variety of global sources in innovative ways, to the telling of personal stories via emerging media forms. Some participants are motivated by the aim of networking and meeting with other Indigenous artists, or combining new media with traditional media such as printmaking and textile design.

The 3 week school covers areas including digital photography, building a website (html, Dreamweaver), graphics, video and sound for the web and webcasting. Sixteen Indigenous artists from all over Australia are participating in classes run by 5 instructors, some of whom are Indigenous, with expertise in a range of areas including Flash, computer animation and multimedia art.

It is expected that a similar school will be convened in 2 years time in Queensland. In addition, ANAT has recently embarked on a partnership with Tandanya to support new media arts practice and is looking at other potential partnerships to provide opportunities for professional development and for the creation of new work in what is an exciting new way of ensuring the continuity of the world’s oldest artistic tradition.

Vivien Johnson, The House of Aboriginality CD-ROM; Copyrites: Aboriginal art in the age of reproductive technologies: Touring Exhibition 1996, Catalogue National Indigenous Arts Advocacy Association and Macquarie University, Sydney.

I like the internet. I think Graham Meikle likes it too, perhaps for similar reasons: we can explore our favourite mudwrestling webcam sites, meet other fans, keep in touch. Graham’s position as author and mine as reviewer also imply a healthy respect for the expanded research methods the net allows, the online communities we can be part of, the e-mailing of stories at the last minute. This shared respect, I suspect, finds us both very curious about how the wrestling of public and private interests will shape the internet’s development.

Imagining Graham’s desk

Pens, paper, a Compaq (?) laptop, dictionary, thesaurus and a gleaming crystal ball sitting to one side into which Graham gazes periodically with an optimistic pragmatism, rather than tech-utopian drool. Above the desk a mirror—reflecting bookshelves creak-heavy with politics, postmodernism and the entire cyberculture canon. And a good deal of print-outs, because net-dissectors still like to underline words with a pen. From this very desk, Graham has conveniently chronicled the most famous political uses of the net in recent years, pored over interviews with many key outspoken online activists and authors, grouped the different shapes of net activism into useful categories, and offered some perspectives on ways the internet may continue to be developed in an open form. I’m thinking it’s a nice old wood.

Imagining Graham’s Internet

Some of its key features include openness, resource sharing, communication, conversation and collaboration. While these are features celebrated by the early digerati such as Howard Rheingold and John Barlow, Graham is careful to debunk ‘cyberhype’ during a quick tour of the net’s early years and evangelists. He maybe spends a little too much time translating the hyperbole around the net as ‘market boosterism’, but is sharper in critiquing ‘interactivity.’ Usefully, he outlines transmissional, registrational, consultational and conversational forms of interactivity, and proposes that Tim Berners Lee’s ‘intercreativity’—solving problems together—as a better challenge to aspire to. Throughout the book, an open, conversational, intercreative internet is described as a Version 1.0 internet. A Version 2.0 internet, Graham proposes, is one where we move to the closed system preferred by entrenched corporate interests, a broadcast rather than many-to-many model. By the way, the book is riddled with characters doing their utmost to steer us away from a version 2.0 internet; I fancy Graham’s down with numero uno.

Some of The Riddlers

An English couple being taken to court by McDonalds, launched the mcspotlight.org website in 1996. Dragged through the British legal system for distributing a critiquing pamphlet, they found with a website a way to match their wits rather than budget with the legal muscle of a multinational food giant. In subsequent years, millions of visitors viewed the original pamphlet and much supporting material, but as Graham reveals, it was the astute site development and understanding of online community and information navigation which made mcspotlight one of the more successful online political campaigns.

Future Active similarly traces many popular political campaigns such as the B92 radio station’s celebrated use of online radio to spread news during the Bosnian war. Much of the work is in documenting what happened as events unfolded and how the net was used, but this is supplemented with plenty of insightful quotes from both campaign organisers and relevant theorists. Graham diverges from the media theory pack a little though, by exploring ways some nastier groups have used the net.

Web Nasties

While careful to point out he doesn’t endorse, merely analyses, the net strategies of deathnet, godhatesfags.com and the North American Man Boy Love Association, I don’t understand why Graham didn’t use the same sort of caution in detailing his flirtations with the Labor Party, Liberal Party and One Nation websites. To his credit, he thoroughly exposes the major parties’ lack of engagement with their constituents online, speculating that it’s not that the major parties don’t get it—but that they don’t want it. Prefer they the broadcast or Version 2.0 model rather than a community-based model with lack of hierarchy or control. In contrast the web-Hansonites are shown to have embraced and harnessed the qualities of the internet effectively. Although One Nation sitemaster Scott Balson’s claim that “Hanson was the first cyber-politician on the internet,” is slightly dubious, their integration of e-mail lists and bulletin boards was apparently commendable.

Other Commendables

Veering into newer political territory, one of the book’s better sections links together the ‘free software’ movement, the growth of the indymedia online publishing centres, globalisation, and the role of 2 Sydneysiders in making this happen—Matthew Arnison on code and Gabrielle Kuiper. The free software and open publishing movements are becoming increasingly influential in many spheres and their development is well described here. With his encouraging tone and enthusiasm for the topic however, some chances for exploring the issues and difficulties currently being experienced by open publishers have been missed. This is my only problem too with the near closing pieces on ‘culture jamming’ and ‘tactical media.’ Fantastic coverage of interesting projects, people and events online, but scarcer on-the-ground is any critique of the limitations of their approaches.

The book for you?

Depends. Maybe you’re a sociology, communications, cultural studies, art or media theory student looking for a good, brisk overview of recent online skirmishes, blossomings, battles? Perhaps you’re interested in understanding more about our transforming society and ways the net is being tactically used? Maybe you don’t share the same bookmarks as frequent indymedia visitors, or the nettime/fibreculture/rhizome etc mailing list members?

For me?

I liked it, although much of the terrain was familiar. Wished occasionally for more criticisms of people being celebrated, but admired the collation, the crisp, want-to-communicate tone. A broader ‘media activism and the internet’ might have covered more artistic strategies online, MP3s and more software development. Like Naomi Klein’s No Logo, this is a fine book which may end up being in the right place at the right time.

Graham Meikle, Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet , Pluto Press, Australia, 2002.

Michael Goldberg, Auriferous – The Gold Project, 2001, Bathurst Regional Gallery

By their very nature, 2 new shows at Sydney’s Artspace tell us that something strange is going on in the world of art. Distributive justice (also showing at Documenta11 in Germany) and catchafalling knife.com take us well outside the parameters of our usual gallery experiences, even in these halcyon new media days. In one the gallery-goer becomes a participant in an international polling of national attitudes to social justice, in the other we witness a share market trader-cum-artist gambling $50,000 of his anonymous sponsors’ very real money on Newscorp shares for 3 weeks. The seriousness of both works is immediately evident, but a sense of playfulness, of art cogently querying opinion and money making pervades. Both can be experienced in situ or online, though it’s the gallery which provides something more substantial, but is it art?

Distributive justice

I met the Croation artist Andreja Kuluncic, creator of Distributive justice, just before her show opened here. The project is multimedia and multidisciplinary. Kuluncic says that “it lives on the internet but comes into direct contact with people during big exhibitions like Documenta.” She calls the work “a social laboratory where the audience actively influence the content, the duration and the results of the project.” The open installation is an inviting forum—the curve of the furniture provides desktop space and room to sit at computers (where you play games) and monitors (watching interviewees from other showings talk about their share of ‘the common good’) or to read books, documents or a social economy map or to simply fill in questionnaires, to meet other people and the human guides to the work. “It’s not just a mouse and keyboard show, besides the galleries still do not accept virtual arts as true value…Web art pieces still encounter the resistance of curators.”

The show’s catalogue describes the virtual space of the work as an internet game “in which participants…freely distribute material and non-material goods, building a society that undergoes dynamic changes; several types of society emerge as a result.” The combination of online game, questionnaire results, recorded interviews, a newsletter, associated lectures and forums with philosophers and sociologists involved in the project, and statistical analyses, add up to an intriguing survey of intuitive and objective responses to the notion of social justice and its distribution in a nation. All of this is integrated on the web in a permanently open forum.

I ask Kuluncic about her artistic input into the work. “I am managing the project like a visual artist, trying to create the platform or the frame for other people to join. There are now around 15 people working with me: 7 people more or less continuously, though not every day—2 philosophers, a sociologist, web designers and a programmer. I talk with the designers…Sometimes it’s not easy, you have to fit the different ideas in. It’s like working as a film director. The concept is not so much visual as that art can open up barriers and make a good platform for discussion, to be somehow much more alive, near to real problems and life.”

Kuluncic describes the work’s travels: “The work has been to the Torino Biennale, Documenta and is on its way to Innsbruck (Austria), Berlin, and Minneapolis (Walker Museum), sometimes all of it, sometimes as in Sydney, just 2 or 3 parts. In the US I would like to add a new part. I don’t know what it is yet, something about how the US approaches global distribution. They have a big share in it compared with us in Croatia with 4 million people.”

Has the work been shown in Croatia? “We did the initial surveys and discussions there but the finished work will go to Croatia later. That’s the idea, the Croatians will be able to see the different models of social justice. This piece comes from Eastern Europe. My grandmother was born in a kingdom, then there was socialism under Tito, there was a war and now we have this wild capitalism…It’s not clear what kind of capitalism we are going to have. We want to raise this question to the people because they still don’t take enough part in political life. In socialism someone would care about everything for you, your flat, your education. Now it’s my flat, my education…but it’s not easy to resource and resolve this.” One thing that pleases Kuluncic is the arts funding from the Croation government and the city of Zagreb that has allowed a provocative work like Distributive justice to be realised, along with the international galleries and biennales showing it.

Distributive justice has the potential for provocation, but what kind? In the catalogue, Nevena Tudor comments: “There’s no so-called direct action that results in something visible, aggressive. It’s about the use of intellectual activism, establishing a network of relations to function as a platform every act can rely upon…The action is without provocation, the action that actually means contemplation: gaining space for contemplation.”

catchafallingknife.com

Michael Goldberg, Auriferous – The Gold Project, 2001, Bathurst Regional Gallery

Michael Goldberg is a Sydney-based artist and a former share market day trader who says, “I see stock as a living, breathing organism.” What grabbed you? I ask. “Greed!” he jokes. When did it start? “I was sucked in by the Telstra sales share and was a day trader for a while. I enjoyed the click of the button, the knife edge.” Goldberg researched candlestick charting which was originally created to monitor stock (“Rene Rivkin thinks it’s a joke”) and thought it looked very much like art making.

As for his role in his daily dealings and his appearance at Artspace, he is emphatic: “I am not being a stock trader. I’m playing one. I’m going to work like a day trader for 3 weeks at Artspace.” He adds, “I am not a performance artist.”

Of course, performance artists are usually themselves. Goldberg will be himself. Performance artists work in real time, and often see the sustained duration of that time as significant. Goldberg will respond to market movements, trading his sponsors’ $50,000 in Newscorp shares for 3 weeks. If it was his money the performance artist label might fit—the whole event could turn into a financially self-lacerating misadventure. Or it might turn a profit for his anonymous backers. “Catching a falling knife” is stock trader jargon for taking especially risky trades.

Goldberg initially put the idea out on the web, provoking responses like “You’re an artist, you’re mad”, until people realised he was serious. His backers declared a long held interest in being patrons of art. But, they asked, what are your skills as a trader? To prove himself he had to make some convincing market predictions. He did. The anonymous syndicate came good with the money. Goldberg himself will not make money out of the performance, which is the way he wants it. Australia Council funding will look after installation and other costs (he usually teaches at the Sydney College of Arts).

The installation at Artspace will be, he says, “virtual site specific, taking place in the cyber world of the stock market.” His focus will be on Newscorp shares only, “riding the stock like a horse. It’s a trading project, not investment. It’s very short term, minute by minute, In 2 to 5 minutes you can buy big chunks of Newscorp at any time, play it up or down. It demands absolute concentration…80% of share traders don’t make any money.”

Goldberg says he will become “an agent of risk and reward; my investors know the odds, they’re big gamblers who can afford it. The added value for them is the involvement in the arts.” He will report to them every day, which involves “a stressful accounting procedure, with public access via the project website.” In Artspace you’ll be able to see him at work (he’ll commute from home) in the mornings, trading (in the afternoons he will have his portable electronic trading system with him, clipped into his belt), posting charts, watching the Bloomberg channel.

I ask what if something major happens, a new Gulf War? Goldberg retorts, “People won on 9/11, bet on the stock going down.” At the time he posted a message suggesting that these winners donate some of their earnings to Red Cross.

As for art, “There’s an aesthetic in the markets, otherwise there is no point in doing this. Art has to emerge as in the Deleuzian rhizome…like an organism.” The candlestick chart patterns will build up. The Japanese names for the movements are lyrical and translate, for example, as ‘paper umbrella’ and ‘dragonfly’. “Each pattern represents a probability—it feels analogous to martial arts, where you look at the probability of moves and move with them.”

And, yes, Goldberg will be available to engage with the public, which reminds him of his last installation where he monitored gold share movements (there’s an open cut gold mine outside the city and the show at Bathurst Regional Gallery was part of the Auriferous project). He had to put up a disclaimer saying that he couldn’t offer investment advice. For that installation Goldberg commuted daily from Sydney, stopping off at the Stock Exchange. He then travelled by small aeroplane to Bathurst to his scaffolding roost in the gallery. There he was surrounded by mats he could fall onto if there was a big dip in the market. In this work he saw his art as portrayal of the “relocation of the value of gold from the dusty hinterland to the stock exchange.” The difference this time, he says, is that he’s very anxious, working with real money.

Distributive justice, Andrja Kuluncic and collaborators, Sept 19-Oct 12, www.distributive-justice.com; catchafallingknife.com, Michael Goldberg, Oct 17-Nov 9, www.catchafallingknife.com [expired]. Artspace, Sydney.

Simon Anders, Summer Holiday, shortlisted entry to the BORDERPANIC postcard competition in association with Avant Card

Conscious of the growing involvement of artists in political protest through their art and the utilisation of conventional and digital media technologies, RealTime’s editors approached media theorist McKenzie Wark to comment on where he sees Tactical Media fitting in the bigger picture of power and media.

For there to be such a thing as tactical media implies that there are also strategic and logistic media. These terms go together, and describe 3 different levels at which contestation can take place. If the tactical is local and contingent, the strategic involves planning and coordination. The logistic would then refer to systematic, global and long range organisations of forces.

Paul Virilio argues that in military affairs conflict has passed from dominance of the tactical to the strategic and on to the logistic. These days the whole planet is organised on the basis of a logistical ordering of production and communication. The casual way in which a war against Iraq can be talked up on the global stage, in a way convenient for the Republican Party in the United States in an election year, points to the underlying logistical militarisation of the whole of society. It is simply taken for granted that there is a force ever at the ready.

As Friedrich Kittler argues, the design and layout of the silicon chip bears the imprint of its military origins. The logistical principles of organisation can be found just as readily in the communication and media spinoffs from military organisation as in the war machine per se. We might speak of this society as a military entertainment complex, in which the same logistics apply to the traversing of the sky by bombs and by data.

The principles of this logistics are not complex, although their effects may be. Information has, since the telegraph, moved faster than people or things. The telephone, television, telecommunications, not to mention the radio, the internet and the cellphone, are all part of the unfolding of the key logistical principle–telesthesia, or perception at a distance.

Telesthesia makes it possible for information to move faster than people or things, and thus to become the means of organising the movement of people and things. This is what separates the American logistical empire of the air from its great predecesssor, the English strategic empire of the sea of the 18th century. The latter was not able to organise all that effectively at the logistical level, as it lacked the means of communication to marshal resources in depth and monitor events on a global scale in realtime.

The organisation of power is increasingly logistic, and yet the current rhetoric about alternative responses is about ‘tactical media’. This seems a strange state of affairs. Surely we should be talking about strategic media, even logistic media. It may be somewhat self defeating to think only on one of the possible levels of organisation for counter power.

It’s worth taking a look at what the rhetoric of tactical media is meant to achieve. It has become a popular term. Ironically, it is even mobilising strategic resources. Institutions are putting resources into it, supporting the beginnings of what could be a coordinated network of resources with some depth and continuity. From talking to people at various foundations here in New York, I get the impression that Tactical Media is turning into a handy way of classifying programs of experimental media that otherwise cut across accepted categories of activity.

One of the richest sources for the rhetorics of tactical media is Geert Lovink’s new book, Dark Fiber (MIT Press). As one of the original promoters of the term, Lovink has a subtle sense of just how it can be deployed to mobilise resources. It’s interesting just how much semantic freight Lovink tries to get this term to carry. Tactical media, he writes, is to “combine radical pragmatism and media activism with pleasurable forms of nihilism.” But it is also “into questioning every single aspect of life, with ‘the most radical gesture’.”

Tactical media plays with “the ambiguity of more or less isolated groups or individuals, caught in the liberal-democratic consensus, working outside the safety of the Party or Movement, in a multi-disciplinary environment full of mixed backgrounds and expectations.” It is also “about the art of getting access, hacking the power and disappearing at the right moment.” While “tactical media are opposition channels, finding their way to break out of the subcultural ghetto” it is also “a deliberately slippery term, a tool for creating ‘temporary consensus zones’ based on unexpected alliances.”

“What counts” with tactical media “are temporary connections between old and new, practice and theory, alternative and mainstream.” But it is also “a question of scale. How does a phrase on a wall turn into a global revolt?” Tactical media may intervene within a movement, but it may also link a movement to social groups. Or perhaps it is even a “virtual movement”, with no existence outside of its network expression. Then again, “perhaps we are just a diverse collection of weirdos, off topic by nature.”

What I find interesting about this collection of quotes from Dark Fiber is that the most tactical thing about tactical media is the rhetorical tactic of calling it tactical. It’s a way of short-circuiting the theoretical debates of the 70s and 80s, which put enormous emphasis on getting the theory of representation aspect of alternative media together, to the point that the practice of creating media was often strangled at birth by wranglings over the signifier.

Tactical media is a rhetoric for bypassing the theory of representation, if only to sneak up on it from behind. By claiming no strategic leverage for a particular subject doing the representing, or a certain methodology for doing the representing, or even any particular veracity for the representation, tactical media unblocks the flow of practice. But it does so at the expense, not so much of issues of representational strategy, as issues of communicational logistics.

At best, we could think of tactical media as a tactic of compromise on representation. Let a thousand flowers bloom. Try lots of different tactics. Borrow from art history, from media theory, think of it as a temporary activity which need not make overarching claims or defend its legitimacy. See what works. But the unresolved problem is how to ‘resource’ such a field of practice. How are resources to be allocated? How are networks to be sustained?

For all their diversity, rhetorics of tactical media tend to assume much the same analysis of the overall situation of what I am calling the military entertainment complex. There’s a background image of it as monolithic and pervasive. The tactical appeals as a way of getting into the cracks. The tactical is a ‘rhizome’, a ‘temporary autonomous zone’, an instance of the ‘multitude’. In other words, it seems to fit with the popular theories of the day.

The problem is that the popular theories of the day are not media theories. A media practice is being deduced from theories that for all their sophistication in other respects, tend to have somewhat simplistic views of media. Worse, they tend to see media as a mere add-on, rather than as a central object of concern. If we are indeed living in the shadow of the military entertainment complex, then the technics and techniques of telesthesia need to be organising principle of the theory.

I am not suggesting, however, that we need to get the theory right before anybody starts trying to make media. That would be to return to the old arguments about ‘representation’ that still haunt the more atavistic corners of the cultural studies establishment. Rather, it’s a question of doing theory and practice together. Perhaps we need tactical theories to go with the tactical media practices. Tactical media may derive some of its energy from simplistic theories of media, but it gets a lot more from immersion in issues, in working with technologies, in creating competences and skills among people, and so on. It’s a question of turning theoretical attention toward what tactical media workers are doing. An excellent example would be Graham Meikle’s new book, Future Active (Pluto Press), which does exactly that.

Some may object that in even speaking of media in these terms, I am buying into a militarised rhetoric. (I remember a book reviewer who objected to my use of the terms ‘culture wars’ and declared an intention to sit those wars out in the coffee shop.) The objection has some force. However, I don’t think one can so easily exempt oneself from what may be a systematic mobilisation of forces. I have certainly been more struck by this since moving to the United States. Even if one wanted to work in a way that refused the rhetorics and practices of conflict, one would need to think through just how such a practice might work in a militarised environment.

Tactical media has been a productive rhetoric, stimulating a lot of interesting new work. But like all rhetorics, eventually its coherence will blur, its energy will dissipate. There’s a job to do to make sure that it leaves something behind, in the archive, embedded in institutions, for those who come after.

Geert Lovink, Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture, The MIT Press, 2002

The first Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP), directed by Paul Thomas, had an ambitious multi-threaded program encompassing 3 exhibitions, along with several conferences, forums and symposiums, seeking to both present electronic artworks and investigate their theoretical and philosophical aspects.

BEAP’s themes, including biotechnology, consciousness, locality, virtual reality, and alternate and experimental modes of projection sparked debate, with many artists and theorists at the CAiiA-STAR Consciousness Reframed Conference focusing on notions of reality and how interacting with electronic arts alters consciousness. But what does this actually mean in practice? Immersion, curated by Christopher Malcolm at the John Curtin Gallery, responds by showcasing electronic installations from both Australian artists and Internationals (mostly associated with CAiiA) whose practice deals with interaction, artificial intelligence, portals and alter-realties.

The main gallery was dominated by the elegantly simple Zero@Wavefunction: nanodreams and nitemares, a collaboration between Victoria Vesna and nanoscientist Jim Gimzewski (both USA). The artwork’s interactivity is based on the way a nanoscientist manipulates an individual molecule billions of times smaller than common human scale but projected on a massive scale. The viewer stands in front of a tonal projection casting a larger than life shadow which activates the software nano-molecules or buckyballs. These respond via sensors to the movement of your shadow, changing shape and direction so that you can manipulate the molecule through the interface of your body. The resultant human interaction is incredible: normally staid audiences lose their self-consciousness and jump, dance, and move their arms and bodies to shift and alter the projections in a truly immersive virtual shadow play.

On the opposite end of the scale of ethereality is Ken Rinaldo’s Autopoiesis where we are spatially engaged by 10 giant metallic and vine branch robotic arms or tentacles suspended from the ceiling, moving in response to gallery viewers and each other’s movements. The artwork/organism modifies its behaviour over time. It’s silent when the gallery is empty, however when one enters, the arms jump into action like synchronised swimmers, or Star Trek borgs communicating with each other via audible telephone tones. Rinaldo’s work also places our bodies in dialogue with what seems to be alien intelligence—bringing into focus the symbiotic relationship between biology and technology.

Nigel Helyer injected some contemporary political content with his subtly minimal sound installation Seed. The gallery audience utilises headphones attached to land mine detectors to hear the exoticised Arabic music emitted from small mines placed on mini Persian carpets. Other Australian works included Chromeskin, the result of a 3-year collaboration between west coast artists Richie Kuhaupt and Geoffrey Drake-Brockman, and Lynne Sanderson’s Somnolent Fantasies. Stelarc was well represented, from documentation of his 1970s skin piercing performances through to his current technologically augmented practice, with the sculptural metallic Exoskeletons of his performances on display—works that make it obvious that electronic arts have antecedents in performative art practice.

Skylab was another collaborative work, a 3D video installation by Biennale advisor David Carson with 3-D video artist Brian McClave (UK) and George Millward, a UK based atmospheric physicist and experimental electronic musician. Dealing with regional issues, it was viewed through 3D glasses, evoking a cosy retro cinematic feeling. The large-scale back projection created a mesmerising Turell-like space, where image and text free-floated with astronauts, combining NASA footage with local media snippets detailing the fear of space junk falling onto Perth.

Even more locally based was Screen, an exhibition of WA artists curated by Pauline Williams situated over 6 locations across the city, as well as tucked into a long corridor at John Curtin Gallery. This limited space on the way to the toilets was utilised to great advantage by Rebecca Dean, Paul Caporn and David Fussell with their blue lagoon video, performance and text installation, documenting love gone wrong against a background of idyllic palm-tree wallpaper scenes in individual toilet cubicles.

Screen also previewed the new CD-ROM (strangely categorised as an “interactive film”) from Perth producer Michelle Glaser (see RT48) and a talented production team. The psychoanalytic Dr Pancoast’s Cabinet de Curiosities has a 1920s illustrative aesthetic reminiscent of a medical textbook. The viewer is quickly engaged by exaggerated mouse movements, either pulling phallic-like objects or rubbing the mouse furiously to move to new screens, find more information, or stimulate sex organs. Via this voyeuristic screen frottage we enter the doctor’s intimate arena of naïve erotica viewed via keyholes and peep shows. His phantasies immerse his patient, a certain Miss Smith, in a carnivalesque atmosphere of exquisite caricatures and evocative soundscapes. It feels nicely naughty, and again on the collaborative thread, is best viewed with a friend.

BEAP was not without teething problems. The geography of Perth and the scattered locations of events, as well as the CAiiA conference being held in 2 venues, meant a lack of cohesion, some confusion, and hours of daily travelling for conference delegates. Additionally, the restrictive opening hours of John Curtin Gallery meant it could not accommodate the large audience for the major drawcards, Canadian Char Davies’ Osmose and Ephémère, the best-known Immersive Virtual Environment works available today. These ground breaking breath-navigated, individual head-mounted display worlds from the mid 1990s rarely travel because of the expense and the logistics of their installation. Simply extending gallery hours, or at least opening on Saturday, would have made them more accessible to both local and visiting audiences.

Then there was the glaring divide between the space and resources allocated to installation and screen-based work. BEAP Director Paul Thomas’ belief that net.art doesn’t belong in a gallery meant this medium was not well represented. This was unfortunately demonstrated by the staging of Robert Nideffer’s (USA) online proxy.com and creepycomics.com as a short series of slides projected high in a tiny room. Proxy.com (http://www.nideffer.net/homey.html) is a great online work, however it takes time for individual set-up and to acquire the skills to play. I highly recommend viewing it online as it immerses you in a world of electronic characterisations and interactions. However it was a poor curatorial choice in this context, as it does not lend itself to casual gallery viewing, which many other online interactive pieces are specifically designed to do.

Overall BEAP was a very successful event celebrating electronic arts and developments in science, technology and philosophy. It did bridge the ambiguous spaces between the audience and the artwork, providing alternate modes of interaction and engagement. As well, the focus on interaction is a timely reminder that, as galleries and museums start to acquire electronic works, they are best valued by their shared experiential potential rather than as discrete objects. By coming to terms with its staging problems and omissions BEAP in 2004 should be an event to look forward to.

What is art doing in the biology lab, the genetics lab? Bio-technology is the future and artists want a say in it. This is art as philosophy, as investigation, not as decoration. The works in BIOFEEL and the symposium The Aesthetics of Care, part of the Biennale of Eletronic Art Perth (BEAP) offered a window on the world of the laboratory, an attempt to expose contemporary social and technological issues to the public in formats that might stimulate new thinking. The artists in BIOFEEL argue that the issues exposed by genetic manipulation and animal experimentation for commercial and medical purposes are matters that should not be left solely to scientists and entrepreneurs.

BIOFEEL

BIOFEEL was curated by SymbioticA, an artist-run space in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, Unversity of Western Australia. It was established to “act as a porous membrane in which art and bio-medical sciences and technologies could mingle” (Oron Catts, BEAP Catalogue). The group researches the potential for artistic creativity in biological science, providing a laboratory environment for artistic production and offering residencies that support interdisciplinary work and critical interaction to explore and present new pathways in our biological future. Among the projects run by SymbioticA are tissue culture and bio-cybernetic studies.

You will remember the ear that seemed to be growing out of the back of a rat (Patricia Piccinini made multiple photo-composites of it accompanying photographic models). It was made through “tissue engineering” and then surgically installed into the rat where it continued to live. In tissue engineering a scaffold of degradable biopolymer is built in the shape of the organ to be engineered and then the living cells that will become that “semi-living” object are seeded into it. Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr carry out their tissue engineering work in bio-reactors set up in a small laboratory in the gallery. You can look in through the small portholes of this bio-containment facility and watch the artists ‘feeding’ their cell-cultures. They presented the results of 2 works in documentation and micro-sculptural objects. Worry Dolls, “objects” to tell your worries to, are tiny constructs of bio-scaffold and surgical suture grown over with skin, muscle and bone cells. Their forms are imprecise and unique, glutinous looking and vaguely humanoid. Once grown they are fixed in formalin and shown in small sample jars, here in a hanging spiral or to be examined through a magnifying lens. Pigs Wings explores the chimera, a hybridisation of animal forms (pigs might fly!). Also grown on a bio-polymer scaffold, this time the cells (pig bone tissue) take the form of wings, bird, bat and pterosaur. Once grown, they too, are presented in documentation and as beautiful objects. I liked best the 3 paradigm versions embedded in ostrich eggshells in glowing coloured light.

MEART – the semi living artist is an internet mediated collaboration between a culture of embryonic rat neurons growing on a Multi-Electrode Array of silicon (at Georgia Tech in Atlanta) and a pair of elegant robot arms set up as a plotter in the gallery. Sites of activity in the neural array drive the pens back and forth across a sheet of paper. There was said to be a feedback from the gallery to the neurons, so that they might learn, but its operation was not at all clear. The project has obvious relevance to artificial intelligence and the development of the cyborg, but endlessly, tediously drawn lines from the robot arm plotter pens make for something like abstract expressionism done by an obsessive compulsive Jackson Pollock. The only beauty in the project was the pair of robot arms built in Perth by Phil Gamblen.

Marta de Menezes’ studio is the biological laboratory. Her work takes on the techniques of micro-biology: microscope and magnetic resonance imaging, fluorescent dye marking, and brings us inside the body or the cell. Her Functional Portraits involves a video projection of a woman’s head onto which a series of transverse functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging [fMRI] slices of her brain are superimposed. This travels from her face to the back of her head as she carries out an activity that is representative, attempting a portrait of both the person and her brain. Proteic Portrait is a digital image, printed onto canvas, of the 3-dimensional conformation of a protein formed by mapping the letters in the subject’s full name (which, being Portuguese, is very long) onto the one-letter codes for the 20 amino acids that make up proteins. 21 small pictures of the stringy stick figure-like molecular arrangements and the details of the coding make up the print.

Of the other works in BIOFEEL I will mention only Rearming the Spineless Opuntia. Amy Youngs’ wonderfully shy small cactus grows in a conical blue pot resting in a quadrapod supporting a motor and a pair of ultrasonic sensors. As you walk over to look at the piece sitting in the corner of the gallery the motor switches on and it draws up its pair of copper shells that act as an armour for this defenceless hybrid. The most accomplished work in the exhibition, and the most humorous in the way it defeats one’s attempts at close examination.

Aesthetics of Care

To what extent are the ethics of care towards humans and animals (and the planet as a whole) relevant to the kinds of problems traditionally associated with art? Here, where art is an experimental medium, exploring many areas drawn from science and new technology, why should we not engage with the problems brought to society by bio-medical technologies? If the future is to remain ours (not simply rented to us by Microsoft and Monsanto) then we must grapple with the modern eugenics of selecting special gene sequences from the supermarket shelf.

Lawyer Lori Andrews, brought from the US to give the keynote speech at Aesthetics of Care, is right on top of her material. Obviously knowledgeable about all the ethical and legal issues she gave a talk that showed a depth of knowledge of art engaging with bio-tech that put all of us to shame.

Stuart Bunt, cofounder and scientific leader of the SymbioticA group, spoke about the ethics and licensing principles used for research on live animals and enquired how appropriate the application of these principles might be to art. As he pointed out, biological materials have always been used in art but recent work using live animals raises issues of how we judge the value of the creatures and the ethics of our relations to them. KD Thornton surveyed the use of animals in art, mentioning Eduardo Kacs Alba and Chinese expatriate artist Xu Bing’s animal performance installations among other works.

Many other artists spoke but ultimately the symposium was a rather confused affair that left me feeling that, though there were some useful presentations, by the time the forum arrived in the evening so many issues had become conflated that it really ended up discussing nothing. Crossovers between questions of the ethics of animal use in laboratories and the effects of genetic manipulation on people (both directly and through food and medicine) followed upon one another willy-nilly without any attempt to draw out the serious distinctions between the two.

It’s not unusual, while strolling around the arts precinct at Southbank in Melbourne, to be assaulted by the sometimes ear-shattering efforts of aspirant divas. Many of the students from the nearby Victorian College of the Arts use the tourist precinct as a place to busk their wares in exchange for much needed public funding. However, when the sounds are found to emanate from a businessman with a briefcase attempting to shatter the various objects of Stephen Barrass’ Op Shop installation by singing in a public place, it is surprising, and delightful.

Barass’ installation is part of the Experimenta’s Prototype exhibition featuring 13 predominantly Australian, new media installations and digital works along with 6 short videos and animations displayed on a DVD jukebox. A richly eclectic collection, the exhibition itself exceeds the catergorisation implied by its title. The term ‘prototype’ seems to suggest that these works represent a mere stage along the way to a more justifiable (and scientific) ‘somewhere else.’ But this is more a function of the necessity of framing funding applications for exhibitions in terms of the greater good. As Ian Haig argues (p5), there is an inherent danger in badging and validitating new media art within the discursive frameworks of science and technology. To be fair to Experimenta, though, one can only imagine with what consternation a funding application would be met if it claimed to be setting out to exhibit works that are, as Haig prefers, quirky, perverse, weird and very good fun!

But this is precisely the territory that Prototype explores. Take, for example, the ultra-cool installation Burn Out 200—Part II The Game. Ben Morieson’s Daytona-inspired installation is the continuation of a performance project that began with a spectacular event held at Melbourne’s Docklands in which local drag racers, choreographed by the artist, created a drawing in burnt rubber that was then photographed aerially. In Part II–The Game, participants sit in a car console, familiar to anyone who has played car racing games at Timezone, and can select 3 cars with which to do burnouts. The pictures created by the user are then archived (for possible inclusion in the artist’s gallery) and are printed at the rear of the console for the user to take with them. Morieson’s argument that “the game mimics the rhetoric of super-charged emotion and spontaneity associated with modernist painting” may have been lost on the queues of young guys lining up to have a go but it certainly didn’t detract from their obvious enthusiasm for the work.

Barrass’ Op Shop was also popular. Using a microphone placed in front of a video-projected virtual environment that depicts floor to ceiling bric-a-brac, participants are invited to use their voices to smash the objects on the screen. While I was there, a small crowd formed around the microphone and there was some competition to see who could cause the most damage. Each new breakage was met with cheers and high 5s all round. You gotta admire an artwork that makes people feel like that.

Finished with testing your driving skills or your vocal range, you can try to get a couple of uppity Canadian girls to invite you to a party. Talk Nice, by Canadian artist Elizabeth Vander Zaag, uses Speak and Yell (SAY) software to analyse the pitch of user’s voice as they engage in conversation with 2 onscreen teenagers who attempt to teach the user to ‘talk nice.’ Talking nice means mimicking their Valley Girl intonations and phrasings as they run you through a series of questions like, “If you were offered drugs at a party, what would you do?” Astute 12-year-old participant Lucy was promptly issued an invitation when she responded, “I’d ask you what to do”. The invitation, however, was subsequently withdrawn when Lucy refused to ignore someone who wasn’t part of the girls’ social set. I felt like I was back in high school! Incidentally, despite numerous attempts, I never cracked it for an invite.

The in-ya-face interactions of these exhibits contrasts nicely with works like Richard Brown’s Mimetic Starfish, Chris Henschke’s Tonal Field Navigator, Jane Crappsley’s Untitled Drawing in Space and Martin Walch’s Over Written, Under Written. Each of these continues the inventive use of interface that characterises many of the exhibits in Prototype, but in subtler ways. In Mimetic Starfish, for instance, the user caresses a projected starfish controlled by neural net technology and gesture sensing, and the starfish responds to the speed and force of the user’s interaction by extending or withdrawing its tentacles. Henschke’s Tonal Field Navigator rewards the user’s intervention, through the placement of their hand in a projected hologram, with a shifting, immersive visual and aural landscape.

That’s if you can get the sound of screaming rabbits out of your ears! The squeals that emanate from Pet Sounds, by Isobel Knowles and Haima Marriot, come from 2 seemingly innocuous stuffed rabbits. As you squeeze the adorable little animals, they emit strangely synthetic yowling noises. The more you hug and squeeze them, the more they howl. It sounds as though you are causing them great anguish but it is really hard to stop doing it. It’s like being at a perverse kind of petting farm.

There are other works, like Iain Mott and Marc Raszewski’s Sound Mapping installation, Simon Norton’s Testimony: A Story Machine, Bruce Mowson’s Flesh Antenna and a number of videos and animations that deserve to be mentioned but space doesn’t permit. What should be said, however, is that it’s gratifying to see such a breadth and scope in these works, such a sense of playfulness and joyousness. If works like these can be produced and brought together in exhibitions like Prototype under a funding regime oppressed by the short sighted and utilitarian policies of the current Federal Government, then there really is hope for a vision of new media arts that is more than worthy; it’s actually fun!

Experimenta, Prototype, Interact 2002 Asia Pacific Multimedia Festival, BlackBox, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, Sept 5-21

Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival grows in scale and reputation by the year and so does its new media-driven Electrofringe, now in its 5th year. The list of artists, workshop directors and panel participants is phenomenal and almost belies its ‘fringe’ title in sheer numbers and in the presence of many well-known practitioners side by side with seasoned rebels and activists.

“Everybody is part of a workshop or a session, it’s not just a party”, says coordinator Joni Taylor, “and the parties are where the performances mainly happen. For example, the Lalila group will work with 20 volunteers with cameras filming a car chase and will mix it live Saturday night at the Cambridge Hotel.”

Taylor is Electrofringe festival coordinator with Shannon O’Neill. Her first experience of the event was “as a punter and, seeing it as one of the most interesting things around, I’ve been involved ever since, first as a journalist covering it for publications and websites and then last year as an organiser.”

Taylor explains how it works: “This Is Not Art (TINA) is organised by Newcastle’s Octapod, which started out as a small volunteer-run community organisation, basically a hub for the local community. The TINA team organises all the festivals that are under its broader umbrella. Each festival has one to 2 managers. This is growing: Sound Summit last year had managers and state representatives who helped them to get people from different cities, and we did that this year too. The festival’s got such a good spirit that people want to come, to support it and help with PR. Each festival deals with its own funding, publicity and selection of guests but in the end it’s one big festival.

“This Is Not Art is triennially funded by the Newcastle City Council and that goes towards venues, printing the program, small administrative logistics. Each of the festivals deals with their own technical requirements, grant applications, begging, bribing…We got increased support this year from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council, as well as funding from the Australian Film Commission’s Interactive Media Fund and FTO (NSW Film & Television Office). We’ve got no commercial sponsorship, it’s not something that quite suits the festival. It’s always had an energy about it that it’s not owned by anyone, it doesn’t have a lot of ‘branding’. We get in-kind support from local webservers who give us broadband access which is really important for our kind of festival. Metro Screen have been great too.

“Audiences have definitely been growing, and the number of different groups coming as well. When it started it was mainly underground writers and zine makers, and then the media aspect grew and that crossed over into Electrofringe and then with Sound Summit coming on board there were a lot of electronic music industry representatives and record labels. They naturally bring another huge audience just wanting to hear good music that wouldn’t be exposed anywhere else because it’s not particularly commercial. The past few years there’s been a big focus on parties at night that showcase electronic music. That brings in a whole group who wouldn’t necessarily think of going to a workshop on the possibilities of DVD surround sound, but might be there to see a great UK live electronic act, walk into a workshop and then think ‘wow!’.

“Some of the best things that happen at this festival, and I’ve seen it, are the collaborations that occur within those 5 days. People who met last year from electronic music or developing software are getting together this year to do something, producing side events. Because it is national there are some people organising events in their own city who say to people they meet, why don’t you come to my festival in Perth.

Nick Ritar and Sean Healy co-founded Electrofringe, genius, guys, a really great chance to get their friends into one place, with video, VJ-ing, sharing their knowledge. This year, for the first time, we put out a call for applications internationally and I went overseas to see work: Shannon’s house is covered with tapes and CDs.

“John Dekron will be here from Germany as well as locals like Wade Marynowsky and Lalila, who are all working in similar ways, developing video software for editing. They can improve on existing software and work with open source software as well. It’s like having a whole lot of young inventors getting together.

“I met Dekron in Berlin. He’s one of the leading video performers there (www.thisserver.de). In everything, from small underground events to really big scale Love Parade street parties, it’s the way he works with the footage to create tremendous environments. His software is amazing. He’s not like the Light Surgeons [UK, also coming] who are quite content-oriented, Dekron’s coming to share his skills with the workshop.”

Here’s how Dekron’s video masterclass is described in the Electrofringe online program: “The workshop will enlighten the way object oriented programming with Max and nato works. We will build an application that allows (you) to play back digital video material from the hard disk and output it with an attached DV camera. In the end we will be able to select clips with the number buttons, scratch the material using the keyboard (maybe the arrow buttons), adjust the playback speed and whatever comes into our mind. The developed patch will be turned into a standalone application and provided as freeware.”

Dekron writes on his website: “If the pictures react to the sound, an unsolvable (sic) symbiosis is developed which produces a new reality. Dancing figures transform into graphic items; music, images and dance become one. With the latest generation of computers realtime manipulation of videostreams is possible and offer the VJ complex control of the images.”

Taylor describes Light Surgeons (UK) as “a collective of designers, film makers and musicians who work with a variety of film, video, slides, spoken word, narratives. Their Chimera Project is based in 5 to 6 cities in collaboration with artists there producing large scale, beautiful live video performance—and no clichés. They’ll be on at the big Saturday night party. Their staging requirements are huge, with layers of gauze in front and behind. They stand in the middle working with shadows and projections…images come flying at you.”

The Light Surgeons have provided creative production and toured internationally with live music acts such as the Propeller heads, Cornershop, DJ Food and Unkle and have worked with many ground-breaking independent record labels and artists. They describe their work thus: “The material is mixed live on stage and forms an exploded, expressionistic documentary which crosses road movie with social political essay.”

Another guest, V/VM, also from the UK, “is infamous in the plagiarising, anti-copyright and cover band scene. He’s been around a lot longer than any of this ‘bastard pop’ started. He does a whole range of covers and makes them sound ugly and disturbing and he’s got a really great attitude. There’s lots of excitement about him coming. The way he works and mixes and edits is a good example of how technology works in popular culture and doesn’t fit into galleries or commercial music scenes.

“This year there’s quite a big computer game component, gam3_art, not specifically about computer games but the people who are using the same technology in their art and asking what’s a game and what is art anyway. They’ve grown up with that technology and don’t like commercial games because they’re boring and supported by big companies. So they create their own and question the whole corporate media thing.”

An enormous number of Australian artists will participate in Electrofringe’s workshops and panel sessions and performances. The program also includes a session on DIY social centres, looking at how to establish accessible community-oriented music, art and media spaces. This session involves SpaceStation, Spin N Jam, Midnight Star Squatted Social Centre, Mutagen and Turella. Taylor says these centres “use new media to set up and to claim space.”

There are many screenings of local and international video, including the all digital special Independent Exposure 2 from San Francisco, and the Mediateche showcasing of recent work by both local and international online artists. Laptop Cinema is Archimedia’s workshop/screening on the small screen. “Utilizing laptops to transform any room, dinner table, or bus ride into a microcinema, this workshop looks at the possibilities of the small screen space and guerrilla-style cinema when combined with digital media.”

There are some distinctly intriguing workshops including MELDart I [elektroXwerkshop] in which collaborations will link artists across genres. “Spoken word artists and electronic artists will thrash it out to create new works in the lead up to the elektroXwerd performance event.” DVD do’s and don’ts will show you “how to unlock the creative potentials of the DVD format for filmmakers, surround surgeons and pixel pushers.” What to make of Infinity Box Presentation? “The Infinity Box uses the relaxing FLURO FLUFFY CHAIR as its interface and is a totally self contained video instrument with its own internal rhythm generators.” Yes please.

Electrofringe is part of This Is Not Art which also includes Sound Summit, National Young Writers Festival, National Student Media Conference, Independent Radio Conference, Pacific Indymedia Conference and New Media: Critical Approaches. Newcastle, Oct 2-7 2002. www.electrofringe.net; www.thisisnotart.org

d>ART02 Exhibition

dLux media arts national touring show of short videos and 5 installation art works, d>ART02, seems to emerge from a machine-like sensibility, musing on the human condition from an electronically mediated and dispassionate distance.

Interactivity was a core principle of all but one of the installation works. Mari Velonaki’s Throw (Australia, 2002) invites viewers to pitch balls at projected images of figures that glide by like ducks in a shooting-gallery, making them flinch, bob and weave. Viewers variously display curiosity, aggressiveness, impatience and shyness, reactions that Velonaki seems to want to provoke to complete the work. Throw’s apparatus appears to be based on a movement sensor that triggers computer-programmed sequences of predetermined images, and successful interaction requires a good arm.

Another work with the capacity for viewer interaction is Sophea Lerner’s The Glass Bell (Australia, 2002), whose large glass screen, down which water cascades, shows first the façade of a house, then scenes of a pond and forest. Viewers are encouraged to touch the screen (hand towels hang nearby), which is intended to cause changes in the imagery. The opportunity for deliciously tactile engagement is teasingly offered. The work also includes photographs of the meditative patterns made by close-ups of rocks, leaves and snow, projected onto screens of white fabric. Suspended as a series of filters, the last delicate sheet barely registers the image.

Two videos requiring viewer participation were presented on sleek iMacs. Danielle Karalus’ Shocked (Australia, 2000) depicts a woman’s post-natal depression, relationship difficulties, consultations with her psychiatrist and subsequent electrotherapy. Essentially a short movie, and an absorbing and finely crafted one, it requires the viewer to activate each scene by finding and clicking on hot-spots on the screen. Rather than controlling the narrative and influencing its outcome, we’re only triggering its progression, retrieving data, and we can’t be sure we haven’t missed something. Debra Petrovitch’s CD-ROM Uncle Bill (Australia, 2000) is a black and white representation of life with a violent uncle that similarly requires the viewer to navigate the correct sequence of images. Both works offer dark histories to which we readily relate, and, like untended house-guests, we decide how deeply to pry.

Mathias Antlfinger and Ute Hoerner’s l’aprés midi d’un avatar (Germany, 2001) is the only installation that doesn’t need physical intervention. A large screen depicts 2 computer-generated figures walking and conversing in a barren landscape, independent of any operator and oblivious to viewers. This repeating sequence becomes sterile and disengaging, a feeling enhanced by having to eavesdrop on their babble via headphones. These escaped, life-size avatars satirise both human behaviour and their more biddable electronic brethren.

Interactivity is not new. Duchamp’s 1920 Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) required the viewer to start it. A rationale for interactivity is that it sustains viewers’ attention and involves them more deeply than passively observing. It also acknowledges the individual viewer, whose interaction contributes to or even completes the work. Technology alone cannot sustain art. A work such as Throw presents limited, though testing, options. The ‘players’ watching Shocked are involved but become impatient as they sense they can only facilitate the progression of a stalled narrative. We’re accustomed to human interaction, with its infinite and complex variety and mutuality, but these machines lack human capacities. Viewers find themselves in a limbo between responding mechanically to machines and responding as humans to humans. However, in Throw, Shocked and Uncle Bill, our ambivalent responses form part of the works’ resolution and meaning.

d>ART02 Screen

d>ART02’s screen program comprised 17 works varying from one to 16 minutes in length. Anouk de Cleroq’s Whoosh (Belgium, 2001) is evocative, eloquent and relevant. Stark black and white images from various sources are supported by subtitles compiled from the writings of, for example, Tennyson, McLuhan and Ballard and aggregated into a heartfelt message about our captivity by alienating technologies. Phrases like “in this age of global communication I still mumble sad lines to myself” remind us of the diminished space for emotion in a mechanised world.

Andreas Gedin’s So far, so good, (Sweden, 2001) is an absorbing piece of theatre. Two seated men face us, one eating pizza and describing to his blind companion what is happening on a TV out of our view. We try to comprehend the unseen image (silent movie slapstick?) from the speaker’s rapid-fire description, and wonder what his unseeing companion could make of it. The film is about the translation of experience into narrative, of the visual into the verbal, and the subjectivity of the human filter through which they pass.

A Film (Atanas Djono, Australia, 2001) is highly seductive though ultimately simply self-referential. We see a skywriter putting the final touches to the words ‘A FILM’ in a blue sky, and then for 15 minutes we watch the phrase gradually dissolve, occasional clouds drifting by, accompanied by background sound suggesting a babble of voices. Also playing on film as both medium and concept is Phillip Ryder’s Train (UK, 2001), a re-photographed version of a piece of 16 mm film (showing Ryder tied to train tracks) that had been run over by a train. His Rock (2001), about suicide by drowning, involves immersing in a river for 2 weeks a short Super 8 sequence showing someone waiting on a bridge over the river. In both works the film stock stands in for the victims. The damaging of the footage introduces an aleatoric element, giving the resulting movies an expressionistic, quasi-abstract finish that parodies aged celluloid. Though rich in metaphor, this is end-game movie-making, literally and figuratively.

In Crash Media (Tim Ryan, Australia, 2001) we can just make out a car rolling over in slow motion. The electronically distorted image (evoking an animated abstract painting) may make sense to the camera, but it requires our careful interpretation. The subject matter’s possibly catastrophic nature is occluded by the distortion. The work distinguishes machine perception from human perception, reminding us that the two are not the same and that the difference between them can be vital.

Myriam Bessette’s Azur (Canada, 2001) is an aesthetically delightful and mesmerising light and sound work. Line Up (Julie-Christine Fortier, Canada, 2002) provided some humour, showing a burning fuse tracing a path through a human head and continuing on. Sumugan Sivanesan’s Seismic (Australia, 2002) shows a street scene frozen almost still by repeated pressing of the pause button, shifting our perception from the cinematic to the photographic.

SALA: Moving Image Project

The absence of a traditional narrative trajectory was a criterion for inclusion in the Moving Image Project—42 recent short screen works, all by local film-makers, shown during this year’s SALA (South Australian Living Artists) Festival. Diverse and generally of a high standard, they complemented nicely the d>ART02 season. Joe Felber and Julie Henderson’s 25 Songs involved Henderson as choreographer and performer in a short film on classical dance, music and culture. This delightful piece set the highest production and performance standards. Choreographer and dancer Christos Linou showed 3 short films transferred from Super 8 to DVD—Thriving, a fragment of dance; The Sirens, in which images of the sea are overlayed with images of human movement; and the nicely satirical Act of Trespass, which depicts a businessman repeatedly walking and retracing his steps across a busy city footpath to the bemusement of passers by.

Equally interesting were the works that revealed fascinating microcosmic worlds normally unseen. Anne Walton’s DVD works all used a digital camera set for maximum close-up. Edge shows maggots sniffing about at the edge of what looks like earth pressed against a sheet of glass. The fascinating Glen Helen 1, 2 & 3 shows 3 scenes shot at that location in Central Australia, the first showing (upside down) a finger tip pushing sand up against the lens, the second showing a droplet of water slowly drying on a rock in the sun and the third showing the artist’s right cheek in profile as she brushes flies from her face. Walton’s technique shifts your perception.

A relief from the showcase of sophisticated technology were Aanya Roennfeldt’s Manbags and Pasta Cowboy Gets Takeaway, animations that used materials such as cut-out drawings on wood veneer backdrops—a down-market South Park. Both works comment humorously on social manners and male identity, the Art Povera materials adding a wry twist. James Strickland and Bianca Barling’s Second Fix explores the broken heart, while Shoot is a collage of tantalising fragments by 17 film-makers, adroitly edited by Danielle Walpole.

The moving image combines 2 essential aspects of culture: story-telling and visual imagery. Prior to the advent of film, still images such as paintings and photographs were often narratively driven, the fragments they depicted standing in for an implied whole. Film extended this potential to protracted actuality. In new media, narrative is often implied by virtue of the medium’s suggestiveness as well as our own suggestibility and desire for story. We don’t like a plot left hanging, but perhaps that’s where the art lies.

d>ART02, Experimental Art Foundation, Aug 1-31; Mercury Cinema, Jul 30. Samples of works shown are at the dLux media/arts website, www.dlux.org.au/dartNET .

The South Australian Living Artists Festival, Moving Image Project, curator Jo Holmes, Mercury Cinema, Aug 4 & 7

A British prelude

Just as we started out on this 2 part survey of multimedia and new media performance works-in-progress and the attitudes of artists to the technologies they have embraced, 2 interesting and pertinent things happened. First RealTime became a party to bringing the UK new media performance and installation group Blast Theory to Australia, so we recommend you read the interview with them (see article). Then, British performers Robert Pacitti (of the Pacitti Company) and Leslie Hill and Helen Paris of curious.com spoke in Perth, Adelaide and Sydney on their way to Time_Space_Place, the national hybrid performance workshop held in Wagga Wagga in September (see RT 52).

Blast Theory and curious.com in particular reveal the numerous ways that new media allows them to engage with issues and audiences. The audience become active participants in a performance they are witnessing online (communicating with the performers, or responding to performer strategies) or, in theatres and other venues, crossing the line to becoming performers themselves. In Blast Theory’s Desert Rain, which the company will be presenting in Sydney shortly, 6 people at a time, for half an hour each, are the focus of the work as they play a VR Gulf War game. curious.com describe Vena Amoris as a work where a small audience wait in a bar to be summoned via their mobile phones and, one at a time enter the theatre where, alone, they have a spotlit phone exchange with a performer they can’t see. At the end of the performance they pass through a door at the end of a long corridor opened by a tall blonde, revealing another, identical blonde, and stand in front of a full length mirror through which they momentarily glimpse the performer who has been talking to them. Very David Lynch. Given that this was not a profitable venture, Hill and Paris are trying to re-work the concept to handle slightly larger audiences.

Aided by a 3 year residency at the Institute for Studies in Arts, Arizona, courtesy of the City of Phoenix, and working in a well equipped and staffed laboratory (“true R&D as opposed to grant-to-grant”) curious.com have explored the practicalities of “how to be visceral in the virtual”, the subject of much of this survey. They worked with a camera triggered by speech and by motion (“it will follow you, be with you, stalk you”), filmed each other and created virtual clones of themselves. The work is called Random Acts of Memory [RAM] and photographs they showed from it suggested an eerie world where 2 figures claim each other’s memories, go in for “head to head wrestling”, “encounter unreasonable facsimiles” and only interact with the other’s clone—“as if the mediatised world had taken over.” They are currently developing a work about scent and memory in collaboration with Dr Upinder Bhalla, an olfactory scientist in Bangladore, India.

A very strange place

Memory is virtual, so is the future. So are the ghosts in photographs, films, videos and sound recordings. Perhaps this explains why so much new media performance (and other) work is about memory, traces of incomplete recollection, individual and collective, and reconstructions. It’s also why these works have a sci-fi, ‘what if…’ quality, doubling, as they do, as adventures in the vertiginous pleasures of wild speculation and the anxieties of miserable distopias, often at once. In this oscillation between past and future, the present is a very strange place. It also explains why so much new media is about science and technology, as critique or engagement: it builds on the possibilities of the technological, it experiments, tests, wants in on the debate about genetic engineering and other issues, and reclaims prophesy for art.

Screening the virtual

How do you represent and project the virtual in performance? Shadow play and projections on screens and gauzes, the use of television monitors and computer screens continue to play this role in performance with theatrical deftness (as in Robert Lepage’s smooth blend of hi-tech and old theatre illusion) and in various combinations and permutations—the multimedia theatre of simultaneity where, as audience, we are expected to bring various literacies to bear. But screens are flat. Screens are substantial. Artists are finding their capacities insufficiently virtual. Therefore they go for screens that are there but not there: transparent screens—glass, perspex, gauze, walls of fine water, smoke (for that holographic effect), curved surfaces (the massive screen tower in the La Furas dels Baus production of Berlioz’s Faust at Salzburg), mobile and plastic screens. The transparent screen not only holds an image, it also allows it to spill and multiply, generating larger virtual spaces and figures. And for a screen both ephemeral and substantial, why not the body itself, a well-known receiver of projections of all kinds, and another piece of old theatre magic given very new life (see Jonathan Marshall, “Fusion: the body as screen”, RT 50, p 28).

Hypersurfaces: depth in flatness

Of course, there is the computer screen itself (whose images are increasingly relayed to all these other screens), not just a surface for receiving an image and showing it, but a hypersurface: “an interactive, intelligent surface…with a spatio-temporal dimension…[where]…virtual spaces are depicted through the continuously changing ‘matrix of physical pixels’.” Here Alicia Imperiale is citing Marcus Novak in her book The New Flatness: Surface Tension in Digital Architecture (Birkhauser, Basel, 2000) where she illustrates the depth that can be achieved in built surfaces, just as new media performance strives to create fluid virtual spaces (screens) for performers actual and virtual to inhabit.

Theatre artists speak of set design. Dancers sometimes describe generating space with their movement. Artists working in performance often speak of their performing space as architecture or sculpted space, as you’ll see in this survey, a reminder of performance’s strong kinship with architecture (think of Sydney’s Gravity Feed or Melbourne’s BAMBUco) and the visual arts. Architecture itself now embraces and embodies the virtual as buildings become screens, their surfaces embedded with technological outputs.

Staged subjectivities

In the cinema, point of view has primarily been third person, with most exceptions to be found in experimental cinema. An interesting development in new media and multimedia performance, especially in dance, has been an exploration of how to convey the performer’s point of view. This has been seen in filmmaker Margie Medlin’s work with Sandra Parker of Danceworks in In the Heart of the Eye; in Jude Walton’s Seam (silent mix) with Ros Warby (with the dancer wielding a tiny camera aimed at herself); and is, in part, the goal in new works described in this survey by Company in Space’s Hellen Sky and Mary Moore, one work dealing with memory and space, the other with the experiences of identical twins and how they see the world.

What are they doing?

The performers in the works we survey have a new multiplicity of tasks and roles. These can include being filmed in pre-production (virtually cloned, sometimes as themselves, sometimes animated), wearing motion capture suits (in the laboratory or in performance), triggering sound and image (via responsive cameras, mikes, lasers), performing with their virtual selves and others. Or they become screens. Or they play guides taking audiences into new realms of experience. And they can be relayed, as in the classic telematic works of Company in Space where a dancer in one space dances with another, often in a distant country.

What do we call it?

For convenience, we’ve used the term new media performance, It’s not entirely appropriate because some work is classically multimedia and not strictly engaged with new technology, however the delivery platform is increasingly digital and greatly facilitates the integration of various media. Then there’s the hatred of ‘new’ and the growing weariness at having to listen to people hating it. Of course, the technology is hardly new any more, nor some of the things done with it (the re-working of hallowed theatrical devices), but what is new is the ongoing experimentation, the yield of fascinating hybrids and the reworking of relationships with audiences. Perhaps it will, as some wish, all settle down into some form or other and the hype will pass, as it did for cinema in the last century, but this new work continues to offer excitement and provocation.

Getting a smooth outcome

Smooth exchanges, flow, continuous surface—these are the concepts that are ever-present in contemporary culture. Alicia Imperiale

What did we hear from artists as we surveyed the works they have yet to realise? What are they looking for? All kinds of balance and smoothness. This is nothing to do with the works themselves, which range from serene to cerebral to savage. It’s often about getting the mix right, smoothing out the relationship between ‘the visceral and the virtual’, not losing live presence to the seductions of the screen. Other tensions seeking resolution are to be found in oppositions often driving the emergence of these hybrids: desire (we love the technology) and critique (we worry about its effects); a tool (just another theatrical device) or a partner (its materiality for the artist cf language, paint).

There is also a tension generated by changes in the creative and collaborative processes with a number of artists comparing their approaches now with filmmakers. Working on the floor often has to be preceded or paralleled by significant conceptualisation, scripting and story-boarding (though these might not involve dialogue or plain narrative), for reasons aesthetic and often pragmatic given equipment costs and additional performer time for experimenting, recording and testing.

The resolution of these creative tensions is often sought in the proliferation of words like ‘liquid’, ‘fluid’, ‘balance’, ‘integration’, ‘synergy’, the appeal of ‘hybrid’ and ‘interdisciplinary’, and the practical correlatives of R&D, careful planning, story-boarding and time to develop.

Company in Space

The Melbourne-based Company in Space describe their new work in the 2002 Melbourne Festival, The Light Room, as “an immersive filmic opera, that showcases innovation in cutting edge digital technology and performance art, by skillfully integrating live music, spoken text and dance with video animation and interactive set designs.” It’s the result of a 3-year collaboration, “a synergy of media. One that is comfortable combining cutting edge technology with traditional art forms, such as pure operatic voice and dance.”

The choice of the words “integrating”, “synergy” and “comfortable” and the cutting edge/tradition opposition are perfect examples of new media and multimedia performance’s urge for synthesis, True to the history of performance, the substantial nature rather than the illusory effects of this 3 metre high glass installation (it is never referred to as a set) is made clear. Located in Melbourne Museum’s Australian Gallery, it is “a stand-alone interactive installation that can be accessed during museum opening hours and an operatic performance, staged at night.” There is a persistent reference to architecture in the artists’ notes and, in a show about memory and space, “Past, present and future interweave…in this ephemeral house of the future.”

Director Hellen Sky puts it more explicitly: “For me new media is a language that can speak of memory and life journeys through the choreography of sounds, images and the body within an architectural space…It is like imagining that the iron on your ironing board is a scanner and you can see, hear and feel the experience of the cloth.” Librettist and performer Margaret Cameron makes a case for new media as something more than a theatrical device, while seeking to maintain the visceral/virtual balance. “The interconnectivity of new media makes it a ‘partner’ not a tool in exploring how we make visible the experience of the body in the physical world; how the body experiences architectural space and how it might experience virtual space. Technology is a new medium but to interpret it as a poetic of experience, rather than a replacement for experience, is a particular thing.”

Architect Tom Kovac, who is creating the glass tower, writes how “The translucency and liquid quality of glass is extremely well suited to use with this new technology. It…can carry the ephemeral, transient qualities of digital light. The glass surfaces have made this unique futuristic stage structure a giant luminescent realtime screen…” And, sound designer Nigel Frayne writes of “a sonic architecture created from computer software and electroacoustic design elements. Sound and image are used like memory trails, tracing the steps of the performance’s 5 main characters.”

Asked what we’ll see, Hellen Sky says: “An environment like a glass house made liquid by images from 9 video projectors and a large, rear projection screen 3 images wide” used to create “single panoramic scapes.” A black gauze hangs in front of this screen so that it can also take images forward projected. “It’s like a film set. The projections on the glass create spaces and divisions inhabited by the performers.” The performers are not replicated (as either themselves or responsive animations as they have been in previous CIS works by being telematically relayed or working from motion capture suits). They dance, speak, sing. “They also engage with interactive systems”, tracking devices that “allow them to influence projected text…zooming in on or re-shaping words, making them more or less visible or opaque…Transducers, sensing devices that the performers activate, change the shape of the virtual environments.”

What are these environments? The products of 3D modelling, they include “rooms, corridors, a bridge, a virtual pier, a virtual library…” The performers appear to occupy these spaces on the glass screens. Not only that, but those environments are seen “as if from the point of view of the performers. They suggest remembered places.”

What is it about the frequent association of new media with memory? Sky thinks it’s the facility to play with time. It’s the capacity of new media to manipulate film and video documentation and, she says emphatically, “to layer it and to evoke the haptic relationship to space.” The Light Room focuses on “the senses and their relation to space, to architecture. The text and the libretto emerged from looking at forms…and how the senses work across ageing. The material is drawn from specific experiences but in the process of editing and sifting it has become less specific and more theoretical.” Sky sees the glass architecture as evocative of “the ephemeral…of our complex relationship to space” amplified by “glass’ capacity to reflect and refract.” She comments on the tendency in modern architecture to embed glass with other technologies.

Sky has always wanted to work with glass and now she’s got it: no easy task she says. Getting the funds, negotiating with an architect, glass engineers and sponsors, engaging with video-gaming engines and the sheer longevity of the project have made her feel not unlike a film producer. I ask if, like some other new media performance creators I’ve spoken to, the process has been like directing a film. “I’ve tried to keep a story board like Spielberg—live material matched with projected space, sound, light—so there’s a megascore but it changes on the floor. The rehearsal period is only 5 weeks and not all the performers will be there full-time. As the computer interface designer, John McCormick, explains, they won’t know how it all works until everything is installed: a classic example of the conflation of research & development with rehearsal, an inevitable outcome of costs.

McCormick calmly tells me about what sounds like a monumental task of working with Sky and the performers, filmmaker Margie Medlin, 3D modeller Marshall White and programmer Ricardo Zorondo on the task of integrating the components of the work. Some are relatively fixed, like composer David Chesworth’s score (though that is then mediated by sound designer Nigel Frayne) and the lighting, though that has to take into serious account not messing with the projections. Sound and lighting in turn have to be amalgamated with film, 3D virtual worlds, and the voices, gestures and footfalls that trigger the emergence and merging of virtual objects.

Mary Moore

Adelaide-based Mary Moore, a talented theatre designer, has become the creator of a series of significant multimedia works including Exile, a striking work for solo Butoh performer in a virtual world constructed by light, screens, film and animation. Moore describes her latest venture:

“The new work I am creating is The Twins Project (working title Double Vision), a mixed media performance work created by artists, all of whom are twins. The inner kernel of my vision for this project is drawn from my own experience as a twin. It began with a simple question: How do identical twins create separate identities from a shared experience? And it has developed into an exploration of similarity and difference, separation and merging, and the gap between the subject and the ‘other’: with all the possible ramifications implied by these terms within the global flows of people and customs.”

In the following account of her intentions, Moore addresses the issues of live/virtual balance and the flight from flatness, but also makes a strong point that it is no mere matter of focusing on the performer but of creating or ‘sculpting’ the space for them.

“Fundamental to my work as a designer is the creation of 3 dimensional performance spaces and I am continually interested in using projected images to create these spaces. Whilst it is always my intention to focus the performer in a performance work my obsession has been to liberate the projected image from its usual position as a flat screen placed at the back of the performer. I look for ways to sculpt space through projection and place the performer inside the image.

“Earlier this year I worked with Wojciech Pisareck (see RT 52) and Paul Jennings (both of whom are twins) on the creation of a 3D virtual world that can be projected to create a 3-dimensional playing space and can interact with the live performer. It involved the creation of computer-generated imagery and the testing of these images within the 3-dimensional playing space. We have been able to conduct laboratory experiments within the Flinders University digital studio using full size suspended surfaces and 6 video projectors. We used 3D Studio Max software and applied realtime animation as well as images rendered to video.”

Moore continues, raising the potential of conveying performer subjectivity: “My objective was to develop architectural images moving in real time to give the illusion that the acting space is a reflection of a performer’s point of view as he or she travels through the streets and alleys of a city. The most difficult challenge was to create moving perspectives that match the vanishing points on the multiple projection screens, and relate to the physical movements of the actor. The intention of these visual experiments is to create a doubled perspective that will express the individual spatial awareness of each of the twin actors.

“In a few weeks, I’m embarking on the next stage of the creative development with identical twin performers Brendan and David Rock, identical twin film artists Paul and Tony Jennings, and fraternal twin, digital animator Wojcieck Pisareck.”

Moore and her collaborators have benefited from working at the Australian Performance Laboratory (APL), established at Flinders University in 2001 to formalise the links between the Drama Centre and the independent artists and companies using its research laboratory. APL specialises in creating ‘real time’ solutions for the integration of digital technology into live performance, without overwhelming the visceral with the virtual. The centre is running a symposium on the performer and new technology for the Shanghai Festival as part of Celebrate Australia 2002 in November this year with stelarc, Company in Space, Mary Moore, Wojciech Pisarek, William Yang and Chinese artists.

David Pledger, NYID

For NYID’s latest project, artistic director David Pledger has enjoyed the “liberating experience of writing a script” rather than his more usual practice of creating a scenario of images and actions to be choreographed on the workshop floor. The process has taken some 2 years including a 2 week development workshop courtesy of MTC and script development support from The Studio at the Sydney Opera House (where Pledger hopes the work will be shown in 2003 after its 2002 Melbourne Festival premiere). Inspired by Kafka’s The Trial and contemporary issues of surveillance, a mediatised world and globalisation, Pledger’s script is not an adaptation of Kafka’s novel, rather, he says, it’s a response.

Given his themes, especially a long term preoccupation with surveillance, it’s not surprising that the camera should play a pivotal role in this production, “but as just another theatrical device which is there to communicate, otherwise we wouldn’t use it.” Pledger is emphatic that his use of screened live and pre-recorded images is “neither decorative nor aesthetic.” A bank of small, industrial monitors set low on the stage and a group of larger television monitors above frame the live performance while a large screen/wall to the side reveals large images.

Pledger says that the production is not about performers engaging with their virtual selves. Although they might watch themselves at certain points, and while they have to be aware of their relationship to the screen, this is not something Pledger wants his performers to be conscious of; “it’s something they learn and then forget.” Of the 7 performers, 5 have worked with him before, their impressive shared physical vocabulary was on show in the NYID-Gekidan Kataisha collaboration during Next Wave in May this year. Pledger says that this continuity is vital, and given the limited 4 and half week rehearsal period for K, is vital. Similarly his script for K has the screenplay quality of being very precise about what Pledger needs from his film and sound team in terms of images and duration. When asked about the relationship between script, performance and sound and image, Pledger says that the dialogue cues “aural trademarks”, rather like motifs, that then drop into an accumulating sound bed and subsequently have their visual correlatives revealed on the screens.

Gideon Obarzanek, Chunky Move

Closer, a commission of the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI), is an interactive dance installation created and produced by Chunky Move. It has been previewed at the antistatic dance event at Sydney’s Performance Space in September and will premiere at ACMI in December. Obarzanek writes:

The relationship is reciprocal, with the choreography endlessly modified by the actions of the audience. The audience’s actions are in turn shaped and defined by the installation, which calls upon them to touch, throw or press their bodies against upholstered, torso-size, sensor pads mounted on the walls in the installation space.

Obarzanek sees Closer as a choreographic instrument, an investigative tool, in which “bodies are pushed into a kind of physicality that is especially unusual in a traditional gallery context. They literally impact on the work.”

He describes how he started work on Closer. “This was 2 years ago and it was a slow process. I mapped out the possibilities with Peter Hennessey (Interactive and Visual Design) and worked with the dancer, Nicole Johnston, for 2 weeks in the studio on movement phrases. I had a camera: it was irrelevant to just use the eye. I focused on it moving with or away from the dancer. Most of the movement deals with the collision between a dancer and a surface. I shot a lot of material on video before we started working with Cordelia Beresford. She was using a 16mmm movie camera but we did it on video first and she came up with very good suggestions, what would work and what was practical—a strong influence on determining the menu of possibilities. It was an expensive shoot over 2 days, so we had to know exactly what to do. We worked with a padded wall and a padded floor and shot some of it from above to give the impression of falling, of impossible impacts. It all looks like a wall when you see it in the installation. Actually, you don’t see the wall, but the shock wave is seen in the body in the inky blackness.

“We ended up with a small amount of footage, but there had to be a massive amount of coding—Peter really kicked in—for lots of options and it required huge amounts of RAM. Darrin Verhagin, the composer, was there right from the beginning because the audience also influence the sound. There are 4 tracks running. One track is fixed but the others can be altered by impact with the pads. The testing period showed us how important sound was going to be for the sense of user involvement.”

Part 2 of our survey of new media performance will continue to focus on the issues explored here but will extend to animation and the virtual thespian, telematic performance and the significance of new media communications for collabarations between communities within Australia and internationally.

The artists and companies to be surveyed in Part 2 are Kate Champion, Wojciech Pisarek, Sarah Neville, Samuel James, IGNEOUS, Keith Armstrong and the transmute collective, para//elo, Hill & Nash (ex-Men Who Knew too Much), Cazerine Barry, Tess de Quincey, skadada and others.

See also, Keith Gallasch & Virginia Baxter, “Is any body really there?”, e-volution of new media, Artlink, vol 21 no 3, 2001.

Danielle Micich in Lindsay Vickery’s your sky is filled with billboards of the sky

One of the ways technology works in Western culture is to call attention to itself when new, for at that moment it has no social life. After a period of use most technological artefacts are normalised into everyday life and are no longer seen as technological at all.
Timothy D Dale, Strange Sounds, Music, Technology & Culture, Routledge, 2001

Technology is so interconnected with the production of sound and music it seems as necessary and unconscious as breath. From the earliest instrument-making through to digital recording, a feedback loop involving technological advancement and the pursuit of new sounds has been in constant play. Is the development of technology an artist-driven exploration or does the technology drive us to explore? Has the glut of new digital tools created a sonic lexicon of sameness? Have we missed something along the way? This survey looks at a collection of artists, by no means comprehensive, working with sound in various manifestations, and their relationship to technologies, both new and old.

Sounds/objects/space

In Sound Sculpture (Fine Arts Publishing, 2001, see RT49, p33), Ros Bandt gathers a selection of Australian artists working at the intersection of sound, sculpture and space. Much of the work in sound sculpture does not simply utilise emerging technologies, but is often at the forefront of developing them. Bandt herself developed the SSIIPP (Sound Sculpture Interactive Installation Performance Playback) system in the 80s which allows for 8 track playback triggered by movement sensors and used in Australia and internationally. One of Nigel Helyer’s latest works has seen him in residence at Lake Technology and then UNSW developing the Sonic Landscapes Virtual Audio Reality system—an immersive 3D sound environment using GPS (Global Positioning Satellite system) to create a sonic realm that responds to the positioning of the body within a specific landscape (RT50 p26). Investigating the sonority of electrical energy, Joyce Hinterding has developed the electrostatic sound system which, in combination with her magnificent aerials, can tap into atmospheric emissions and then be sonically manipulated and shaped. There is also the relational sonic/spatial investigations of Michael Graeve. Most recently he curated the Gating exhibition, involving visual and audio explorations of the “gating” technique. Artists like Rodney Berry, Iain Mott, David Haines, Ross Harley, John Drummond, Stelarc and others have also been involved in explorations of sound/object/space and in the adaptation of technology for aesthetic ends.

Lawrence English is a Brisbane-based artist working with sound in many forms. In his recent installation, Poles, at Brisbane Powerhouse during the REV festival, he used what he calls “virtual signification.” He describes the process as “taking virtual elements that represent an environment or area, such as photos, web documents, text and using…those segments of data, converting them via various sound applications …processing them further to create interesting textures and scapes or rhythms of some form…”

These manipulations are then reintroduced to the natural environment. “In some ways, it completes the loop between the digital and the organic, the virtual and the real.” He says that the need to stay portable has made him pare back his equipment and push the boundaries of the technology (laptop and software) to squeeze as much out of it as he can. He believes that one of the key challenges facing sound artists and musicians is “using the technology and driving it, not the reverse. It’s almost too easy to sit down with a few VST plug-ins and a sound editor and create something abstract and electronic sounding…I really feel it’s up to the user to inject some personality and character into the technology.”

Camilla Hannan works primarily in the area of installation and surround sound composition. She was one of the co-producers (along with Nat Bates and Bruce Mowson) of Liquid Architecture 3 in Melbourne this year (see RT50) which incorporated various modes of sound art—installations, a surround sound concert, live electronic music events, audio visual screenings and presentations with an emphasis on the investigation of ideas. Hannan states that “for many people concepts and ideas can be a lot more difficult to express than technical formulas. As a result, many sound practitioners hide behind technology in explaining their work. We wanted to encourage artists to look beyond the technical interface.” Her interests lie in “ideas of space both conceptually and compositionally” and her installation works use both ‘authentic’ sonic spatialisation (environmental recording using DAT and binaural microphones) and processed spatial structures, the finished product often ending up on DVD format. She sees collaboration and a sense of community, as can be found in the ((tRansMIT)) sound collective, as vital to the development of her work.

Phillip Samartzis is a sound artist, lecturer at RMIT and, recently, curator of Variable Resistance—10 hours of sound from Australia, an exhibition of Australian sound art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He sees the spatialisation of sound made possible by 5.1 DVD surround sound as a real development and challenge to sound art today. Artists have been working with customised versions of surround sound for the last 20 years, but the increasing availability of 5.1 technology has “allowed sound artists to stop just thinking in stereo and think more about how they can choreograph space with sound. It’s such an under explored area…considering that we’ve been listening to stereo for 40 or 50 years. What does it mean, those couple of speakers at the rear and that speaker at the front? We’re all discovering new ways of exploring, remixing balancing sonic gestures in space.”

Samartzis sees the greatest challenge to sound art is to make these explorations accessible to a wider audience. For him these adventures in surround sound are “one way of extending the cinematic experience by removing the image but still having that immersive, tactile…sonic experience.” In his own work he tends to invest time and money in the “transducer that’s at the coalface of the sonic phenomena”—the microphone—making environmental recordings that, through simple editing techniques and surround sound technology, can create “sophisticated renderings of environments and real spaces” and “hyperreal experiences.”

Julian Knowles, sound artist and lecturer in electronic music at University of Western Sydney sees that the recent affordability of 5.1 surround sound technology for both production and distribution provides the opportunity for artists who have already been working in surround sound to finally distribute their work for domestic listening. An international DVD release through Extreme Records of his spatial sound explorations is in the pipeline.

Sounds/visions/bodies

Andrée Greenwell is a composer who explores the area of music/sound and video/film. With her 1997 work The Medusa Head she worked with animator Paul Butler to make a richly textured episodic aria for video. Writing the score specifically for the video production, she was interested in fighting the “exploitative way” in which music is used in traditional screen narrative. Her desire is “to use music, and/or sound design to drive narrative. Or to have a very strong narrative input.” Recently she adapted her hour-long live performance Laquiem (libretto by Kathleen Mary Fallon) to a 6 minute film. With sound design by Scott Horscroft and mixed for Dolby stereo by Julian Knowles, this work achieves a stunning fusion of vision, music and sound design including an exquisite underwater sequence.

Greenwell says that she writes music in a “timbral way” leaving space for other elements and subverting the hierarchies so that “the music is working very much as sound design—the sound design and the music are equal.” Her approach to technology is matter of fact. “In a certain kind of territory it’s inevitable that there will be certain amounts of technology. I think you can hardly avoid it…I start with a concept and then figure out the best way to realise it.” Her next work takes her back to performance with a semi-documentary music theatre work, Dreaming Transportation, which will involve projections.

WA artist Lindsay Vickery has also been investigating the fusions and interactions of sound, video and body. He has been exploring the Yamaha Miburi Midi jumpsuit and its interplay with STEIM’s Image/ine software. The suit consists of flex sensors on the limbs, pressure sensor shoe inserts and handgrips. Vickery’s system has several triggering configurations, but basically uses Max/MSP (a software system for the patching together of other software components) to trigger sounds. The Image/ine software manipulates video footage in realtime, incorporating both prerecorded data and live feeds. In your sky is filled with billboards of the sky, developed for the REV festival, a dancer could manipulate both audio and video elements. Vickery has also used his system in skadada’s dance work Scan (2002) with images supplied by Tissue Culture and Art (Oron Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary), audio samples by John Patterson with the choreography of John Burtt and Katie Lavers.

The integration of video and sound in realtime is also the preoccupation of Tesseract Research Laboratories, producers of Video Combustion, a large scale collaboration between VJs, sound artists and performers to create an immersive, improvisational multimedia environment. (RT50). Tesseract refer to the feedback loop of technology and artistic exploration: “We are investigating our areas of interest [live group performance and video jamming] whilst developing and exploring the technology to do so, which actually further develops our knowledge of the artistic preoccupations.” They have developed a network of hardware including “obsolete broadcast video matrix switchers and modified video mixers” and software which includes “group communication tools for developers and performers, and routing tools for live distribution of video and audio.”

The development of of the Max/MSP environment which Knowles describes as “a programming environment which allows the user to build instruments for processing audio, video and MIDI signals” along with other software such as nato 0.55+ and Jitter has allowed “image processing [to] be intimately connected to the audio processing by data flows from one to the other.” This can be seen in the work of Wade Marynowsky aka Spanky and also lalila.net who explored the live video/sound/performance matrix in Cycling Hildegarde as part of their residency at Performance Space in August this year. Knowles also sees the use of gaming tools—“using environments designed for games authoring and hacking them to make real time instruments”—as another avenue for development.

In the area of sound design in performance, one of the most innovative artists is Garry Bradbury. His sound scores for works such as Nikki Heywood’s Burn Sonata and Inland Sea seem to exist in their own space and yet also intersect, drive and support the performance. Most recently his massive and monstrous sound design for Benjamin Winspear’s Macbeth (Sydney Theatre Company) was for me the core of the work.

Bradbury says, “Though I have a love/hate relationship happening with my PC (or rather a kind of nauseating co-dependence), I find myself increasingly drawn to older technologies (I always have), player piano (new work in progress), turntables (ongoing Sanity Clause project with Ian Andrews), percussion (I feel like hitting something), and voice (I’m singing again after 15 years, as well as doing lots of text cut up).” Bradbury uses styles and technologies developed for live ‘pure’ audio to create interactive or relational sound scores for performance. Other sound artists working with performance are Liberty Kerr and Barbara Clare (magnusmusic), Darrin Verhagen and Boo Chapple. Tasmania-based sound designer Chapple, who is presently working on is theatre ltd’s White Trash Medium Rare, says of the feedback loop between technology and artistic concept: “New technologies in sound allow an exploration of sonic elements that do not exist outside of these technologies, thus, determining the world within which concepts, ideas and preoccupations can develop.”

Sounds and…well, sound

Mitchell Whitelaw calls it “inframedia audio”, a new zone in media space where sound is a “media artefact.” It is the manipulation of emissions of electronic signals—sometimes digital in origin but not always—actively avoiding “content” and leaning towards processes and improvisation. (Whitelaw, “Inframedia Audio”, ArtLink Vo1 21#3, 2001). In Sydney this kind of thinking is exemplified by impermanent.audio. Caleb K, producer of impermament. audio’s monthly evening of experimental audio moments defines it by what it’s not: “not beats…not background music…not dance music…it’s not multimedia…not narrative. It’s not very often loud.” The performance of this form creates “a sound object rather than a physical object—but the sound is physical itself—so we’ve still got a physicality going on, but instead of 100% relying on our eyes we let our ears to do it.”

Many artists are using computer-based digital technologies, like d.Haines, Vicki Browne, and Ai Yamamoto, but many others are resisting the upgrade trajectory or they’re rediscovering older technologies. Jasmine Guffond, half of Minit with Torben Tilly, has been led into sound art by her desire to explore “less conventional or traditional musical forms, structures, sounds and instrumentation. Our music-making process has involved a very limited range of technologies over the last 5 years which has allowed us to focus on certain ideas and musical forms without getting too distracted by new technology for technology’s sake.” Using a sampler, mixing desk and FX pedals, Minit create beautiful undulating soundscapes that incrementally shift through textures and spatial orientations. At the extreme end of the scale is Peter Blamey who requires only a mixing desk which he patches so it generates the sound he then sculpts. Philip Samartzis suggests that artists are rediscovering and reconfiguring these technologies “because of a different perceptual process, a different way of listening” that has developed from our new media immersions.

This trend is also apparent at Small Black Box, a monthly sound event that takes place at Metro Arts in Brisbane. Greg Jenkins, sound artist in endophonic and one of the organisers of the event (along with Andrew Kettle and Scott Sinclair) says: “There’s a sort of hand-tooled aesthetic behind SBB, a lot of it’s down and dirty.” But there is also a mix between the use of older and cutting edge technology. On the same evening in June they had Liv Bennett who used 1/4 inch tape machines playing loops of varying lengths, some reaching into the audience, and then Adam Donovan who used hi-quality audio output devices and the German made visual tracking software eyecon to control the audio. Jenkins says of his own methodology “I deliberately limit what I use…because I simply don’t have enough time to learn everything that is out there and learn it to such an extent that I can be usefully creative with it.” Jenkins sees that, between Small Black Box and Lawrence English’s regular sound event fabrique at the Brisbane Powerhouse, the sound scene is thriving in Brisbane.

Sending sounds

Primarily, this survey has been about the influence of new media technology on the production of sound and music. Delivery and distribution have also been incredibly influenced by new media developments. MP3 technologies and streaming have revolutionised the global distribution of audio art and created communities across virtual borders. www.laudible.net and radioqualia have made Australian sound art available to a global community. South Australian artist eyespine has a complete net-based approach ranging from methods of delivery, streaming MP3s and access to hardcopy ordering, to the creation of a Shockwave-based interactive online mixing system (and he is one of many taking this approach). And of course traditional radio, such as ABC’s The Listening Room cannot be ignored as an important supporter, commissioner and disseminator of new media-based audio arts, supporting the likes of Colin Black, Sophea Lerner and Robert Iolini.

When I commenced the research for this article, I unwittingly set up a determinism/voluntarism polarity which, as with most dichotomies, has proven itself too inflexible to be of value. The reality is that people will continue to hunt for their sonic substances in the areas that are available to them, some old, some new. Perhaps it is best to approach new media with Heidegger’s view of technology—“not as a tool or machine, but rather a process, a dynamic of ‘revealing’.” The older media supply the foundations for the new and the new creates perceptual shifts and ways of reconfiguring the old. And the loop goes on…

Gail Priest is a sound designer for performance. In 2001/2 she was artist in residence at ABC Radio Performance & Features creating Music Theatre for Radio.

A recent submission states, “The use of new technology by artists and audiences causes a reconsideration of the nature and meaning of art, and opens the way for new interpretations and expressions of art, just as the technological advances in art practice have in the past” (Report of the Contemporary Visual Arts and Craft Inquiry, 2002)

The relationship between new media and visual arts is a multifarious one, possessing qualities of cause and effect. Progression and expansion in one field unfurls fallback and rejoinder in the other. The subject matter of much contemporary art work (including but not necessarily confined to new media work) is the developing ‘new’ technology itself (extending into computer science). The processes of formulation are not detached, rather they are integral elements, both in the making of the work and in the thematic concerns; these are not self-contained processes. The definitions themselves are fraught: new media—where the technologies are often no longer new (or progress to the uninitiated may seem slow); and visual arts—where an installation may include sound or video footage, and/or interactivity and, regardless, installation is arguably as much about the spatial experience as the visual one. The lines are blurred and the definitions ‘do the job’ in that they indicate the genre of practice we may expect, although they in no sense comprehensively define the extent of the works within these adapting fields. There is a tension between these terms, agreed upon within the communities involved, by a common ‘ease of use’ consensus.

Art practice per se is not easily separated out from the political, social, economic and cultural concerns of our time. The canon of visual arts evolves further than fine or visual arts and its intersection with developing technologies and the affects of our immersion within them produces a non-singular mode of art production. Art does not take place within a rarefied, isolated environment and many artists respond to living in the so-called information age by discussing the very information accessed. As artists we are immersed within and cannot readily differentiate ourselves from the effects of globalization, anti-globalization, cultural, social, ethical and political enquiry, world events or scientific development to make some kind of pure statement.

Bill Seamans’ Hybrid Invention Generator (currently on exhibition at Te Papa Museum, Wellington, New Zealand) “conveys its own fields of meaning through 3D models, texts and digital audio. Varying combinations of these fields of meaning are experienced through direct interaction with the system. Each participant will potentially have a different experience of this open work. The work provides an environment for rich associative and contemplative activity surrounding the notion of invention”. (Bill Seaman, “The Hybrid Invention Generator—Assorted Relations”, unpublished paper, 2002). Such a work sits within the field of critical technical practice, extending 3 categories of practice and research: computer science, new media, and visual arts.

Susan Hiller’s Witness, exhibited at the 2002 Biennale of Sydney, uses the internet as one of the means of gathering stories on UFO sightings and encounters. This installation goes beyond sound, narrative, content and the technology that made and operates it. The pulling together of this international delegation of voices and languages seems timely in an age where geographical location no longer precludes communication, and internet applications actively augment intimate conversation as the norm.

The permission to explore animation characters, to build one’s own, to delve into ‘cute’, to create whole other worlds/complete logic systems/systems of abstract meaning is a developing articulation of this field. Witness The Augees, (augee: (n) augmenting organism), a simple life form with emotional capabilities. ‘Playing god’ by controlling their emotions, the user can create differing levels of ‘happy or sad’ and ‘intellectual or strong’ for these abstract animated organisms/characters. (A group work for stuff-art by Minty Hunter, Rebekah Far, Charlie McKenzie and Michael Pearce; www.abc.net.au/arts/stuff-art/augees/default.html [link expired])

Philippe Parreno’s character ‘AnnLee’, takes the plight of the anime where the Patricia Piccinini and Peter Hennessy Lump CD goes, looking for who they are, the essential human condition (amongst many diverse outcomes and thematics). Parreno also collaborates, passing the character around and works between film, documentary, fantasy narration, video, and digital animation. Piccinini debates stem-cell replacement therapies, and raises important questions around evolutionary and genetic modification.

Visual art practice has embraced new technologies, political agendas and expanded cultural practices and evolved to a broad polemic of issues. The complex topography of the new global community lends a multidisciplinary direction through which artistic practices and processes come alive outside of the pre-determined institutional domain of westernism, or those situated solely in the sphere of artistic canons. Artistic, social and political theories and practices intersect. The technology provides the tools for extending this natural relation.

Documenta11, 2002, Kassel, Germany responded to contemporary cultural political and social themes via a visual discussion with conceptually persuasive art works. Engulfed in the smell of coffee grounds, I walk past 5 screens of white rubbish bobbing in clear blue water, wander amongst rolls on racks, clumps in boxes of deep dark browns and blacks, journey through dykes and parks, and watch 7 hour stretches of film—all of which proved to be a dynamic and rewarding challenge to attentiveness.

Also at Documenta11, David Small’s The Illuminated Manuscript combined graceful motion of spatialized language as a graphic element on the screen/page, with absorbing content and tactility in a stylish interactive installation. Both animated discussion and actual interaction occurred around this work. The mechanisms of the sensors were clearly visible and there was a real sense of delight in discovering the playfulness of the interaction, as well as the possibility of extending the format of the book and the way we read/interact with text.

Projected typography is virtually printed into the blank pages with a video projector. Sensors embedded in the pages tell the computer as the pages are turned. In addition, sonar sensors allow visitors to run their hands over and to disrupt, combine and manipulate the text on each page. The book begins with an essay on the four freedoms—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear and freedom from want. Each page explores a different text on the topic of freedom. www.davidsmall.com

Igloolik Isuma Productions’ Nunavut|Our Land was shown continuously as a 13-screen installation. A work that crosses conventional boundaries of digital film making, its displays of the activities of daily life—husky-driven sledge journeys, fishing, skinning dead dogs, cooking and the conversations that occur throughout—make compelling viewing.

“We are Inuit storytellers in a 4000 year-old oral tradition,” says Zacharias Kunuk, producer-director and president of the Isuma collective. “In our time we have new technologies so it’s our job to adapt digital filmmaking to continue our elders’ tradition of passing on information to future Inuit from one generation to the next. It’s a bonus when the rest of the world sees our work and appreciates our Inuit point of view.” (www.isuma.ca/about_us/index.html [link expired] and “live from the tundra”, streaming from a remote outpost on Baffin Island).

There are many frictions within the production of new media work. For net.art (with a trickle through effect for CD and/or HD outputs) the lessening of the interactive experience compounded by the inability to standardize expectations for delivery platforms initiated by the browser wars, has made a huge impact on output potentials. Alongside this is a frustration in dealing with the fallacy of the non-linear and interactive experience, of which any relatively competent programmer (and user) is all too painfully aware. In turn, the hype/desire for infinite possible outcomes proves a driving force towards more complex programming methodologies, AI models, discussions, critiques and production. It demands implementation of highly technical and complex structures/languages (which alter one’s mode of thinking and being in the world), to ensure ‘truly’ interactive outcomes within stated confines. A problem for the end-user within this propulsion is a misunderstanding of the level of sophistication required for implementation of these processes in the ‘real’ (and the enormous expenditure of time required). There is a ‘so-what’ attitude from a jaded audience bombarded by constant exposure to mainstream big-screen simulations of popularized futuristic narratives (made with enormous resources at hand).

A further struggle for new media work (and once again particularly net.art, with a seeping throughout) is its habitat, located side by side with an excess of software-driven dross, to which audiences become habituated and come to expect. ‘Mastery’ of the software ad nauseum is the resident context. Despite, or in stark contrast to these ‘blimps’, there is a refreshingly large amount of exciting and dynamic work being produced by artists, across many more areas including tactical media activism (TILT and Borderpanic), gaming paradigms, sound, sensor-based installation and performance works, with most being available (or referenced) on-line.

Another example of a refreshingly playful work currently in exhibition at Te Papa Museum, Wellington, NZ is Sean Kerr’s binney project. Starting with an iconic painting by the New Zealand artist Don Binney, Pacific Frigate Bird, Kerr has “generated a 7 screen interactive work that the audience will activate either through the internet or by mobile phone. The bird can be made to soar across the row of screens in the exhibition, move through 3-dimensional space, and perform in ‘flocks’ through commands from internet users from around the globe.” ( www.tepapa.govt.nz/BINNEY_PROJECT.htm)

Two recent shows at the Centre for Contemporary Photography explored the way time and space are constructed and mediated by photography and video. Daniel Crooks’ Time Slice, an extensive instalment of video and print works, challenged the traditional logic of the photographic still and the video sequence, blurring both the enclosed frame and the succession of multiple frames. The momentary pause of the photo is widened and the continuity of the video is disrupted, edited, literally making more or less time, more or less space.
Crooks’ digital printouts Train No.1 & 2 rework an understanding of landscape. Over 3 metres across, they show time-lapse collapsing into elongated stills that scan multiple zones along railway lines. They are panoramas, but of varying speeds recording the push and pull of the city. A stationary camera is put in opposition to a tracking one. Static No. 1 is a more psychedelic spread. Against a warped backdrop of horizontal lines and jammed magazines and posters stand people, vertical, just recognisable. There are bodies as waves, bodies carrying the extent of their journey within their own skin, and bodies as modulating blobs. Figure and ground seem to rush across each other in separate directions. In the video Static No. 5 there is a similar frenetic quality, in this case a photograph becomes animated, a violent cutting and pasting constitutes movement. Crooks creates a kaleidoscope or rather the scope to collide.

This transfers vertically well with works like Elevator No. 1, one of the most abstracted works, depicting a graphic falling, the apparent velocity turning an elevator shaft to flowing ribbons. In Elevator No.3 a whole building is morphed, levels contract, storeys expand. Even architecture is subjected to a radical ride. Elevator No.4 has the most ‘special effect’ though, where a lift door becomes a liquid peeling, the metal door unzipping itself to allow fluid, drunken figures to enter and exit.

The theme of motion in art was vigorously pursued early last century by the avant-garde, whether it was Duchamp’s descendent Nude, the Italian Futurist Balla’s attempts in paint or El Lizzitsky’s early photomontages. Crooks’ work in part carries this kind of energy, what Paul Virilio would call kinematic‚ as people and vehicles begin to flare, shunt, refract, becoming unhinged at the intersection of time and space. Crooks puts forth a poetics of public transport, using tramcars and train carriages, perfect units to play with at the junction of time and space. The artist’s work has a scientific methodology, the various videos and prints the outcome of invention. The data is both evidence of process and finalised works, thus they travel well.

If Crooks’ work is experimental then Jo Scicluna’s is experiential. A more packaged, measured and scaled work, the viewer encounters Scicluna’s timespace 04: timelapse 2002 behind a black curtain, a darkened room lending the work a more intimate, even cinematic reception. All is silent. Both artists at the CCP choosing to deal with time and space in purely visual terms with an absence of sound. Perhaps because the sonic would allow the viewer to ascertain another sense of time, a tempo or rhythm.

Scicluna’s work is in triptych with a single projection divided into equal frames, side by side. The first screen on the left shows a clock, cropped to hang above an undisclosed space. It is LCD perhaps, more digital than analogue yet it flickers, counts illegibly. Not counting down but away. The middle screen shows an entrance to a busy building, a revolving doorway, with suits coming and going, a security camera angle on fast forward. Or an escalator, its metal steps producing a dizzying, blurred optical effect. Or a lift with its floor by floor sequence. These are mechanised, automated yet unreliable vehicles. The final screen shows the face of a clock tower, a Warhol-like fixed shot in slow motion. An almost blank countenance: is it moving at all? The clock format of hours: minutes: seconds is echoed in the screen layout of real time: fast forward: slow motion. The viewer confronted with 3 different representations of time simultaneously is made to feel anxiety: panic: boredom. The work challenges the viewer’s sense of time and how it is shaped.

The work asks questions, positing an ever-increasing corporate time (time is money) against an outdated and outmoded State/Municipal time with an individual’s personal time being caught between the two. Vito Acconci, witnessing this paradigm shift, noted, “There was no need anymore for time to be installed on the street; no need for time to be set in place where you happened by, when all the while you were on your own time. Public time was dead; there wasn’t time anymore for public space; public space was the next to go” (“Public Space in a Private Time”, WJT Mitchell ed., Art and The Public Sphere, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London,1990).

As an act of resistance and an adjunct of this, the last instalment of the timespace series by Scicluna, was her use of a still from the digitised clock made into stickers and applied to street surfaces in Melbourne and Vienna. These were then re-photographed. The stickers challenge the specifics of site as it were, they are ‘stuck’ in time in various places, proposing the artwork could possibly exist ‘anywhere’ but not at ‘anytime’.

Both Crooks and Scicluna use interventionist strategies in their art (posed, timely) being directly reinserted into life’s flow (chaotic, unconscious). And real time and real world variables are bought to bear in the so often atemporal assertion of gallery space offering some exciting and stimulating alternatives, both paused and at high speed.

Daniel Crooks‚ Time Slice, Jo Scicluna timespace 04: timelapse 2002, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne June 14-July 6.

Digital technologies and new forms of media delivery are dramatically changing the nature of documentary production, form and distribution. The audience can be a correspondent or a participant, not only a viewer. Digidocs

It eats technology

The cinema is a great cultural survivor. Whenever a technological threat has appeared which might diminish the grip movies have on the consciousness and hip pockets of their audience, the industry has taken advantage and turned into a parody of its own flesh-eating monsters, absorbed the new technology, gaining enrichment in presentation, audience attraction and ultimately, a new lease of commercial life.

This has happened because cinema has a fetish for gadgets and processes. Its history is littered with examples, some more successful than others, of using new technologies to create greater appeal.

The history of these special effects starts in 1902 with George Méliès’ A Trip To The Moon. His films created the legacy of the marvellous or fantastical which cinema has never relinquished. There is arguably a direct history from Méliès to the digital artists of the current cinema, both in the look of the image and its effect on the structure of narrative. The science fiction genre was born with Méliès, but the impact of digital technology goes far beyond the depiction of the scientifically wondrous. It is now, as films like Mullholland Drive, Timecode, Memento and others attest, a presence in all genres of storytelling and film forms.

After an initial panic, the cinema also successfully made a series of accommodations in response to its biggest threat, television. This has meant film and TV companies have absorbed each others archives, turned TV shows into movies and the reverse. The novelty of open-air screenings continues to be popular around the world despite being the antitheses of the passive darkened room. Even the width of film stock has expanded and shrunk in response to the handiness of the technology which uses it. No matter what size the camera, the process of constructing stories and recreating projected realities has continued unabated.

The digital is yet another cross-roads for the film industry. This time, some say, the issues are truly different because there has never been anything as fundamentally ‘new.’

Broadly speaking, there are 3 schools of thought on this: one is that digital technology is primarily an enhancer of effects, a tool which offers heightened presentation; the second says that digital is another dimension altogether where not only the look but the very structure of story and audience/subject relationship is fundamentally changed; the third is what might be called a whole-of-industry approach, embracing both the look and the structure of film.

Digital is now the norm across all media. Everything is on-line or else it appears to belong to yesterday. Increasingly, television shows and many films have a website, a chat room and on-line products for sale. This is being extended to include additional story involvement, as in the multiplatform TV series Fat Cow Motel (RT 50), formally launched this week by the Queensland Minister for the Arts, Matt Foley.

The look of it

For the general audience the impact of digital technology is in the effects— bigger, cleverer and ever-present. Two examples define the early boundaries. Remember the look of the screen in Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books (1991) when he experimented with the digital density of the image. The film had layers of beautiful, elegant images which were more like lithographs than moving screens, whose purpose was to elaborate rather than drive a story forward. Greenaway is a director who believes in the centrality of the image and has no interest in cinema’s link to classical literary narrative.

In the same year, writer/director James Cameron in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) used digital effects to enhance story, permitting concepts such as the resurrection of a character from shattered pieces of chrome, a digital character who never dies because the bytes are smoothly re-arranged in the way cartoon characters emerge unscathed from explosions.

It is clear that the magic or spectacle of cinema will be further dramatically enhanced by digital technology. Ironically, this may bring about a return to the origins of cinema, to the place where the wonder is there for all to experience. This is an important issue for all those who make and critique films. The audience no longer runs from the theatre when the train comes into the station. We have seen so much that so much more needs to be on the screen to get us to react with anything like the innocence of early film audiences.

This does not apply to today’s children, however, who now encounter the digital experience literally pre-birth. It is not something they have to learn, or use as a replacement for an older analogue way of thinking. This will fundamentally affect the development of their imaginations and their creative acceptance of the image experience on a variety of screens. Digital says films today should be effects perfect, like Lord of the Rings or Babe. Children now watch Walking With Dinosaurs (2000) on TV (a program which is generations better that Jurassic Park (1993) in terms of the quality of its effects). The ‘spectacle’ of Spielberg has become ‘infotainment’ on the small screen for all ages, and the voice-over gives the program an added educational authority which no parent can refuse. It is likely that applications like this explaining the complexities of science or ecology for example, will be as important for the digital presence as its use in classical storytelling on the big screen.

Download it now

There are assumptions in the digital sector which have to do with the fetish of the new. Our equipment, and therefore the depth of our experience, is either cutting edge or out of date. You have Flash to access an on-line program or not. If not, then the viewer has a sense of being disenfranchised. The new dimensions of wealth and poverty in the digital age are very much about access to technology and the information which flows from it. Ideas now seem to be contained within the digital flow. It’s not human thought but electricity which is the platform.

This will change with some speed. Whilst it seems an absurdly wasteful use of technology to buy a bottle of Coca Cola with a mobile phone, the recent inclusion of digital camera capacity in mobile phones which can then email images directly is ground-breaking.

Convergence automatically creates access which would otherwise be difficult or expensive to acquire. This will dramatically affect the capacity of program makers and storytellers to be viable in the new age. Development and production funding, along with the financial edifices which have grown up around them, will be competing soon with more practical needs like equipment acquisition and training.

Digital technology has also had a profound effect on the sequence of production. What has been established as a set of roles for 100 years is now reversed. Editors are now involved in pre-production and designers in post-production, cinematographers too. This has forced a new flexibility onto the process of producing films which will change the way creativity connects to narrative structure and presentation.

How big is my story?

Stories have always been the engines of spectacle and the basic rule of story construction since the origins of narrative cinema has been containment and simplicity. However, the potential branches of film stories have usually been denied in favour of a focussed narrative of no more than 2 lines, ie a major thread plus a sub-plot.

This structure has dominated cinema largely because the audience was passive, receiving the text in a darkened room. The situation of cinema determined that essential relationship. For a director like Hitchcock this meant he could give the audience information (by showing who is hiding behind the door with a knife), send the character to their inevitable death and leave the impotent audience whispering, “Watch out, Watch out!” to an unresponsive screen.

The interactive possibilities of digital technology suggest other relationships between story and audience, removing the sense of being informed yet powerless. Dave Sag of Virtual Artists suggests ‘yellavision’ where the audience alters the fate of a character by shouting at the screen. Writers in particular need to consider what this might mean for their carefully constructed storylines.

One such opportunity will soon be provided by the Digital Media Fund of the South Australian Film Corporation (www.safilm.com.au) who are proposing a digital think tank next year—a week’s retreat where change and chance (multiplatform and interactivity) can be explored. This is a welcome opportunity especially for writers who rarely travel the whole length of a production as true collaborators. If that bridge is crossed then “Once upon a time” might translate into “Sometimes it goes like this…”

For SAFC, allowing filmmakers to join forces with professionals working in digital media in the hothouse of a creative retreat, builds on the accords already negotiated with ABC On-line and SBS New Media which are intended to produce a range of projects including animation, on-line documentaries (see, for example, A Year on the Wing, on-line documentary, www.abc.net.au/wing) and short fiction. It is not certain, however, if these projects will be for the large screen or smaller ones such as TV or computer where they will be competing for audience attention with interactive game shows and T-commerce facilities. Nevertheless, these initiatives suggest all kinds of interesting possibilities.

Meanwhile, AFTRS (Australian Film Television & Radio School) is developing digital technologies specifically as tools for special effects in films. Exploring the plasticity of the image through digital effects is part of the drive behind the best experimental short films, where the compression of time and image makes the wondrous especially effective. Physical TV’s ATOM award-winning short dance film, No Surrender is a good example (www.artmedia.com.au/ physical_tv.htm). Director Richard Allen calls it “a digital age story” where the camera (cinematographer Andrew Commis, editor Karen Pearlman) is a malevolent presence on screen, forcing the audience to question the intention of the technology used to construct the narrative. This too is a form of interactivity, but more subtle and ultimately intelligent. No Surrender points the way to the possibilities that abound when collaboration occurs across forms and new technologies are integrated into the totality of the vision.

Opening quotation from Cutting Truths: Convergence, Interactivity & the future of documentary. Digidocs, www.reangle.com.au/digidocs

It’s curious how often a bunch of film finalists can display striking thematic similarities although stylistically they work in very different ways. Without having access to the rest of the short animation field for these awards it’s hard to tell if you’ve witnessed a trend or a manifestation of the unconscious desires of the judges who made the final selection. Whatever, these films shared as their subject the evocation of childhood subjectivity—whether recollected, in first or third person, intimately or ironically—with some very interesting visual outcomes.

Into the Dark (6 minutes; also short-listed for this year’s Dendy Awards) is a brief moment-of-death reverie strung tautly between the poles of guilt (a boy shoots a bird in a huge backyard tree) and pleasure (the boy’s imagined moments of naked flight, lifting off from a pool of water on a bathroom floor). The shooting of the bird has a furtive quality, mostly done in a detached, objectifying silhouette, while the sustained bathroom scene has a pronounced sense of interiority. It commences from the boy’s point of view with the sharp black and yellow of the bathroom seen through watery distortion, one of the best graphic moments of the film. This subjectivity, reinforced by first person narration, alternates with another identification strategy as we find ourselves face to face with the boy, leisurely and sensually towelling himself dry, or about to float up. The firmness of line in the bathroom scenes contrasts with the smudged charcoal rawness of the journey to death on a hospital gurney, our only point of view that of the dying man. The operating theatre staff are giant silhouetted birds, there is a stoush with a dog. In the bathroom, the boy flies, but the dog and birds fight outside and a small bird, like the one the boy shot, flails and thumps like a giant against the window. The oscilloscope beep of life drains away into a sustained signal of death. The frame is filled with the same deep sepia photograph of a boy we encountered eye to eye as the film opened. The inclusion of the dog aside (a role never firmly established, you feel you might have missed something), Into the Dark is demanding, placing the viewer in an intensely subjective position while feeling at all times that this is someone else’s life. On second viewing I was less than happy with the use of the photograph with its suggestion of biographical reality and of time long past. The animation can stand on its own without this. In terms of manipulation of point of view and the merging of visual styles, Into the Dark manages to be both pleasingly coherent and nightmarish: a common childhood act staying, like original sin, with its perpetrator until death.

The wickedly inventive Sssh… (5 mins), is in no doubt that all human ills are born with us, or at least that’s how it can feel when a baby cries despite every attempt at consolation. This time the view is determinedly adult though that’s a position the film plays with very cleverly. The great thing about Ssssh… is not just its virtuosity and wit, but the framing of its lateral narrative. A baby drawn onto the screen by the filmed hand of the animator cries raucously and endlessly. The animator rapidly provides numerous, hilarious solutions (most playing with cartoon animation transformations) but none is effective—the companionship of another baby briskly sketched in yields 2 screaming kids, all mouths, and brutal erasure of the newcomer. The baby is spun around, the artist’s nib opens the back of the head and we are plunged into baby-world-view. Slick, lively Chuck Jones style animation is suddenly supplanted with aggressive animated stick drawings of all kinds of mayhem, funny and increasingly grim, including a potted history of the attempted genocide of Aborigines (the blood around the base of an Australian flag pole briskly cleaned up in an act of ‘forgetting’). The incision is bandaided and baby calmed. In contrast to reflective, lyrical animations with metaphyiscal musings, it was a pleasure to see an animation with political drive, focussed inventiveness, satirical wit and a vigorous playfulness with its own conventions. The switch to the style of children’s drawings is a bold one that works well, a rough ride from innocence to experience.

Pa (6 mins) starts out innocuously with an actress playing Grandma working her way through her huge collection of photographs, including many of her husband, Pa, while a boy’s voiceover informs us that the grandson never met his grandfather. The animation proper commences with a photograph of Pa’s grave, the site sprouting colourful flowers as the boy recalls his imaginings of what Pa might have been like from the odd bits of information he has gleaned. And it’s then that the film springs to life in its dextrous collaging and creative distortion of largely black and white photographic images that conjure Pa’s fantastic world. While reminiscent of, among others, Terry Gilliam working on Monty Python, director Neil Goodridge’s handling of the collage style is taut, consistent and makes the most of the juxtapositions the form allows while keeping the narration simple—the relative innocence of the words up against the heightened imagery. The boy fuses Pa’s love of chooks with his passion for cricket, and so conjures a cricket match played by Pa and his chooks in cricket gear, chooks watching from the the grandstand, and Pa beheading his team mates as his bat becomes an axe. Similarly a love of fish collecting and walks in the bush merge into a fantastic journey astride a huge fish through a forest. And it gets wilder, and wittier—Pa milking a snake as if it were a cow and spiking a guest’s drink with the poison. Pa, the canary fancier, joining the bird on its swing. Pa dreaming of going to Hawaii, the boy imagining him as surfing a huge wave (a striking scene) until he crashes, falling prey to cancer. We sense behind these astonishing visions a man who enjoyed many rather ordinary passions, but who was also a bit of character, and is sorely missed by the grandson who never knew him, hence the power of family lore and the photograph album. The film’s opening, with the grandmother, and its ending, with the face of the boy popping out of the head of the canary, are cumbersome and twee devices for a film of, otherwise, such drive, threatening to throw off-balance the engaging play of toughness and whimsy. As in Sssh… there was also a nice sense of the film emerging from our own culture.

Strangely, after the delights of familiar graphic forms, the 3D computer animation of Mark Gravas’ Show and Tell (5 mins) seemed almost traditional, so familiar and commercial has the style become. It’s set in a futuro-gothic, out-sized classroom juxtaposed with a richly coloured world of child fantasies, those of a despised boy who collects junk on his way to school and uses it as the subject of his show-and-tell. The rhyming couplet narration (adult, third person) nicely matches the boy’s growing success as he seduces the class (and demolishes his teacher) with a tale of a magical journey to “the mutant bat’s grave”, while producing from his bag mattress springs, roadkill and a one-legged dog called Max. It’s all too easy a journey to success, the teacher is a cliché, the dog under-used, but it has a nice, droll fabulist’s sense of wicked inevitability, expertly realised figures and a marvellously vertiginous play with perspectives.

The 5th contender Dad’s Clock (writer-director Dik Jarman; RT 50, p24) didn’t make it into the final 4. It’s an expertly crafted, melancholic reverie that juxtaposes a simple narrative told by the son of a dying father, with images of the man’s fantasy construction of a fantastic boat. Dad’s Clock is as expertly crafted as any of the above animations and shares not a few similarities in theme.

If these animations are indications of the health of the art, then there is no shortage of really expert craft, seriousness that transcends whimsy and a great capacity to play with psychological and visual point of view. In the end it was the feverish wit, visual inventiveness, lateral narrativity and political edginess of Shhh… that won me.

Into the Dark, writer-director Dennis Tupicoff, producers Fiona Cochrane, Dennis Tupicoff; Shhh…, writer-director Adam Robb, producers Paul Fletcher, Andi Spark; Pa, writer-director Neil Goodridge, producer Andrew McVitty; Show and Tell, director Mark Gravas, writers Bradley Trevor Grieve, Sandra Walters, producer Sandra Walters.

Four films are brought together for an awards ceremony and, inevitably, comparisons are made, similarities emerge, lines are drawn, like is compared with like but also with not alike.

A Wedding in Ramallah and East Timor—Birth of a Nation: Rosa’s Story are the ‘straight’ guys. They tell stories about ordinary people struggling with mundane realities—family, marriage, domestic life—in abnormal circumstances (the Palestinian Territories and East Timor). They like to look at life in the microcosm and see what it says about the bigger picture. There’s a subject who stays in front of the camera and a film-maker who follows them about. They’re revealing, touching, funny at times. They’re careful not to preach while still having something worthwhile to say.

The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinski and Rainbow Bird and Monster Man are the ‘arty’ ones, telling stories of unimaginable pain and personal suffering with great imagination and energy. They like symbols and motifs, re-enactments and dramatisations. Much of the telling is in the cutting and zooming, panning and fading. They are evocative, elliptical, edgy, looking for new ways to say something that can’t always be said easily.

A Wedding in Ramallah (90 minutes) is perhaps the funniest of the bunch but also has the most depressing air of hopelessness, its subjects seemingly trapped by circumstances, leading stifled lives with little possibility of genuine change. Director Sherine Salama has an eye for dry humour, a mildly sardonic appraisal of Life’s big-little ironies, such as the Palestinian bride who longs to be with her husband in America and, sure enough, winds up living in a suburban condo purgatory. Be Careful What You Wish For….! Not that the newlyweds have much of a say in the matter; the groom is only in the US to avoid being in an Israeli prison.

The film works by shifting the focus away from the familiar narratives of bombings and reprisals to show us something positive about Palestinian culture rather than simply viewing it as being ‘not us’. At the same time, it doesn’t try to airbrush the Palestinians into appearing ‘just like us’. It’s clever, cluey and revealing, thanks mainly to an astute decision to film the preamble to and aftermath of an arranged marriage. This is an event totally at odds with Western notions of romantic love but meaningful in its own context. (There are some wonderful scenes of the couple sitting silently together with nothing to say; you can almost hear Sherine Salama thinking out loud as she films, ‘Boy, this is terrific.’ And it is.) The link between ritual as a marker of identity and cultural/national autonomy is never articulated but seems obvious nevertheless.

Rainbow Bird and Monster Man (52 mins) is the grimmest tale of all, a soul-stretching story of child abuse and its consequences, as if somebody has taken all the macabre horror of a fairytale and said, no, really, this is what Life is like. It’s also the most affirmative viewing, a remarkable survival story. It starts with an anecdote about a man, Tony Lock, making music after a murder, in the police van, and then, later on, writing poetry in prison. And somehow that sets the tone, a sense of release suffusing the nightmare. The film’s strength is Tony Lock himself who, apart from a few re-enactments, narrates his own story with incredible clarity and insight. It’s an extraordinary act, not in the sense of a performance but of a deed accomplished, something created and offered to us. The film’s imagery, evoking different stages in Tony’s life, must do justice to his story and, for the most part, it does.

Rosa’s Story (55 mins) is another survivor episode, following the efforts of a young East Timorese mother to collect her children from various places of safe keeping. Rosa’s attempt to reunite her family for the first time is complemented with footage of Xanana Gusmao endeavouring to do likewise with the new nation, like Rosa travelling around the country to collect support and build a new life. It’s tentatively hopeful; the spirit is willing but the odds are not good for a single mother in a poor country.

Paul Cox’s The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinski (95 mins) gave me the best drift for some time, some dreamily dreamy daydreams and sub-conscious streaming. In fact I may even have been asleep for some of the time. It has some fine dancing too and the best performance of L’Apres-midi d’un Faune I’ve ever seen. It’s the only performance of L’Apres-midi d’un Faune I’ve ever seen, but I’m sure it’s very good.

In essence, the film is a visual accompaniment to readings from Nijinski’s diaries tracing his mental disintegration. It’s illustrated with trademark Cox motifs drawn from nature—fire, water, blood—and especially the play of light—shadows, silhouettes, reflections—to create a visual dance characterised by rapid movement, interspersed with a lingering stillness. Above it all there are Nijinski’s ramblings—fevered, obsessive, dogmatic, dismissive, expansive and always the voice—incessant, repetitious, loopily looping the loop, the Artist at odds with Society, childish and narcissistic, seemingly omnipotent but fearful of everything that opposes or diminishes his powers. I’m not sure if I learnt anything about Nijinski in the process but, as a performance, the film succeeds on its own merits.

So that’s it for this year—some madness, a marriage, children lost and found. Do we still have to pick a winner at this point? If so, I’m going for A Wedding in Ramallah simply because it hardly puts a foot wrong and, as Nijinski would no doubt agree, not a lot people can do that.

A Wedding in Ramallah, writer, producer, director, cinematographer Sherine Salama; East Timor—Birth of a Nation: Rosa’s Story, writer, director Luigi Acquisto, cinematographer Valeriu Campan, producers Luigi Acquisto, Stella Zammataro, Andrew Sully; Rainbow Bird and Monster Man, writer, director Dennis K Smith, cinematographer Kevin Anderson, producer John Lewis; The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinski, writer, director Paul Cox, cinematographers Paul Cox, Hans Sonneveld, producers Paul Cox, Aanya Whitehead.

The 14 feature films contending for this year’s Australian Film Industry Award constitute a bumper crop of impressive variety ranging from Ivan Sen’s powerful Beneath Clouds to Phil Noyce’s Rabbit-proof Fence and David Caesar’s Dirty Deeds. The lesser-known category of Short Fiction (under 30 minutes) displays notably less diversity, with the 4 finalists (out of 65 contenders) each playing out variations on a theme: male-angst-on-the-move. Two are set in Melbourne and 2 in Sydney.

Several of the finalist directors are products of film training institutions: Eve of Adha is written and directed by Leonard Yip from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), and follows a young Muslim man (intensely played by Paul Rene) facing a range of tormenting ethical decisions; the only film not to locate its angst within the confines of a modern, luxurious lifestyle. Into the Night, directed by Tony Krawitz from the Australian Film Television and Radio School, purportedly reflects the life of a street rent boy, but the first sweep of saccharine music, the principal casting, and the film’s main location within a sumptuous apartment suggest otherwise. It is unadventurous but slick and technically proficient, bearing the stamp of AFTVRS as an industry training ground, just as the VCA film, Eve of Adha, demonstrates the creativity associated with its art school genesis.

Eve of Adha opens with a quotation: “Everyone begins the morning by trading with his soul; he either wins it or ruins it.” The daily dilemma and existential loneliness of the main character is evoked and enriched through the use of an exceptionally good soundtrack featuring Middle Eastern inflected music composed by Justin Ryda and M. Nasir. Location sounds are withdrawn from the sound mix as Rene’s character prays, at home on his prayer mat or in an empty mosque, creating moments of clarity and suspension of time. While the minimal script is slightly awkward, subtle use of colour and textured surfaces in the interior sequences, and tightly framed shots create a compelling atmosphere, mirroring the protagonist’s mix of calm moments amidst inner turmoil. At times, it is the most visually interesting and provocative of the 4 finalists.

Roundabout, the directorial debut by Rachel Griffiths, also makes creative use of sound design and music (David Bridie is screen composer), and the flair of cinematographer Tristan Milani (The Boys) drives its narrative about an alienated businessman cracking under pressure. The film is cleverly structured and also concerned with the disruption of the flow of time. Roundabout features the protagonist’s car trip—the driver departs for the city from a stark cube in a wealthy suburb and gradually spirals out of control on the freeway in a series of imaginatively conceived and executed shots. But like a polished advertisement it slides over and away, the credits rolling as copiously as a feature film.

The longest of the 4 finalist films, The Host, is shot in chic black and white, its story again played out against luxurious contemporary architecture (which could have inspired the film—it comes to feature as a silent character in the story). Director Nicholas Tomnay (a past graduate of the College of Fine Arts, Sydney) sets up a host of expectations and stereotypes, only to cleverly turn them on their head. This is a film with a great deal of quirky humour, and despite its play upon illusion and decadence, it achieves a sense of veracity, partly though its casting and performances. The Host elegantly realises the potential of the short film medium through its finesse of form, exploiting the dynamic of this medium through skilful and beautifully paced editing. Robert Moss’s music creates a joyful thread throughout, working at times in counterpoint to disturbing events on screen.

The high level of skilful filmmaking in these 4 short films, and the (mostly) welcome integration between sound and image, with the music working as an integral part of the affect rather than a last-minute add-on, are strong indications of the vibrant state of filmaking at the moment, notwithstanding the difficulties associated with distribution and actually reaching audiences. I am left wondering however about the male angst; is this the post-Lantana theme of the early 21st century?

Eve of Adha, writer-director Leonard Yip, producer Chris McGill; Into the Night, director Tony Krawitz, writer Cath Moore, producers Melissa Johnston, Rachel Clements; Roundabout, writer-director Rachel Griffiths, producers Louise Smith, Jason Byrne; The Host, director Nicholas Tomnay, writers Nicholas Tomnay, Krishna Jones. producers Nicholas Tomnay, Alison Clentsmith, Linda Ujuk.

The AFI Awards roll around every so often like a funeral for a distant uncle. Time to take stock and try to find something nice to say about the old bastard. It’s not been a notable year for Aussie movies with domestic box office share sliding back into the 4% range. It is increasingly clear that Australian cinema rests on a star system that has overshot a local production base. The best analogy might be soccer, where fans are more interested in Leeds United than the local league. Forget the ‘telling our stories’ rhetoric—the nationalism Australians draw from the cinema is the nationalism of being acknowledged internationally.

It’s ironic, then, that a lacklustre year has produced one of the best Australian films for a long time. In a just world, Ivan Sen’s Beneath Clouds would walk away with this year’s award. Where most Australian films are formally conservative exercises full of Actors reciting Dialogue, Sen can use silence to build to a powerful emotional experience. It’s a film of enormous courage which doesn’t try to aestheticise pain or set it into a comfortably discredited past. It stands out as a film which successfully asks you to feel something.

If Beneath Clouds has been the major achievement in our cinema’s recovery of the courage to deal with Indigenous stories, Rabbit-proof Fence has been the popular success and will probably start favourite for Best Film. It’s a film with some fine moments whose importance is in telling us what we should already know about the Stolen Generations. While the emphasis on the strength of young Aboriginal women is a timely intervention, the film falls back on the comforting convention of racism as outmoded bureaucratic insensitivity. Rolf de Heer’s The Tracker situates racism as melodramatic villainy, though it does this to grapple with the problems of making our ugly history into aesthetically pleasing art.

Paul Goldman’s Australian Rules is another matter. It appears to have survived the bad odour caused by lack of consultation with the Indigenous community and is now draping itself in the mantle of liberal politics. All this for a collection of clichés: the regressive male hero of Black Rock (and a hundred other Aussie films); and the country town as hell. Although it’s about standing up to your father, its drama is built around the paternalistic assumption that the courage of white liberals is what’s important.

It’s all very well having aesthetic victories around the margins, but a healthy film industry needs a sniff of the multiplexes. Three films have had wide commercial release this year: The Man Who Sued God opened on 233 screens, Dirty Deeds on 183, and The Hard Word on 162. Rabbit -proof Fence was the closest thing to a crossover hit opening on 95 screens and then holding around 50 screens through a 5 month roll-out.

David Caesar’s got Kerry Packer’s money and Broynbrown in Dirty Deeds and yuz can all get stuffed if you don’t like it. You’ve got to admit that the money’s on the screen. Every shot is brutally art directed, every line of dialogue polished to a state of rough perfection. Each image strives to be a fragment of cultural DNA from which you could reconstruct the entire zeitgeist of late-60s Australia.

Alex Proyas has got Rupert Murdoch’s money in Garage Days. I suppose it’s this year’s Moulin Rouge, given that it proposes the triumph of visual bombast over quaint pre-postmodern conceits like characterisation. The musical has become the quintessential genre for these self-consciously flashy films. The puzzling innovation here is that although the film appears to champion the cause of live music, all the music is non-diegetic. Being a musician is a hip fantasy, not a matter of performance.

As its title indicates, The Hard Word grows out of the sharpness of its dialogue. There’s Guy, Rachel, and a caper which provides the pretext for hardboiled bon mots, though the wheels fall off during the third act. After seeing Claudia Karvan struggle to be a femme fatale last year in Risk, and Rachel Griffiths defeated by the same task here, I’m wondering whether we’ve got the dark relish of treachery within us. Our politics suggests that the evil in this country is much more banal.

The Man Who Sued God (Mark Joffe) is the kind of compromised, dishonest crap that gives commercial filmmaking a bad name. The impulse to populism manifests itself in over-produced music, helicopter shots, the kind of blue heelers you see in TV commercials, and the kind of Billy Connolly you also see in TV commercials. The film tries to kid you that it’s got something to say until the whole pile of shit finally caves in on itself and the only way out is to sell us the old one that love conquers all, even insurance companies. Tell it to your agent, Billy.

Back over in the art cinema margins, theatrical influences still hold sway. Tony Ayres’ Walking On Water is this year’s Soft Fruit, a film conceived in terms of individual scenes, each leading to its chunky moment of confrontation. The problem is that you get confrontation after confrontation right up to the moment when there has be to Resolution, which has to come out of nowhere. (Russell Mulcahy’s Swimming Upstream hasn’t been available for preview, but I fear we are in for a similar bout of Performance.)

Where Garage Days is hip that the surface is all, Till Human Voices Wake Us (Michael Petroni) is the complete opposite. Characters are intensely introspective and quote TS Eliot. Piano and cello are played sensitively. This is one of a number of films brought out of limbo to round out the field—but that’s part of the value of the exercise. The history of Australian cinema is littered with lost causes, tragically flawed films whose primary interest is in the ways they go wrong, the contradictions they can’t reconcile.

Let’s consider Paul Cox’s 1999 Molokai, a film about lepers with a famously troubled production history. It is tempting to reach for the obvious metaphor and see the film as something of a leper. Given its episodic nature, it is obvious that bits have already dropped off. David Wenham is hunkered down into his accent and declines into the clutches of the make-up artist, Kate Ceberano drops by to give us a tune and Chris Haywood goes blind from drinking whatever Kris Kristoffersen and Peter O’Toole were having in their dressing rooms.

I can see why Cox wanted to make a film about Father Damien, another European wandering in a beautiful but blighted wilderness at the other end of the earth. But it’s a hagiography whose time has past, in that it shares with Australian Rules the assumption that it is the white man’s burden to save the poor indigenous victim.

Like Molokai, Julie Money’s Envy was made in 1999. It’s another of these games of get-the-yuppy in which Sydney filmmakers seem to delight. I guess having a 3 generation mortgage will do that to you. Who is the audience for these films? It certainly isn’t the yuppies who are caricatured, and the rest of us can hardly be too traumatised by seeing Tuscan kitchens invaded or the paintwork scratched on the Beemer.

After a few festival screenings last year Willfull has had to wait for its brief swandive to the floor in commercial release. Rebel Penfold-Russell concentrates on the design of the film, but seems to have learned about directing actors from watching sitcom mannerisms. But then, the tragedy of the ghostly mother is that life is more complicated than simply being stylish.

Finally, the real suspense this year doesn’t concern the films so much as the AFI itself. Given that the organisation has been pared back to something that no longer does much more than this, the Awards are under pressure to produce and I fear that the sparseness of the field won’t help.

Existing almost purely in the domain of festivals, competitions and private video release, short film’s barely existent commercial screening life means that funding one most always involves independent means. As educational tools, short films are an important stepping-stone in the life of aspiring filmmakers. Whilst functioning as vignettes of creative experimentation, they also exist in a practical capacity as advertisements of the filmmaker’s skill.

The Young Filmmakers Fund (YFF) was established in 1996 by the NSW Film and Television Office (FTO) to encourage creativity and new talent in the film industry and in essence address the lack of funding for short films. In July this year the FTO announced the recipients of the 11th round of YFF grants bringing the total number of projects that have been assisted by the fund to 67. Each grant offers a NSW resident aged 13-35 up to $30,000 to produce a film (short or short feature) in any format or genre. The virtue of having the fund in place to cultivate local talent has been demonstrated in the success past YFF assisted films have enjoyed. Many have won selection and accolades at national and international festivals and have gone on to be sold to distributors and broadcasters worldwide.

The recipients of the 2002 grants demonstrate the diversity that the FTO supports. The 4 projects range in both content and style spanning black comedy, experimental and short drama. What comes across in discussion is each director’s solid sense of vision for their film and a keen sense of teamwork on their production.

Danielle Boesenberg’s The Easter Tide, produced by Sam Meikle and Rachel Clements, is based loosely on the marriage of the filmmaker’s grandmother, examining how love endures the pain of losing a child. Structured around a series of flashbacks the modern setting will have a “really contemporary look with lots of fluid camera” while the flashbacks will consist of more abstract shots that play with shallow focus to replicate the uncertainty of memory. “[The style is] very much flashes of memory and memory breaking up. With memory you remember certain details and everything else is a bit blurry.”

Boesenberg was pleasantly surprised she got funding for the film, musing that “Particularly in Australia there is a tendency to try and make a funny film. [The Easter Tide] is a little story. It’s not solving the world’s problems or making people laugh or trying to be anything other than a sweet little story.” The fact that all 4 of this year’s YFF assisted films are not characterised by glaring punch-lines is recognition enough that there are many ‘little stories’ out there yet to be told by young filmmakers.

Whilst Boesenberg has been harbouring the idea for her film for quite a while she sees it as a nice symmetry that she is able to start production in the year that her grandmother died. Having already made a few self-funded short films with her husband, screenwriter Meikle, Boesenberg is grateful she doesn’t have to go down that route for The Easter Tide. “The only way to make films without funding is to beg, borrow and steal and I think we’ve pretty much used all the calls we can make on that.”

Stray Heart, directed by Jason di Rosso and produced by Paula Jensen, was shot on a characteristically low short film budget and made use of the YFF grant entirely in post production. The story follows a lonely kleptomaniac who seeks solace in the shared experience of owning objects. Shot on a Bolex using nearly all natural lighting sources, the experience forced di Rosso’s team to be extremely disciplined in their filmmaking. Having scoured for locations where the natural light source “was as good as if we’d had all the trucks and money in the world” di Rosso concedes that “in actual fact we’ve ended up with a film that anyone would say looks stunning.”

The YFF grant then allowed them “pretty much all the resources we wanted” in post production and they finished the film on 35mm. “It was a different learning experience of not necessarily making ends meet but of learning to work on a professional level in an area of the industry I hadn’t had much experience in.”

Referring to the “dark shadowy edges” of the film’s images, di Rosso says the story was created specifically for the camera. DOP Sean Meehan wanted to do something that would lend itself to the look of the Bolex so “I immediately thought of something dark that dealt with the psychological and the metaphysical.”

For Louise Fox it was the resonance of a true story she had read that inspired her to write. A Natural Talent is about a woman living in central NSW in the 1850s who gains celebrity status by claiming she has given birth to rabbits. “I was pregnant when I wrote it and surveyed all the pregnant women I know. At some stage they’d all had weird dreams about giving birth to animals. It seemed to be quite a universal anxiety.”

As both an inward examination of grief and loss and a black comedy, Fox wants the audience’s attitude to shift through the film. She describes it as a “funny, strange and dark” drama and was intrigued by what could have driven a woman to create such a fabrication. “I’d been reading about women in that period and their level of loss (at birth)—5 out of 10 children—and what that did to an entire generation when there were no ways of speaking about it.”

Set in the “really dry but very beautiful” region of Wolca NSW, the visual style is influenced by the pastoral image of The Drover’s Wife. “I thought about the difficulty of raising children in that world and that iconographic imagery of Australian women in the bush through that period of painting.”

For Fox and producer Tamara Popper who are endeavouring to raise more money to fund what will be a short feature (26 minutes) the FTO grant has “engender[ed] a lot of faith in a lot of people” who may not otherwise have had confidence in relatively inexperienced filmmakers.

For Adam Sebire (Le Violon d’Ingres) the grant has allowed his production team to experiment with a new medium. “My background is documentary and this gives me the chance to step into a highly stylised visual and aural realm way outside of that. It will push all the crew in that sense and if it doesn’t I guess it won’t have succeeded.”

The film is a surreal exploration of Man Ray’s photograph Le Violon d’Ingres. The famous photograph depicts a nude sitting with her back to the camera, f holes super-imposed on her skin so that she looks like a cello. Using one long tracking shot around the photograph, the film is set to the music of Satie’s Gymmopedie No 1 and also references the poem said to have inspired Satie. According to Sebire it will be a “concentrated mix of music, poetry, light and sensual and surreal shapes all coming together in a tapestry.”

Sebire’s concept works against the view that Man Ray’s photograph places the woman as a passive object of desire. “In this film she comes to life and gazes directly and intensely at us, she sings us this poem and eventually metamorphoses into her cello ‘other’.” Yet rather than dealing with notions of the male gaze, Sebire is interested in debates about the depiction of ‘reality’ in photography. “I think Man Ray was playing with the idea of whether a photograph can be trusted to represent the truth. He has this very surreal image where we’re not sure if she’s a woman or a cello.”

Conscious that the idea of photographic manipulation has topical relevance, Sebire wants to “experiment with a type of 21st century surrealism to play with the illusion that Man Ray set up. Perhaps people will start to think about how we can look at an image and be sure that it’s telling the truth.”

The Easter Tide, director Danielle Boesenberg, producers Sam Miekle and Rachel Clements. Production to commence in Jan 2003. Stray Heart, director Jason di Rosso, producer Paula Jensen. Production completed. A Natural Talent, director Louise Fox, producer Tamara Popper. Production to commence in December 2002. Le Violon d’Ingres (working title), director Adam Sebire, producer Fiorenza Zito. Production to commence 2003.

The insertion of a major retrospective of experimental films from the U.K., Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! into the Melbourne and Brisbane In International Film Festivals brings into focus the way marginalised work is received and perceived here, how it relates to our own history and also triggers current concerns about technical resources.

Mark Webber, freelance film curator and writer (and guitarist with British band Pulp) sifted through hundreds of 60s and 70s 16mm films from the London Filmmaker’s Co-operative (LFMC) to curate Shoot!…. After taking 2 years to assemble, the films were initially screened at the Tate Modern in May this year. Webber was a guest at both Australian festivals.

The selection, he stated, is by no means definitive but does fairly represent the period. Some of the better known works have been overlooked in favour of the rarely seen. Those of us starved of access to films from this era from the National Library of Australia’s National Film and Video Collection (once accessible, for example, through the National Cinematheque and Experimenta screenings, and those organised and researched by Peter Mudie over the years) certainly appreciated this approach. In Melbourne, where I saw Shoot…, Experimenta presented the single screen films at Greater Union Russell Street as part of MIFF and the Multi-Screen Events at gammaSPACE in Flinders Lane.

Though some of us were re-visiting this subversive artist-centred era of cinematic practice, the bulk of the audience seemed to come to this work for the first time. Hopefully, for them, the program put some of the current concerns in new media about speed, repetition, structure and collage within an historical perspective.

gammaSPACE most closely replicated the intimate and transient spaces where such works first surfaced. There the audience responded disarmingly and directly to Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone (1973 30min b&w silent). This film was simply a white circle drawn slowly over 30 minutes on a black background and projected through a smoke generating machine. The cone which thus materialized was touched, broken, examined and delicately interacted with by the audience, enveloping them into the film’s performance.

There was also a panel discussion at the MIFF Festival Club where Webber was joined by Simon Field, Director of the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Simon Gammell, Director of The British Council (Australia). Talk was nostalgically centred around the empowering energy of independence, its politics and the artist-based nature of the self-contained LFMC which incorporated production, distribution and exhibition under the one roof.

The rigour of the Marxist theoretical stance emanating mainly from the writings of Le Grice and Gidal, the oppositional, formalist and conceptual nature of the work was at one point described reverently as Anti-Film. Such a comment underscores how “film” continues to be defined from the theatrical /story-telling end of the filmmaking spectrum, its dominant entertainment arm. It is worth looking at ES Small’s Direct Theory: Experimental Film/Video As Major Genre (Carbondale, Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1994 ) for an argument that such marginal experimental filmmaking is a form of theorizing in and of itself. Even more important is looking at the films themselves, given that so much has been written about them over the years.

Even the films presented in the section entitled “Structuralist/Materialist” were experienced as quite unassuming, delicate, playful, open and inviting. Unlike the theoretical/political discussions around them these films do not in themselves deliver any sense of ranting rhetoric. The program delivered a sense of a vulnerable human conversation between equals.

Shoot… allowed me to re-experience the pull of that film community, that international yet local film project. Each film in this program was like a sentence about film made in conversation with the surrounding work. Artists were talking to each other and their audience about film through film: as texture, flicker, material, repetition, crackle, time, landscape, dance, diary, multimedia, performance and so on.

This was a conversation into which many of us coming into film at that time felt unassumingly drawn. Many Australian filmmakers including Corinne and Arthur Cantrill, James Clayden, Marcus Bergner, John Dunkley-Smith and Albie Thoms were marked by such an impact and in their travels their work has found its way to a screening at the LFMC. While in London Dunkley-Smith collaborated with Guy Sherwin (represented in Shoot… by At the Academy (1974, b/w sound 5min). More needs to be made of such connections when importing blockbuster programs from overseas. Sure, this LFMC film work is outside the main game but here in Australia the local work experiences the schizophrenic reality of being outside the outside. Perhaps this is no different to those who came after this acclaimed “golden age” at the LFMC itself. As former transitional Londoner Paul Rodgers pointed out to me, that group has had to fight for the survival of the co-op itself as they watch their own work get marginalised even further.

My experience of the program was positive, though there were disappointments. Mark Webber himself was understandably affected by some of the unfortunate technical incidents that occurred during the Melbourne screenings. This culminated at gammaSPACE with him withdrawing David Larcher’s Mare’s Tail (1969, colour, sound 143 min) from the program after the projector’s take-up reel failed. It was a pity because the only other screening in Melbourne of this film had been in the mid 70s at a seminal screening of British Avant Garde film at the Melbourne Filmmaker’s Co-op in Lygon Street (yes, we used to have an artist run film co-op here too). Experimenta’s Executive Producer Fabienne Nicholas pointed out that it was a hard decision to cancel the screening but given the difficulty of sourcing acceptable film equipment it was prudent to not risk damage to a precious, stretched 30 year old film print.

We are indebted to BIFF for getting such a demanding and satisfying program to Australia, and to Experimenta and MIFF for getting it to Melbourne. Yes, it is disappointing that technical issues relating to projecting film in gallery settings remains an issue here. This is despite film’s growing importance within fine art communities internationally. It should be a solvable issue given the growing technical complexity of new media performance and installation amply evident at Prototype, an exhibition of New Media installations at another successful Experimenta presentation (see Lisa Gye).

Nor was the MIFF immune with some of the films in the final Diversifications section of Shoot… having to be shown silent because of equipment failure. It is hoped that Festival Director James Hewison, who has delivered a very successful festival, will show the leadership necessary and persevere in screening experimental work. As the festival discussion panel on ‘Global Film Culture’ noted, experimentation and the retrospective could be 2 of the stated cultural objectives of a progressive film festival.

Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! ,Brisbane International Film Festival; Experimenta, Melbourne International Film Festival & gammaSPACE, July 2002.

The third Sydney Asian Pacific Film Festival gave the impression of a cultural event nascent with possibility. Despite the abundance of work to source, the program comprised a promising sample of films from across the region combined with popular cult offerings.

Opening night featured festival guest Zhang Yimou’s Happy Times. While Yimou’s earlier works, Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern and Shanghai Triad are saturated in colour, allegorical period themes and immaculate stylisation, Happy Times focuses on contemporary Beijing and those marginalised by China’s economic miracle. Zhao (Zhao Benshan) is a retired factory worker struggling against the stigma of poverty in his longstanding yearning to marry. When he finally locates a prospect through a dating agency she demands an expensive wedding, the first indication of her new China greed. Zhao’s friend suggests they raise money by hiring out an abandoned bus to young lovers, The Happy Times Hut. Zhao, embellishing his standing by masquerading as a successful hotelier, is persuaded by his fiancée to take care of her stepdaughter Wu Ying (Dong Jie). Zhao becomes increasingly protective of the blind Wu Ying as their friendship evolves through shared feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Despite at hinting the possibility for greater intimacy, Yimou crucially frames their mutual need within the overwhelming dispossession of a new class unable to define its place, making the comedic and humanist touches seem whimisically misdirected at the film’s emotionally demanding resolution. While Wu Ying escapes to make her own way in the new world, Zhao’s future is as forebodingly open-ended as China itself.

Demonstrating much about modern China’s reading of western individualism, Quitting is an autobiographical account of Jia Hongsheng, a prominent actor whose career is derailed by drugs. After months of smoking pot, Hongsheng becomes convinced he is the progeny of John Lennon and is committed by his family to a mental asylum. This is not the kind of hedonistic depravity the world’s alternative press might latch on to as an example of vertiginous chic, and audiences jaded by the west’s fetish for chemical excess in film (drug porn) will find the film’s earnestness naive. With Honsheng’s elaborate confession to authorities the key to his redemption, it’s little surprise Quitting passed Chinese censors despite its taboo subject.

In contrast, Tekashi Miike’s Dead or Alive (Japan) is a vision of surfeited postmodernity. Its opening montage is a machine-gun paced exposition of Tokyo at the moment of apocalypse. A prostitute jumps from a high-rise, a man greedily snorts a 5-metre line of cocaine, hit men pull automatic weapons from a convenience store’s frozen food section, a Chinese crime lord erupts ramen noodles as a gluttonous feast ends with an assassin’s bullet, and for a further 10 minutes violent imagery cascades in a tsunami of perversity and power. Miike’s disintegrating world is constructed from images without origin—the same diaspora and rootlessness that defines his characters. Crime fighter Jojima (Aikawa Sho) and gangster Ryuichi (Takeuchi Riki) share a profound longing for connection and place. Jojima is alienated from his family and Ryuichi is the offspring of ‘Zanryu Koji’—children left in China after WWII who returned unwanted to mainland Japan. Feeling no debt to Japanese society, Ryuichi and his small group muscle in on the Shinjuku underworld. The searing final confrontation between Jojima and Ryuchi suggests anything is possible in Miike’s films. Apart from the lead actors, the sequel to Dead or Alive is a complete departure. Sho now plays Mizuki the hit man and Riki his mysterious rival. Escaping from the yakuza the two share a ferry-ride home to a small island far from Tokyo, rekindling a childhood friendship. With the spiritual hollows of the Tokyo underworld behind them, the island gives rise to a nostalgia for lost innocence. Refreshed and purposeful, the killers leave to revive their careers, pledging to donate future profits to help suffering third world children. Despite a brief period of renewed professional gratification, the team discover the yakuza have long memories and hit men aren’t a rare resource in Tokyo city. Using a formula of chaotic imagery heavy with pastiche and satire, Miike takes the yakuza genre firstly to a limit of excess in DOA I, switching to a far more mercurial sense of possibility in the sequel. With his prolific average of 4 films a year, the crammed and sometimes vocal audience was evidence of Miike’s revered reputation in Japanese cult cinema.

Hong Kong’s signature action films were absent from the program, but flights of HKs irreducible cinematic imagination were on offer in the animated children’s film My Life as McDull. McDull is an animated piglet and he’s impossibley cute. He’s also a failure in the eyes of his mother, and seeks to prove his worth by becoming a master in the ancient art of ‘Kung Fu Bun Snatching’ (no really). My Life as McDull is scattered with many Desiderata-like platitudes to assuage the gravity of average inadequacy, but a blending of disparate animation techniques and an almost random inventiveness from image to image is enough to overcome a lack of ballast.

Sandy Lives (Vietnam) demonstrates how the cinematic image has the power to place us in another cultural reality, if only as tourists. Set just after reunification, a husband and wife reunite after a 20-year wait, only to find their lives are now irrevocably disconnected. Memory, desire and the lingering horrors of war shift together and apart like the transient shores upon which their riverside village is built.

Entertainment as myth disguising social and economic contradiction is at the core of Heart’s Desire, the smash hit of 2001 Indian cinema, providing the festival’s best taste of popular Asian cinema. Set in Mumbai’s equivalent of Bel Air, 3 baby-faced young men sing, dance, laugh and cry through 3 hours of gushing Bollywood optimism and coming-of-age romantic longing. After their summer of discovery, Aakash and Sameer are matrimonially bound. Siddharth, the inquisitive, sensitive young artist almost derails the friendship by falling for Tara (Dimple Kapadia), an older woman with a child and a drinking problem. From the ensuing fallout we learn that young Indian men are strongly discouraged from relationships with older women who like a drink. Thankfully for the buddy motif, Tara dies of cirrhosis, allowing the trio to blossom to manhood accompanied by more socially acceptable partners. Despite occasional thematic reservations, it’s impossible not to enjoy this Mumbai 90210 epic with its sprightly performances from Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Skashaye Khanna, and Preity Zinta, and especially the scenes shot in Sydney.

For me the festival standout was New Moon, a contemporary dramatisation of the resistance of Mindinao Muslims in the Philippines. Akmad (Cesar Montano) is a Manila doctor who returns to rescue his family from attacks by state-sanctioned Christian militias. As Akmad is drawn deeper into the conflict, director Marilou Diaz-Abaya subtly subverts an obvious moral resolution, emphasising the complexity of history and tolerance. The mostly expatriate Filipino audience connected deeply with the deft storytelling, sighing in epiphany at twists in the sentient narrative, demonstrating how the collective experience of engaging with film transforms according to viewing culture. Cesar Montano’s introduction of the film increased the generous and intimate audience fervour. Leaving the session, I was repeatedly asked if I enjoyed the film by enthusiastic strangers. How often does such openness occur in Sydney’s film-scene citadels?

Unsurprisingly, New Moon and Heart’s Desire shared the audience award for most popular film. The Short Soup short film competition winner was Tree by Eliza Johnson, an impressionistic and simple play of colour in which a young girl protectively remembers her dead mother through elaborate rituals. Ballad of the Praying Mantis by Naoki Tsukushi, a fatal affirmation of queer identity over family duty was the winner of the SBS eat carpet award. Also promoting a sense of Asian community were seminars on co-productions and the special challenges facing filmmakers in developing unique Asian-Australian voices, a retrospective of formative and hitherto suppressed Chinese animation, and a ‘meet the filmmaker’ session with cinematographer and Wong Kar Wai collaborator Christopher Doyle.

Despite room to grow the program, directors Juanita Kwok and Paul De Carvalho have succeeded in bringing the vast voices of Asian cinema together in best possible spirit. While Australia’s view of Asia is so often founded on economic opportunism rather than a desire for cultural understanding, festivals such as the Sydney Asia Pacific Film Festival are vital in promoting greater regional awareness. With screenings mostly well-attended audiences can only hope for an expanded festival in 2003.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep. People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.
Rumi

Brisbane International Film Festival 2002 was characterised by the bold and timely 1001 Voices: Cinema of the Middle East and Islamic worlds. The program extends Brisbane’s renowned Asian film programming, giving voice to stories from a region at the forefront of global consciousness.

There’s no better time than now to try to understand the cultures of the Middle Eastern and Islamic worlds when we’ve been saturated with select, managed images of the region. Images, some information, but very few stories. The newsmedia have propagated images of extremists grappling with modernity, but generally we’ve been denied access to detailed accounts of everyday life.

Stories from the Middle East can go some way towards filling this vacuum. For all its social relevance, though, the BIFF program largely resists the temptations of propaganda. Artistic Director Anne Demy-Geroe’s choices tend toward broad humanism and away from highly politicised expression. This task is more difficult than it sounds, naturally, given the intensity of the conflict in so much of the region. It would be hard to imagine, for example, a documentary such as Palestinian Rashid Mashharawi’s latest, Live‚ From Palestine, about the lives of people at the Voice of Palestine radio station achieving ‘apolitical neutrality.’ In that film’s chilling postscript, occupying forces raze the station. A bomb placed in every room, every studio, and everything—lives, careers, hopes, dreams— is destroyed.

Mashharawi’s previous fictional works, Curfew (1993) and Haifa (1995) dealt with the hugely topical issue of refugee camps, as does Asmin Aslani’s tragic The Mourning Book for the Land of the Meridian, set in Afghanistan and popular at this year’s festival. Though the content is inherently political, the real power derives from the level of engagement with the stories of the people—bewildered refugees, traumatised children, shattered journalists whose lives we momentarily enter.

Iranian Abolfazls Jalil’s well-known concern for orphaned children is beautifully realised in Delbaran, the story of Kaim, a refugee boy nurtured by an old couple at a truckstop. With its sudden, poetic moments of kindness, cruelty, beauty, humour and the bizarre, Delbaran, is infinitely stronger for the director’s rewriting of his original script to incorporate the Afghan nationality of the outstanding child actor he had discovered, Kaeem Alizadeh. His films eschew advocacy or stridency, yet depict the complex and heartrending social reality of the region in powerful ways. They raise questions about representation and the extent to which a culture’s stories can be separated from its politics. Considering the fusion of church and state, it would seem futile, if not artificial, to expect most films from the Middle East to be empty of political content.

Despite this, most of the films in 1001 Voices are more contemplative. Indeed, rigid ideologies are often problematised, such as in the superb Under the Moonlight, Iranian Reza Mir-Karimi’s story of a young mullah awakening to the different and difficult world away from the seminary. The film argues for the acknowledgment of the difficulty and necessity of somehow reconciling fundamentalist and reformist elements.

Though the films of Kiarostami were noticeably absenct (perhaps to give others a chance to shine), Iranian cinema featured strongly, ranging from the lush lyricism of Farhad Mehenfar’s mystical The Legend of Love and Alizreza Ghanie’s The Wind Game, a tribute to the works of Rumi, to the deliberate innocence of Hamid Jebelli’s White Dream, to Mazar Bahari’s surprising and touching documentary, Football, Iranian Style, about the nation’s unifying passion.

Babak Payami’s democratic farce, Secret Ballot (also translated as “Void Votes”), set on the remote island of Kish, is an absurdist treat. The determination of the plucky female electoral agent (Nassim Abdi) to collect every single vote on election day, regardless of the soldier’s (Cyrus) petulance, is endearing. The film’s seriocomic narrative is at its best in the scene where the young girl complains of the irony of being “old enough to marry, but not old enough to vote.” Payami leavens the didacticism with just the right amount of absurdity—the stoplight in the middle of nowhere is a prime example). Characters represent the themes: he, patriarchal tradition, incompetence and the law of the gun; she, progress, modernity and, ultimately, hope for a better future. Visually mesmerising, Secret Ballot’s tenderly-delivered message, about the need to resolve ideological differences for the sake of progress is all the more powerful for its comedic embodiment in two memorable leads.

In addition to the outstanding Iranian program, other masters from the region were also represented in the BIFF program: Youssef Chahine with the exhuberant, irresistible Silence! We’re Rolling, a loving tribute to the MGM musical, and Amos Gitai, with his accomplished Wadi Grand Canyon, made in the style of Michael Apted’s 7-Up series but with deeper political resonance. Gitai, whose oeuvre is characterised by explorations of relationships between ethnic groups, returned to the canyon of the title (a disused quarry on the margins of Haifa) at 10-year intervals from 1981 on. The result is a cumulative portrait of a group of individuals of mixed ethnicity across time. The depiction of the effects of time on the relationship between Miriam, a Jew, and her Arab husband Scander, is particularly moving.

The stories of the Middle East experienced in the boldly programmed 1001 Voices provide a unique and valuable access to an under-explored and generally misunderstood world. The program’s range of voices—poignant, tragic, funny, bizarre, beautiful—entice us to open our eyes and ears; to throw off our mediatised somnolence and apathy, and to awaken.

2002 Brisbane International Film Festival, Artistic Director Ann Demy-Geroe, Greater Union Hoyts Regent, Myer Centre Cinemas & State Library of Queensland, July 9-21.

Barbara Campbell is using the archival and intellectual environs of Sydney University in the manner of an 18th century Salonniere, to host a long-standing conversation with art history and theory. Her archival research method, orchestration of objects and images and her attention to site departs from the traditions of theatrical performance. This novel approach is signalled in the title of her upcoming survey of recent performances, Flesh Winnow: a homage in part to the art historical grandmaster Marcel Duchamp. As the artist notes:

Flesh Winnow is of course a reference to Duchamp’s, or rather Rose Selavy’s, 1920 work Fresh Widow, itself a pun on French Window, the basic form of the piece. I’ve always loved that work because I think it’s one of the most powerful anti-war pieces and because it comes with a cutting performative element—Duchamp had replaced the glass window panes with panes made of black leather which he insisted should be shined every day like shoes.

This art-historical play (in the performative sense of the word ‘play’, as in playing with or toying with) suggests a diabolical dimension to the discipline and its venerable traditions. Thus with tongue firmly in cheek, I asked Barbara the following questions.

Along with your chosen subject matter and thematic references, how has your visual arts background informed your 20 years of performance work?

My visual arts background comes in 2 parts really—the practical and the theoretical, having done time in both art schools and university art history departments. Both areas impact equally, I think. The material language I draw on comes from a direct contact with the materials and techniques of art making. Etching processes, large sheets of paper, the drawn line, a white gallery wall: all these things have come into my work because of my early contact with them at art school. Equally, I’ve had quite a lot of art history training over the years and am aware of the historicising process. I know how histories are constructed out of narrative, how new histories are created when a piece of the narrative gets added or omitted. I like to play with these narrative chains. I think that process is essentially a performative one. An object—a painting or a sculpture for instance—is as much an actor as the human agents who surround it—the makers, writers, dealers, handlers, framers, audiences, photographers, etc.

When you say performative, does this refer in any way to theatrical traditions? Could the 3 traditions (visual arts, academic art history, theatrical performance) be more intertwined than we think, despite the fact that, at an institutional level, performance studies, visual arts and art history are becoming further segmented and specialised?

I was using performative in the sense that contemporary anthropologists and historiographers use it—the sense that history demands actors and audiences. But in that big ‘T’ Theatre-as-institution sense, while I don’t participate in it, I do use it. The things that are used to support the Theatre—the fourth wall, the rehearsed action, the tricks of lighting and costume, I choose to foreground as the substance or subject of the work itself.

How does your choice of site help to determine the formal or thematic qualities of each performance, including multiple performances in different sites?

Well of course there’s no such thing as a neutral space from which we artists can create something unencumbered by history. So whether the site is a black-box theatre, a white-box gallery or the side of a quarry, you must be cognisant of the attendant meanings and conventions of each space. The difference is that an audience may try harder to understand the meanings and conventions of a quarry before they question the meanings and conventions of the other, seemingly naturalised spaces.

While the University is not a quarry (though many may disagree with me), it does present the performer and her audience with a raft of a priori associations. How did you approach the University’s specific archival and pedagogic machinery?

I was very fortunate in having virtual free rein with choosing sites for all the works. It’s one of the great things about universities (even still)—the sense of being given the licence to try things out. So, for example, with Inflorescent, I was drawing on 19th Century notions of looking, that kind of looking which is about fascination with difference, particularly sexualised difference. I’d always loved the Macleay Museum and knew it would be the perfect site for the work and I think I approached the Director, Vanessa Mack, about 2 weeks prior to the performance and she was incredibly open to the idea and not at all fazed by the short lead time. The great thing about the Macleay is that it’s not just about the objects, but how those objects are stored and displayed within a 19th Century tradition of museology, so the museological techniques are on display with the objects. It’s an instance of the university’s assets helping to create a work. Of course that happens every second in the university’s libraries, but a performance is a bit different from an essay.

That suggests the performance of a perverse style of librarianship: an example of (Duchampian) ‘best practice’…

Well, you know, I do love a good library. I think libraries are for me what ‘the bush’ is for other people. And it’s as much an aesthetic thing as an intellectual one: the textures, the colours, the quiet movement of bodies. I remember with the first performance I did in residence at the university, The Midday Movie and the History of Australian Painting, I deliberately set out to use the tools of art history against itself. I think that’s pretty evident from the title alone. The inspiration actually came from the body of work that Paul Saint had been doing in the mid-1990s. I found his wonky woven baskets quite hilarious and appealing in their simultaneous subversion of both craft and art practices. I commissioned one from him and it became the vehicle for a performance where I could play with the mismatch of disciplines and the abuses of art history (me being the main perpetrator of such abuse).

Another source of inspiration for the work came from attending the big exhibition on Turner at the National Art Gallery in 1996 and for the first time hiring one of those audioguides. It was such a comforting experience looking at these beautiful atmospheric objects and being absorbed in the aural narrative of their making. But then there was this incredibly dramatic moment when looking at a seemingly innocent picture of the Devon or Dorset coastline, we were told how Turner carried on a long-term affair with a woman there and masqueraded as a sea captain amongst the locals: from the sublime to the smutty.

So in developing the work, I spent a lot of time in the Power Library writing an obscenely contracted version of the history of Australian painting that could be fitted into the 8 ad breaks of a midday movie and that were scripted in such a way that didn’t distinguish between the high-brow and the human interest. I was very conscious of how different this kind of writing about an art object is from the standard art historical approach. In the performance, these 8 little scripts were recited by me but were channelled through Paul’s basket which stood over and stood in for my head as I lay on the floor.

Your performances also have an utterly seductive attention to form. This is most apparent in your work with the nude, Inflorescent being the most obvious example. In part this occurs through what one viewer noted as a fetishisation of the detail. Is there a danger in your spectators coming in too close?

I must say I was quite nervous about the mise-en-scène I’d created for myself in Inflorescent. I nearly thought myself out of doing it at all because I tried to second-guess the audience’s response. Funny things happened during the first performance of Inflorescent. Although the boundary between my space and the audience’s space was clearly defined, one bold woman and her reluctant female friend broke through the invisible fourth wall and came into my space. I think my steely resolve not to be affected by this intrusion eventually forced them back. At the other extreme, I noticed 3 male professorial types lined up along the back, who found a safe distance from which to stare and stayed nearly the full hour. Generally, I think it was much more uncomfortable being a member of the audience than it was for me lying there naked. I gather there was a constant pull between looking (straining to look in fact), and being conscious of looking, either looking too closely or for too long. All this illustrates the part of the audience in shaping a performance. I’m not the only author, especially in a piece like that.