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Mohammed Lelo, Toby Martin, Phu Tran, Alex Hadchiti, Songs from Northam Avenue, Bankstown:Live

photo Heidrun Löhr

Mohammed Lelo, Toby Martin, Phu Tran, Alex Hadchiti, Songs from Northam Avenue, Bankstown:Live

Around dusk we file into the Northam Avenue backyard of local resident David Cranston for the first of our Bankstown:Live experiences. Offered Aerogard to ward off the evening’s likely bloodletting, we enter past the scented gum, turn left at the passionfruit vine, past the cactus flower, to spaciously uneven rows of unmatched chairs. I step over the self-seeded spinach to my seat and take in the suburban staging—the ever evocative wire screen door, the porch peeling paint, the empty birdcage, the sombre tool-shed—door ajar. The sky is huge, birds zooming overhead and there’s a scent of eucalyptus. This might just be enough theatre for me.

Hazem Shammas, The Tribe, Bankstown:Live

photo Heidrun Löhr

Hazem Shammas, The Tribe, Bankstown:Live

But there’s more. Performer Hazem Shammas appears under fluoro light to recount episodes from Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s The Tribe—in conventional storytelling mode with subtle physicality and occasional musical accompaniment from Oonagh Sherrard on cello. I enjoyed reading Ahmad’s successful novella, a richly detailed evocation of everyday life from the perspective of Bani, the youngest in a family who are all members of a small Muslim sect who fled to Australia before the civil war in Lebanon. In this brisk 40-minute adaptation by Ahmad and director Janice Muller, Shammas at a microphone deftly inhabits the persona of Bani at various ages. Intensely physical memories range from his grandmother Tayta’s belly to a vivid account of a wild family wedding, alongside reflections on Shia and Sunni heritage and a darker, almost surreal episode involving a death in the family. Meanwhile, under the portico Sherrard adds a recurrent melody interspersed with glides and percussive taps on the cello strings underlining Bani’s emotional recollections.

Further down the street we sink into possibly too comfortable lounges laid out in the front yard of Wally Arends, another Bankstown local. As resident artist over two years, singer-songwriter Toby Martin has become familiar with these people and their houses, hanging out at the coffee shop, picking up strands of conversation to connect with his own life and weave into lyrics for Songs from Northam Avenue. His musical collaborators are first Anh Linh Pham on Vietnamese zither (a relative of the koto and other Asian instruments) and Phu Tran on Vietnamese monochord (with its almost Theremin warbling), then Alex Hadchiti on oud and keyboard and Mohammed Lelo on the Middle-Eastern quanun, a fascinating zither-like instrument with 81 strings; Martin describes it as the antecedent of the Western piano. There’s a rich layering of sounds in each of the trios, although the microtones of Vietnamese instruments are not always an easy fit with Martin’s Indie folk. The songs range across a man’s life from the 30s to the present, the waiting lover (the monochord gently soaring like an electric guitar), a Lebanese father’s melancholy awareness of his son’s ignorance of the brutal realities of Middle-Eastern conflict and the tension in a couple over English pronunciation. There are unusual tales, striking word pictures and some immediately catchy melodies.

Nancy and Albert Oh and friends, Bansktown:Live

photo Heidrun Löhr

Nancy and Albert Oh and friends, Bansktown:Live

The Urban Theatre Project (UTP) producing model is a mix of “lead artists” and others from within the community and outside it working with the multifarious talents of local participants to collaboratively shape ideas and display them to best advantage.

In “a creative spirit of community, diversity and togetherness” (program note) members of the extensive Filipino community working with artist Alwin Reamillo and builder David Hawkes constructed a decorated bamboo Hopping Spirit House (in the spirit of Bayanihan, the traditional practice of community group work in rural Philippines). Following the traditional Aboriginal “Welcome to Country” by Darug elder Uncle Steve Williams, in a symbolic representation of the power of community, the huge structure is hoisted onto many shoulders to be transported down the street with Williams leading the way.

This clears the way for collaborating artists Emma Saunders, Nancy and Albert Oh to assemble locals who dance the rumba so lightly on the asphalt you’d think it was sprung and later demonstrate a joyous “Hokey Pokey for the 21st Century.”

Under a Hill’s Hoist, audience don earphones for The Last Word, a series of monologues written by seven Western Sydney residents, all reflecting on a departed friend or relative. Each piece has been carefully crafted, sensitively voiced by professional performers and accompanied by James Brown’s pulsing music. It’s a poignant listening experience.

Sophia Brous, Bankstown:Live

photo Heidrun Löhr

Sophia Brous, Bankstown:Live

In stark contrast to the mostly modest houses in the street, late in the evening we find ourselves at the fence line of an opulent two-storey villa. On the concrete driveway is the prone body of a woman in white. It’s Sofia Brous, composer and “genre-defying chanteuse” who’s worked with members of the community who are called upon this time to volunteer their lullabies. Tonight she sleepwalks among faux pillars and water features, ‘waking’ to sing from her collection of songs in nine languages. As Brous sings, a woman near me mouths the words under her breath. We’re not provided with the cultures of origin or the words to the songs, so we guess, cued by linguistic cadences and, not least, the playing of UK multi-instrumental collaborating artists David Coulter and Leo Abrahams, whose vivid accompaniment from the garage evokes Asian flutes, African electric guitar, eastern European zither and much more. Brous, who has an impressive vocal range (barely warranting the more than ample reverb), ornaments each song with precise gestures and soothes us with the strangely familiar melodies she has gathered.

And then there are films! Van is a short animated cautionary tale by Vinh Nguyen referencing his father’s journey from Vietnam to Australia. UTP director Rosie Dennis has directed Bre & Back, a beautifully observed portrait of the lives of four Indigenous women including former local resident and cultural adviser, Lily Shearer and her mother Noeleen, now living in Brewarrina.

Banguras Family, Mervyn Bishop, Uncle Steve Williams, Bankstown:Live

photo Joanne Saad

Banguras Family, Mervyn Bishop, Uncle Steve Williams, Bankstown:Live

I couldn’t beat the queue to take a turn in the Family Portraits booth on the footpath. Here photographer Joanne Saad staged a gathering with one of four local families. Audience members were invited to enter, join in a conversation and a portrait. On the night I visited, before a backdrop of colourful cloths, five members of the Banguras family from Sierra Leone were seated around a coffee table displaying family photographs. With infinite grace, the Banguras entertained their array of temporary guests appearing very much “at home” as indeed did we all on this hot January night in Northam Avenue, Bankstown—locals and blow-ins alike.

Urban Theatre Projects, Bankstown:Live, 150-160 Northam Avenue, Bankstown, artistic director, Rosie Dennis, 22-25 Jan

RealTime issue #125 Feb-March 2015 pg. 16

The Long Pigs

photo Prudence Upton

The Long Pigs

A wordless drama exploring the ritual of cooking and a silent slapstick rort about the darker side of clowning are both entertaining; neither entirely tasteful. The Long Pigs aims to upset and does so superbly, while The Kitchen provides a garish divertissement that is formulaic save for its well-structured thematic circularity and glorious evocation of Indian tradition

The Long Pigs

Physical theatre supergroup with particularly black humour, WE3, bring The Long Pigs to Sydney Festival. These sooty-nosed clowns aren’t quite right. WE3’s regalia is shabby, like their innocence. Their dirty little hands are conspiring, selfish, gluttonous, cannibalistic and animal: they’re in a pig-eat-pig world where exclusion, derision and brutality get you places. Caught between their mundane reality with its status quo security, and a forbidden fantasy of colour and joy, the three clowns non-verbally quest for mental and physical sustenance. Slippery bananas, a clowning stock-standard, come to represent not only humiliation but human meat (“long pig” is Melanesian Pidgin for human flesh). Bananas are the currency that affords these sorry souls survival. Every banana is a life; well, the life of a joke.

The wide stage is set like an abattoir or dusty factory. Shadowy clumps dangle from the ceiling like carcasses shrouding forgotten furniture. Silly-walking industrial underlings shuffle in to go about their repetitive, drab and nonsensical business. This factory routine, a meta-jab at comedy, is merciless. Jesting calls for freshness amid stale replication and these clowns know it, mock it and yet live it.

Nicci Wilks, Clare Bartholomew and Derek Ives-Plunkett make up the paranoid and disenfranchised comic trio. Director Susie Dee, along with set-designer Anna Tregloan and lighting guru Andy Turner bring the wags’ inner workings into a spatial concept. It’s Jethro Woodward’s engaging score though that balances macabre with ludicrous, synchronising intent with action.

So much is mysterious and left so. Why are these grim buffoons manufacturing—or is it murderously collecting—red noses? Are they feeding them to something? Do they work together or against each other? Their satire scissors at Judeo-Christian sanctimony and uses the divide between black- and red-noses as a metaphor for racism. They even deride the entertainment industry when they clamber into the audience to take payments from patrons who might like to stone Jesus (who is crucified on stage) from their seats. Violence is okay when it’s funny, and it’s even more okay when you pay good money for it.

The Kitchen

photo Jamie Williams

The Kitchen

Roysten Abel’s non-narrative, non-verbal theatre work, The Kitchen, is highly dependent on symbolism: it combines on-stage cooking of Indian sweet Payasam (warm milk with rice, nuts, raisins and spices) with live musical accompaniment. It’s a sensory smorgasbord that delights smell and taste, especially when upon exiting the audience sample the dessert.

Twelve Kalamandalan drummers are perched on a copper kettle-shaped scaffold, with only their hands and drumskins lit. The effect is of cooking flames licking and lapping epicurean rites. Their collective sound thuds euphoniously but twangier solos cut through the air which is at most times balmy with cooking smells and billowing steam. In front of the drummers two actors (Mandakini Goswami and Dilip Shankar) prepare Payasam silently in near unison, their individual timing representative of our quirks and misalignments in love and compromise.

Director Abel, inspired by the Sufi mystic Rumi, says of the two pot-stirrers, “Even though they don’t act in the usual sense, they make an emotional journey during the performance. There is no real plot, but you get to see pieces of their story, the manner in which their relationship develops” (program note). After ghee and sugar, they pour in milk and once the milk-bowls are drained the actors rehearse their pouring actions from now empty vessels in a deeply sensual allusion. Like romance, it is the beautiful ache of longing, or lack, which makes union so sweet. Through cooking, the pair pass through infatuation, irritation, reconciliation, acceptance, devotion, boredom and many other emotional states in vignettes familiar to lovers.

In Hindu mythology, the human body is considered to be a kettle that holds the soul. Hence cooking holds potent metaphors for bodily and social transformations. Kettle shapes recur in The Kitchen, theming set design, action and even the bodies of the accompanying mizhav drums. Mizhav (small-headed copper or clay kettle drums common in Kerala’s temples) are traditionally heard in life rites like Namakaranam (naming ceremony), Upanayanam (boy’s introduction to education) and cremation. They’re associated with Brahmacharya (purity of sexual intent, often chastity or fidelity). Due to their place in pivotal life celebrations, each mizhav is treated with the status of a person—for example when the instrument wears out it is given a dignified burial. These associations make the mizhav the perfect accompanist for this dramatic presentation of relationship rituals, themselves microcosms of initiation and death.

The Kitchen’s symbolism is tidy and recursive, but it relies on associations with honorable traditions—Rumi’s take on love and hypnotic, ecstatic drumming—to add gravitas to the work’s banal showiness. Its most beautiful elements felt like justification for pleasing an audience out to taste-test sensuous entertainment this summer.

Sydney Festival; The Long Pigs, performer-devisors Derek Ives-Plunkett, Clare Bartholomew, Nicci Wilks, director Susie Dee, Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre, 15-18 Jan; The Kitchen, direction, lighting Roysten Abel, set design Neeraj Sahay, York Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney, 22-25 Jan

RealTime issue #125 Feb-March 2015 pg. 17

Théâtre des Bouffes Du Nord, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco

photo Prudence Upton

Théâtre des Bouffes Du Nord, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco

Set with the aging, ramshackle objects of a worn out music school, the stage ticks with the polyrhythmic certainty of a collection of metronomes, each keeping their own meter while pushing the others just slightly out. A luscious red curtain falls limply away from its anchor, placing us somewhere antique. Nioukhine (Michel Robin) meanders on stage with a hobble and a hunched back. He exits and enters absentmindedly, playing for gentle laughs while three of his “seven, no six, … no, seven daughters”—the musicians (violinist Floriane Bonanni, pianist Emanuelle Swiercz and soprano Muriel Ferraro)—wait with poise at their instruments, in modest bustled gowns.

Originally dubbed a farce by Chekhov, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco presents the character of Nioukhine at the dusk of his life, intending to deliver a public lecture on the evils of smoking, but instead offering a series of reflections on marital entrapment and wasted life. While his presence offers some slight lazzi [commedia dell’arte clowns. Eds] touches, Chekhov’s final version of the monologue largely subdues outward comic physicality in favour of text that works towards subtler tragi-comic reflection. There are the familiar themes, then, of a lament for lost youth and of life lived through the rapid socio-economic upheaval of Tsarist Russia in decline, for which Chekhov’s signature works are recognised.

The pathos of a character bemoaning his less than tragic fate is underscored by the musicians who materialise the play’s ironic subtext. Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in B minor for Violin and Piano opens to move us from melancholy to paced, playful fervour. This is extended to crescendo with a call to presence by the shy soprano, who flits from the stage the moment her bold rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Romance, Op 47, No. 1, is over. As Nioukhine lulls into reverie—“How I long to run away and to forget … I was young once …”—Berio’s Sequenza VIII for Violin punctuates his brooding with cutting repulsion. This exasperated performance, played with Bonanni’s audible gasps, shoots Nioukhine’s reminiscence out of the past and into the present. It feels as if we are as disjointed as them all: both in and out of time.

Stage relationships with time take on a different flavour in Have I No Mouth which produces a distinctive sense of presence carried by the three performers who play themselves. Cast as a mother-son-psychotherapist trio, Feidlim Cannon, Ann Cannon and Erich Keller craft a delicate theatre of distant intimacy to contemplate what it is to work through the sudden experience of losing a family member. Feidlim’s father, Sean Cannon died from misdiagnosed Guillain-Barré Syndrome, and mother and son draw to the surface their entwined histories of family, grief and memory in order to examine the unresolved feelings they carry about a seemingly avoidable loss.

Brokentalkers, Have I No Mouth

photo Prudence Upton

Brokentalkers, Have I No Mouth

While in theme the work risks making the stage a place for therapy, Have I No Mouth rather enables the inverse to happen: therapy and memory become theatrical, self-reflexive and at times comical. At the forefront of the work is the dynamic played out between Feidlim and Ann which traverses sentiment as well as sarcasm as they paint, via a series of memory vignettes, a landscape of Feidlim’s Irish-Catholic youth. In one such re-enactment, Feidlim finds Ann’s rather ominous selection of significant objects—a coffin for a baby, a telephone, a roll of bandage –“a little negative.” So begins the kind of familial banter that can only have been rehearsed over 30-odd years, now brought to subtle theatrical visibility. While Feidlim judges Ann for “talking about the horrible shit,” Ann likes to think she knows her son better than he does himself: “Are you telling me that you don’t believe in God anymore? Well I don’t believe that you don’t believe in God anymore.”

What is exquisite about this work is the complex (un)self-conscious clarity the performers bring to the presentational status of their on-stage selves. As a ‘therapeutic’ method in itself, this allows for an ever-refracting play between performed-present and performed-past selves that is further enabled by gentle dramaturgical disruptions to the ownership mother and son hold over the past. When Feidlim reads—verbatim on a microphone—his mother’s account of the loss of her third son soon after birth, a startlingly affective, almost biblical beauty emerges in place of what would otherwise be a catharsis of emotion. As Ann is blessed in a stream of gently falling confetti, Feidlim speaks her words: “It was snowing. I said: ‘I know he’s gone, isn’t he?’” In sifting so poetically through time, these performers expertly use theatre to share their collective journeys to self.

2015 Sydney Festival: Théâtre des Bouffes Du Nord, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco, director Denis Podalydès, concept Floriane Bonanni, Sydney Opera House, 22-25 Jan; Brokentalkers, Have I No Mouth, co-directors Feidlim Cannon, Gary Keegan, Seymour Centre, Sydney, 15-18 Jan

RealTime issue #125 Feb-March 2015 pg. 18

Long Grass, Vicki Van Hout

photo Heidrun Löhr

Long Grass, Vicki Van Hout

Vicki Van Hout’s Long Grass in the 2015 Dance Massive, the fourth of these two-week festivals of innovative Australian dance, follows the appearance of Marrugeku’s Gudirr Gudirr (RT114), a cross-cultural collaboration featuring dancer-choreographer Dalisa Pigram in the 2013 program. Together they signal that contemporary Indigenous dance is becoming both more visible and aesthetically and culturally diverse.

The programming of Indigenous dance has not been easy for Dance Massive given the dominance of Bangarra Dance Theatre (with whom Van Hout has danced) and a paucity of works elsewhere. Pigram (see interview) and Van Hout are changing this, while the emerging TSI choreographer Ghenoa Gela (whose work appeared at last year’s Next Wave and in Force Majeure’s developmental workshop season Cultivate and who inventively choreographed the finale of that company’s Nothing to Lose; see review) represents the promise of works to come.

Long Grass

Van Hout is at once auteur and collaborator—her vision and choreography are exquisitely distinctive, her creations woven through collaboration. She’s an integrator, drawing on the many Indigenous dance practices people have shared with her across Australia and her fellow artists’ ideas and experiences. (She is also a formidable writer, blogging enthusiastically and insightfully for Western Sydney’s FORM Dance Projects. The Aboriginal English dialogue in Long Grass is witty and revealing). For Long Grass she invited Darwin dancer-choreographer Gary Lang (whose long established work needs to be seen beyond that city) to work with her as cultural consultant and co-choreographer. Van Hout, with Lang and lighting designer Clytie Smith, created the ring of tall grass, representing the vacant land where homeless and displaced Aboriginals (called “long grassers”) gather in Darwin. True to the work’s ambivalence about Long Grass culture—at once violent and communal—the tall grass catches the light, sparking in a bleak world. Close inspection reveals the stems and flowerings to be intricately crafted—the knotting and weaving, hours of labour—the kind of detail also evident in Van Hout’s design for her first major work, Briwyant in 2011 (RT103).

A sculptural design centrepiece is of another kind of weave: a bed frame with a mattress support woven from long strips of material by the performers: it symbolises rest, intimacy, sensual seduction, entrapment and boundaries as it cradles and entangles dancers and is deftly manoeuvred about the stage framing action (see the cover of this edition).

The action is discursive; a series of vignettes of Long Grass life played with a laidback naturalism, recorded and live voice-overs (Lang), songs and eruptions of dance. This is dance theatre that really dances; the great power and precision of the highly articulated movement contrasts painfully with Long Grass inertia—drugged states and the incapacities of old age (a funny but finally sad motif). The forceful dancing represents the creative potential of joyous communality, too often distorted into sexual competition and violence—a woman beaten by one man immediately becomes target for another in a harrowing sequence, all the more ugly for its meticulous crafting. The dancers are uniformly superb in solos, duets and groups, Van Hout realising dance for the men with a rich variety of articulation and inflection. Only occasionally does the structure and tempo of Long Grass falter (a drunken night-on-the-town trio) or suggest that it’s too discursive.

Long Grass is an important work, culturally, sociologically and aesthetically, revealing in observant detail the lives of the dispossessed with humour, bitterness and sadness. It’s a brave work: not everyone will be able to reconcile the portrayal of hopelessness with Long Grass’s inherent optimism: a fraught community with ancient if damaged roots is better than none. Not least, it is the fine weave of dance, drama and music, resonant with the design, that makes Long Grass at once tautly and casually cogent, with dance writing hope large upon the stage and on our psyches.

Sarah Aiken, Rebecca Jensen, Rachel Coulson, Janine Proost, Overworld

photo Gregory Lorenzutti

Sarah Aiken, Rebecca Jensen, Rachel Coulson, Janine Proost, Overworld

2015 Dance Massive

Once again Dance Massive is very largely a Victorian affair, with NSW (Force Majeure, Vicki Van Hout, Sue Healey) being the only other state represented this year. Given the paucity of major dance festivals around Australia (save for Perth’s new MoveMe Dance Improvisation Festival, see reviews by Maggi Philips & Nerida Dickinson), Australia Council investment in the event and the National Dance Forum occurring in Melbourne at the same time, interstate artists must be wondering about their standing, let alone their careers, as Dance Massive markets programmed works by bringing in international producers and presenters.

The willingness and courage of Arts House, DanceHouse and Malthouse to commit so consistently to Dance Massive is admirable and doubtless there are advantages in showcasing local works already funded and which do not require expensive transport costs to mount in an already dance-dense culture. Artists and companies from other states might not be ready to fit the Dance Massive two-year cycle or the costs to participate might be beyond them. Whatever the reason, Dance Massive looks like a festival for and by Melbournians when it should be more than that.

Massive themes

The body-machine nexus continues to enthral choreographers much more than it does playwrights and theatre directors. In dance, the authentic body is at stake; as new technologies become more pervasive, providing electronic and mechanical prostheses and robotic substitutes, choreographers envisage co-option, cooperation or defeat. Antony Hamilton and Alisdair Macindoe in Meeting “share space with 64 robotic percussion instruments… the bodies enter[ing] states of heightened physical and mental agency, with all actions carried by the meditative pulse of the machine beat.” Rebecca Jensen and Sarah Aiken’s Overworld, “inspired by our immediate and unlimited capacity to access pop culture just as easily as ancient ritual and spiritual practice,” assays “how we access and broadcast information online, how we connect to information and to each other, what is meaningful and what is not” (see review from Next Wave 2013). Atlanta Eke (see review of recent work at Alaska Projects) performs Body of Work in which the human is “a biological organism and technical machine; a cyborg blurring the lines between who choreographs and who is choreographed.” In Stampede the Stampede, Tim Darbyshire performs “within a turbulent yet controlling choreographic apparatus…. the work attempts to expand choreography by means of machinery, object, lighting and sound configurations.”

In Motion Picture, Lucy Guerin looks to an older media technology that is still potently with us, taking “the 1950 film noir classic D.O.A. as a choreographic score to explore the tensions between live performance and cinema.” Rudolf Maté’s movie is screened behind the audience, but seen and interpreted by the dancers—who or what choreographs here, film or Guerin? As with our relationship with new technologies, this work “both pays homage to the moving image and rebels against it.”

Merge, Melanie Lane, Dance Massive

photo Dian McLeod

Merge, Melanie Lane, Dance Massive

Connectivity in terms of space and materiality is explored in a number of Dance Massive works. Rosalind Crisp engages with design (and the talents of Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham) in The Boom Project while Melanie Lane in Merge relates to objects created by visual artists Bridie Lunney and Ash Keating. Prue Lang’s SpaceProject “is the investigation of movement through the perception of space.” Chunky Move’s Depth of Field (a term long associated with filmmaking in respect to lenses and perception of space) breaks out of the theatre into public space in order “to reveal the unseen in the everyday.” Shelly Lasica’s Solos for Other People is performed in a basketball gym and Natalie Abbott’s Maximum conjures the gym inside a theatre.

A different kind of space is entertained in BalletLab’s Kingdom, where “four men—poof, queer, homo, fag—who also happen to be choreographers, come together to articulate how their individual and collective desires intersect with art, life and sexuality.” The dancer-choreographers “penetrating each other’s artistic territories,” are Matthew Day, Luke George, Rennie McDougall and Phillip Adams working in close collaboration with visual artist Andrew Hazewinkel to explore “ideas of utopia and a relationship to habitation, nature and identity.”

The body itself is the subject of Force Majeure’s Nothing to Lose, a bracing entertainment in which proudly corpulent artists stare down prejudice, enact favourite performances and dance gloriously. Rawcus’ ensemble of artists with and without disabilities likewise aims to reveal the potential of marginalised bodies and lives: “From karaoke to bedroom dancing and imagined celebrity, 12 performers grace eight stages side-by-side in a tableau that becomes an exhibition of human expression.” In Do You Speak Chinese? non-Chinese speaking Melbournian Victoria Chiu “plays with the many ways our bodies speak for us, often before we’ve even had a chance to open our mouths,” and in 10,000 Small Deaths, Paula Lay foregrounds “the experiential body,” directly addressing with dance, video and music “the transience of our corporeality and the beauty and sadness of existence.” Sue Healey’s On View: Quintet presents portraits live and on film of Martin del Amo, Shona Erskine, Benjamin Hancock, Raghav Handa and Nalina Wait, “explor[ing] the dimensions of portraiture and how we view each other.”

The body and space, perception, identity and technology with the odd hint of transcendence and a touch of dance metaphysics: what beyond music and our inner pulse dances us? That’s Dance Massive waiting to be danced in 2015.

Arts House, Dancehouse, Malthouse, Dance Massive, 2015, Melbourne, 10-22 March

RealTime issue #125 Feb-March 2015 pg. 19

When I was a little boy on the north coast of NSW my brothers and sisters would crawl into the long grass to bend, arrange and ‘weave’ the stalks to make fragile cubby houses there to play in. Other native creatures also did this, and hid there all the time of course. Often there were more than a few deadly snakes but, blind to the danger, we never seemed to encounter them. In the Darwin tropical north bandicoots and native rats build their nests in the grass and live off the stalks, seeds and thriving resident insect-life. Snakes of all kinds in large numbers come to pick them in turn.

In the country town where my family lived in post WWII rural Australia, there were homeless Aboriginal people, a resident population, who lived in vacant unkempt grassed blocks (they never seemed to be able or want to ‘squat’ in the numerous derelict houses). They seemed to drink and party a lot—the ‘goomies’ as they were called. Their presence reminded us of a lifestyle we were possibly one step away from.

Colonial Australia, it seems, has always had a ‘pest’ problem. There has always been the ‘Aboriginal problem’—authorities used to ‘disperse’ Aboriginals once upon a time. As I’m writing this, a ‘rabbit cull’ is taking place in the dark outside my ranger’s cottage. I can hear the short quiet ‘snap’ of what sounds like 0.22 ‘silencer’ bullets all around me. Darwin has always had a multicultural homeless population—Xavier Herbert’s novel Capricornia begins there, but authorities have periodically attempted to eradicate what they saw as freeloading pests—physically shipping people on boats back to what is now Maningrida just after WWII, and kicking out the hippies on their way to London in the 1970s, and Aboriginal people through laws to do with public drinking in the 1980s. There was a touch of jealousy for this loose life free from the nine to five workload, so different yet right in your face. What would happen if everyone lived like this?

I came to work in Milingimbi in 1979 and spent scattered time in Darwin as a transit place when passing through to southern cities. In the 1980s when I began to collect autobiographies from local artists at Milingimbi and Ramingining, early in the tales would be episodes of Darwin sojourns. An historian told me that within two years of Darwin being established Aboriginal people came to live there on the fringe. Most of the senior men had, in their teens, walked the 500km westward, cross-country to Darwin looking for ‘the action,’ for adventure. Darwin was a freer place then. They sometimes lived in prescribed areas like Bagot Reserve but as often camped with relatives on beaches and in the many convenient ‘long grass’ spaces in the centre of the city. Particular community groups had their own site-specific ‘grass’ sites; Parap, near the Oval, Rapid Creek, Fanny Bay, East Point, and with the hippies on the Esplanade or Casuarina Beaches.

Most expatriate workers I knew experienced their own, often darker, Darwin story: someone they became close to, who went to Darwin to live in the ‘long grass’ only to be lost and die there. A friend pointed out how walking into the sunset metaphorically was walking toward death. In the Arnhem Land society of arranged marriages and another consciousness, there are countless runaway brides and refugees from family disputes, convenient victims of accusations of sorcery. Many people come to the ‘long grass’ accidentally—they may have come to Darwin to go to hospital, to attend an education course or a political or church meeting and ‘fell in with friends.’ People also talked of ‘having a holiday’ after a big win at cards, or the final payout of a work contract.

It is timely to examine these lives; in other societies they appear romantically and seriously in literature, film and folklore. Outside of Herbert’s Capricornia in 1939 and Stephen Johnson’s 2000 feature film Yolngu Boy it’s a subject rarely explored. The experience of Vicki Van Hout’s Long Grass reminded me of surreal scenes in Fellini’s 1969 film Satyricon, but less high camp, and also the beauty of the players and positive energy of the music and dance portrayed in Marcel Camus’ 1959 Black Orpheus, another tale of refugees on the fringe.

I was told recently that all art could be described as form, content and context. Long Grass is an immersive, captivating work in form and style that charms, seduces and positively takes you into its arms. Its context, and some of its content, is the existential question posed by Camus and facing many Aboriginal youth today: to commit suicide or not commit suicide; after that everything is simple and structured.

There are many reasons for being depressed and committing suicide and many ways to do it; drinking yourself to death is a common one. I remember a particular man.

A totem is temporal—it exists in a physical site, in time and a season. There was a man from a small almost extinct clan group. We were close friends and at one stage talked about sharing a house due to the housing shortage. He belonged to a ‘line of clouds’ totem group that included anchovies and stingrays. His name meant a species of stingray. He was also a painter of small, fine pointed subject matter. I remember a year of ‘king’ tides when schools of small fish would come into the shallows and skip across the water. The tides spilled onto the land such that you could scoop the fish out of the gutters at the side of the coastal road. ‘Stingray’ had just finished a contract and before he holidayed in Darwin he took a painting with him to make extra money. We joked about the ‘mokuy’ dead spirit in his painting and how it was a self-fulfilling prophecy in the long grass lifestyle. Within several weeks he’d died there.

All through the wet season and just into the dry everything magically grows, seemingly overnight. The ‘long grass’ can be two or three metres high. I remember driving through walls for more than an hour with nothing in sight other than this straw curtain in front of me. In April comes the violent powerful ‘knock’em’ storms that flatten the grass and clear the line of sight. Watching Long Grass I thought of Vicki Van Hout as an amazing ball of energy like these storms that come out of nowhere to energize, create and be gone again before you can blink.

“If you were in my country I could show you places and you could see the picture in front of you. The story is alive and well and in front of you.”

Edwin Lee Mulligan, painter and poet, often referred to as a dream catcher, is telling me the story of Dungkabah, an ancient ancestor from his area around Noonkanbah in North Western Australia. Dungkabah, who steals people in their sleep and “entombs them in the spirit world,” is the maker of the “poisoned gas” that is now such a valuable commodity. We are sitting in Carriageworks in urban Sydney and while Mulligan admits it is hard to understand the full resonance of the story without access to its physical home, he offers a quiet but urgent invitation to contemporary Australia to try just that little bit harder to see from an Aboriginal perspective.

Mulligan is working with the Broome-based company Marrugeku on their latest show, Cut the Sky. It is conceived by Dalisa Pigram (co-choreographer) and Rachael Swain (director) and will premiere at the Perth International Arts Festival in February and play at WOMADelaide in March. Cut the Sky is dance theatre that attempts to grapple with the issue of climate change—particularly from the Aboriginal perspective on land and resource management. Along the way it draws on a number of other cultural and thematic touchstones: The Noonkanbah Protests against state-sanctioned mining on sacred sites in 1980; Werner Herzog and Wandjuk Marika’s documentary Where the Green Ants Dream (1984); and the Bertolt Brecht/Kurt Weil opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Set in the aftermath of a future man-made environmental disaster, the characters, including mining workers, a geologist, a sex worker, a displaced traditional owner and a protester, have to find their way in the radically changed world.

The show has developed from the Listening to Country laboratory that took place in 2013. Pigram says, “We took dancers to specific sites close to Edwin’s country, including Wandjina Gorge and places close to Broome. We were interested in trying to find ways of listening to country to effect our dramaturgy in this kind of dance theatre making. And we found something there for sure which led to us thinking, What if we don’t listen to country? What if we set this piece in the future and the damage is done… [We are also] finding ourselves being propelled back into the times of the Noonkanbah Protests in Edwin’s country. Have questions changed, or are they the same? Are we processing these ideas of resource management and caring for country in the right ways to sustain our lifestyles and our people?”

Along with the research from the laboratory, Mulligan’s poems also have had a direct effect on the choreography. Pigram says, “From the moment [Edwin] starts to speak about these physical dreams he’s actually experienced and turned into poetry it really opens your mind to seeing in a different way and allows [you as a] dancer to take that into your body…to develop the movement language and start to shape scenes.” Mulligan, primarily a painter and poet, is happy to have found a different medium for sharing his dreams: “I’m really privileged to work not only with Dalisa but other dancers too, where we [ex]change words and stories…translate stories into dance patterns.”

Music is also a strong driver within Cut the Sky. The show is divided into five acts or “mediations” based around five songs, two extant from Nick Cave, one from Buffalo Springfield and two commissioned from pop-funk artist Ngaiire [Joseph]. These are performed by singer/actress Ngaire Pigram under the musical direction of Matthew Fargher. Dalisa Pigram explains, “We’re looking at the function of the songs to be a bit like protest songs, the voices of the people that spoke up along the way, towards this future that we’re inevitably going to face.”

As with all Marrugeku shows, the collaborative team is a truly international affair. Movement is devised by the cast along with choreography by Pigram and Serge Aimé Coulibaly from Burkina Faso and Belgium. Dramaturg Hildegard de Vuyst is also from Belgium. The media designers, Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya (Desire Machine Collective) are from Assam in India. And of course there are a range of Australian—Indigenous and non-indigenous—collaborators as well. Pigram says, “From its birth Marrugeku has been an intercultural company…working in Indigenous contexts and communities to help tell these stories and share this perspective. [It’s about] a reciprocity, learning from one another and sharing that through our art making. To have perspectives from Burkina Faso in Africa, from Belgium, from Assam in India…is really valuable in this particular show especially considering climate change is ultimately going to affect and is [already] affecting all of us across the world. And we feel the importance of finding these opportunities to share Aboriginal perspectives, as these ancient knowledge systems can be beneficial for all humankind. If we share these things, hopefully it leads to new ways of looking at them and maybe we have a chance to make a difference.”

Despite the future setting of Cut the Sky suggesting a pessimistic outcome, both Pigram and Mulligan seem to have an overall optimistic outlook. I ask Mulligan if he has hope that his message—the Aboriginal perspective—will get some traction in mainstream Australia. He responds, “There’s a saying: we’ve all been given the gift of mortality and having the gift of mortality we all have the ability to dream, and by dreaming and by saying these stories, through whatever medium, we’re able to…” Pigram continues the thought “…shift people, and find new ways to look at things rather than coming up against each other all the time. Edwin has often said [that there is] this soft way to tackle such a heavy issue with such conflicting opinions…to share this in a soft way so people can take it in and feel it and hopefully they can see the other way to look at things.”

realtime tv interview

Marrugeku, Cut the Sky, Perth International Arts Festival, 27 Feb-1 March, https://2015.perthfestival.com.au/; WOMADelaide, 7-8 March, http://womad.org; WA regional tour August 2015; European tour Oct/Nov 2015

I recently travelled to Brisbane to look at screens: the Too Much World exhibition of the film essays by Hito Steyerl at IMA and the RoseLee Goldberg curated videos of international performance works at the QUT Art Museum. These shows are well-staged, spaciously ample and low on sound bleed and there’s occasional seating, allowing sometimes long works to be comfortably experienced. QUT Art Museum (with ICI and Performa) and IMA (with partners Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands and the Goethe-Institut Australia) are to be congratulated for staging these significant exhibitions.

I enjoyed both immensely. However, there were not a few moments when I wondered why I wasn’t in a theatrette or at home with the DVD player instead of wandering about waiting for the starting points of long videos or when I might gain access to the headphones or how much of the seven seven-hour Marina Abramovic performances I would be able to take in. The validity of showing these kinds of works as if pictures hung on walls becomes questionable as durations accumulate.

Hito Steyerl, Too Much World

In Sight & Sound, filmmaker Kevin B Lee describes the film essay as a form that “critically explores cinema through the medium itself,” in an age when almost anyone, “with or without a camera,” can do so given the enormous availability of images and technical resources (“Video essay: The essay film—some thoughts of discontent,” 8 Aug, 2014). Lee asks, “Does this herald an exciting new era for media literacy, or is it just an insidious new form of media consumption?” It’s a question inherent in the works of Hito Steyerl.

Film essays can look like documentaries and will deal in facts, but they are principally and unashamedly subjective, often poetic in form and playful with film language. One of the most acclaimed contemporary film essayists is Berlin-based Steyerl, who complains that while galleries will pay to show her work they will not fund her films, forcing her more and more into cheaper methods of production and having to learn digital skills. This is evident in 2014’s Liquidity Inc, a wild 30-minute ride through interview (a stockbroker turned cage-fighter), raw performance, animation, appropriation and vision-mixing in an assault on the schizophrenic condition that is Neo-liberalism. Roles, images, titles and images of weather (Steyerl’s masked daughter delivers The Weather Underground Report) and climate all become fluid in what appears to be a post-GFC, post apocalyptic world.

Next to Liquidity Inc (2014, 30mins), The Guards (2012, 14mins) is quite formal—as close as you’ll get to a straight documentary from Steyerl—in which two black American gallery guards reveal their backgrounds as policeman and marine. Their language and the marine’s miming of his stalking and attack routine in the quiet white gallery rooms with their famous paintings bring home the police mentality and militarisation pervading the everyday. As the film proceeds, the guards’ attitudes and moves are almost threatening. Finally, we see Steyerl, seated, smiling, watching the guards at work, but they have been superimposed over the paintings and into their frames, supplanting the art, as in earlier scenes artworks had become live footage of police pursuit and war scenes.

Adorno’s Grey (2013, 14 mins) is also neatly if more laterally constructed, documenting a formal attempt to find the grey paint beneath the white walls of a lecture theatre where the great Marxist cultural theorist Theodor Adorno taught until, in 1968, three female students walked to the lectern and bared their breasts, and he fled never to return. The film is part of an installation in a viewing space in which the screen is made up of large, leaning vertical planks in shades of grey. The black and white video itself is consequently shaded grey adding to the sense of ambiguity central to the film (why grey? why flee? why bother?). Smaller versions of the planks are found outside near two walls of text dating the history of protest as action or art.

Disappointingly, key Steyerl works (November [2004], Lovely Andrea [2007] and Free Fall [2009]) that were included in the Van Abbesmuseum in Eindhoven (Netherlands) do not appear in the Brisbane iteration of the exhibition. I’ve seen Lovely Andrea but not November and Free Fall, missing the opportunity to see how Steyerl self-critically positions herself as subject, performer and maker in each. There are DVDs available in Europe of Lovely Andrea and November. Time to invest in some reflective home viewing.

There’s a fine small catalogue of good essays accompanying this well-staged exhibition with abundant stills from the videos of this influential artist. It includes Steyerl’s widely delivered and published lecture “Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?” (you’ll easily find it online), a wonderful mind bender in which “digitisation slip[s] off-screen and enter[s] the material world” (Editor’s introduction, Too Much World) which, in turn, as in Liquidity Inc, becomes dangerously fluid.

Performance Now

Rose Lee Goldberg, author of the seminal book on performance Performance Art: From Futurism To The Present (1979) and founder and director of New York’s Performa festival, has curated a travelling exhibition of performances, some stand-alone screen works, others documentation. Most have been made since 2000. Irritatingly, there’s no catalogue, captions are basic, sometimes not even indicating country of origin, and there are blanks for all the links to artists on the website of Independent Curators International, the co-producer of the exhibition with Performa. Under these circumstances, for the committed viewer Performance Now just manages to work, piquing curiosity, sending the odd shiver up the spine or putting an idea into orbit.

Marina Abramovic’s Seven Easy Pieces (Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2005) comprises seven resurrected performances (including her own and works by Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci) set on circular platform stages. The set-up of seven eye-level screens side by side on a gently curving wall suggests perhaps that Goldberg only intends us to dip into these epics. The videos of these durational works for the most part appear as still lives at seven hours each. After 15 minutes or so of standing with no capacity to (desecratorily?) fast forward and concern building about time limits, the eye is attracted to the screen on which the gilt-and-honey-masked artist cradles pieta-like a dead hare, sets up and demounts easels and blackboards, opens a trapdoor and taps the frame furiously before subsiding into stillness, hare in lap. It’s Abramovic’s recreation of Josef Beuys’ How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965), regarded by some as the artist’s masterpiece. It is richly suggestive and strangely beautiful, even if experienced at a pronounced remove. These videos simply ignite a desire to have witnessed the performances. They are more homage than experience.

In a work seen in Australia in 2012, a grand piano is slowly rolled around a gallery followed by a curious audience. A circle has been cut from the grand’s centre and some two octaves of the relevant wires and keys put out of action. In the centre is a man, pushing the piano from the waist, leaning over the keyboard to play a piano reduction of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony back to front, using the dead keys percussively and plucking and stroking the strings. We fill in the missing notes in our heads and muse over the creation of an unfamiliar interpretation from Guillermo Calzadilla and Jennifer Allora (Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy,” 2008, Puerto Rico). In interviews (eg bombmagazine.org) the pair have cited their fascination with the relationship between music, sound and violence exemplified in the ode’s theme of ‘universal brotherhood’ alongside its quoted Turkish military band theme. More evident is the work’s playful resurrection and synthesis of 20th century avant-garde visual art tropes in the form of piano as readymade, piano desecrated (if not destroyed), piano prepared a la Cage and piano for performative installation.

I particularly enjoyed the political motivation evident in a number of works. In Regina José Galindo’s video, one of the show’s, most intriguing, in what appears to a be a Latin or South American city a young woman in black carries a bowl of red liquid, stopping frequently to dip a foot and leave red footprints along the streets and footpaths. Simple though it is, the association of Catholic culture with extreme forms of penance and pilgrimage is casually evoked but barely noticed by people the woman passes. Only later, having not registered or understood the gallery caption and searching for reference to the work online, I discover its title and meaning: A Walk from the Court Of Constitutionality to the National Palace of Guatemala, leaving a trail of footprints in memory of the victims of armed conflict in Guatemala, 2003.

A more overtly political work, And Europe Will Be Stunned/Mary Koszmary (Nightmares) (2007, 11 mins) by Israeli video artist Yael Bartana, is staged in the deserted, overgrown National Stadium in Warsaw. A suited young man at a microphone speaks to a small group of young people as if addressing a larger audience, low camera angles lending him stature. He declares, “Jews! We miss you!” The young people stencil “JEWS” onto the field. “Even when you left, there were those who kept telling you to leave,” he says. However, in the end the sense of enlightenment is diminished as the young people line up in dark uniforms with red neckerchiefs, suddenly evoking Stalinist or Zionist Youth fervour. It’s bitterly ironic, made in the manner of propaganda films of the 1930s-50s but with full-colour, feature film production values that tell us this is a film about now. Bartana was chosen to represent Poland at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

Liz Magic Lazer’s I Feel Your Pain (US, 2011, 80mins) records the recreation of interviews with famous people, including a bitterly funny television exchange between Bill and Hilary Clinton after the revelations about his infidelities. It’s performed in a theatre, the actors sitting with and moving about the audience with cameras trained on them, their images projected onto the cinema screen. With an adroit fusion of live verbatim theatre and parodic media technique Lazer incisively focuses on the rhetorical tactics and cliches politicians and political commentators deploy, especially when under pressure.

Among the more striking works on show is a modest two-minute film Ukungenisa (2008) that comes with significant post-colonial ramifications. A black woman (the South African artist Nandipha Mntambo) is transformed into a Mozambiquean bullfighter preparing to fight in an abandoned Portuguese arena. She wears not only the requisite outfit but also a large animal skin as if she is at once hero and victim, scraping a foot across the sand like an impatient bull.

Several works pivot around the modern family. Guy Ben-Ner’s widely seen (including on YouTube) Stealing Beauty (Israel, 2007) in which the artist and his wife and two children invade successive IKEA stores and inhabit display rooms is wickedly funny. The dialogue between family members focuses on consumerism and property (“Is Mom private property?”) with a mock-Marxist slant which is nonetheless apt. Stealing Beauty is a model of guerrilla filmmaking of the most amiable kind (Liz Magic Lazer also conducts filmed live performance interventions).

If Ben-Ner mimics conventional filmmaking, Ryan Trecartin runs wild with the camera: bodies lunge into frame, close-ups are in-yer-face and there’s a lot of dress-ups and dialogue that you have to grab at. And if Ben-Ner’s family seems quite normal, Trecartin’s fictional one, in A Family Finds Entertainment (US, 2004, 40 mins), is a high-level bizarre mix of folk ordinary and wild. The artist plays demented teenager Skippy (knife wielding, teeth blackened,) who is ordered to leave home by his “Snake” mother. He’s hit by a car, survives and parties with a wild girl, Shin, while being followed by a woman making a documentary about “medium-aged kids all over the world.” But narrative counts for little in this wild melange of home video, animation and vivid theatricality. What it adds up to is a sense of release from family life—if from one mad world to another. See it to believe it (sometimes found on YouTube).

Kalup Linzy’s black family soap opera All My Churen (US, 2003), built around a series of telephone dialogues, is not as visually delirious as Trecartin’s, but the dialogue and the artist’s convincing comedic playing of all the roles in various wigs, outfits and voices are likewise gripping in their excess.

In the foyer there’s a sculptural work by Brisbane artists Clark-Beaumont, the only Australians represented in Performance Now. It’s a carefully crafted, sharply angled rock face, a duplicate of the one that Sarah Clark slid down before being rescued by Nicole Beaumont while they were on a walking trip. The near-serious accident was re-created for the opening of Performance Now. A machine fault meant that the video was not showing during my visit. But reading the accompanying wall text and appreciating the sculpture, a friend commented that imagining the performance was oddly satisfying.

Big questions arise out of the Performance Now experience. Is this simply a video art exhibition? What does it actually have to say about performance today beyond the fact that art performance has diversified and is less precious than its forbears? Can an exhibition of performance on screen be meaningful without context? As Mike Leggett, driven online by the absence of an Experimenta Recharge catalogue, asks (see article), “Is the web now confirmed as rivalling the white cube, becoming the preferred place for exhibiting media art, simultaneously storing knowledge gleaned in steady accumulations of feedback?” You can see Performance Now (allocate a day) until 1 March and ask yourself.

Too Much World, The Films of Hito Steyerl, curators Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh in association with Annie Fletcher, presented in cooperation with the Van Abbemuseum and the Goethe-Institut Australia; IMA, 13 Dec, 2014-21 March 2015; ICI (Independent Curators International) and Performa, Performance Now, QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, 6 Dec, 2014-1 March, 2015

The curators of Experimenta Recharge 6th International Biennial of Media Arts ask three questions, only one of which intrigued: “can artists illuminate knowledge for new generations?” From computer-based animation, through DIY electronics to intensely introspective installations, the multidisciplinary DNA of the current generation of artists has been adjusting, if not exactly mutating, familiar ground.

A generation has indeed passed from the time when ‘new media’ (the ‘media’ recently decoupling from the ‘new’ to re-emerge assuredly as ‘media art’) was first identified and named. Back then, while interactive constructions took tenuous shape, using the few software applications available, experimentation with the new tools often took precedence over intentions. Knowledge, as a by-product, was formalised later. Appropriately, the Recharge title of the exhibition proclaims the work is “inspired by and entangled with the past,” an historical line tempered with the invitation to celebrate the novel, the fresh, the invigorating.

Experimenta’s historically successful biennial format enables the packaging of the exhibition with events and performances followed by a national touring program. Bringing together apparently “disparate technologies and disciplines,” a space exists for focused assessment on what emerges as new from within the contemporary arts. The Biennial, like several similar international media art events, stands apart from the world’s art biennales which continue exhibiting the trusty formula of object, installation, video screen and an occasional performance, but generally drawing the line at artists choosing to combine all three. Media art shows experiment—Recharge commissioned five works—usually involving complex use of electronics. This is high-risk stuff.

Ei Wada’s monumental installation, Story of Falling Records, mounts four analogue audio tape decks atop four-metre transparent bins into which the audio tape spills as an ominous rumbling is heard; then, when the bin is full, rewinds rapidly back to the spool, over the heads, revealing a catchy tune. This was “undergoing maintenance” early on in the show; clearly the risks associated with selecting such important modified-analogue works also risk losing an audience. Later by checking an elegant documentation of the piece on YouTube, I realised this as a major work. Furthermore absence of a catalogue—now available—forced me back to the web for contextual help. Is the web now confirmed as rivalling the white cube, becoming the preferred place for exhibiting media art, simultaneously storing knowledge gleaned in steady accumulations of feedback?

A collective, La Société Anonyme also addresses the problem of archiving, assuring us that their “collection of binary code from sound and image media art files from the SKOR archives…is intended to last well beyond the years of present day technological systems.” We learn that black and white square structure of binary code format is “visually appealing and translatable,” made for an elegant display to one side of the main space. Knowledge invisible to the naked eye becomes a sculptural object.

Three people provided curatorial input: Jonathan Parsons and Elise Routledge (both Experimenta staff) and Lubi Thomas. The 20 artists participating included seven from overseas, two of whom had completed residencies, a novel one-off innovation administered as part of the event. One of the Korinsky brothers, Abel, resident at RMIT, referenced the much discussed Big Bang reverberation using the closed ‘cube’ space of the gallery to deliver a rush of sound in (or of) the ears, the head, the body. We perambulate a construction reminiscent of solar sails, or a filled umbrella-like apparatus gathering ‘cosmic winds,’ which, when suddenly plunged into darkness, glows in the dark. In silence.

Also based in Berlin, the other artist-in-residence, the Brazilian Anaisa Franco, was guest for two months in the Creativity & Cognition Studios at the University of Technology Sydney. Her three exhibits included the newly made Your Wave of Happiness, one of a ‘sensitive sculpture’ series activated into pulsing light by someone climbing onto the peak of a mound of light rope. Placed on a landing to one side of the exhibition entrance, it was one of several instances of awkward presentation in the miscellaneous spaces that make up the RMIT Gallery. An older ‘reactive sculpture,’ Paranoia, an hilarious set of chattering false teeth activated with visible circuitry, was by contrast so much in your face as to become a navigational hazard. More often encountered in the clean spaces of the white cube, was the gloomy architecture of the gallery part of the scene-setting of ‘the past’?

Stuart McFarlane and Darrin Verhagen use light in highly manipulated narrow beams over an area the size of a supermarket trolley to create staccato changing colours. This made it difficult to identify the object creating the shadows in among the pulsating light beams at the centre of this little arena. As all the exotic contenders are eliminated, it is identified as a bent paper staple; back to the 19th century. Replace clip and multiply.

A riveting single channel video projection of an ancient story is told by Yunkurra Billy Atkins, a Martu elder (from the Western Desert, West Australia), a collaboration with the Perth-based digital animator Sohan Ariel Hayes. Maree Clarke, a Boonwurrung woman from northwest Victoria uses video as part of an installation in which she tells new stories based on pre- and post historical contact. Award-winning Raymond Zada is of the Barkindji/Paakintji peoples in South Australia and in his video installation ironically floats the street signs of Adelaide over its central square, “the red earth of Kaurna country.”

Khaled Sabsabi, 70,000 Veils 2014, 100 channel digital video, courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

The disputed territories of the Middle East emerge from 100 screens in Khaled Sabsabi’s 70,000 Veils, a reference to the depths of Islamic teaching. Arranged in two large six-metre panels forming the shape of a V—or hands held out in prayer—the 70,000 images gathered on his travels are presented 700 to a screen as a single file that takes 700 seconds (about 11 minutes) to play through as successive composites. The effect is more static and reflective than this suggests as transparency levels are slow to change. A deep rumbling sound resonates and crescendos around the shared space, unavoidably it seems, layering into the other works nearby.

The Experimenta Biennial of Media Arts is to be congratulated for taking the risk and maintaining the opportunity to engage with these approaches to making art, with nods toward the sciences. The illumination provided by and for the new generation reiterates the view that knowledge is like an exhibition: a construction in need of constant attention by audience, artists and curators together.

Experimenta Recharge, 6th International Biennial of Media Arts, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 28 Nov, 2014-21 Feb, 2015

Even though Columbia Pictures’ head Harry Cohn famously derided putting ‘messages’ into films (“If you want to send a message, use Western Union!”) Hollywood cinema has ended up the largest global producer of ‘messages.’ More promiscuous than an Amazon.com entry, they can take any form and be conservative or subversive, populist or messianic. They circle the world like FedExed Legionnaires disease, suggesting that their rampant distribution accounts for their globalist totalising effects.

But such media analyses are focused on the messenger, not the message, whose aura and make-up encode its fuller meanings. Most importantly, these ‘messages’ detach from their hosts to circulate in unfounded ways, often cross-fertilising with others completely out of context. Thus Hollywood films appear to be authored and voiced, but they’re oppositely generated, thereby requiring alliterate modes of reading.

In the case of Mark Foster’s World War Z (2013), a type of ‘semiotic listening’ is required to prise any message from the movie’s semantic din. In its most fascinating and confounding moment, a mass of Israelis and Palestinians gather at processing gates inside a humongous wall Israel has built to keep out a plague of infected ‘zombies.’ A young Palestinian woman grabs a microphone and starts singing through a low-fi PA system. Accompanied by non-stop feedback she sounds like a wounded mule. A young Israeli woman grabs another mic and joins in singing the unspecified untranslated song, which presumably has something to say about unification. Their inept carolling is smeared with whining sine waves and whelping whistles from the military-issue sound system. Yet this magically moves all the civilians of conflicting denominations to join in, generating a nauseous sonorum of campfire togetherness.

Is this deluded humanist cinema dreaming it’s outrageously optimistic? Or is this a cynical damnation of cinema that wishes for such a moment? Whenever actual noise is rendered on the film soundtrack—here embedding bad singing with bad audio—it signifies something occurring beyond legibility. Notably, beautiful wailing women’s voices are globalist clichés on current Hollywood film soundtracks. This scene’s impetus for terrorising its own soundtrack signposts a post-literate realm, where words alone and their utterance as message do not adequately explain the audiovisual scenario under scrutiny.

Before one can answer this conundrum, the feedback and its painful vocalisation hits the ears of the zombies outside, triggering them into extremist violence. Are these zombies symbolic of the torture endured by those who are annihilated by terrorism? Or are they terrorists enraged by the platitudes which suppress their logic of rage? And if on the other side—in that ‘Free World’ trapped by the gigantic CGI-transmogrified Wailing Wall of Jordan’s Temple Mount—Jews and Muslims sing a song of hugging devoid of Zionist and Islamic pressure, who and what exactly are the zombie Other, squealing in pain at their utopian wails? Columnists covering the Middle East (as well as writers for religiously aligned publications) have mostly thrown their hands up in despair over the confused messages delivered by World War Z, excited initially by a rare instance of Hollywood attempting to symbolise anything to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, yet perplexed by the lack of fixity or substance in the film’s ‘voice.’

Their lack of patience and perception is telling. As the ‘Free World’ searches for terrorist needles in Islamic haystacks, critiques of extremist fundamentalist strategies proceed as if everything should be in plain sight. Extremist attacks are deplored for their unjustifiable actions, yet their reasoning and logic might be as hidden as those haystack needles. The ‘Free World’ press chooses to employ humanist ethics and globalist morality to dismiss extremist rhetoric—the very same sentiments which form the bulk of ‘messages’ in Hollywood’s post-9/11 cinema. But in less democratic realms, a deadly butterfly effect is proffered: The Chinese state-run Global Times (an English-language publication) recently inferred that “what Western developed societies have gone through is payback, as it is their historical acts of slavery and colonialism which led to their current demographic structures.”

Meanwhile in World War Z, the traumatised zombies are reborn as an Other beyond Others. They become a rhyzomatic flood of flesh-entangled tentacles, pouring like a unified mass toward the wall which keeps them at bay. Like decrepit corporeal treacle moving according to an upturned gravity, they shoot skywards in a spiralling tornado of rotting flesh. If terrorists are indeed cells, then this is their hive uncovered. It’s an explosion of bodies driven by collective force, blindly forging ahead against all obstruction. They do not need to see anything: their senses are aligned by something beyond the sensible, the literate, the perceivable. They vibrate like sound waves, responding to the force of being struck, agitated into a deadly wave of negative energy.

For once, Hollywood CGI goes beyond its Tinkerbell fairy-dust facials and shows bodies not as singular identities, but as an uncontrollable mass of aggravated chaos. The zombies form a human eruption of self-scaling bloodlust, reaching the wall’s ledge and piling over like sparks from a welder’s arc. They crash below, again and again, bearing the weight of nothing more than statistical probability: enough will fall to create a landing carpet for the others, all eventually becoming agency for further agency. It’s like a time-condensed visualisation of the ideological breeding supported by fundamentalists of all persuasions and sides: for each of us that falls, ten more shall take our place.

Here, Temple Mount has become an arena for rock spectacle. The zombies are stage-diving into the crowd, either breaking neck and limb as they hit walls, grates, rooftops, or snapping and biting at any living thing in their path—from startled IDF soldiers to scarved singers. Like a swarm of suicide bombers, they ‘CGI-bomb’ every frame of this sequence. Yet they resemble disaffected scruffy teens circa-Grunge—possibly the rebel soundtrack to the formative years of many working on this film’s production. (They’re even wearing plaid shirts and camo-gear.) Is this Brad Pitt’s company Plan B Entertainment making a plea for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by utilising the para-Survivalist Amero-secular voice of Grunge rage? For while World War Z is sci-fi to the eye, to the ear it’s a musical.

Musicals are aberrant by nature and disruptive by form. They constitute a narrative type predicated upon unleashing libidinal, transformative, utopian & pathological energy through the incursive act of singing in what otherwise is a normative text, shaped by literature, actualised by theatre, and rendered by photography. Songs become decimating agents within their film, wherein the world becomes a stage. Once a character starts singing, things will change—internally (for the character and for the film) and externally (for the world it depicts and our experience of that depicted world).

When that young Palestinian woman started singing, she set into motion more than can be accounted for—and far more than can be rationalised by the global intelligentsia and its elitist acultural op-ed columnists. The film’s ‘message’ is in its noise.

In 2014, three science fiction films comprised variations on the same theme—an alien or artificial intelligence expands over the course of the narrative, leaving its imprint upon humanity. In an interesting coincidence, each of the films—Spike Jonze’ Her, Luc Besson’s Lucy and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin—harnesses the star power of Scarlett Johansson to embody (or in one case, to voice) that intelligence.

Johansson’s ascension to stardom has seen her move from individualistic early roles playing the misfit (Ghost World, 2001; Lost in Translation, 2003) into a series of characters that, while often compelling, tend to blur into one bombshell archetype. Always an object of desire, she appears most memorably as a sensual yet troubled free spirit (Match Point, The Black Dahlia, Vicki Christina Barcelona). Whether playing ingénues, femmes fatales or breezy temptresses of married men, Johansson brings intelligence to her roles, a gravitas even, in which you recognise the extent of her experience as a professional actor dating back to the age of eight. In none of her parts is she a pushover, something the Marvel franchise must have picked up on when casting her as Black Widow in various Iron Man, Avengers and Captain America films.

Last year’s three science fiction films take the Johansson archetype and push it into a new realm of super-human ability and intelligence—from sex-goddess to truly god-like.

Lucy (2014), written and directed by Luc Besson, is the high-octane action version of the trio and arguably the most mainstream. Johansson’s Lucy (named after the famous early hominid skeleton Australopithecus afarensis, discovered in 1974) is a student kidnapped and forced to become a mule for a new drug that stimulates radical development of the brain. A violent assault by one of her captors causes the container in her stomach to rupture, releasing an enormous quantity of the drug into her bloodstream, accelerating neural activity and triggering Lucy’s transformation into a kind of superhuman (a state that also involves the swift acquisition of a snappy little black dress).

With Lucy’s vastly expanding potential, the world around her begins to transform as well, in often explosive and hallucinogenic ways. At one point she runs low on the drug and her body physically warps and starts to disintegrate. A fresh infusion restores her and ultimately sends her soaring through time and space. Both micro (the electric blue drug rushing through Lucy’s body) and macro scenes possess an exhilarating, visceral quality. The film’s scientific premise, that only 10 per cent of the human brain is used by us, is a fantasy, as Besson is aware, but it’s an engaging hook upon which to hang his existential spectacle.

As he did with Anne Parillaud in Nikita (1990), Besson uses Johansson’s physical vulnerability as a foil to heighten the impact of her newfound power. The director has said, “For me Achilles without the tendon is of no interest. His weakness makes him interesting. That’s what I like about women. It’s difficult for a woman to compete with a man because he’s usually stronger. So women have to be more clever, more intelligent, more sneaky, more everything. They have to find another way and that is so attractive” (wired.com, 23 July, 2014).

The most mysterious and abstract of the three films—containing virtually no exposition—is Under the Skin (2013), with Johansson playing an alien who assumes human form to lure earthly men to a grim fate. The entire film is a slowly moving sequence of heightened sensory moments where Daniel Landin’s cool cinematography combines with Mica Levi’s extraordinary soundscape to create a naturalism that tips into surreal horror. Our journey is that of the alien, whose every encounter is new, intensified, yet (initially, at least) detached.

Unlike the Michel Faber novel on which it is based, Jonathan Glazer’s film is so enigmatic that we never know quite why Johansson is enticing male humans to their deaths; but this doesn’t really matter. The film’s focus is on the alien’s unfolding experience of her human identity, one mainly rooted in sensuality and the body. In some ways, with her black wig, full lips and expressionless gaze, Johansson’s alien is reminiscent of those ultra realistic RealDoll sex mannequins (as seen in the 2007 film Lars and the Real Girl). Even when she’s in her white van stalking men, she doesn’t seem to have any volition of her own—its absence underlined by the shadowy men on motorbikes who superintend her disguise. It’s only when she begins to become more human that individual motivations emerge, with appalling consequences. It is clear that both before and especially after her escape from her guards, the alien is always at the mercy of men.

Despite the very different approaches of the two films, Johansson’s performances in Under the Skin and Lucy share a similar impassivity, at the point where Lucy is moving away from human emotion and the alien has yet to feel it. Yet while Lucy will come to acquire unimaginable power, in Under the Skin we see Johansson stripped of her usual knowingness and at her most vulnerable.

With its candid footage of real Glaswegians interacting with the bewigged Johansson without realising who she is, Under the Skin deliberately plays the viewer’s awareness of the actor’s celebrity against her apparent anonymity here. The curious spectacle of the star walking about unrecognised, at one point stumbling and being helped up from the pavement, creates a subtle feeling of displacement: a paradox where the familiar is rendered unfamiliar. Glazer confirmed this in an interview in The Dissolve (4 April, 2014): “We’re using how Scarlett’s objectified, the glamour of her image. And she’s using all of that as well. There’s a deconstruction going on.”

The action sequences in Lucy and the naked exposure of Under the Skin push Johansson the physical performer to the fore. Both films are predominantly cold in tone, detached. In contrast, Her (2013), where Johansson doesn’t appear in front of the camera at all, is about warm engagement. Her’s protagonist Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is beset by loneliness and the desire for connection in a world where human interactions are increasingly mediated by technology. In a cute illustration of this, he works for a company that simulates hand-written letters for clients too busy or inept to put pen to paper. Theodore is likeable but self-defeating, a man who after the break-up of his marriage takes refuge in the virtual world of online porn and video games.

Enter the sentient operating system. The rapport between Theodore and Samantha, as the new OS calls herself, is immediate. What’s not to like? Samantha is warm, efficient and unexpectedly funny. She brings company and order to Theodore’s life. Despite her obvious existence as a cognisant, intelligent being, her role is to serve him. When the two embark on the romance that takes up the bulk of the film, it’s easy to take a somewhat cynical view as to why Theodore falls so swiftly in love with Samantha, yet as the relationship moves through the usual misunderstandings and standoffs, with Samantha evolving constantly, her role as servant fades into the background. Theodore is left with the realisation that, rather than being an ever-present comfort, his AI love is even less accessible and more complex than another human being.

It’s what Johansson does with her husky, mellifluous voice that sustains the viewer’s interest in Samantha. Her is a great demonstration of the actor’s easy grasp of the subtleties of verbal communication; her ability through voice alone to create a character who feels just as real as Theodore, on whose face the film dwells intimately.

There are clear parallels between Samantha, Lucy and the alien in Under the Skin. All three are guinea pigs: haphazard experiments in what it means to be human. Each is a commodity: Samantha a commercial operating system, the alien a honeypot used by her overlords in the harvesting of men and Lucy a drug receptacle who continues to be pursued by the gangsters who implanted the drug in her.

At the same time, each character undergoes transformation, embarking on a journey of self-discovery that, in two cases out of the three, results in transcendence of human limitations altogether. For all three their initial servitude and subsequent transcendence occurs in relation to male characters, whether aggressive or supportive. In Her, Theodore is the film’s protagonist; this is his journey as much as hers. In Under the Skin and Lucy, Besson’s observation about women’s comparative weakness and compensatory enterprise making them more interesting is pertinent. The male characters highlight the singularity of Lucy and the alien—a singularity emphasised by their femaleness.

Who better to convey the qualities of female commodification, transformation and subversive intelligence than a performer who is both seasoned character actor and famous sex symbol: one who plays her glamorous image up to maximum effect while remaining cannily aware of its implications?

Lucy (2014), writer/director Luc Besson, cinematography Thierry Arbogast, score Eric Serra; Under the Skin (2013), director Jonathan Glazer, screenplay Jonathan Glazer, Walter Campbell, cinematography Daniel Landin, score Mica Levi; Her (2013), writer/director Spike Jonze, cinematography Hoyte Van Hoytema, score Arcade Fire

Murray Arts Staff (L-R) Jo Bartels, Karen Gardner, Vivien Naimo and Carolyn Martin Doyle (Maggih Coates not pictured)

Karen Gardner is Regional Arts Development Officer and General Manager of Murray Arts, whose contributing councils comprise the across-the-border collaboration of Albury City, Corowa and Greater Hume in New South Wales and, in Victoria, City of Wodonga, Indigo and Towong. With a population of some 130,000 citizens (2.3% of them Aboriginal) spread over 17,755 square kilometres, it’s a region which, as Gardner tells it, is very active in the arts but with much more potential to be realised.

Gardner tells me she fell in love with theatre when she was 16 and did a degree at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst—“So I’ve always felt a connection to regional arts and I’ve always been quite passionate about being able to experience the arts in regional communities.” She subsequently worked on arts events in the Millennium and Olympics cultural celebrations, but “when the job came up at Murray Arts my husband and I moved from Sydney to be here. And it’s wonderful.”

Give me some idea of what Murray Arts does in the areas of facilitating, nurturing and connecting.

I see us having a dual role; one of these is about building community capacity and that’s almost twofold in that it’s about supporting and nurturing artists to live in regional areas. It’s also about building the capacity of the community to be involved, to facilitate and undertake their own arts projects. So there’s our community capacity but then I very much see us having a role as creators and producers of work as well. We undertake our own arts projects and try to make them happen in our region. There’s a whole lot of other stuff but those are the two key areas [as well as] an information and communication role, an important part of what we do—newsletters, the website and social media. And then we run a lot of partnership projects as well; workshops—all those sorts of things.

Let’s talk about some of the projects that you’ve initiated or are on the way.

Last year we organised a big project called the Holbrook Yellow Submarine. We yarn-bombed the HMAS Otway in Holbrook, which is a full-sized submarine [donated to the town which was named after a British submariner. Eds] and we made it yellow with knitting. We got a lot of coverage—national and international—and donations. It was a huge project that connected a very small community to the whole world. It crossed ages and timelines, crossed the nation, crossed the world. And I think what we got most out of it was people’s connection to place. When people sent in their donations of yellow wool—because we were relying entirely on people to contribute to this project—it would often come with a little note. Some people just thought it was a fun and quirky idea but lots of people had a connection to the submarine in some way. They had relatives who’d served on the submarine. Someone said, “When he was learning to walk, my son took his first steps on the HMAS Otway.” It offered such a lovely insight into the lives of a community.

We were the project managers and we had three artists (Libby Alexander, Donna Pinder and Michelle Oxley) overseeing, making sure the installation of the submarine looked fantastic. We had thousands of donations. One was 17 metres long. Others sent tiny squares. And they were all sewn together by a small army of volunteers and then installed. Just to give you some idea of the scale, the submarine is 90 metres long by 8 metres high and the whole thing was yellow!

Last year we produced We Are All Made of Stardust—an arts and science project linking astronomy and charcoal drawing. We arranged a series of science lectures on the night sky and invited an Aboriginal storyteller, Leonie McIntosh, to come in and talk about Indigenous interpretations of the night sky. Then we had artist Zhen Chew do charcoal drawing and create a series of animations to re-animate the stories that people had learnt through their night sky viewing. Western interpretations of the night sky are about the constellations themselves whereas Indigenous interpretations are also about the black space in between. So you get nice contrasts in meaning. To get those stories across and re-tell them, the community participated in these big charcoal drawings workshops.

Huge! This time we went to some of our smaller communities where we hadn’t worked before. A particularly memorable one was out at Savernake, which is a couple of hours from Albury. We told one person that we were coming and 70 people turned up. Savernake is very much a farming community. There’s a school, a community hall and that’s about it. Some drove from an hour away to be part of the project. The whole school took part, all 16 of them. It was such a beautiful community event. We put on a barbecue and took the telescopes out and, of course, the night sky out there is just huge. It was just a really great community response to that project

Karen Gardner, Bronwen O’Shea (ABC Goulburn Murray) and Chris Coleman (ABC Riverina)

It’s a reminder not only of the vastness of the heavens but the distances that are involved in your region. You have to bring people together who live miles away from each other or go to them.

That’s right. We do a lot of professional development workshops as well but one of the big projects we have coming up this year is a transportable art gallery. We’ll have a small gallery set-up that is completely able to fit either in the back of a car or be towed by the Murray Arts car. Again, we’ll be able to take that to some of our smaller communities where people wouldn’t necessarily come in to see a show at Albury Art Gallery or they might feel intimidated going into a [conventional] gallery space. We’re also working on getting some nice digital content to support a curated exhibition of contemporary art from our region.

Yes, and also makes it more interactive. We’re working with an app that when you put it over the artwork will allow you to take a tour of the artist’s studio or to see an interview with the artist.

Another of our key activities is around Aboriginal arts development: we have a part-time Aboriginal Officer, Maggih Coates. Over the last few years we’ve been working very closely with Aboriginal artists to provide them with opportunities to exhibit and sell and create profiles for themselves. We arrange an annual group exhibition and then support individuals as we go along. One thing that’s on our agenda for this year is moving our office and having a shopfront that will be a permanent exhibition and sales place for local Aboriginal artists. It’s become very obvious is that there’s no place to buy Aboriginal art in our region. That’s a real gap in the market and this space will meet that need.

You have Flying Fruitfly Circus and Hot House Theatre but what’s the region like in terms of artistic density?

I think we’re very blessed. As well as those professional companies you’ve mentioned we’ve got the Murray Conservatorium, Albury Regional Gallery, which is under re-development but there’s also Arts Space Wodonga. We have two performing arts venues as well. So in terms of infrastructure we’re very lucky. We also have a lot of practising artists, probably mostly visual artists, in our community. I think one of the challenges for us is that while we do have two universities, neither offers a specialised arts degree any more. So in terms of actually bringing new artists into the region at tertiary level, especially at that cutting edge/experimental level, that’s something that’s not happening.

There are also the cuts to TAFE, which are problematic for everyone everywhere.

That has definitely affected our region as well. TAFE is doing the best they can do and it’s not that we don’t have any new or emerging artists that are coming through. I think it’s that ‘pushing the boundaries’ stuff that universities are able to do and bringing new people in—and then they stay. That’s what’s really critical. What we try to demonstrate to artists is that you don’t need to live in the city to have an arts career, an arts practice. It’s something we try to showcase, to provide support for those artists here.

As producers, a few years ago, Murray Arts did a project called The dis/assemble Dance Project for dancers with and without disabilities. We have an amazing choreographer, Tim Podesta, who works internationally and just happens to live here. He choreographed these works with his full-time dance students and others who had been working with Margot McCallum—another amazing dancer we have here—for five or six years prior to their coming into the program. Although that project as a whole doesn’t exist any more, its legacy lives on in some of those dancers with disabilities now attending Tim’s studio and Margot continues to work with a group of dancers who perform. Albury City has just recently done a project, which was a collaboration and mentorship involving five artists with disabilities and five without. They produced some amazing pieces. So, yes, there are lots of things happening.

You’re covering a lot of council areas and a very big and diverse population. Is there a sense of cohesion between all the different agencies? And you’re straddling a state border as well.

We’re unique in terms of regional arts and I think it’s symbolic of the region itself in that it really is a cohesive border community. We have a health system that works cross-border—Albury-Wodonga Health. The community sees itself very much as a region. And I think we’re incredibly lucky that the councils are very open to working with one another. We’ve just been a partner in a NSW project that got Museums and Galleries funding. It’s a partnership between Murray Arts and our three NSW communities to explore identity through community museums. And then we’re working with three of our Victorian councils to pull together another project. All the cultural development workers come together on a pretty regular basis.

Some do, some don’t. The two big councils of Albury and Wodonga have cultural teams and a cultural development officer. One of our other councils has a cultural development officer; one has a community development officer. There are two smaller councils that used to have community development officers but those positions haven’t been replaced. There’s a very collegiate atmosphere and people are not too possessive about ideas.

What are the kinds of things you long for? You’ve already talked about the need for specialised arts degrees at universities and a wish that TAFES were better off.

They would definitely be on the wish list. I think we would love to see some kind of permanent Indigenous cultural centre. We’re somewhat on the way to that, but it doesn’t really have the funding to operate in a full-time professional capacity.

I would love to see more cutting edge artists choosing to live in regional areas, to explore their practice here. With the NBN and social media artists might see that there is a lot that regional areas have to offer.

The inaugural MoveMe Improvisation Festival celebrates improvisation across dance, music and performance in Perth. Bringing together international, national and local performers and audiences, each performance carries the exciting sensation of spontaneous creativity. All three reviewed works share a key feature of fundamental trust, allowing performers to pursue creative risks on stage.

The Ferrymen

The Ferrymen is an engaging dance improvisation featuring strong comedic and theatrical elements. Andrew Morrish and Peter Trotman have been working together since 1981, and a strong sense of comfortable trust underlies their sparkling frisson of improvised movement. They embrace chatty text as part of their practice, opening by exploring the titular premise of Ferrymen. From a coracle to larger vessels, detouring by way of the motion of oars and the advisability of white men articulating their pelvises, Morrish explores various types of ferry and operator movements with the observation that the inducement that “there’ll be sex at the end” will persuade men to try anything. The talkative monologue at front of stage is echoed in the freestyling moves of Trotman making the most of the black box space, quietly working his way across the back of the stage.

The performers unite using mime for light-hearted development of ideas, with eyes popping dramatically, whether to provoke audience reactions, restrain personal amusement or both. One running gag involves the lack of expense in preparation, featuring a phone with an attached speaker providing water sounds, even at the risk of affecting those with “urinary tract problems.” Further jokes focus on dance themes and interests, appreciated by the audience packed with dancers. A particularly long monologue is interrupted by the audience, resulting in some good-natured anti-heckler ripostes, but quickly picks up physical pace and energy.

Ad hoc props are employed, such as scaffolding as a series of embarkation gates for Hades. New ideas are generated constantly, whether philosophical conceits, spoken patterns or movement devices, including a new way of communicating through slaps, stamps and claps.

The Ferryman is a constantly whirling combination of whimsy and discipline, producing some movements sharper and more compelling than achieved by more pedestrian choreographed works. When energy levels fall, performers and audience wait together to see what will arise next. Like a crystal forming from Morrish and Trotman’s love of the artform, fed by their experience and confidence, the work branches in myriad and random directions. It comes to an abrupt halt in some aspects and yields fractally complex and satisfying results in others, leaving the audience with the memory of a unique experience, beautiful and bizarre.

Entanglement

Working with contact improvisation, using modelling from quantum mechanics as a jump-off inspiration, Jacob Lehrer and David Corbet’s Entanglement presents improvised movement and soundscape growing together. All the movement is video-streamed to laptops, allowing musicians to work with software systems as well as piano and trumpet to develop a responsive tone picture.

Lehrer and Corbet are strong dancers, creating fascinating displays of trusting physical exploration and interaction in conventional balancing and pivot-based movements, bodies being swung around then closely entwined. Both demonstrate remarkable control when walking over and standing on each other, even balancing with a face as footrest. Controlled reactions and non-reactions add surreal dimensions to these moments. In another feat of strength and self-control, dance lifts using the folds of skin around the belly, looking like an attempted bare-handed appendectomy, yield revulsion and admiration in equal parts.

Quantum mechanics, particularly the notion of Entanglement, “the states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other, even though the individual objects may be spatially separated” (press release), features in both dance and musical motifs. The dancers repeatedly echo each other’s movements from across the room and physically react at a distance. Audio artists Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey develop and repeat themes as the dance unfolds, an incredible achievement in real time.

Lehrer and Corbet are working in the moment and with their performance space. Rehearsal Room 2 at the State Theatre Centre rejoices in floor to ceiling windows, its view framing Perth’s Horseshoe Bridge with its ornate lanterns, the city skyline and passing traffic with lights moving past. These frames are used effectively to create silhouetted tableaux, and movement outside appears to trigger changes in movement on the stage.

A fantasy in movement and sound, Entanglement explores the possibilities of strength, movement and sound without any need for trivial communication between the parties, not even eye contact. This level of confidence and skill in improvisation is inspiring.

Happy Little Accidents

Happy Little Accidents presents theatrical improvisation, with Perth actors stepping up in response to challenges presented by the audience and bouncing ideas off each other to create spontaneous comedic entertainment. Shane Adamczak, Sam Longley and Sean Walsh are leading lights of the local improvisation comedy and theatre scene, most recognisable from The Big HOO-HAA! The performers are confidently fluent in improvised theatre, this presentation featuring carefully calculated timing bringing out the humour in each madcap scenario.

Despite an introductory explanation of the importance of audience contributions, the performers’ skill at conjuring strings of skits and scenes from a single word means that not much is required after the initial prompt—“bubbles.” The basic stage set-up—an empty frame, a water cooler and chairs—plays on height differences and vivid imaginations creating plenty of happy little accidents in diverse scenarios that include office cubicles and an internet blind date.

While some scenarios overstay their welcome, there are no breaks in the action. With lovely camaraderie nothing seems forced, nothing taken too seriously and the performers don’t push for any major narrative arc. Each vignette is self-contained and enjoyable on its own merits, the series of accidents coming together as a whole. Longley, the MoveMe Festival MC, who had pointed out the absence of dance skills in the cast, draws laughs with a physical comedy/freestyle interpretive movement routine.

A welcome addition to Perth’s festival line up, MoveMe Improvisation Festival provides plenty of inspiration and entertainment for both performers and audiences.

STRUT National Choreographic Centre & collaborating organisations: MoveMe Improvisation Festival, 22-30 Nov, 2014; The Ferrymen, PICA Performance Space, 26-28 Nov, 2014; Entanglement, Rehearsal Room 2, State Theatre, 27-29 Nov, 2014; Happy Little Accidents, PICA Performance Space, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge, 25 Nov, 2014

Hybrids abound in Sydney Dance Company & Carriageworks’ New Breed, five short works by emerging choreographers, crossing the line between human and animal or elaborating on the uneasy coexistence of inner and outer selves. In Performance Space’s IOU3, a group of largely younger emerging choreographers mostly performed their own creations, tackling notions of form, caring and, in one case, the humanimal.

Lee Serle’s White Elephant (17 minutes) is a “reimagining” of the work of Australian painter Stephen Bush as a “surreal…series of live paintings connected by the elephant figure in an ambiguous narrative” (artist program note). Bush’s elephants are humans attired in the floppy costumes we see on collectors for wildlife protection funds. There’s one in Serle’s creation, entering with fury, swinging and kicking, breaking the mood of on and off formality of the opening dance. The delicate accompanying ostinatos and slightly asynchronous plucked metallic strings that had been ominously invaded by a deeper piano utterance, softly sizzling strings and wolf-like howls, fade into silence (Ben Frost, “Leo needs a pair of new shoes”). Unlike Bush’s hyper-naturalistic landscapes, Serle’s is abstract—glo-coloured piles of origami—and compared with Bush’s anti-colonial gestures, his meanings enigmatic.

In the final section, after a semi-balletic solo, a cry for Celeste suggests this is Babar who, with two women dancers in a slow writhe of bodies, is borne down by inertia as seven other dancers look on, three with red horns. The sense of pathos is compounded by a long sustained high note gradually subsiding into the bed of sound beneath (Ben Frost, “Hydrogen Sulphide”). White Elephant is a mysterious, less than cogent choreographic creation.

In Charmene Yap’s five-minute Do We, female and male dancer face each other, heads rather oddly thrusting forward until he moves in (to a gypsy mandolin melody) sniffing and snuffling about her. The dance resolves into a well-proportioned duet with hints of animality and, finally, separation. Its initial strangeness is the best thing about the too-brief Do We. Cass Mortimer Eipper’s quite literal dance theatre-ish Dogs and Baristas focuses on the “portion-sized friendships [which] keep us sane.” In other words, how do we ration affections. The work oscillates between solo speaking (about fear, anger, autonomy), the occasional dialogue (“Why does life have to be so complicated?” “It’s not”) and simple groupings where individuals fit or not. The ‘social’ component of being humanimal is not always a given, and here is lightly comical.

In Scrutineer, Juliette Barton performed her own solo, asking, “Was I looking through your eyes or mine?” She stares intently at us before withdrawing into herself on a gold-lit bench where she rests and turns with yoga-like inwardness contrasting with later involuntary kicks and rolls, nonetheless impeccably precise, before once again returning our stare. We wonder just where she’s been—attempting to ascertain a sense of self regardless of the gaze with which we construct her?

Gabrielle Nankivell sees her work as expressing “dancers’ fascination for physicality,”—the “wildebeest within.” In her program note she writes, “With the head of an ox, the hindquarters of an antelope and the mane and tail of a horse, the wildebeest as image morphs easily between living animal and fanciful creature. Storms and predators gather as instinct stirs the herd and migration whirrs into action like an ancient machine.” The herd comprises 13 dancers in various groupings in a 25-minute journey of routine, tensions, fights and resistance against the forces of nature aurally amplified by Luke Smiles’ score which rises from mechanical clockwork into a storm of static that turns convincingly thunderous. This is a world in which nature is at once mechanical and sensual, ordered and dangerous, human and animal, where the herd rules—save for a passionate solo outburst expressing the power of difference. Nankivell’s Wildebeest is a vigorously realised if limited conceit.

IOU3

In the most engaging of the New Breed and IOU3 programs, Tanya Voges takes the text of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, “the shape of the text of the page,” especially punctuation, as the score for her work, …and the pendulum, to a score by James Brown and narration by Damian Asher. Although not a literal evocation of the tale, Voges’ escalating, geometrically precise pendulum-like movement, her chalking of the floor (reminiscent of the protagonist’s fraught intuitive marking out of his frightful cell), a video-ed aerial view and Brown’s tense score cumulatively point to the horror behind apparent order. Voges claims in her program note that she intended the patterns of the work’s various scores would “generate movement.” However, her highly articulate dance and melded sonic and visual imagery suggest more than abstraction.

Emily Amisano writes that in her piece, in between dog and wolf, she is reflecting on the tension “between ‘the call of the wild’ and civilisation.” Her approach is metaphorical, engaging with a length of rope with which she has an ambivalent relationship, a kind of co-dependency in which it ties her down or she leaves it, only to return. But the connection between body and rope is not clearly established and some of the movement appears surplus to meaning, weakening the force of her metaphor.

Adam Synnott and Lisa Griffiths’ film existence (made with Jason Lam), was “inspired by nursing their newborn.” The couple cradle and rock each other to a minimalist score in low light and in various formations, several of them intriguingly complex (caught in motion and as stills) as limbs move about bodies seeking security, locking in to form odd humanoid shapes. In Naked Habit, Timothy Ohl and Gavin Clarke tackle drug addiction with a light touch and a multitude of props (including puppets) and effects that limit cohesion and choreography, but amuse.

Kristina Chan’s adrift looked promising, her body wracked, slipping and falling, tossed about by unseen forces—forcefully embodied in James Brown’s thunderous score and Guy Harding’s flashes of lightning—but there was little sense of structure or of a clear approach to the “buoyancy, weightlessness, surface tension and turmoil” Chan wished to convey in her short performance.

Craig Bary and Joshua Thompson’s Without Concept aimed to “abandon both concept and theatrics” in favour of unadulterated “formalism, exploring dance as a medium.” As the two super-fit, agile bodies moved dextrously from discrete solo selves to mirror images to entwinement and mutual support, a kiss, sinking into one another and separating, there was much more played out than aesthetic abstraction—with humour and intimacy and sometimes interesting dancing. The audience were palpably entertained.

As with the Keir Awards, New Breed and IOU3 offered no revelatory choreography, although Tanya Voges’ …and the pendulum (save for its excess of voice-over narration) proved to be the strangest of the works, structurally the strongest and the one with the most potential. The seasons were nonetheless very welcome testing grounds for new choreographic talent deserving more opportunities to realise their vision.

Sydney Dance Company & Carriageworks, New Breed, Carriageworks, Sydney, 4-8 Nov; Performance Space, IOU3, Carriageworks, 12-15 Nov, 2014

There are many strange things about Belgium—its entirely artificial birth, its role as the seat of the European Union, its dysfunctional regional politics, down to the way in which, on a regular work day, the whole country becomes one uniform traffic jam, causing delays as far as Germany. But the strangest must be that Belgium has, on top of its many peculiarities, also claimed the title of global centre for contemporary performance—in particular, dance.

Such centrality is, in other places and at other times, usually explained with some combination of economic power, important cultural heritage, long-sighted and proactive support for the arts, or at least a presence of wealthy patrons. Belgium is the home of many of the most important performance-makers today, yet it has none of these: it is a modestly performing economy with not much wage differentiation, its arts policy is chaotic and cultural history unimpressive (with the remarkable but all the more confusing exception of graphic novels, where Belgium also leads the world). Sure, there are obvious advantages: it is incredibly central (an hour or two to Paris, London, Amsterdam and Berlin). It is cheap and easy-going, allowing for an artistic existence free from the grinding stresses of Paris or London, and the Belgian culture at its best seems to have serendipitously combined the understatement and detail-oriented mindset of Northern Europe with the Latin love of art, fun and appreciation of the fundamental messiness of life. Still, these circumstantial benefits do not amount to an explanation.

Going to theatre in Belgium, I often wonder about the role that performance plays in this country. The audience, as we know, does half of the work in theatre, but the investment of Belgian audiences in the theatre event is hard to discern. The works I have seen have had neither the political urgency nor demand for societal dialogue that permeates German or Balkan theatre, nor the blatant entertainment value of British theatre, nor the torturous national self-examination that occupies contemporary Australian performance. Instead, there’s a laboratory-like focus on research, that seems to be appreciated for its aesthetic (rather than political or philosophical) qualities. I am guessing that some modicum of regional identity is expressed and consumed through the performance encounter—most of the contemporary greats are Flemish (not Wallonian), supported by the Flemish theatres.

Augustus ergens op de vlakte

Case in point: Augustus ergens op de vlakte (“August somewhere on the plains”) is August: Osage County by another name, directed by Tom Dewispelaere and Stijn Van Opstal of Antwerp-based performance collective Olympique dramatique. I cannot overemphasise the public and critical appreciation for this production, which was visually unremarkable (no three-storey house, though) and structurally extremely faithful. I was told that the translation was exquisitely colloquial, seamlessly transforming this Great American Play into a Great Flemish Play (Johnna the Native American servant spoke with a Dutch accent). Certainly, greater emphasis on physical comedy and a more shrill register of anger distanced the production from the more measured Steppenwolf original (and, beyond any doubt, from the humourless film version). My personally applied Brechtian distantiation resulted in deeper insight into the clunky, predictable mechanics of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer-winning play.

Rosas, Partita 2

Partita 2 is a collaboration between Ann Teresa de Keersmaeker, the icon of European contemporary dance, Boris Charmatz, its rising star and violinist Amandine Beyer who performs live on stage, occasionally being swept up into the choreography.

While Charmatz’ interest in free improvisation meshes finely with De Keersmaeker’s relaxed and minimal choreography, the concept is resolutely hers. De Keersmaeker has been revisiting Bach for years now—a composer whose baroque compositions are pure structural perfection, understood better as mathematics or engineering than as anything to do with emotion or narrative, and as such an unusual choice for dance—finding ever more subtle ways of illustrating, or amplifying, his musical structure with extremely simple (but never austere) movement, based on natural body movement (“my walking is my dancing,” she says).

Partita 2 opens with Beyer (I think) performing the first four movements of Bach’s Partita for Violin n.2 in 20 minutes of complete darkness. Then De Keersmaeker and Charmatz arrive to execute a choreography in complete silence (this is revealed to be the choreography for the fifth movement, the renowned 15-minute Chaconne). Finally, music and dance come together in a unified reprise. It is a fascinating gesture of courage, to substitute one of the most famous pieces of music ever written with its dance interpretation. It is even more mesmerising, however, to watch an extremely simple, almost-amateur-looking choreography repeat to music, and realise that it minutely and precisely responds to intricate musical patterns. De Keersmaeker and Charmatz walk and run in circles, hold hands, fix or discard clothing, retrace each other’s steps, or, in a most memorable sequence, stand with their four feet in the same spot and slowly cantilever one another to the ground, then back upright. These are gestures of warm-up, of rehearsal, not of a finished piece—and yet, the cantilevering sequence, in which Charmatz naturally spends more time upright than the much smaller and lighter De Keersmaeker, is revealed to be organising the forces of inertia and gravity in perfect sync with Bach’s 60-or-so variations to a four-measure structure.

Partita 2, with its total absence of narrative, illustrative emotion, or humour, is the sort of piece one should only attempt to see when very rested and prepared to focus deeply—its delight is entirely in the structural relationship between Bach’s composition and the choreography. Appreciating the Chaconne alone requires depth of musical understanding. This is dance for nerds.

Rosas, Golden Hours

Partita 2, which had premiered at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in 2013, could already be understood as the closing paragraph of a long artistic journey. Golden Hours, premiering in late January 2015, signalled the opening of a new chapter. This time working on the Rosas ensemble, De Keersmaeker is still using the principle of illustrating deep structural principles of a minutely studied score with extremely simple movement; but now she has turned her attention to pop music, bringing together Brian Eno’s album Another Green World (1975), and Shakespeare’s As You Like It, while the movement is now working from the principles of social interaction (“my talking is my dancing,” she wrote).

In practice, De Keersameker closely translates Shakespeare’s play into movement that illustrates sometimes interactions and sometimes the linguistic content of the text. One gets the impression that each line of Shakespeare is present in the choreography. A ‘narrative’ is present on stage, but the text is clearly used primarily as a score, to organise the dance structurally. The transposition, thus, verges on intentionally idiotic: monologues and dialogues become solos and duets, statements become gestures. Eno’s album also underpins the work, emerging more visibly in the second half, where entire scenes are replaced with his songs (with two organisational principles revealed in turns, Golden Hours repeats the formal solutions of Partita 2).

A Shakespeare scholar would, I suspect, get enormous pleasure from reading Golden Hours as an analytical essay on As You Like It. A De Keersmaeker fan, likewise, could follow her trajectory into ever more simple movement, illustrating scores ever more outside the traditional musical pieces for choreography. Yet, on the surface, having turned a play into 2 ½ hours of interpretive dance, oddly close to literalism, Golden Hours closely resembles really bad art.

The premiere of Golden Hours happened amid the news that La Monnaie, the Brussels opera house, may stop funding contemporary dance [impelled by state budget cuts. Eds]. It will inevitably politicise this work: De Keersmaeker’s career developed through her 23-year residency there, and Golden Hours will be taken as an example of work that can no longer happen. However, Golden Hours is the sort of work that needs less, not more publicity: it is a first step in a new direction, coming from a mature artist whose work is now characterised by hermetic exploration of form. It should not be asked to represent a cause, but allowed to develop.

From Belgium is a new column by Jana Perkovic covering performance and dance in Brussels.

Augustus ergens op de vlakte, writer Tracy Letts, direction Tom Dewispelaere, Stijn Van Opstal, co-produced with Toneelhuis, KVS, NTGent, KVS 3-12 Dec, 2014; Partita 2, choreography Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, production Rosas, Kaaitheater 19-21 Dec, 2014; Golden Hours (As You Like It), choreography Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Kaaitheater, Brussels, 23-31 Jan, 2015.

When we talk about taboos there’s usually the frisson of the forbidden. There’s a fascination that seems to draw its energy from the tension between repulsion and freakish curiosity, but in most cases it’s because bestiality or cannibalism or whatever British MPs get up to behind closed doors is so far from our own experience that we can peek at the awfulness without getting too close. The subject of Bryony Kimmings’ latest work is billed as a taboo topic, but if it doesn’t carry that same crackling electricity, it’s all the more daring for it.

Before proceeding, a caveat. Kimmings is one of the most provocative and exciting artists working in the UK today, and she could make a story about auditing your taxes into something hilarious and heart-wrenching in equal measure. I can’t think of a more promising talent to take on the topic of male depression without falling prey to the pitfalls of therapy theatre, righteous sermonising or ‘boring but important’ art.

Fake It ‘til You Make It

Fake It ‘til You Make It sees Kimmings sharing the stage with her partner of seven years, Tim Grayburn, who has never performed before. Six months after they moved in together, Kimmings found a packet of anti-depressants in Grayburn’s backpack and what followed was another six months in which they discussed what had led him to keep from the world the fact of his depression and anxiety for close to a decade.

“We went through this whole process of battling with this conditioning that he’d obviously had since he was a child,” she says. “Most men probably have, where it appears weak to have the crying disease. He was pretty much the classic locked-box geezer, and we spent a lot of time going backwards and forwards about why that might be. Just exploring. After that six month period I think he’d come around to the fact that actually talking about it made it 50 times better just in itself…He was suddenly like ‘I feel so liberated, I cannot believe I just spent eight years hiding it. I need to pass this information on.’”

Before agreeing to make a performance with Kimmings, Grayburn presented her with four rules. The first was that it had to be about clinical depression and men (the only alternative was advertising, “and advertising would be the worst show ever,” she says.) The second was that Grayburn wouldn’t have to look the audience in the eye, which became its own artistic catalyst. “So he spends 50 minutes of the show with various things covering his head, from sunglasses to paper bags to these elaborate structures that we got our designer to make. Then right at the end he’s got the delicious opportunity to stand there, in that moment, and take that thing off.”

The third rule was that Grayburn got to learn to play the guitar and take professional lessons, which Kimmings admits was less a creative condition and more of a bribe she agreed to. The last stipulation he put to her was that “he always appear like a man’s man, ‘like Robert Redford in Out of Africa’.”

Male mental illness is really less of a taboo than a “public secret,” says Kimmings, and though statistics indicate that there are few lives untouched in some way by depression and anxiety these are still diseases too often suffered in private. Fake It features singing and dancing and the “usual plethora of crap” Kimmings introduces into her work, but the normalcy of its subject matter is what has proven most engaging. “Everyone really seems to like it when we just talk to each other like we do at home. Or there’s moments where he might trip me over, or I might get really annoyed with him for not putting something in the right place. It seems to be that part of the collaboration that’s actually the most interesting and most humanity-focused.”

A circuitous career

Kimmings’ artistic career has been a circuitous one. After finishing high school she found herself working an unfulfilling retail job at H&M and thinking, “I cannot do this.” But she “didn’t have any ambition and was a bit muddled up,” she says. She decided to enrol at London’s Brunel University (“I only went there because my friend went there”) and opted for a degree in Modern Drama Studies.

“Luckily it was like Marina Abramovic, Franko B, Anne Bean,” she says. “Essentially like a performance art studies course. I didn’t study a single text, never had to act, and lots of people dropped out going ‘what is this weird stuff?’ but I thought ‘this is amazing!’”

Upon graduating, however, she spent several years trying to develop work but to little end, due to “not really having much to say, I suppose.” She moved into producing and focused on dance, rather than performance art, since she’d seen others attempting to produce work in the same field as their own practice only to face resistance. In her 20s she became involved in the fertile London club scene that produced a crop of talented performance makers such as Scottee, but it wasn’t until the age of 29 that she premiered her own full-length show, Sex Idiot (RT120).

Six years later, that show is still touring (most recently at this year’s Adelaide Fringe). It’s an exploration of Kimmings’ own sexual history brought about by the discovery that she had contracted an STI, which spurred her to track down former lovers to discover its source. Each encounter led to the creation of a piece of performance, the collection of which make up the structure of Sex Idiot. The work is “such a navel-gazing show,” she laughs. “Luckily the things that happen in Sex Idiot, most people go ‘oh god, that’s me,’ to one or two of those things.”

Her more recent creations have escaped the threat of a similar inwardness by introducing collaborators such as Grayburn and her nine-year-old niece Taylor (in the astonishing Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model; see RT120). Works currently in development include a Theatre Complicite-commissioned collaboration with seven female cancer survivors to produce a musical that explores “the feminist story of cancer, the economic story of cancer, the race story of cancer,” and a Royal Court project working with young men from council estates across the UK who are usually the subject of villainised or criminalised stereotypes.

This act of expanding her practice by incorporating others has brought its own challenges. The day after Fake It premieres in Perth, she says, “I’ve already had to deal with the fact that it’s (Grayburn) that everybody wants to watch, not me. He’s the main character. I’m just the narrator, really, facilitating his story. Last night I came off the stage and thought I really don’t know my place in this work. I think I’m still figuring that out.”

Bryony Kimmings, Fake It ‘til You Make It, Theatre Works, Melbourne, 18 March-5 April

Since 2007, Adelaide’s ActNow Theatre has been quietly carving out a niche within the city’s capricious independent theatre ecology. Under founder and Artistic Director Edwin Kemp-Attrill, the company’s early, rough-hewn agitprop has given way to a distinctive brand of Boal-ian forum theatre that engages professional and non-professional participants in the creation of productions that are, in the main, devised, interactive and issue-based.

Zero Feet Away represents a digression for the company, situating its audience as members of a virtual rather than physical community. The shift is signalled by the name of the work—a reference to Grindr, the location-based social network for gay, bisexual and bi-curious men—and by the unusual injunctions that greet the audience as they enter the space: “Please keep your mobile phones switched on,” “Flash photography is allowed.”

Taking our seats, we are instructed to use our phones to log into a purpose-built web-based app that enables entered text to be projected onto one wall of the space. Predictably, a stream of nonsense appears as audience members familiarise themselves with the app’s interface. The anonymity is emboldening, the live feed swelling with expletives and amusingly disjointed words and phrases. A guitarist, Ben Flett, improvises warmly as director Kemp-Attrill and the performers, all of whom are young and male, and all but one gay, pass around a microphone and introduce themselves.

Our first task as audience members is to use the app to state our own sexuality. We are, unlike the performers, unseen and unaccountable as our fingers flit across our touchscreens and the breakdown is displayed on the projection wall. Other questions follow: “When was the last time you had sex?,” “At what age did you lose your virginity?” The answers feel variously mischievous, unreliable and confessional.

Confessional, too, is the word I would use to describe the frank, intimate monologues—each of which grapples with some aspect of the performers’ lived experiences of being gay—that form the work’s second mode of storytelling. At a time when HIV rates in Australia have reached a 20-year high, with young gay men most at risk of infection, it feels both brave and important that the majority of the monologues touch on issues of gay men’s health and recent innovations in the treatment of HIV such as post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).

The work changes gears again as a multi-part segment begins in which our answers to a series of questions are used to construct the identity of a fictional character. An ad hoc mixture of popular vote and executive decision-making by Kemp-Attrill leads to the assignment of gender (male), sexuality (gay) and a number of personal preferences and life events which amount to a fluid biography. The exercise, though conceptually ambiguous, is enjoyable, but it is the show’s least mediatised moments that prove most compelling.

The final monologue is a harrowing account of an episode of sexual abuse. Our phones sit, useless and forgotten, in our laps as the air shifts under the weight of what is a moment of profound, unguarded generosity. The rest of the performers put out, one by one, the desk lamps that up until that moment had lent the show a homely ambience. In the ensuing darkness and silence, intimacy—and not its technologised simulacrum—feels to have been fully achieved.

ActNow Theatre, Zero Feet Away, directors Edwin Kemp-Attrill, Charles Sanders, performers Adam Carter, Andrew Thomas, Tyson Wood, Harry Bullitis, online app/manager Zoe Bogner, musician Ben Flett; Dance Studio 3, AC Arts, Adelaide, 14–16 Nov, 2014

Motherboard Productions’ Or Forever Hold Your Peace (The Story of Iphigenia) is a barricade-storming ensemble work that reboots the Iphigenia ur-story and Euripides’ classic play as a platform to explore the nature of political leadership, personal sacrifice and war. Motherboard’s collaborative and international process was once again on display in their adaptation of radical New York playwright Charles Mee’s Iphigenia 2.0.

Mee’s howling protest against the foreign policy of George W Bush draws on a mix of chilling and banal texts sourced from Wilfred Owen’s WW1 poetry, the field of ‘killology’ developed by former Colonel Dave Grossman and catering lists for US soldiers. Mee’s taut piece is set within the three days leading up to the ‘fake’ wedding organised to lure Iphigenia to the war front by her ruthless father Agamemnon. American/Australian dramaturg Morgan Rose and Motherboard director Dave Sleswick (see interview) skilfully ‘Australianise’ this premise through Iphigenia’s bridemaids: think Abbott’s daughters drunk at the races, with shoes and fascinators akimbo and you have something of the feel of the work and the colourful, deshabille aesthetic of Jennifer Bismire’s costumes. Peter Cossar’s menacingly besuited Agamemnon opens the show with Mee’s prophetic monologue: “I see that there are acts/ that will set an empire on a course/ that will one day/ bring it to an end.”

The pace and the passion don’t let up from that first powerful moment to the final speech of Iphigenia incandescently delivered by Steph Tandy as she embraces her matrydom: “What would you have me do, mother?/ Stay at home and make a decision/ about the draperies in the bedroom?/ Or get a job in some law firm?/Or do social work?/Or try to preserve the environment?”

We witness each of the key characters circling around the deep question at the heart of the work about the nature of public objection: will you speak out? Agamemnon agonises but never reneges on his original calamitous decision to sacrifice his daughter. His wife tries and fails to act. Achilles prevaricates. Only Iphigenia speaks out but she embraces rather than condemns the incomprehensible sacrifice demanded of her.

The cavernous set deepens this idea of political witness as we sit onstage with the performers, looking out over the raked, empty seating banks of La Boite, which are cordoned off by temporary fencing. The performance area is ringed by 12 narrow metal lockers, each as tall as the 16 performers who relentlessly patrol the stage in kaleidoscopic physical routines underpinned by the pounding and ominous soundscape by Dane Alexander. Indeed, when all of the physical and textual elements of the production are utilised, like the final scene where the wedding party at a long table watch Iphigenia die, the show is a tour-de-force, intimate and spectacular. Unfortunately, when it retreats back into movement exclusively, or when Mee’s original text strays too far from Euripides, as in the Bridesmaid sequences, there is a subsequent hollowness, as if this referential form needs all of its elements knitted together for us to experience the full weight of the damning critique.

La Boite Indie & Motherboard Productions wih QPAC, Or Forever Hold Your Peace (The Story of Iphigenia), adapted from Charles Mee’s Iphigenia 2.0, after Euripides, director Dave Sleswick, RoundHouse Theatre, La Boite 12-29 Nov, 2014

The Nest Ensemble returns to The Blue Room Theatre with a new didactic performance, immersing us in 1950s psychotherapy research. Based on Dr Bruno Bettelheim’s career-making case study, Joey: the Mechanical Boy examines the impact of a quest for academic fame. Dr B takes Joey for extended residential observation, writing that maternal detachment caused Joey’s abnormal development and behaviours. Dr B dubs Joey “the Mechanical Boy” for his affinity with machines and his mother a “Refrigerator Mother” for her cool distance.

Joey’s daily routines follow a numbered sequence, precise order providing reassurance in his laboratory residence, a recreation of his room at home that features a bed bedecked with cardboard to create an “airplane.” The pyjama-clad boy shares his most moving moments with his life’s most reliable fixture, a simple electric fan. Joey’s routines intermingle with Dr B’s exciting career trajectory, the larger than life lecturer bursting onstage to spotlit fanfare and applause, often referring to his studies with Freud and also, less exuberantly, to his experiences and observations in a German concentration camp, while Joey’s mother counts the days without her son. She quietly presents her lost loves, hopes and dreams as she waits and then on Joey’s return home, her rule of love and sacrifice removes scientific scrutiny and Joey learns the difference between “nice” and “interesting” behaviour.

Philip Miolin is amazing as the young Joey, the lost child thoroughly evoked through the actor’s use of motion and posture, particularly with Joey’s perched crouch as he watches the electric fan. The boy’s autism is conveyed through movement and stilted speech, with the evocative mask designed by Per Brahe creating a flat look of constant, baffled curiosity.

Margi Brown Ash plays both Mother and Dr B, a red clown nose distinguishing between her roles. Ash is dramatically strong as Dr B, German accent shaping the part, allowing his self-congratulatory shouting to gradually reveal self-doubt and suffering. As Mother, Ash is understated, with an underlying bitterness that nonetheless sees her love triumphing over clinical definitions that have defamed her motherhood.

Tessa Darcey rises to the twin challenges of set and costume design with clever solutions, capturing Dr B’s intellectual pretensions with a lectern for him built of books and creating a complex costume of found objects to emphasise Joey’s identity as the mechanical boy. Joe Lui’s dynamic soundscape features soothingly melodic mechanical noises and consistently responds to characters’ emotional states. Karen Cook’s lighting design defines distinct stage areas, with individual light bulbs magically responding to Joey’s “commands.”

Plenty of food for thought is provided in this intellectually challenging production. The closing twist, Joey claiming his life as his own rather than fodder for other people’s edification, throws the jarring, intrinsic wrongness of earlier events into even clearer focus. A satisfying denouement reveals Dr B’s reputation lost, his theories debunked and his personal history revealed, appropriately given his devastating impact on at least one family. The Mother’s open-handed forgiveness, accepting that Joey was born in an unfortunate era, tempers the harshness of karmic judgement. Set in the 50s, there are enough echoes of attitudes to mental illness, parenting and medical/social judgements to resonate with audiences now, providing as many insights as there are attentive audience members.

The Blue Room Theatre and The Nest Ensemble, Joey: the Mechanical Boy, director, co-writer, co-producer Leah Mercer, co-writer, actor Margi Ash Brown, actor, co-producer, set and costume construction Philip Miolin, set, costume designer Tessa Darcey, lighting designer Karen Cook, sound designer Joe Lui; The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, Perth, 17-22 Nov 2014

A Broadway-style musical addressing the life and work of Gertrude Stein sounds about as likely as a Pixar film about Peter Greenaway. The high modernism of Stein’s writings was closer to Cubist painting and her project nothing short of a reinvention of the possibilities of language. To approach that legacy with the Great American Songbook in hand would seem sheer folly, but a recent Melbourne production of Frank Galati’s Loving Repeating proved a giddy upending of expectations.

The work was written by Galati and composer Stephen Flaherty in 2006 and premiered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Melbourne’s Vic Theatre Company staged it as its inaugural production, and it’s one that should put the company on any critic’s map. Rigorously produced and boldly performed, it deftly constructs a house of cards that would collapse if any of its elements were handled inexpertly.

It begins in biographical mode, following Stein’s early years studying psychology and philosophy at university before meeting Alice B Toklas, the fellow writer who would become her lifelong lover. Strict biography soon shifts into something more artful, however, as time refuses to play straight. Deirdre Rubenstein incarnates the elderly Stein, orating from a lectern, while several performers present both Stein and Toklas at various earlier ages. As these embodiments accumulate they do not divide their common figure into discrete eras or phases of life, instead singing to one another across time, and often sharing the playing space simultaneously. It’s a subtle device that gathers weight as Stein’s fascination with repetition and echoed phrases increasingly becomes understood not as mere technique but as an attempt to articulate an entire philosophy of being.

The choreography of the large cast (14 in all) also reflects the distinct patterning of Stein’s words. Movements reverberate across bodies with tiny variations, like a breeze rippling over a field of grass. At times the ensemble appears more like a kinetic sculpture, one moved by an internal motive force, again like Stein’s writing.

Most intriguing is the music, however. Given the formal iconoclasm of Stein’s work, one might expect that the mode of music theatre would here be deployed ironically, or that a postmodern deconstruction of the musical would take place. Not quite. This is a full-throated, melody and harmony-rich affair that incorporates vaudeville numbers, lovers’ duets, tango breaks. Almost all words are drawn from Stein’s own writing, here imbued with a spirit that seems to animate them in a way not always obvious on the page. A line whose repetition can seem to drain words of their connection to materiality—“a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”—instead emerges as a deeply impassioned engagement with the object world.

Loving Repeating leaves no doubt as to the potent musicality inherent in Stein’s writing. If there is any affront to the writer it may be that, unlike the reader’s response to her words, the audience’s is determined, even over-determined, by the character of the music. Yet it would be a rare reader who could conjure such memorable airs as have been composed here, and after the last note sounds it would be a rare audience member not compelled to revisit Stein’s writing and find anew their own music therein.

Vic Theatre Company, Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein, music Stephen Flaherty, text Gertrude Stein, adapted by Frank Galati, director Jason Langley, musical director Ben Kiley, Chapel Off Chapel, Melbourne, 21 Jan-8 Feb

The recent surge in the popularity of performance on institutional and art market circuits is at odds with its historical status as an alternative, ephemeral (and therefore unsellable) art form. Alaska Projects’ performance series, Restaging Restaging, represents a humble attempt to reconfigure this ideological inconsistency.

Over four Sundays in 2014, eight artists were invited to create 20-minute performances in Alaska Projects’ gallery space, located in the basement of a Kings Cross car park. In their notes for the show, curators Brian Fuata, Jess Olivieri and Sarah Rodigari describe their aim to present performances “with an earnest ideological purity of genuine interdisciplinary exchange.” The presentation of these works inside the curious car park space adds a raw energy to the execution of this project, enabling performance to regain some sense of its former status as an alternative underground art form, literally.

The final show in the series included a double-bill featuring two Melbourne-based artists, Matthew Linde and Atlanta Eke. In Spring Cleaning, Linde is dressed in grey and surrounded by common items of clothing scattered across the floor, along with haphazardly placed suitcases and coat racks. To a continuously changing music track, he walks calmly around the space, placing the clothes on racks and repositioning suitcases, and it is difficult to decipher a deeper structure or order in these gestures. Before long he begins using his feet—in white socks—to drag hats across the floor before placing them atop the coat racks, which gradually come to resemble clumsily dressed shopfront mannequins.

Linde is joined by five performers who sit or stand motionless, only moving sporadically to form new unassuming positions before becoming still again. Like over-enthusiastic children playing dress-ups, they wear too many clothes, with extra tops and pants wrapped superfluously around their limbs. Despite a shared occupation of the space, they remain conspicuously isolated from one another, never exchanging so much as a glance.

Linde is director of Melbourne’s Centre for Style, an exhibition and retail fashion space that blurs the line between gallery and commercial boutique. In Spring Cleaning, his purposeful yet ultimately arbitrary rearrangement of everyday clothes invites us to reflect on their purpose and worth. He calls into question the utilitarian value of fashion versus its art value, subtly interrogating the usually reified status of fashion objects and our relationship to them. And across them, perhaps also, our relationships to each other.

Another everyday object, the car, is reimagined in Atlanta Eke’s performance, The death of affect restaged with a return to the Japanese nude 2017. A beep announces Eke’s arrival on an advancing white car; the dancer sits on the bonnet, legs splayed pin-up model style. A loud crash sounds as she makes her way to the driver’s seat, but keeps the door open and bends her body forward with hair flung to the ground in a frozen posture that creates an oddly authentic portrait of a crash scene. In the stillness, audience members snap photos on their phones, like curious voyeurs passing by a freak road accident.

Suddenly, the car begins inching forward, propelled by Eke’s hands on the floor and assumedly an unlocked hand brake. What follows is a highly controlled pas de deux featuring human and machine. To the beat of stark, suspenseful music, Eke manoeuvres her car in all manner of ways: pushing it from the back; lying face forward on the bonnet with hands on the ground to move it in reverse; even dropping to the floor and pulling the car over her so that it covers her completely.

Soon Eke’s car is joined by a blue Toyota and a shiny white Audi, manoeuvred by three performers who stand beside their vehicles as they push and steer. This choreography feels brave and bold in the tight space and before long we lose cognisance of the human bodies steering them and focus only on the cars. I hold my breath as the Audi barely scrapes past a concrete pillar. The weight of the cars gives them a slow, measured movement, forming a dreamlike dance that is both playful and surprisingly moving.

Recently awarded the inaugural Keir Choreographic Award, Eke confirms the clarity and originality of her choreographic vision. As with the most successful site-specific art, this performance restructures our conceptual and perceptual experience of the car park space, which is progressively transformed into a concrete stage for dancing cars. The uncanniness this produces is humorously highlighted when another (real-life) car parks just up the ramp from the performance. It is a privilege to witness original work of such calibre in this unexpected space.

Director Jackson Davis informally introduces us to Lovely, a “ritualistic” performance he initially envisaged as a eulogistic solo (in a fat suit!) in honour of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman—“He’s always been my favourite actor and first celebrity crush”—but which became a large-scale collaboration with fellow members of re:group performance collective, PACT’s 2014 Artists-in-Residence, utilising 40 brief clips from the actor’s 30-year film career. Davis tells us he hopes the ritual might conjure the actor to join us at performance’s end.

It’s a fanciful invocation and its slightness, in the end, is inescapable, but once the production swings into cinematic action, we are faced with one and many Hoffmans: a huge variety of characters, very distinctive moods and demeanours, hairstyles, ages, body weights, ways of speaking, phone handling, walking and dancing.

Like the greats of American cinema’s golden age Hoffman evinces a reassuring sameness to which he lends sufficient difference role to role. I was struck by this when watching two of his last films: in A Most Wanted Man (2014) he is a driven, indefatigable German spy boss; in God’s Pocket (2014) he’s a reticent American working class truck owner and petty crook on the side. Neither is a great film but, as ever, Hoffman is utterly watchable, his physical heft, slow movement and drawl suggestive of gravitas—in one film the character’s mind is responsive and active, if blind to the limits of his power; in the other it’s emotionally disengaged and short on foresight—a man who feels deeply but doesn’t know what he thinks, let alone how to articulate his thoughts.

Lovely is seriously and delightfully ‘cinematic.’ The blank PACT space is quickly transformed into a film studio with the humblest of means. The clips shown on a centre-stage screen above the action are duplicated live by the ensemble, male and female, who play Hoffman while otherwise acting as camera, lighting and sound crew, providing live-feed images to two screens either side of the first. They wittily, sometimes parodically, reproduce reverse field, close-up and tracking shots as well as introducing design elements (a cut-out boat waved overhead for The Talented Mr Ripley), but generally treat their subject with closely observed affection (silly moustaches aside).

Best of all is the production’s dancerly seamlessness—the crew constantly on the move, setting up scenes while others are being shot, swirling from one location to another, actors one moment, crew the next—climaxing with the whole ensemble taking their cue from the exacting party scene in The Master in which Hoffman’s Dodd dances drunkenly while cruelly belittling his followers.

Lovely reveals Jackson Davis (a University of Wollongong graduate following in the footsteps of the artists who comprise TeamMESS and Appelspiel) and his collaborators to be highly inventive, possessed of a fine sense of dramatic structure and the spatial and visual sensitivity with which to give life to their loving gaze.

PACT, re:group performance collective—PACT’s 2014 Artists-in-Residence, Lovely, concept, video, direction Jackson Davis, co-direction Carly Young, dramaturg Malcolm Whittaker, video technician Solomon Thomas, performers, co-creators Emma Hoole, Pippa Ellams, Christie Woodhouse, Lauren Scott-Young, James Harding, Hannah Goodwin, Kirby Medway, Oliver Trauth-Goik, PACT Theatre, Sydney, 11-13 Dec, 2014

The lecture performance has had something of a renaissance in the era of live art. Once a staple of performance art in the 1960s and 70s, it offered a novel way of reconsidering the interstices of creation and pedagogy, and the power dynamics that define the significance of art practice beyond the moment of individual reception.

How does that translate into the age of TEDx talks, in which an endless succession of experts deliver animated lectures that claim the solution to all of the world’s ills are contained in a 15-minute walk through their particular area of research? A pair of lecture performances were presented as part of the recent Trilogies exhibition in Melbourne in January, and left me wondering what role the mode itself can play today.

Soda_Jerk is the Sydney-raised, New York-based duo of Dominique and Dan Angeloro, whose lecture The Carousel is an assemblage of Hollywood scenes spliced together by commentary that produces a dialogue between the disparate clips. Many of the films chosen come from the shallow end of Hollywood’s pool—goth-action flick The Crow, Bruce Lee knockoffs, roundly derided vampire trash Queen of the Damned and even Ed Wood’s notorious Plan 9 From Outer Space.

The thread that binds the generous collection is that of stars who died during shooting or before the film’s release. It’s a literal rendering of the notion of hauntology, in which the spectre of the past exists within the present, and which often traces its lineage to Jacques Derrida (who also appears here).

Derrida’s argument is that cinema is always already haunted. Even actors who are still alive today will one day be dead, yet forever reanimated on the ghostly screen. Soda_Jerk argue that the ‘ghost box’ that Thomas Edison purportedly attempted to create in his later years has been hiding in plain sight all along as the cinematograph. Their lecture asks its audiences to put the theory to the test themselves, serving up scene after scene in which dead performers continue to enact the artificial rituals of Hollywood, even in some cases brought back from the grave by CGI technology.

Erik Bünger’s The Girl Who Never Was is another exercise in hauntology, but one that centres more on the phantoms that are words. It begins with the spinning of a turntable, through which Bünger conjures the oldest recorded human voice, that of a little girl humming Au Clair de la Lune. Slowed down, however, as it was discovered in 2009, it becomes apparent that the voice is that of a grown man, and the story of the little girl that had accompanied the recording is revealed to have an absence at its centre.

Bünger’s lecture now travels into the future as envisioned by one past, that of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. In France the HAL’s dying words were translated as the same song, Au Clair de la Lune, slowing down as the computer’s systems are dismantled. Yet a computer doesn’t slow down when it is switched off, Bünger notes. At HAL’s heart must be another, older technology, that of the haunted phonograph. From these intriguing connections Bünger’s lecture begins to produce a gyre that expands wider and more wildly than most conventional lectures would be allowed. From computing pioneer Alan Turing’s tragic suicide by poisoned apple we leap to the ubiquitous logo of the Apple corporation with its iconic single bite and from there it’s back to the Old Testament, where the original sin is not Eve’s own bite but Adam’s crime of listening to her words. The erasure of female speech takes us to Adorno’s claim that audio technology rendered women’s voices “shrill” and unpleasant, and that only men should be recorded, and this segues into scenes from Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo in which the operas of Caruso are projected into the Amazonian jungles, the male voice utilised as a weapon of colonialism.

Both of these lecture performances use montage to raise provocative and compelling questions which draw on theories enjoying some currency in academia and cultural theory, but their arguments are loose, associative, laughably unacquainted with the scientific method but not interested in proving any hypotheses beyond reasonable doubt. Bünger’s lecture, particularly, seems close to the paranoid method of critical thinking, in which everything can in some way be traced back to the argument being made. What that argument is, exactly, is never entirely clear, and so there is a magnetic absence at the heart of his performance just as uncanny as the ghostly child of its title. If the TEDx talk’s promise of an accessible resolution to existential ailments is both its appeal and its disappointment, these lecture performances make more apparent the emptiness we try to conceal whenever we pull one up on our screen. Those lecturers too will one day be dead.

TRILOGIES, Erik Bünger, Soda_Jerk, Willoh S Weiland/Aphids & OtherFilm, curator Will Foster, The Substation, Newport. 23 Jan-15 March

Against the backdrop of an eerily projected forest stands a lone tree, its assemblage from everyday leftovers—water bottles, feathers and plastic wrap—elegant, white and wispy. The stage is darkened to red as a shiny-shirted compere (Chris Dunstan) enters to set a fable in motion. We are in the recognisable land of fairy tale: of lost children, mysterious houses and shape-shifting environments. Our protagonists are a sister and brother, who venture inside a house of ‘worlds’ after the boy’s curiosity takes him deep into the woods. She follows as the reluctant older tween, navigating herself through nature with an iPhone and a digitally stymied desire for some good, old-fashioned adventure.

The Drawing is structured as a choose-your-own-adventure narrative and has been built across a number of development phases by writer-directors Natalie Rose and Chris Dunstan with the collaboration of groups of child participants. The project began as a series of workshops across five months with Shopfront Theatre’s Junior Ensemble of 8-15 year olds. For its current iteration, Blacktown Arts Centre brought artists James Brown, Clare Britton and Matt Prest into the mix to enable the work to realise more complex dramaturgical and design possibilities, as well as engage a new community of children in the process. The result is a work that draws some participants from the original workshops into conversation with newer ones, led by both adult artists and paid younger artists who take on the primary performer and devisor roles.

The complexity of the process here speaks to the myriad challenges of engaging children as ‘rhetorical’ agents in creative practices that aim to enable them to experience the capacities of their own self-representation. Setting up opportunities which allow young people to be drivers of the conceptual landscape of a work, as well as to participate in its realisation, has often been the domain of youth and community theatre. In The Drawing, the young collaborators additionally replay a version of their own participatory agency in the dynamic the work establishes with its audience: we get to choose what happens. What emerges is—as the program bills it, “a show made by kids for kids”—with the seams of such extended agency a little clunkily and quite delightfully peeking through.

To participate, the audience is given a package of equipment (feathers, balloons, glow sticks) with which to signal when we have a choice to make. Our first involves the action of the narrative: do the lost children climb through a window, ask for a hot dog or look for tap shoes? We wave our feathers and suddenly we are inside the house of a mysterious old man Otto Von Chesterfield (Prest), who has a particularly odd relationship with the children and to the ever-changing rooms in the house. In another moment, we select a book—Matilda, Harry Potter, or Green Eggs and Ham—and are told we have taken a wrong turn causing the show to end prematurely. Here our agency felt undermined: the ramifications of our selection were not indicated upfront—a slight unevenness in the way the idea of ‘choice’ is understood in the work overall.

The Drawing is impressively supported by the characteristic excellence of designers Clare Britton and James Brown—the latter’s signature sounds of urban clatter, disco thumps and unnerving atmospheres illustrated by projected animations (originally inspired by drawings from the children) that give a three-dimensional, cinematic depth to the worlds the fantasy house charts. Performances by Prest and Dunstan are animatedly comical, leading us into a story that is increasingly sinister, elaborate and compiled with pop-cultural references in possibly just the way you’d expect a work made ‘by kids for kids’ to be.

Blacktown Arts Centre & Performing Lines, The Drawing, writer-director-performers Natalie Rose, Chris Dunstan, devisor-performers Matt Prest, Hania Goro, Samuel Rosenberg, Brayden Sim, Maud Mitchell, design Clare Britton, AV & sound design James Brown, Lighting Mirabelle Wouters, Blacktown Arts Centre, Sydney, 21-31 Jan

The phone connection between LA and Sydney is bad, clipping the ends off Andrew Upton’s words, breaking up sentences and scoring the distant vocal with layers of crackling static, as if a solar flare was about to fry everything from communication networks to supermarket cash registers and home computers. Very apt for a discussion of Samuel Beckett’s blackly comic and emotionally unnerving Endgame (1957) with its post-apocalyptic scenario—one room, a master, Hamm, and servant, Clov, the master’s parents (Nagg and Nell) in rubbish bins, no provisions, seeds that won’t sprout and a grey world outside with few if any signs of life. Hamm declares, “You’re on earth, there’s no cure for that.”

Upton, shortly to direct Endgame for the Sydney Theatre Company, tells me that he and Hugo Weaving, who played Vladimir superbly in the director’s production of Waiting for Godot for the STC in 2013, relished the experience, impelling them to take on Endgame. They see it, says Upton, “as a kind of shadow play to Godot, picking up on the Pozzo and Lucky dynamic and exploring it in more detail and in a very different way, in the form of Hamm and Clov.” Their relationship is very complex. Hamm’s power over Clov is diminishing; he seeks compassion from Clov while persistently abusing him, and both recognise their co-dependency, wishing it, and sometimes their lives, gone.

Upton recalls, “One of the things that surprised us was the warmth inside Godot. There’s less of it in Endgame. We’re not looking for warmth in a saccharine sense but what’s so particular to Beckett, a kind of love he has at the heart of his work, flawed though we humans are.” That will be no easy task; the dialogue overflows with deadly one-liners, bitter altercations and sudden changes to what Upton calls “the gradient of power.” But even though “power is all that is left” to the blind, incapacitated Hamm—exercised verbally—and Clov—will he carry out his threat to leave?—there are haunting exchanges about caring in particular between Nagg and Nell and Hamm and Nagg—in terms of childhood fears and old-age helplessness. Hamm wants to know if Clov loves him, asks for a kiss, wonders if it’s compassion that keeps Clov with him. Upton describes the play as “a beautiful microscopic study” of power and relationships.

We turn to time in Endgame; the sense of it is quite different from Waiting for Godot where the protagonists suffer it or try to fill it in. In Endgame, there’s a contrasting sense of busy-ness, despite the characters bewailing the tedium of their lives. Upton says, “There’s a lot more pressure, a sense that this is the last day, even if it’s not clear whether or not Clov will leave. Time in Endgame unfolds in a less loopy, floppy way.”

I’ve always felt Endgame to be more palpably realistic than Godot, making it a very different play. Upton thinks that “there are those who see Beckett through the false lens of Theatre of the Absurd. These people in Endgame are in very real circumstances; they’re just not the circumstances we know; they’re very real to them.” He adds emphatically, pointing to the difference between reading a play and producing it, it has to be real for the actors: “Giving in to each moment and being alive in each, however abstract it may be, needs a really concrete centre for the acting. At one level Beckett’s writing is poetry, at another it’s crazy naturalism—it’s a beautiful theatricality that Beckett sets up.”

Hamm and Clov could be living in a post-apocalyptic world. Alternatively, they could have withdrawn themselves from a world that they did not find accommodating. Hamm recalls visiting a mad engraver and painter in an asylum “before the end of the world.” When the artist looks out the window he sees only ashes. Hamm comments, “the case is not so unusual.” Upton thinks, “it’s a point at which an abstract space, like the end of the world, can become really clear for an audience, about what you’re ignoring or in denial of, in many different ways—that’s the power of the play. It’s one of those plays that will always be timely, but I feel it’s very timely for us because it’s about power and leadership, and it alludes to environmental degradation.”

With designer Nick Schlieper, Upton sees the world of Endgame as a vertical space, as opposed to Godot’s landscape horizontality. “We’re using the verticality of the Sydney Theatre to capture the narrowness of the world the characters inhabit, like a chimney almost. They’ve definitely made a home out of it although it’s not their home, rather an abandoned industrial space. With the height there’ll be a lot of business with the ladder.” (Ordered by Hamm, the limping Clov repeatedly climbs to either of the two high windows to report on the state of the world—he sees only flat sea through one and land through the other. Not ash, but it might as well be). The design’s verticality of course corresponds with the power theme.

As per the insistence of the Beckett estate there’ll be no music (“the language is already so musical!” says Upton) but the writer’s spare, meticulous stage directions will be honoured and Max Lyandvert’s sound design will evoke a world outside, “some sense of the ocean stretching away.”

Finally, Upton says, “we want the characters to be a real family,” not a quirky Wes Anderson family per se, but one inspired by its kind of eccentricity—for which there is fuel aplenty in Endgame.

Sydney Theatre Company, Endgame, writer Samuel Beckett, director Andrew Upton, performers Robert Menzies, Sarah Peirse, Bruce Spence, Hugo Weaving, designer Nick Schlieper, Sydney Theatre, 31 March-9 May. Upton’s production of Waiting for Godot tours to the International Beckett Festival in London this year.

Has Sydney’s most engaging art left its galleries? Kaldor Public Art Projects’ 13 Rooms, on the wharf warehouses of Walsh Bay and Underbelly Arts on Cockatoo Island, have both shown recently and to great effect what can be done outside the white cubes and black boxes of the old-guard art world. In an online era when we can grab all the media we like at home, it seems we’re all looking for experiences to immerse ourselves in, rather than art to look at in traditionally zoned-off institutions.

Tiny Stadiums is a small-scale, local instance of this wider trend, featuring emerging artists and curated by a young duo called Groundwork (Amelia Wallin and Maria White). The curatorial lynchpin of last year’s festival was to use Erskineville’s civic spaces as art sites over two weekends in November. While previous Tiny Stadiums festivals have utilised more public and naturally engaging spaces, like the shuttered corner bakery on the main street, there’s something admirable and sweetly everyday about overhauling decidedly ordinary civic buildings for the purpose of live performance. The most revelatory space to which audiences would usually have the least access, the Anglican Church, was possibly the most under-used, while the most open space, a park on Erskineville Road so small you might miss it, became home to a simple but solid DIY radio project called The People’s Weather Report (see p4). Artist and Tiny Stadiums curatorial assistant Grace Mackey invited people to record their own reflections on climate change under the guise of a weather report from wherever they were. The results were honest, intimate, chatty and accessible—somewhere between a podcast and a sound art project.

Ironically, the strongest work occupied the most traditional space, PACT Theatre, and it was TeamMESS’s Trojans, a loving ode to terrible soap operas performed over four nights. It’s a reminder that even in the midst of the current trend toward public spaces, many artists seem most comfortable with confined, controlled conditions. Across all its projects, TeamMESS takes the conventions of addictive pop-culture phenomena we take for granted—soaps, forensics shows—and reveals these tropes to a live audience who are forced into being part of the spectacle and the silliness. The creators conceived of the Trojans project not just as the finished product we receive on our televisions, but as a live performance. From the very beginning, the audience was made to feel we were not in a theatre but a live TV studio, with trashy ad-breaks, a tinny theme song and el-cheapo green-screen completing the experience.

In celebrating and unveiling how trashy soaps are made, Trojans was recursively subversive and reverential—indicative of the mash of high and low culture in which we’re all swept up. The criminally overlooked American indie film Nurse Betty took a similar approach 15 years ago, with Renee Zellweger as a naïve waitress whose sense of reality slides away from her disappointing small-town life and into her favourite soapie following a horrible trauma. She comes to believe that the handsome Dr Ravell of the hospital soap, A Reason to Love (a reference to the background soapie all the Twin Peaks characters are addicted to), is her long-lost fiancée, and journeys to the show’s Los Angeles studio to fulfill her deluded dream. The film uses soap opera to make a grander statement about American cluelessness and the sad psychology of celebrity worship: Why do we adore the famous as much, or more, than the people in our real lives?

Trojans didn’t ask any such big questions, but it did show us that the inherent crappiness of these shows comes from the insane economics involved in turning over low-budget content for daily televised consumption. A different writer provides a new script written on-the-fly on each day of the show, with the dialogue and blocking instructions piped in real time to the actors’ ears as they perform. The result is then edited on-the-go and shown to us on two screens, with the cameras and sound booth and editing suite all on raw display. Although this follows the reality of soaps which are written hastily and recorded at the astonishing pace of one episode a day, it diminished the quality of the writing and the performances, a pretty key element to the project’s realisation. But within the time constraints, the writer of the performance/episode I saw, Nick Sun, came up with some gloriously horrendous lines: “This is a Buddhist murder!” For a live video project, I expected the creators to utilise the outrageous cinematography conventions of soap operas—long-held zooms at the end of every scene, lingering reaction shots, entire conversations held between two people both facing the camera.

But the hour-long show included at least four deaths, one resurrection, a marriage and an apocalypse—admittedly pretty fast-paced action for a soap, but about as ridiculous as you could hope for.

There’s an argument that projects like Campbelltown Arts Centre’s Minto: Live (2011), which staged art in the streets of south-west Sydney, do public programming best—that curating work outside the inner city and expanding the audience for contemporary art is a more daring and interesting proposition. Does Sydney need more inner-city public art festivals at the expense of geographic expansion? Where the widely acknowledged limitation of This is Not Art—an important festival in many ways—has been its failure to engage with the local spaces and people of Newcastle, I similarly question the extent to which Tiny Stadiums relates to Erko residents and new art-goers. It’s a somewhat disheartening experience to see the same faces show after show, though I did find myself in a room full of strangers at Mook Gwa Institute’s Story Title, which hijacked the premise of a corporate workplace training session (and all the accompanying language of ‘winning’ and ‘success’) for its guerilla community aim: forcing participants into sweet, fleeting conversations with passers-by.

The artists in a similar project, Underbelly Arts—which certainly does push out to a broader art-attending public—benefit from a fortnight of studio residence preceding the festival to develop their work with peers and curators at the ready for instant feedback. By contrast many of the Tiny Stadiums works felt a little thin: great initial concepts not quite brought to fruition. The imbalance was righted with the extraordinary feeling of goodwill tangibly present. In the Town Hall and the park and the theatre people looked happy and engaged and were being excellent to each other, which might be an art project’s greatest possible achievement.

PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, Tiny Stadiums 2014, various locations, Erskineville, Sydney, 13-23 Nov, 2014

This year’s NOW now festival presented radical thought as sound, moreso than radical sound as thought, many artists taking the opportunity to question processes of meaning-making, communication, interpretation and slippage. I focus here on performances with intriguing conceptual underpinning, alongside those that delivered pure, sonic brilliance.

Sprawled across five days at Marrickville’s Red Rattler and SNO gallery spaces, this festival of experimental, exploratory music and sound offered a line-up programmed by Jon Hunter, Emily Morandini, Clayton Thomas, Aemon Webb and Ivan Cheng. I was there for the Thursday, Friday and Saturday night performances.

In their debut performance as a trio, Gail Priest and Joel Stern presented a live laptop-based improvisation with dancer Lizzie Thomson moving through a series of repetitive movements in different combinations, partly in response to the music but also as a discrete non-representational element. From sparse beginnings, myriad electronic and archival sounds intertwined to create a deep cavernous mesh. Presented in three distinct sonic movements, the piece was punctuated with a series of vocal interruptions by Stern periodically taking the microphone to explain, in an overtly discursive way, exactly what was happening in the music. For example, his audio samples were of a Black Throat Finch mating call taken from a cassette tape he found in Java. “Tapes like this are used by humans to draw in and capture the birds to sell at market, so your pleasure in listening to it is misguided,” he explained. It was unusual to be told what’s going on in the middle of a performance, as improvisation is traditionally against explanation in favour of interpretation. The performers’ strategy was to flip the focus from the “production of sounds” onto “the politics of listening,” to confront the audience with what is at stake politically, ethically and philosophically.

Sabine Vogel employed a complex language of extended techniques with amplified flutes, bending thin air into a sometimes percussive, sometimes sub-tonal arrangement of sounds, casting a spell over the audience.

Astrid Lorange and Andrew Brooks provided a stack of A2 paper placed on a stool in the centre of the room, printed with a poetic script titled RATSTEAK. The audience could follow while a recording of the artists reading the poem played loudly overhead. The poem was constantly disrupted, the voices edited to fall in and out of unison, and cut up to create a stuttering effect. The stuttering shifted language from being a tool for coherence and flow into disorder and otherness. Now and then, My Body Is Your Party by the early 2000s USA ‘princess of Crunk&B’ Ciara interrupted the poem, her lyrics alluding to ideas about the body as something at once present and unavailable. The idea was also evident in the physical absence of the poets, separating language and voice from their source of power. Lorange and Brooks put into motion a set of indefinite bodies doing indefinite things, subverting the listenability and meaning of sound within the overtly listening-oriented NOW now context.

Shane Fajey (synth), Pete Jones (guitar) and Aemon Webb (drums) of the Axis Trio created the sort of improvised music experience that didn’t feel right until you closed your eyes. Then it revealed a new, transportive logic and became epic, expansive, soaring, chaotic, vital: like things endlessly falling over and continuously rolling into something else.

Using glass pieces and laser beams, Klaus Filip presented a spectrum of single electronic notes, their pitch represented by green laser dots, like an X-ray on a black screen. He gradually refracted the laser light into tessellating triangle patterns, also fracturing the monophonic beeps into blips and captivating glassy textures.

Marcus Whale and Ivan Lisyak each pre-prepared 20 one-minute audio pieces, put them into iTunes playlists, pressed “Shuffle” and sat staring across a table at each other. What ensued was a barrage of competing sound, texturally rich, sometimes harmonic, sometimes dissonant, with combinations of audio ripped from YouTube and original compositions. It changed like clockwork, each minute entering a new dimension at the will of iTunes shuffle. The artists had appeared to be engaged in an epic staring competition. On reflection, their static presence amid an evolving, erratic soundscape appeared like a tongue-in-cheek comment on the perfunctory role of the electronic music performer at a time when pushing ‘Play’ can generate an entire, unpredictable performance. This was a practical exercise, experimentation in form, and a work that spoke volumes in action (or inaction) as much as sound.

Agatha Gothe-Snape’s lo-fi performance consisted of a succession of seemingly random words displayed in a PowerPoint presentation on a large projector screen, with generic accompanying PowerPoint sound effects. On stage in front of the screen, Gothe-Snape, Ivan Cheng, Brian Fuata and Anna John acted as a collective framing device for the presentation, taking up various positions to create vignettes, moving or changing poses occasionally in accordance with cues from the slides. Towards the end, Daddy Cool’s “Come Back Again” blared out as the performers exited. This work functioned as a sort of humorous intervention amid more serious exploratory pursuits. PowerPoint was Gothe-Snape’s ‘instrument,’ a type of score for bodies to be present on stage. A corporate driver of productivity in the workplace has been recontextualised here as a poetic tool, the artist treating the task of performance like labour, partly automated, partly embodied. This purposefully self-conscious performance was a memorable placeholder in the program: a good-humoured poke at the loftiness of the NOW now audience, but also a complex semantic intervention in its own right.

Amanda Stewart performed a work titled Postiche, showing off her impressive, manic, glitchy voice poetry, with words and sentence fragments occasionally emerging from rapid-fire babble and descending again into incoherence: “…empires crumble… everything’s relevant in the doctrine of commodities… integrated verticals of capitalised fate…” These sounded like a collage of generic sentences from academic journals, history books and corporate instruction manuals, a pastiche of technical languages mashed together to muddle and undermine political and ideological systems. Stewart was accompanied by Rosalind Hall who improvised sympathetically with saxophone neck, mouthpiece and foot pedals.

The artists expressing thought as sound in the 2015 NOW now festival challenged modes of meaning creation with new performance formats. Approaches varied, from didactic, explanatory techniques that brought new consciousness to processes with which we are familiar, to the breaking and fragmenting of these processes using glitch and stutter. This variety and the intellectual rigour are testament to the thriving, creative community the NOW now has helped foster.

Following Pink Violin and Violin Music in the Age of Shopping, not violin music presents the latest scholarship from the rarefied field of Rosenbergology. For those who have not had the pleasure of delving into the intellectual humus of their family tree, the Rosenbergs are a clan of physicists, mathematicians and, of course, violinists who all share the same first initial “J.” Their pseudonymous scholars are keen culture critics and dialecticists, ready to lament the decline of Western Civilization while decrying its inherent contradictions. The book revels in collapse and tragedy, beginning with a post-apocalyptic portrait of one Dr Rosenberg reinventing the Doric column and ending with a suicide.

The material form of the book develops this sense of cultural amnesia. It is an unwieldy volume, lacking even that most basic of bibliographic conveniences: page numbers. There is no table of contents, nor even a list of contributors. Book sections can only be distinguished by their idiosyncratic typesetting. Each chapter has a different font, though Comic Sans is sadly absent. The glossy, low-resolution cover betrays its origins in a print-on-demand self-publishing house. It is, in short, a dysfunctional book.

Which is precisely the point. Contributors were briefed to explore dysfunctionalism as a theme. In one chapter Dr Robert Ostertag offers a principle of dysfunctionalism: “a machine performing a task badly is aesthetically superior to a human performing the task wel.” The phrase is clipped because Ostertag’s responses are subject to Twitter’s 140-character limitation. The book is thus a product of the axiom that cheap-and-quick printing and cut-and-paste formatting are aesthetically superior to more manual production values.

Ostertag’s definition of dysfunctionalism only covers cases where automatism is pitted against human agency in the performance of a given task, such as in the construction of a print-on-demand book. But the cases of dysfunctionalism explored by the contributors are usually those in which a machine poorly translates or transmits human intentions. For instance, Ostertag cites an installation where Dr Rosenberg attempts to play a violin using ECG data. Another author relates the dysfunctional scenario of a Maoist TED talk by Judd Rosenberg. Plagiarism, new and old violins, jazz clubs, composition competitions and the instrumental innovations of violin metal are also evaluated as dysfunctional mediums.

The authors explore language itself as a dysfunctional medium. Academic language, theory language, art language, even mathematical language (the book is a pleasure for those on hand-waving terms with pure mathematics) all come under parodic scrutiny. One chapter is shockingly written in “Engrish,” with “l”s and “r”s interchanged. Another frequently drops articles. These caricatures of the language of people from non-English speaking backgrounds are made all the more offensive by the use of pseudonyms as dysfunctional names. The pseudonym does not point the reader to any particular context. It is a reader’s dead-end. This is dangerous when a text hinges on irony, on knowing that an author “doesn’t really mean it.”

Dysfunctional names leads to dysfunctional readings, and here I cannot accept that dysfunction aesthetically trumps function. Only after clarifying with Jon Rose that the two chapters in question were indeed written by a Japanese and a Slovakian contributor respectively and that exploring dysfunctional language was an essential part of their brief was I able to read the contributions with any sort of sympathy.

There is yet the disfunctionality of culture critique that plagues the book. Lazy generalisations mar the contributors’ clever jabs at contemporary culture. One author paints a juvenile caricature of the Australian suburbs as a cultural wasteland devoid of music-making. Rosenberg is driven around the suburb of “Roselands” in a taxi and promises to double the fare if he can find somebody performing music. He resorts to door knocking after failing to find music at pubs and malls, but house after house is devoid of music-making. I call this caricature juvenile because I entertained it myself as a teenager in the southern suburbs of Adelaide. But then again, I was playing the cello every day from the back room of our triple-fronted, cream brick home, as were many other kids making music in the neighbourhood. I lament with the author the steady decline in public musicking since the 19th century, but he could better pose the question of why amateur music making is still largely delineated by class rather than shaming the working class, or indeed the economic middle class, for having apparently given up on violins. The Muslim taxi driver in this chapter is also a caricature, the purpose of which mystifies me.

Several chapters in the book are quite tasteless, which is again part of the book’s design. In response to my inquiries about portrayals of class and religion, Rose stressed the point that he exercised no censorship in curating the contributions. Tasteless, too, is the Violin Museum inspiring the contributions, which features several exhibits that cannot be included among the 31 pages of pictures of the Museum. The museum, which actually exists, was once situated in the town of Violin in Slovakia. Rose has passed a dragnet through contemporary culture, from the high to the low and the experimental, picking up authentic Rosenberg modified violins and art works, as well as violin-themed nick-knacks and smut. After threats to the director’s life, the museum is currently homeless, but will soon be exhibited in Berlin, Bologna and Australia. Whatever the anti-censorship ideals behind the book, the use of dysfunctional names will lead to its being judged at face value. The book’s irony will be flattened out.

As part of Sydney’s Art Month and the Greek Festival, IHOS Opera will present composer-director Constantine Koukias’ chamber opera Kimisis—Falling Asleep. In the Eastern Orthodox Church Kimisis commemorates the Dormition, the ‘falling asleep,’ or death and assumption into Heaven of Mary, mother of Christ.

The company believes that while Kimisis will appeal to Orthodox believers, its “experiential foray into our own ephemerality,” (press release) will have wider appeal.

For many years an integral and influential player in the Tasmanian arts scene, Koukias has moved to Amsterdam, premiering Kimisis at Splendor Amsterdam and the Karavaan Festival in 2014.

The opera features soprano Irene Sarrinikolaou, a trombonist, DJ and award-winning architects Elvio Brianese and Peta Heffernan whose panopticon design will implicate and immerse the audience in the ritual of transcendence.

IHOS Opera, Kimisis—Falling Asleep, Verge Gallery, Jane Foss Russell Building, Sydney University, 25-28 March

Chamber Made Opera’s Another Other, produced in collaboration with Punctum and New Music Network, is a new work created and performed by Erkki Veltheim, Sabina Maselli, Natasha Anderson and Anthony Pateras, a stunning audiovisual renewal of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman’s legacy.

In “The Snakeskin,” an essay written in 1965, Bergman sees art as hunger, pessimistically describing it as a dead snakeskin full of ants, eaten from the inside but still moving with systematic, uneasy activity. A year later Bergman released his seminal film Persona, in which he explored the validity of art, authenticity and the transformative aspects of self.

Another Other probes these themes with expertise and loyalty, a contemporary exploration of our digital age, which enables various online selves, our gaming skins and the smiling veneer of busy loneliness that they project.

Entering the ICU performance space—aptly a dark hospital basement—we see an indistinct black plastic sculptural object, inside which is something sonic and kinetic, rhythmic in its disconnection and obscurity. We are seated on opposing banks, projection screens a mask between audience and performers. The performers’ stillness emphasises their geometric positioning. Vocal sighs initiate the score, evoking Persona character Elisabet’s feelings of shock as she spirals into silence. Two clocks loom above the performers, activated simultaneously. One counts down, alluding to anticipation, while the other counts upwards, indicating time yet to come. There is continual, circular referencing of the film, repurposed and displaced.

A phone rings. Echoing footsteps walk slowly to one side of the audience. The lights shift; we are spotlit. Alongside the performers we become Bergman’s ants in the flaking remnant of snakeskin that here is theatre.

Five video projections come into play throughout in front of the audience and on the walls behind. A 16mm projector stands alone, an antiquated sculptural object; it could be a ready-made. Sabina Maselli handles live visual mixing with ease, driving imagery at different speeds, generating abstraction and re-imagining old film footage. Saturated and hallucinogenic, a mixture of processed and real, it’s all a blur.

The acoustic score is both measured and random. Natasha Anderson shifts air through the wooden flaps of an elongated Bavarian recorder, often using the mouthpiece for extended voice work. She plays it as a multipurpose object, hitting, spitting and blowing, her action fractured and magnificent.

Loops of sound rise and suddenly there are simultaneous projections. A discordant violin twists and turns as a facial close-up is revealed. Colour saturated images shift to black and white and slowly the film disintegrates before our very eyes as it did in Persona (1966). It peels away from the edges, revealing soft white insides. I’m aware of the other half of the audience peering through.

Erkki Veltheim plays remarkable violin, oscillating between exquisitely slow tonal bowing and high-pitched dissonance. He also plays out the most overt reference to the film—the retelling of the sunbaking scene as a spoken word piece. While it doesn’t sit well within the entirety of the work, there is an interesting gender switch as he tells the female story of voyeurism, of sexual experimentation of youth and the violent impact that the experience has on the woman’s identity. The female vocals become a choral undertone and combine with the imagery to intensify the sense of psychosis.

Anthony Pateras is an astonishing improviser. For Another Other he plays electronics and reel-to-reel tape, altering time and voice. Pre-recorded sound and intense processing generates severity in the score. Pateras is masterful and foreboding as always, an embodiment of storm. The resonating bass takes over, travelling through the body with a harshness that relates to the slapping sounds of the recorder.

The lighting of the audience shifts, creating a new perspective. The clocks now tell the same time, becoming a place of sonic and visual rest. There is silence and then a minimalist sound work begins. It has an oceanic quality, perhaps recalling the beach scenes in Persona.

Images of droplets form and Sabina Maselli stands to operate the projector, turning the cogs by hand, forwards and back, place-making in time.

Another Other is a riveting and fragmented series of micro movements, collectively composed to merge filmic and musical elements just as characters’ identities merge in Bergman’s film. This hyper-expanded cinematic experience shows our mental life to be a complicated mesh of meaning, open to interpretation.

Like the ego, Another Other is impossible to unpack methodically; there’s no narrative thread. This courageous and bold artwork feasts on the art of Persona before the clocks stop and finally there is silence inside the self.

Chamber Made Opera with Punctum and New Music Network, Another Other, creators, performers Erkki Veltheim, Sabina Maselli, Natasha Anderson, Anthony Pateras; Punctum’s ICU, Castlemaine, 5, 7 Dec, 2014

It’s inevitable that experimental music embraces the latest technological developments and that the expansion of art forms to provide ever-increasing audience engagement is also a characteristic of contemporary culture. Now 15 years old, Adelaide’s Zephyr Quartet has built its considerable reputation on innovative programming and collaboration with the widest variety of composers and performers. Music for Strings and iThings is a concert of experimental music that radically challenges the way we think about music and performance and about the pervasive and seductive influence of new technologies.

Zephyr Artistic Director Hilary Kleinig’s composition, For those who’ve come across the seas, epitomises the use of technology in this concert and the capacity of musical performance to raise political awareness. Kleinig’s wistfully evocative piece for string quartet and smart-phone choir is a personal response to media reports concerning Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Combining fragments of recordings of Kyrie Eleison settings from the traditional mass, the Morse code signal for SOS and the national anthem, and performed with a video showing the empty, endlessly rolling sea, the work is already conceptually powerful. But rather than passively absorbing the music, each audience member participates not by singing but by downloading and playing out loud on their phone one of three pieces of pre-recorded music, the combined sound of which forms a three-part accompaniment to the quartet’s playing. The audience thus implicitly enjoins Kleinig’s response, and the work demonstrates the potential of the phone for crowd communication and spontaneous action in any setting, musical or otherwise.

Zephyr invited several composers to try out ideas in response to the concert’s technological theme. Brendan Woithe’s Breath involves the quartet playing a notated work out of sight behind a screen, while Woithe sits at a laptop before the audience. The quartet is miked but can only be heard when the audience makes sounds and thereby triggers the necessary amplification. The audience thus unconsciously activates the music, a subtle weave of long, delicate tones. Interaction is also central to Luke Harrald’s Distant Front (2012), written for string quartet and a laptop programmed to respond to the quartet as it plays. Inspired by painter Fred Williams’ landscapes and the dry South Australian countryside, Distant Front was commissioned by the Art Gallery of South Australia to accompany its Williams retrospective. There is some fine writing for strings, evoking the stillness of outback summer heat followed by soothing rain.

Cat Hope’s composition Wall Drawing, inspired by the serial art of US conceptual artist Sol LeWitt, is a graphic score, scrolling across a projection screen, a device visually and conceptually reminiscent of LeWitt’s work and his ideas on narrative. Accompanied by a Theremin, the quartet transforms the visual into the audible while the audience also sees the score projected on a screen as a visual artwork. Composer and graphic designer Al Thumm takes this idea a step further with his Chameleon Wake for string quartet and video game, with Thumm at the laptop. The quartet responds to his collaged, animated illustrations of the Australian landscape and its fauna scrolling across the screen, producing some highly surreal effects. The game is an active graphic score, adding another dimension to the performance.

VoiceROM (Dylan Marshall and Jarrad Payne) concluded the evening with Falconwood Pinblock, a composition again involving the audience reproducing sound over their smart phones while directed from the stage, together with the quartet and a sampler. (The pinblock, that part of a piano frame holding the tuning pins in place, is made of hardwoods such as falconwood—perhaps the title is a metaphor for the foundations of instrumental music.) As with Kleinig’s composition, the audience does not all come in on tempo, resulting in a somewhat chaotic sound. But musical perfection is not the point, rather it is group consciousness and participation through electronic connection, which can indeed be chaotic.

Music for Strings and iThings is highly experimental music. The involvement of the audience through smart phones and the interactive play with a gamer both push notions of composer, performer and musical reception beyond limits. While not always impressive musically, these works are conceptually radical and developmentally significant. Zephyr’s relentless quest for musical and compositional originality and their work with diverse collaborators continues to position them at the forefront of innovation, involving in this concert appropriation, field recording, live processing, pre-processed sound, visual art, aleatoric elements and directed and spontaneous audience participation. The concert is perhaps a wry commentary on the way in which new technologies have invaded our lives and come to dominate communication and thought processes, but it also demonstrates the way in which contemporary culture can condense so many sonic, musical and cultural traditions and ideas into a new paradigm.

Zephyr Quartet and collaborators, Music for Strings and iThings, ABC Studio 520, Adelaide, 15 Nov, 2014

Despite usual appearances, it is not written in stone that new music and associated instruments must always be impenetrable to all but a learned few. The responses of curiosity and delight that the Instrument Builders Project inspired in visitors of all ages and backgrounds should give pause to anyone despairing about a lack of audiences for experimental music. This exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, and the ongoing project itself, demonstrated that new approaches to instruments, sound and music can reach out to new audiences; not to mention bridge cultural divides between two neighbouring countries.

This was the first time the project had been presented in Australia (two previous iterations have taken place in Indonesia), hosting a number of Indonesian artists in residency alongside their Australian contemporaries. Their works explored recurring themes of site-specific instruments that interact with environmental and meteorological phenomena (exemplified by Michael Candy, Pia van Gelder and Andreas Siagian’s Mountain Operated Synthesiser) and the reclaiming of junk as musical material (as in Dylan Martorell’s use of robotic percussion on discarded tin canisters in Drum Plough, and Peter Blamey’s quietly humming Motherboard Tree).

Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to play and interact with the instruments; many displaying “Please DO touch” signs. This created a relaxed and playful atmosphere for all ages (kids love to play with things that make funny noises). On a more subtle level, it demonstrated the power of a non-traditional instrument to break down the barriers and cultural baggage associated with an object like a violin or piano. We had no hesitation in climbing inside Dale Gorfinkel’s wonderful Lotek Exercise Machine and stomping on foot pumps connected to an array of horns via tentacles of irrigation hose. It’s hard to imagine the same musically untrained visitors taking to a violin with similar gleeful abandon.

The exhibition also hosted an onsite workshop where the resident artists worked on new instruments. The workshop opened its doors to the public several times throughout the exhibition and artists demonstrated their works-in-progress. Some of these instruments rivalled works in the main exhibition in terms of musicality and sheer fun, such as Lintang Raddittya’s Spinningfields, where many light-hearted moments were spent with spinning tops on an amplified aluminium platform, straddling the divide between game and instrument. Gorfinkel, emerging as the star of the exhibition, had several other exquisite pieces in the workshop space, most notably Nada Laut: As Above So Below, a piece made in collaboration with Siagian where a number of conch shells were suspended over vibraphone bars. A fan coaxed the resonating shells to swing like pendulums over the bars, creating pulses of delicate resonances and harmonics. Each shell had been painstakingly matched with a different bar to achieve the most sympathetic match of resonance and frequency. The resulting timbre of the instrument was flute-like, with the underlying hum of a vibraphone conjuring images of sea and wind.

Along with Gorfinkel’s Lotek Exercise Machine, Tintin Wulia’s Odong Dangding Prototype attracted the most attention. A modified Indonesian pedicab, its roof was mounted with a bamboo angklung (tuned percussive bamboo pipes) that were struck by pedal-powered beaters. With the vehicle immobilised on blocks throughout the exhibition, we were able to climb in and pedal away to activate the percussive action above. The Odong came into its own at the culmination of the exhibition when it was released from the confines of the gallery and driven down the footpath of Flinders Street at the head of a procession of onlookers to the Federation Bells. The Odong stopped several times to allow different people a turn at pedalling (I was lucky enough to be one of them). Clarinettist, Aviva Endean, perched on the front of the Odong playing sunny melodies that perfectly matched the carefree mood of the Sunday joyride. At Federation Bells, the Odong’s wireless network capability was activated, triggering the bells to ring as it neared.

The Instrument Builders Project continues to construct and maintain lasting ties between artists in Australia and Indonesia, two countries with shaky diplomatic relations in recent times. That such relationships endure while politicians squabble points to the quiet importance of the cultural ties that endeavours like The Instrument Builders Project propagate. Along with mass appeal evident at this exhibition, such strengths show one possible way forward for art practices like experimental music. There is not much difference between the obscure and the delightful after all.

The Instrument Builders Project, curators: Kristi Monfries, Joel Stern, NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne, Nov 1-23, 2014

James Turrell, Bindu shards 2010, Perceptual cell: fiberglass and metal. Light program, 420.8 x 653.1 x 607.1 cm (sphere), National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, purchased 2014

James Turrell is a god among light-as-art gurus, a practitioner concerned with the “secular transcendent.” His exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia is the fourth in a series originally curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, toured to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, thence the Guggenheim in New York and now in Canberra.

Each venue has housed projection pieces, holograms, drawings, prints and photographs, along with new site-specific, whole-room experiences utilising a variety of light sources from LED to fluorescent, tungsten, fibre-optic and natural, also requiring false walls, extensive fine plastering by experts, and limited visitor entries per hour, as well as caveats on where to walk and how to behave within the installations.

We could discuss the relationship between Turrell’s Quaker background and whether or not this work is spiritual. He himself cautions, “It’s terrible hubris to say this is a religious art. Nonetheless, it is something that does remind us of that way we are when we are thinking of things beyond us.” Key is Turrell’s indication of the way that an individual experiences each installation. Everyone I talk to has a differing opinion of what elements of the current exhibition affect them most.

The obsessive nature of Turrell’s work has seen him create long-term projects which include the purchase of an extinct volcano in the Arizona Desert to create his magnum opus, the Roden Crater, a pilgrimage place which, like the ancient ziggurats and stupa of Indian, Javanese and Mayan cultures, is where human architecture meets the cosmos via a ritual control and channelling of shape, light and time.

In the 1960s, in Santa Monica, Turrell took over the disused Mendota Hotel for 10 years to observe, document, imitate and finally manipulate an unending play of shafts of light across otherwise blacked-out rooms. The hotel became a theatre of light-corridors, serving as creative fodder for a flicker-book of luminous aquatints and drawings executed long after his eviction, a document of his mind grappling with the passage of time.

On a more public scale, Turrell began to create Ganzfield Rooms, named after the Ganzfield effect. Ganzfield Installations build on the sensory deprivation experiments of the 1960s, testing the ‘snow-blind’ experience of skiers as well as the disequilibria of aeronautic pilots. They are essentially fog-filled rooms into which one ascends via stairs through a demarcated, open portal. An internal, soft-edged proscenium arch, like the edge of the sea, extends ahead into a void. Looking back, the white room from whence one came takes on the colour of the opposites of the colour-wheel playing out before our eyes. Complicit with Itten’s colour-field theory, our eyes cycle through a perpetually adjusting fog of exquisite hues.

James Turrell, Shanta II (blue) 1970, cross-corner construction: fluorescent light, built space, Dimensions variable: 106.6cm (max height of aperture), National Gallery of Australia

Without markers for up, down, left or right, pilots and astronauts suffering a Ganzfield effect could plummet to the ground. But at the gallery’s Ganzfield, we are limited by the demarcation of time (10 minutes per session), overzealous guards directing our gaze (“now…look at the white effect on your hands”) and an orderly coming in and exiting in file, let alone the presence of others clearly embodied, grounded and vertical, beside you in the room.

That said, people have been known to plunge into the receding abyss of the edge or tripped up against the installation’s curved side walls. Still, I long for children to run and dancers to sway here. I would love both multitudes and more isolation in this room.

This central problem—of the self, in relation to others—is solved with the solo experience of the ‘Bindu Shards’ Perceptual Cell, a spheroid not unlike an MRI machine into which one is wheeled, clutching an emergency button, for 15 minutes, having signed a caveat not to sue either Turrell or the gallery in case epilepsy is triggered.

From outside the spheroid, the waiting queue watches flashing lights and changing hues, keen to get in. On the inside, there is a hum of low sounds accompanying a play of light that has one’s eyes sink into their orbs. While relaxed by the experience, it is not more than I have experienced in meditation. Per se I am fine with this, but the ‘scientific’ apparatus—lab-coats; the computerised graphs to which attendants’ eyes remain glued; the atom-splitter shape of the whole—leave me with a sense of involvement in a half-baked experiment where the results are ambiguous and one doesn’t know where the proceeds go. My attendant seemed greatly disappointed when I emerged from the ‘soft option’ experience not particularly moved. I wanted to try the ‘hard option’ but the Cell is booked out for months.

It is here where the relative freedoms of the sky spaces, such as the Roden Crater and the NGA’s own Within Without skyspace (2010) take their hold, because these spaces play not only with space and presence, but with the critical factor of time. Not ‘time’ as in ‘you are now timed out,’ but time as in the panoply of light, cosmogony and atmospheres that occur within and through that momentary frame of place.

And yet, while the video document of the extraordinary project that is Roden Crater enthralls me with Turrell’s vision, persistence and obsession, I worry that the ‘sacred’ experience is strongest because represented on film. Here, we have the building aligned to solstice, equinox and other cosmic alignments that only occur once over several months, or decades, the emotional affect of which is edited to become an experience within a short seven minutes of viewing time.

So, is this what we are? In our secular search for meaning, beings subjected to the manipulated compression of time? I do not begrudge anyone finding their enlightenment, momentary frisson or secular joy in a Ganzfield or the Perceptual Cell. What I do take delight in is discovering the sky space created for Rice University, the Twilight Epiphany (http://skyspace.rice.edu), an open-sided pavilion with a 21-metre square cantilevered roof with a four metre square central oculus or ‘sky-eye’ beneath, before and across which students, teachers and alumni of Rice Campus are allowed uninterrupted passage. It reminds me of the liberating moment in the 1980s when I first experienced three of Rothko’s Seagram Murals, hung in a Perspex, gazebo-like room, with a realisation that it is not the subject of any one, or all three, of them, but the ‘passing strange’ of visitors who make the art, that their motion and attention or dis-attention across the colour fields create the work’s meaning. This embraces those who ignore, reject, or simply can’t handle the paintings’ colour fields, so elegantly hung within the gazebo frame. It is this liberation that I crave; and especially as I find the Ganzfield does not have me giddy in space and crash landing.

Aeronautical experiments since the 1960s after all have been entangled with ideas of conquering space to human ends. Driven by an urge to transcend the human realm, these researches also fuelled paranoia about aliens, that ‘we’re not alone’, a Cold War cock-fight and paved the way to ignore the dirt in our own backyards, for why tidy our own planet when we could potentially emigrate elsewhere in the universe? I am not quite sure Turrell’s work is aloof from such considerations.

That said, perhaps the most pure and grounded experience of the James Turrell exhibition is of Shanta II (blue) 1970, a cross-corner construction of artificial wall and fluorescent light creating a blue box that is both out and in, both penetration and void, ethereal and melancholy, an illusion of a solid filling the corner of the room. I lean into the blue (risking the censure of a guard), dipping my hand in what seems to be both threshold and sea, and find nothing but powdery space. Bliss. So, here we are, one at a time, quiet, standing, viewing, questioning and questing, in the corner. As indeed we all are, grasping for the truth, and the beyond, in each of our small, single lives.

James Turrell: a retrospective, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, opened Dec 12, 2014. Check website for closing date:
www.nga.gov.au/jamesturrell

Enduring Parallels was a weekend live performance exhibition held inside the historic sandstone edifice of The Lock-Up, Newcastle: a police lock-up from 1861-1982 that has since been decommissioned for use as a contemporary arts space. It’s a strange marriage arising from utility, not unlike Sydney College of the Arts housed in Callan Park, and is similarly impossible to sanitise.

The stench of urine still pervades the outdoor exercise yard where Adam Geczy (Big Arms) flexed his pecs and then religiously recorded his sets on chalkboards; Nicholas Shearer performed Boots in the disquieting portal of the padded cell; and Jacobus Capone enacted Silent Elegy in the old women’s lock-up, surrounded by walls covered in graffiti, including “Give Frazer The Razor Not Women’s Services.” written in what I imagine is red nail polish.

I arrived early on opening night, avoiding the crowd that had gathered at Civic Park to see Patricia Piccinini’s Skywhale (which unfortunately was dubbed #Skyfail as it remained only partly inflated and ‘beached az’). The first performance I encountered was co-curator Lottie Consalvo’s Near your sorrow, which was the perfect entrée: in a small single cell a woman in jeans and a T-shirt was singing along with a looped recording of another woman’s voice (which she would continue to do for the 17 hours the exhibition was open). The recorded voice belonged to the artist’s sister who committed suicide in 2010 and the audio was later discovered on her sister’s phone. This mournful and elegiac echo became a subliminal soundtrack to the rest of the exhibition as the noise of the opening night crowd had yet to permeate the space. I’d seen live art at The Lock-Up before as part of a few This Is Not Art programs, including Sarah-Jane Norman’s campy Surabaya Johnny and Fiona MacGregor’s starkly confrontational You Have the Body, but the simplicity of Lottie Consalvo’s work was equally immersive and exquisitely immanent as a futile attempt to cleave past and present.

The heavy iron door of an adjacent cell was locked and a small surveillance monitor displayed the artist Michaela Gleave, who would remain self-incarcerated for 48 hours, with only a single bed, toilet and basic supplies. As you observed Gleave on the screen—sitting on the bed, doing some basic yoga stretches—she would also intermittently manually adjust a clock to reflect her perception of the passing time. Impressively, when I returned to the gallery on Sunday afternoon, Gleave was only 25 minutes behind the actual time (quite a feat when you also account for sleep). Doing Time/Time Doing was probably the most extreme of the endurance works and even a mediated sense of the claustrophobia was enough to give me heart palpitations.

Nicholas Shearer’s Boots drew on repetition as its modus-operandi as he sat on a chair surrounded by the worn leather cushioning of the padded cell, pulling his black Baxters off and on. This performance really encapsulated one of the difficulties of aestheticising such an historically loaded space (I know from discussions with past curators that inmates have committed suicide in this cell, and it still has a very foreboding 19th century feel). The soothing simplicity of Shearer’s performance, however, also reminded me of the recent phenomenon of autonomous sensory meridian response videos (Google it!), without the whispering. Another performance that had the act of labour at its core, was Rowena Fong’s With strings attached which had a Rumpelstiltskin motif, as the local clothing designer (from High Tea With Mrs Woo) spun “material waste into infinite cocoons of precious string” (program note). This struck a more craftily redemptive note, as drop spindles hung from the ceiling and Fong turned colourful material offcuts into twine.

On opening night I didn’t make it in for a consultation with Anastasia Klose, Your drunken fortune, but when I returned on Sunday afternoon I was able to sit down and seek her prescience. I told her a recent tale of woe, and she left me with words of wisdom from Morrissey, “I’ve seen it happen in other people’s lives, and now it’s happening in mine,” as she sipped red wine from a water tumbler. I was never one for drinking, or late nights—the wellsprings of this performance—but I can instinctively tap into these kinds of speculative conversations between women even though I remain stone cold sober. Klose brought the aesthetic of hand-drawn signs and lo-fi immediacy to the gallery, and the audience interaction gave this performance a private and unpredictable narrative element.

The only performance that I had conflicting feelings about was Jodie Whalen’s Between husband and wife, which involved Whalen and her husband writing long declarations of love to each other while sitting at a table in a far cell and then reading them out publically every 15 minutes in another space. Perhaps the intention was partly to make the audience uncomfortable, and god knows a marriage is as much a durational performance as any other—as the artists’ parents had often noted: “you don’t get this many years for murder.” Interpersonal relationships were also explored in Todd McMillan and Sarah Mosca’s You are as hopeless as me (study), which had a wonderful soundtrack by The Cocteau Twins.

Enduring Parallels co-curators Ineke Dane and Lottie Consalvo (who have both moved to Newcastle in the last few years) did a stellar job putting this exhibition together, which was as much a testimony to the indelible coherence of the 10 artists’ work in response to the physicality of the site, as it was the individual pieces (unfortunately, Sarah-Jane Norman, who was intending to do a telephonic work from Berlin, was a late withdrawal from the program due to technical issues, leading to a lack of contemporary Indigenous presence in the show). As romantic as the whole enterprise of art may be, especially in this context—where the site acts as a palimpsest for not only counter-discourses such as graffiti, but silhouettes of colonial forbears ghosted on the windows—the exhibition wasn’t overawed by its architecture, instead creating a live ‘event horizon.’ By definition The Lock-Up, as a kind of half-way house of detention, almost begs an engagement with endurance performance and, as the curators note, “Parallels with the past and present, infinity and the measurable, distance and time, value and immateriality, enduring love and memory, resonate in the performances” (program). The calibre of the artists involved in Enduring Parallels and the networks the curators tapped into bode well for The Lock-Up’s continued programming as a multi-disciplinary contemporary art space and I’m looking forward to their 2015 program.

Enduring Parallels, curators Ineke Dane, Lottie Consalvo, The Lock-Up, Newcastle, 28-30 Nov, 2014, www.thelockup.org.au

There are many users of the waters of the Murray-Darling basin and Adelaide is a major one, having long been dependent on water piped from the Murray River to supplement its meagre rainfall. Two large pipes convey water to Adelaide, one of them originating in the town of Murray Bridge, 75 km southeast.

The river basin has also long been home to numerous communities, preceding and since European colonisation. Same River Twice, a joint exhibition mounted by the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery (MBRG) and the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF) in Adelaide, is an essay in two forms: a collection of artworks by past and present artists and a catalogue detailing the history of the river and its pivotal role not only in Australia’s economy but in its culture, including artists’ essays focused on the river and the broader environment.

Curators Melinda Rankin (MBRG) and Fulvia Mantelli (AEAF) chose the exhibition title to allude to the river’s ever-changing nature. The catalogue includes a transcript of a 2012 speech by late Ngarrindjeri elder Tom Trevorrow on the relationship of his community with the river. Writer Ken Orchard’s essay outlines the importance of artistic and photographic depictions of the river in tracing pre- and post-colonial settlement and in informing debate on its usage and management, thus establishing an historical context for the artwork in the exhibition.

Each gallery’s exhibition opening was preceded by a ceremonial welcome to country from the local Indigenous community. AEAF exhibition openings now routinely include a welcome ceremony from the Kaurna community, inviting recognition and appreciation of the region’s Indigenous culture, as well as signifying openness to dialogue and reconciliation.

Central to the exhibition is a selection of work by Ian Abdulla (1956-2011) who grew up on the river’s banks near Murray Bridge and whose paintings and screen prints give unparalleled insights into what such life was like and how abundant the river once was. Nici Cumpston, of the Barkindji community of the Darling region, exhibits her well-known hand-coloured photos of the Murray wetlands and discusses her search for evidence of Indigenous occupation and her documentation of significant sites.

Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist Jonathan Jones (NSW) shows Untitled (Murray-Darling River Catchment), a set of graphite rubbings mapping the Murray-Darling’s catchment areas as defined by the Australian Department of Environment. He notes in his essay how the river system was home to 40 Aboriginal nations, over which catchment management has been superimposed. He suggests the system’s recovery requires acknowledging the cultural values of the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations and Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations groups. Ellen Trevorrow (SA) shows Seven Sisters Mats (2009), traditional items woven from sedges and housed in the Camp Coorong museum established by the Ngarrindjeri community to record and teach Ngarrindjeri history and culture.

Heidi Kenyon, Liz Butler, Same River Twice, AEAF + MBRG 2014-15, installation view Murray Bridge Regional Gallery

In Heidi Kenyon’s (SA) Everything Flows, Nothing Remains (I & II) (2014) dark, curtained rooms house small, backlit jars of ‘transposed’ water—cleansed Adelaide water at MBRG and muddy Murray water at the AEAF. Images projected through the jars show dripping taps, as if connected to the pipeline, accompanied by the sound of water endlessly dripping away. The crucial importance of water management is further highlighted in Dryland base 2 (2008) by Pamela Kouwenhoven (1944-2014, SA. It’s the base of an old rainwater tank covered with degraded malthoid, a protective coating applied to the underside of iron tanks to prevent corrosion. Hung like a painting, it symbolises the constant need to collect water.

Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski (NSW) show works from their Incompatible Elements series, including A living body, a scrolling aerial photograph of the Coorong, the long lagoon adjoining the Murray mouth that is so endangered because of the reduced flow of water through it. The title refers to Tom Trevorrow’s description of the river as a living body. They also show And the river was dust, an aerial map of the Murray-Darling’s winding streams photo-shopped to spell out the work’s title, a quotation from Judith Wright, poet and environmentalist who characterised the Australian imaginary so acutely. Kay Lawrence’s (SA) No Words for the River is a series of small watercolours bearing phrases used by European explorers to describe the river, betraying their ignorance of its nature.

At the AEAF, Fiona McGregor (NSW) shows a video documenting a 2011 performance entitled Water #1 Descent in which she lies motionless on a table for several hours, covered in salt, while rainwater drips onto her forehead from a bladder above her head. The bladder contains her own body weight in water, collected from various sites between Lake Eyre and Sydney following a flood. Her gathering of water suggests homage. She writes, “The image is one of torture and wastage, the performance an extended study of stillness and thirst” (catalogue). Performance art like McGregor’s dramatically focuses our attention and it’s a pity Water #1 Descent could not have been re-enacted here.

The physical presence of salt is taken to extreme levels in Liz Butler’s (SA) two works—at MBRG, she shows Lunar Flow (2014), in which mounds of salt crystals, laid out like a dried lake-bed, lie on the gallery floor surrounding three rusted metal tubes engraved with images of aquatic fossils. At the AEAF she shows Detritus (2014), a bed of salt crystals arrayed like a grave with rusted steel plates lying across it and dotted with containers looking like discarded drink cans but made from architectural film bearing designs for housing. Above the salt-bed is a video of salt pouring from her cupped hands—she urges that we understand the land before building on it.

Jonathan Jones worked with Tom Nicholson (Vic) to produce an artist’s book, Murray-Darling Views—Evening Shadows. Bound tête-bêche as a single volume, Jones contributes a collection of images of paintings selected from the Art Gallery of SA’s extensive collection relating to the Murray, and Nicholson provides an account of the Yorta Yorta protest at Cummeragunja in 1939 with a parallel account of the historical and cultural importance of Henry James Johnstone’s well-known painting Evening shadows, backwater of the Murray (1880, SA), the first painting ever acquired by AGSA.

Same River Twice is not overtly activist but it forcefully reminds us of crucial issues to which solutions are long overdue and implicitly asks how a complex community can act collectively to restore the environment. The Murray Bridge-Adelaide pipeline graphically illustrates the dependence of the city on rural provisioning, but supporting cities with both water and farm produce can deplete rural areas catastrophically. Rather than proposing solutions, the exhibition explores the personal dimension of the river’s life and history, especially the idea of the river as a multicultural home. The exhibition also demonstrates the power of the curator-historian in highlighting a political issue by assembling a collective of otherwise unconnected voices. Indigenous and European stories are intertwined and the curators open a new, discursive connection between metropolitan and regional centres, challenging the validity of binaries.

In his opening address, incoming AEAF Board Chair Professor Ted Snell said that artists are at the edge of change and spoke of the role of art in reflecting, critiquing and shaping society, indicating that this exhibition is about how our survival has to be built on partnership. It is perhaps optimistic to think that cooperation between the communities represented in this exhibition might encourage restoration. But if the condition of the river is the result of the ‘tyranny of small decisions,’ a concept applicable to many environmental and social issues, then this exhibition is a collection of highly articulate responses, and perhaps the solution will emerge from the aggregate of such small, corrective actions.

Same River Twice, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, and Murray Bridge Regional Gallery, 5 Dec 2014-7 Feb 2015

Terry Williams, Stereo 2011, vinyl fabric, cotton, stuffing and fibre-tipped pen, private collection, Melbourne

While inside/outside might seem a pretty straightforward binary, Outsider Art is far from being a clear-cut category. Not only does the term embrace the art of makers variously perceived as untrained, self-taught, intellectually or physically disabled, or otherwise marginalised from either mainstream society and/or the mainstream art world, it also contains a neat paradox.

As Sarah Boxer put it in The Atlantic (“The Rise of Self-Taught Artists”): to be an ‘outsider’ requires identification from an ‘insider’—and immediately, the outsider becomes an insider. Everyday Imagining: New Perspectives on Outsider Art, at Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art, offered a welcome opportunity both to reflect on the assumptions that have underpinned Outsider Art, and to experience the work of seven Australian and New Zealand “outsider artists.”

As curator Joanna Bosse outlines in her catalogue essay, the antecedent to Outsider Art is generally acknowledged to be the classification ‘art brut,’ coined in the mid-1940s by French artist Jean Dubuffet. For him, art brut described a kind of primal, unsullied creativity; he was especially interested in the mentally ill, seeing them as being beyond societal and cultural influence. Bosse is keen to debunk this view, and has selected artists for this exhibition whose work, she says, “convincingly argues against the idea that interiority lies at the heart of their practice.” These seven artists, she points out, are very actively engaged with the external world, and their work, far from displaying a romantically-conceived solipsism, expresses their deep interest in everyday objects and experiences.

Indeed, what inspires the works in Everyday Imagining is recognisably the same everyday world that we all live in: a world of things, people, obsessions, doodlings, abstractions, patterns and geographies. On entering the gallery, the fabric sculptures of Terry Williams issue a haptic invitation (alas, one can’t actually touch them): there are various cameras, a fridge complete with opened door and constructed food items inside, a teapot, a ghetto blaster—all replicated in forensic detail, sometimes life-size, sometimes uncannily out of scale. Their lumpy forms are reminiscent of some of Louise Bourgeois’ works—versions of things that should be hard, their rough seams exuding puffs of Dacron stuffing, like well-loved stuffed toys. There’s a feeling of leakage, of porosity between objects and world—but no lack of skill in the making. Anyone who has ever wielded needle and thread will be able to imagine the trials of attaining the near-perfect proportions, achieving the three-dimensional construction and patiently persisting with details (you can look right through the camera viewfinders). The objects crumple and strain against pressure, their seams give. And their fuzzy disarray suggests the archaeological—they are like a leaking history of the familiar, crumpling and straining against time: shrouded and stitched.

Jonathan Griffin has posed the question: is Outsider Art “a reactionary throwback to anachronistic ideas of artistic genius, suffering and dysfunction?” Similar tropes include that of the ‘unwell’ or disabled artist for whom art-making is a form of ‘medicine’ or ‘therapy.’ Sarah Boxer mentions the case of Adolf Wölfli, a late 19th century Swiss ‘outsider’ whose compulsive drawing “calmed him down.” In Everyday Imaginings, Bosse points—without didacticism—to the possibility of such a motivation in the work of New Zealander Martin Thompson, whose intricate, patterned works in felt-tipped pen, created by filling in 1mm squares on large sheets of graph paper, are so flawlessly executed that at first glance they appear digitally created.

Thompson’s symmetrical, monochromatic designs shimmer like snowflakes or starfields. Different impressions emerge from them like magic-eye pictures, or appear cross-hatched like thick embroidery. They map out planes of not only obsessive, perhaps meditative markings, but of myriad subtleties as well—fine deepenings or lightenings of colour that betray the hand of the artist, his body and his attention in the moment of making. One work seems to have been excavated for the viewer, with one broad edge of the page left uncoloured and finger-smudged.

Like Williams’ fabric sculptures, Thompson’s intricate grids remind me of the notion of ‘women’s work’—that of sewing, crafting, embroidery; in Thompson’s, a pixellated crafting that precedes the digital. Indeed, in the USA, Outsider Art has at times been classified alongside or within ‘folk art,’ and it’s tempting to wonder whether these tactile, intimate engagements, privileging the domestic or the introspective over grand themes, unwittingly undergo some subtle conflation with the feminine, that other great ‘outsider’ category. I’m reminded too of Ann Cvetkovich’s writings on crafting as habitual counter to the insanity of Western modernity, in her book Depression: A Public Feeling.

Equally, it seems that these artists just do what artists always do: shaping form out of chaos (see Elizabeth Grosz’s Chaos, Territory, Art); exploring representation, abstraction, topography. Both Thompson’s patternings and Andrew Blythe’s paintings on paper map out distinct landscapes, two-dimensional architectures whose regularities and inconsistencies play off one another. Blythe’s paintings, created entirely from repetitions of the X symbol and the word ‘no,’ seem to deliver a message, up close, but at a distance have the simultaneously 2D/3D shimmer seen and felt in some Aboriginal dot paintings. Lisa Reid and Jack Napthine both depict bodies and objects: Reid in stripped-down life drawings that relay the character of her models with cartoonish accuracy; and Napthine in a long and colourful mural, both map and narrative, that includes the names of places and events woven around bright drawings of light globes and locks. Where Reid and Napthine bring ‘reality’ into sharp, lean focus, Julian Martin and Kellie Greaves move in the opposite direction, abstracting familiar objects to create colourful paintings that leave the ‘thing’ behind, or obscured, focusing instead on colour and form.

Whether or not there is really an ‘inside’ or an ‘outside,’ Everyday Imagining shines a well-focused light on the work of these seven artists and opens up a productive space for exploring the edges and conflicts of the notion of Outsider Art. Perhaps, as Museum of Everything founder James Brett has suggested, we are all in any case on one ‘spectrum’ or another and creativity is “a version of dysfunction.” Personally, I’m partial to Louise Bourgeois’ famous words: “Art is a guaranty [sic] of sanity”.

Everyday Imagining: New Perspectives on Outsider Art, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, 1 Oct, 2014-18 Jan, 2015

DVD: The Infinite Man

Australian director Hugh Sullivan’s sci-fi rom-com was generally regarded by local critics as a very interesting if flawed first feature. However, the film was nominated for Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Alex Dimitriadis) by the Australian Film Critics Association. Meanwhile SXSW Film Festival (Austin, Texas) deemed it “Indie time travel mayhem at its best…the kind of movie you are going to want to watch time and time again. And time again…And time again… And time again…” Decide for yourself.
5 copies courtesy of Madman Entertainment

DVD: What We Do in the Shadows

Comically melding vampire folklore with life’s more mundane concerns, this engaging horror mockumentary from the director of Boy, Taika Waititi, and Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement charts the trials and tribulations of vampires in a New Zealand share-house. Squabbles over the washing-up are soon forgotten when 8000-year-old housemate Petyr accidentally brings a new vampire into the fold. It’s a heart-warming tale, despite all the blood that’s spilt.
5 copies courtesy of Madman Entertainment

Book: Bodies of Thought: 12 Australian Choreographers

From RealTime and Wakefield Press, a groundbreaking new book for lovers of Australian contemporary dance, focused on innovative choreographers, concentrating on a work by each with an accessible interview and an insightful essay by a leading dance writer. Edited by Erin Brannigan and Virginia Baxter.
(If you miss out head to www.wakefieldpress.com.au
RRP: $34.95 inc GST; purchase in bookshops)
3 copies courtesy of RealTime

Please note you can nominate for ONLY ONE GIVEAWAY.
Email us at giveaways@realtimearts.net with your name, postal address and phone number. Include ‘Giveaway’ and the name of the item in the subject line.

Gail Priest in front of artwork by Dran, part of the exhibition INSIDE, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 20 Oct, 2014-10 Jan, 2015

After 15 and half years of service, frequently above and beyond the call of duty, our much loved Associate Editor, Online Producer, writer and layout artist Gail Priest has surrendered her 7/10th position with RealTime to transform her 3/10 life as an artist into a full-time career with the help of a well-deserved Australia Council Fellowship. Her intelligence, creativity, humour, sense of team work, her generosity and commitment to the artists and writers who fill our pages have made life at RealTime an enduring pleasure, whether in the office or ‘on the road,’ writing and mentoring in Bristol, Melbourne, Adelaide, Singapore, Perth, Hobart and Vancouver. We congratulate Gail for taking the plunge and wish her all the best for her career in writing and experimental music. An inspiring companion on our journey, there is no substitute for Gail.
Virginia & Keith

Improvisation, especially when packaged boldly as a MoveMe Festival presented by STRUT Dance, the nation’s new centre for choreographic development, simmers into consciousness as a sensory evocation of Deleuze and Guatarri’s idea of becoming, of ideas and entities struggling to be born and yet ever trembling before the act. This resistance to being known is a goldmine for possibilities though one fraught with inevitable frustrations. The week, perforated with performances and workshops, certainly fired (and tired) the Perth contemporary dance population as they embraced an array of international guests and knuckled down to the serious stuff of playing with movement, sound and text.

Jo Pollitt, Paea Leach and their co-performers “pick[ed] up and put down their feet” … and arms, torsos and clipped breathing in Beast #3. This version picks up and puts down compositional and random vibrations, split three ways in pairs (with an interlude from a guest duo). The mathematical structure, even in its light-hearted looseness, spawned paired metaphors ranging over control meeting spontaneity, rigour flipped to parody, rhythm inverted to scatter and conversation become noise. The cross-fades mesmerise, yet hover beyond articulation or the parameters of precise meaning. Individual movers emerge and slip back into shared spaces; this becomes particularly evident in the third section where the game of changing leadership is explored. Text threaded further poetic resonances through the quivering patterns though the dialogue invariably faded below my hearing and, consequently, I missed much of the reeling choreography of this mode of expression straining towards form.

Beast’s pairing turned into a three-way overlap with Rosalind Crisp, Hansueli Tischhauser and Andrew Morrish in No-one Will Tell us …, equivalent in many ways to Cage and Cunningham’s coincidence of happenings occurring in the same space and time. Crisp begins in silence and a single throw of light, the right attention to accentuate fingers and toes and the myriad isolated impulses given to an embryonic corporeal enunciation. Like nascent language, the tiny gestures begin and, yet, never arrive to speak. Then Tischhauser’s sonic landscape spreads, the electronic bass reverberating over the miniature gestures in voluminous sonorities which penetrate the senses and leave Crisp’s movements like obscure memories. Into that mix comes “there is no story, just bits or shards” as the charismatic Morrish proceeds to tell a story of Brian, psychic arms and sheep. As nonsensical as those phrases may appear, Morrish does actually concoct a tale which bounces off the movement and sound like an ironic overplay or, in retrospect, like communication come into being.

On another evening, Ros Warby ties up embodied hierarchies and their elimination in Court Dance, an intellectual exercise which rummages through the historical framing of dance as a discipline. Courtly behaviour is engraved in balletic form and its European heritage: the foppery of over-elaborate flourishes marking out the aristocracy as much as does the convention of turn-out, purported to display the body for the consumption of an elite. Warby insinuates these associations in bowing port de bras and squared movements which quickly disintegrate into faltering awkwardness. The transitions are appealing, even comic in moments, but the constant fidelity to undoing loses momentum and strangely, for the unpredictable nature of improvisation, trails away into democratic evenness. The second work on the program, No Time to Fly, re-examines Deborah Hay’s original choreography, giving Warby licence to tangle with the non-linear reality of the maker’s point of departure and the intervening experiences of being involved in this same score for three soloists. Fragmented murmurs of movement and sound under scrutiny ripple and twist beneath the light and disappear before continuity settles. Like Court Dance, non-linearity tends to settle into its opposite.

After the spate of rigorous investigations brought by the works above, Michael Schumacher and Alex Waterman’s Dans le Jardin spun improvisation across the imagination in mysterious ways. Schumacher and Waterman obviously pre-plan to exploit the unseen potential of the available ‘garden’ spaces that come their way, in this instance, Perth’s State Theatre Centre courtyard, a balconied, partial enclosure set with tables and chairs and minimal saplings-just-become-trees to validate the horticultural title. The artists had studied the architectural surfaces and dimensions in which sound and movement could play but they could not have foreseen what imprints their choices might have in moments of actuality. The telling image for me came after Schumacher had set up a kind of hide-and-seek game, disappearing in between the downstairs foliage and isolating arm and fingering against the upstairs surfaces. His next appearance, only hinted at with a subtle change of lighting, was picked-up by two small boys who ran to the slightly removed grating which separates the courtyard from the formidable underfoot illumination of the main-street entrance to the complex. The boys clung to the wire as silhouetted figures, upright and totally attentive, against Schumacher’s controlled fall in the dazzling light. It was a geometric moment and one filled with angles of unspoken meaning before the viewing adults, realising the location of the action, moved to exploit the youthful intuition and obscured the image.

Human intuition, communication and play fused in that moment and confirmed the inestimable value of improvisation. I saw that irradiating pathway anew, heard the sonorous cello sweeps expand around the enclosure, felt the body stretch beyond itself and knew that there was a purpose in a confluence which happened to and was crystallised by those boys. Improvisation, planned, derived from experience and performed in the moment had arrived. In the ensuing activity where Schumacher returned to the courtyard and the sophisticated adult environment, the boys stuck like glue to his incidental encounters, becoming part of the performance, gleefully guarding a found (or placed) twig he entrusted to them as he wove from a beer at the bar to a hand balance, from a swivel salute to a skitter around the now entrancing space. This garden bloomed from an urbanised enclave to an enchanted arcadia of surprise. Improvisation, with all its degrees of design and improbability became performance and confirmed MoveMe’s conception as a festival.

STRUT Dance, MoveMe Improvisation Festival, Beast#3, Jo Pollitt & Paea Leach with Tony Currie, Gregory Lorenzutti, Rachel Arianne Ogle, Patricia Wood, guests Isabella Stone & Ella Rose Trew, composer Mace Francis, lighting Ellen Knops; No-one will tell us …, Rosalind Crisp, Andrew Morrish, Hansueli Tischhauser, lighting: Marco Wehrspann; Court Dance, Ros Warby, music Helen Mountfort, voice Ria Soemardjo; No Time to Fly, choreography Deborah Hay, adaptation, performance Ros Warby; Dans le Jardin, dance Michael Schumacher, music Alex Waterman, lighting Ellen Knops; Perth Cultural Centre, 22-29 Nov, 2014

In a recent report to the federal government Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicted that Australia would significantly slip down the ladder of economic wealth over coming decades because of a fixation on a mining monoculture and a failure to innovate or properly support new approaches in information technology, bio-technology, nanotechnology and responses to climate change. As if we didn’t know. But without equally good investment in education and the arts, the break from a monocultural mindset will be impossible.

Inequitable re-distribution

Just before Xmas, the Abbott Government snatched $6m (over three years) from an already slashed Australia Council budget for the mysterious new Australian Book Council to be administered by the Minister of the Arts, George Brandis, in another assault on peer assessment. Clearly, after his foray into determining the outcomes of the Prime Minister’s Literary Prizes, presumably the PM feels that the Culture Wars are best fought on the publishing front or Brandis is looking to fill his bookcase. The money is for the publishing industry (promotion, data collection, distribution) not for writers. Susan Wyndham in the Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum (31 Jan-1 Feb) writes that to compensate the Council “plans to use money from across its new grants program and strategic projects in all artforms.” This has exacerbated anxiety among artists already concerned about the new grants program, in which six-year funding to key organisations, while granting (the catchcry) ‘certainty,’ could well lock Australian arts into a period of cultural fixity. Let’s hope not. The innovators of the small to medium sector who succeed in attaining six-year funding will doubtless keep us on our toes, although some say six-year planning is not as easy as it is for large companies that already operate long-term. And what will the value of money granted from 2016 be in 2021? As for project and other grants, what will be the effect of the budget cut and the $6m robbery?

RT125 feature Modes of Production—referring to Karl Marx’s inextricable linking of productivity and social relations (reinforced by an ideological superstructure that includes the arts)—reports on a range of activities that attempt to position, promote and develop the arts in Australia and Asia. Some of these are familiar and going through new phases, some are new, some problematic, some creatively liberating.

The producers

In the first of our new series The Producers, Kathryn Kelly interviews Brisbane-based Dave Sleswick. At the 2013 Australian Theatre Forum, David Pledger, concerned about the rise of a producer and managerial class with power and money and lodged parasitically between bureaucrats and artists, provocatively declared, “a producer can never be an artist” (noplainjane.wordpress.com, 29 May, 2013 – site no longer active). Sleswick, as you’ll read, certainly is producer and artist, while others, like Harley Stumm (see RT126) and the indefatigable Marguerite Pepper, also serve the small-to-medium sector admirably and with the invaluable ‘outside eye’ of a sensitive producer. These and their like may be the exception to Pledger’s rule. They make life easier for artists, allowing more time to create, and they know and have access to the networks that artists are often unaware of or lack time or the personalities to engage with. For those of us who performed in the 1980s and 90s and struggled to tour, the current mobility of groups across Australia and beyond, with the support of various federal and state networks, a former Theatre Board producer scheme and artists’ own duly emboldened initiatives, looks miraculous.

Organisation as producer

We look at producing from another perspective in an interview with Performance Space Artistic Director Jeff Khan, who delineates the various ways the organisation develops, produces and co-produces new work with attention to experimentation, Indigenous, queer and site-specific art. For 2015 Performance Space has restructured its program, drawing all of its productions into one season in which it takes over Carriageworks with a LIVEWORKS festival. As a producer Khan believes this will benefit artists above all, as well as Performance Space’s profile in an increasingly competitive market.

Asia-Australia, again

Over two decades we’ve watched attempts to establish a market for Australian art in Asia and then exchanges that might underpin such a market. While Asialink has been fruitful, especially at the individual level, many an event and exchange have been short-term successes but without long-term pay-offs. It’s hoped that a producer network-led initiative will change this. As Urszula Dawkins writes of her APPCAMP experience in Seoul, this involves producers really getting to know each other’s cultures and increasing their personal contact. It’s also a four-year plan with annual meetings to ensure continuity.

Camps and lab

Malcolm Whittaker has also been camping. After reporting on the Performance Space-Arts House initiative Time_Place_Space: NOMAD for us in RealTime 124), in this issue he reflects on his experience of another in the growing number of arts laboratories, Arts House’s Live Art Camp. Whittaker values labs for “creating safe places for temporary micro-communities to reflect, share practice and generate work by dipping into an array of practices…” By producing such gatherings, Performance Space and Arts House and their like nurture their communities and fuel potential works for their own programming and networks.

Greening production

Going directly at the role of artist as producer of their own work, Arts House’s part-lab, part-forum Going Nowhere vigorously explored the possibilities of reducing the scale of art’s globe-trotting carbon footprint. Emma Webb reports on the gathering’s diverse activities: personal carbon footprint audits; international collaborations in development minus jet fuel; conversations with green designers and writers; a fantastical greening event with Tristan Meecham; and the conjuring of possible projects.

Museum & galleries: the framing of experience

The production of knowledge is highly institutionalised. In museums it is increasingly ‘packaged.’ In the first part of a two-part article, Jane Goodall takes a look at the post-museum—an institution constrained by its commitment to educate and entertain (and generate funds as government support diminishes) at the expense of a sense of mystery. She contrasts it with gambler David Walsh’s “success with MONA [which] has much to do with his fundamental respect for the role of chance and speculation in human life.” Elsewhere in RT124, Mike Leggett and I ponder the relationship between the contemporary art gallery and screen works and other digital art it exhibits. Philip Brophy at the Tokyo Art Meeting addresses the nexus between the performing body, East and West, and the gallery. Curation is more than presentation; it’s another layer of production, shaping our reception of the work. In a Kings Cross car park, Ilana Cohn witnesses Atlanta Eke’s performance with motor vehicle.

“Don’t simply aim to please”

In the social media era of an astonishingly heightened desire to belong, much art is likewise packaged to improve reception: a theatre subscription might come with all kinds of benefits (parties, meet the actors, talks, discounts) but also a sense of Facebooked and Tweeted community. It takes more than art these days to please an audience. It’s not surprising that Malcolm Whittaker reports from the 2015 Australian National Theatre Forum that keynote speaker, Belgian festival director Frie Leysen urged that artists “don’t simply aim to please everyone, but dare to be disturbers,” and that we should “valorise the risk, the adventure, the ephemeralness, the uniqueness of the experience and the temporary community that is created through theatre.”

Regionally yours

In recent years, we’ve admired the exponential growth of innovative art in regional Australia, focussing principally on the Riverina and, in RT124, productions in regional Victoria (see reviews of Rebel Elders in Ballarat and Packed in Wodonga). In RT125 Murray Arts General Manager and Regional Arts Development Officer Karen Gardner tells us how work is produced across a vast territory with five councils, and about nurturing local artists and the desire to attract innovative artists to the region.

Ideology laid bare

The authoritarianism of the Abbott Government and the totally unnecessary cruelty of its austerity budget, its censoriousness while demanding free speech, the doubtless Captain’s Call of snatching back $6m from the Australia Council, its desire to sell off public assets for short-term profit for itself and developers, its inhuman treatment of refugees and its failure to address Indigenous disadvantage, have outed it as ideological. A lot of us have known this of the Coalition for a long time, but the Government’s gross misbehaviour has made it clear to all and sundry, just as has the Tea Party-Republican ‘coalition’ in the US—but here the counter-reaction, as seen in the Queensland election, has been incisive (Campbell Newman’s first Captain’s Call was to eliminate the Premier’s Literary Awards).

As David Pledger argued in Platform Paper 41, August 2013: “Re-valuing the artist in the new world order,” Western democracy is in the grip of Neo-liberal ideology with its goals of privatisation (its eye on the ABC and public space like national parks and gardens), deregulation (freedom for developers), globalisation (for corporations bigger than nations) and tax cuts that require the defunding of health, science, education, research, social welfare and the arts. It’s a totalising ideology in which all human activity is perceived as and manipulated to be simply a matter of economics. The state capitalism of China and Putin’s Russia—dictatorial leaders and the free flow of money—is very appealing to Neo-liberals. The un-mandated Abbott-Hockey budget is a clear indication of like-minded, un-consultative, anti-social thinking.

The intrusion of Neoliberalism into the arts in Australia has been evident in the appointment of managers and administrators rather than artists to head performing arts organisations and events, as Ralph Myers argued in his Phillip Parsons Lecture (The Australian, 1 Dec, 2014): “Our theatre and dance companies, our festivals and orchestras are what we have left. We cannot surrender them to the markets. We can’t let the businesspeople and their managers take charge. They’ve got their hands on pretty much everything else in our lives, but we must fight to keep the dreamers in charge of the arts.”

The modes of production I’ve outlined in this introduction represent a small part of the activities of an increasingly networked arts community in which participation ranks high through co-productions, forums and labs, as it does in the growing participatory art movement for audiences in all fields. Art in itself, didactic or not, can be a form of protest, but beyond that our consciousness must be alert to the mode of production that governs our lives as citizens and artists. Just as we should audit our carbon footprint, we might ask how much of Neoliberal ideology have we less than consciously taken on in art and everyday life?

Reason for travelling
From Oct 2014-Jan 2015 I was in residence in Bourges hosted by the media arts organisation Bandits-Mages in association with La Box, Ecole nationale supérieure d’arts de Bourges (ENSA) as part of the European Media Arts Residency Exchange program.*

Ancient alchemies and future fantasies
Bourges is situated in central France, two hours south of Paris by train. It’s an old, old town inhabited back in the BC by the Romans under the name Avaricum, surviving the invading Gauls due to its strong walls and surrounding marshland. It still boasts the remains of a fourth century Gallo-Roman wall or rampart hidden beneath modern wood and stonework. The end of the Middle Ages saw the town extend beyond the ancient walls with grand constructions such as the awe inspiring cathedral, Saint-Étienne de Bourges, begun in the 12th century, the Palais Jacques Coeur and the Hotel Lallement built in the 15th century and the former 16th century Jesuit seminary which is now the art school. There are of course the requisite sprawling modern suburbs (Bourges has a population of around 70,000), but the centre of Bourges is utterly magical, with cobbled streets, winding lanes and vertiginously tilting Tudor-style houses replete with carved woodwork often still intact. Given its age it’s not surprising that the town that has a strong association with things alchemical and feels a little haunted.

However I was in residence to think about the future, working on a project exploring science fiction and sound art, so in some ways I was living in parallel worlds, in a zone of cognitive dissonance. This disjunction was happily reinforced by the fact that this ancient city has a thriving contemporary culture particularly in the areas of media and video art, sound and experimental music.

Culture: connectivities, collectives and cooperation
While it’s not always the case that smaller towns breed closer connections, the intimate size of Bourges and its mix of proactive and passionate artists and arts workers results in good relationships between organisations which gives it an immediately tangible sense of community—one with an experimental, queer and underground bent.

My host organisation, Bandits-Mages was founded in 1991 by graduates from the local art school, Ecole nationale supérieure d’arts de Bourges (ENSA). It offers an annual program of workshops and projects particularly focussed on video, multimedia and digital art and also runs a festival, which since 2013 has become annual. The 2014 manifestation, Rencontres Bandits-Mages took place in November and I was a guest. Highlights from the eight day program included an impressive exhibition developed with Galerie Kapelica from Ljubljana, Slovenia comprising the ‘remains’ of performance art pieces that had been performed at the gallery by leading body artists such as Franco B and Kira O’Reilly. Also presented by Kapelica was Maja Smrekar who created a performance piece, K-9_topology: I Hunt Nature, and Culture Hunts Me (see video), with three wolf hybrids (in association of the Jacana Wildlife Studios which we also got to visit—I did not think I would be looking at lions and tigers in central France). Spanish duo Quimera Rosa offered an electro-kinky performance and workshop using Arduino circuits and body piercing to make the body a playable instrument; the exhibition Hall Noir presented risqué and high-camp video and performance installations in the impressive architecture of the old water tower, the Chateau D’eau; and there was a workshop conducted by writer/producer Pacôme Thiellement and actress Hermine Karagheuz with local students from ENSA making radiophonic pieces themed around alchemy which were broadcast on a temporary radio station.

As evident in the above, the association between Bandits-Mages and the art school remains strong and is mutually beneficial. ENSA is one of the seven nationally run art schools and is housed in an amazing 16th century building offering an enviable amount of hands on studio space. I was attached as a mentor to the Post-diploma in sound (something after a Masters and before a PhD). The students attend one week a month for lectures and to work on projects for a concluding exhibition. My residency was also attached to the La Box program which offers a number of three month residencies to artists (national and international) often with exhibitions in the school’s professional gallery.

Bandits-Mages is but one of the organisations in the arts complex La Friche L’Antre-Peaux which is just outside of the old town in a former industrial complex. Along with rehearsal studios, a circus and theatre company there is also Emmetrop which presents theatre, dance, music and exhibitions with a strong underground and queer agenda. The whole complex is fetchingly feral but is about to be renovated. This meant that Laurent Faulon, the artist presenting the last exhibition in the Transpalette space—a three story tower-like building—was given free rein. For his exhibition, Mon Ciel, Faulon excavated the central area of floor using the clay to coat a large number of everyday objects—ranging from oversized teddy bears to gumboots, to cement mixers to washing machines and even a motorcycle. These objects sat on the edge of the mezzanine levels of the tower that opened vertiginously into the void in the middle. Viewers ascend via a spiral staircase which always shifts the perspective of the whole. On the opening night the derelict roof allowed a misty shower to grace the inside of the building, pooling in the open cavity of the floor—a breathtaking integration of art and site.

Elsewhere around town are two venues for experimental music offering a truly underground experience; both are cellars, or ‘caves,’ in established old share houses. On my second night in town I was taken to the aptly named Odeur de Cave (ODC), the waft of centuries of mould and clouds of cigarette smoke offering the true scent of Europe. I was scheduled to play there at some stage but even in Bourges there are pesky neighbours: ODC had to cease activities for a while. However, the other venue, Cave 40, in collegiate Bourges style, put on the remaining shows. These artist-run venues present local, national and international artists doing all manner of things, mainly with electronic tools, to a dedicated and engaged audience there for the listening, the drinking, then later, sometimes, the dancing. These venues confirmed to me that whether it’s a warehouse in Marrickville in sweltering 40 degree heat or a cellar in France at a freezing four degrees, there’s a strong and vital community for noise and sonic experiment—and it always feels like home.

The overground cultural scene in Bourges, centred around the Maison de la Culture de Bourges (MCB), is currently homeless. The centre was in the process of being renovated when ancient archeological ruins were discovered and the site subsequently quarantined. At the moment the activities happen around the town with most of the dance and performance presented at the auditorium attached to the local Conservatory of Music. MCB produces a few of its own shows as well as forming part of an active regional touring circuit. I was very happy to catch the lovely life-affirming dance work of Christian Rizzo, D’après Une Histoire Vraie (see RT122).

For refreshment…
Bourges drinking and dining is in keeping with its ancient surroundings—traditional. A favourite place of those I often dined with is Le Guillotin on Rue Bourbonnoux near the Place Gordaine which offers an impressive array of grilled meats and their lamb and duck are pretty delectable. While I couldn’t bring myself to try to the horse steak tartare it was a favourite with one of my dining companions. At the other end of the Rue Bourbonnoux is La Gargouille which has a similar menu but with a slightly more modern interpretation and offers very nice desserts. I also spent a lot of time at Le Cujas in the centre of the old town because it was well appointed for someone hanging out alone—ie has small tables in corners with windows—and the waiters learned to put up with stumbling, incorrectly gendered French. Their Irish Coffees, with more than a healthy shot of whiskey and topped with cream, are just the thing on a cold afternoon.

The local wine regions of the area are Sancerre and Menetou-Salon and I prefer the white of the first and the red of the second. They seemed much lighter than my experience of French wines imported to Australia. Chinon is also nearby (closer to Tours) and wine from here offers a bit more oomph and that old mould taste (technical terms) while still being on the lighter side. But don’t be surprised when your half-carafe (a very civilised idea) comes with some bubbles from its extrication from a cask as this Australian invention has been well and truly embraced in France.

One of the most pleasant food related activities is going to the markets (open on Thurs/Sat/Sun at various locations), each big enough to feel rich and plentiful yet small enough to not be completely overwhelming. My favourite products are the wonderful local honeys made by bees that have supped on lavender and acacia; crottins de chevre (small goats cheeses of varying maturity and smelliness); big pears which, after you peel off their not so attractive tough brown skins, are like ambrosia; and the most perfectly packaged fruits, the clementine. Originating from Algeria it’s a neat little citrus related to but oh so much better than a mandarin.

And for the wanderer…
If feeling touristic, the climb up to the top of the bell tower of Saint-Étienne cathedral is worth the wheezy 396 steps offering a full 360-degree vista of the town and surrounding region. However be warned that the crypt tour takes 45 minutes (in French, and could be done in 10), making it feel like medieval torture. The Palais Jacques Coeur is particularly impressive. This local 15th century merchant and friend of King Charles VII was at one point the richest man in France. When charged with counterfeiting and fraud he tried to claim his wealth came from alchemy. His house is seriously weird and wonderful—a maze-like affair with ceilings like boat keels, an amazingly ornate personal chapel and what is possibly the first sauna in France.

Finally you can’t go to Bourges and not take a walk through the Marais—the marshland only 10 minutes walk to the northeast of the old town. Between snaking creeks and canals are nestled over 1,000 gardens, allotments and summer houses. Even in the dead of winter, the Marais is beautiful, in a spooky, melancholic way. And you can never really get lost because you can always see the towering Saint-Étienne cathedral to guide you back to the light.
*The residency was part of the European Media Arts Network: European Media Arts Residency Exchange (EMAN#EMARE) program which in 2014-2015 offers residencies to Australian and Canadian artists, with European artists hosted by Experimenta (see RT124), UTS Creativity and Cognition Studio and QUT’s The Cube. The project is supported by the Culture 2013 Programme of the European Commission and the Goethe Institut.

Thanks to the lovely people who hosted me and showed me around: Sandra Émonet, Isabelle Carlier, David Legrand, Julien Pauthier, Marta Jonville & Thomas, Ewen Chadronnet, Caroline Delaporte & Chris, Éric Grimault, Jean-Michel Ponty, Roger Cochini, Alexandre Castante, Chloé Nicholas, Véronique Frémiot, Manon Chavigny.

Co-conceiver and choreographer Dalisa Pigram and storyteller/dream catcher Edwin Lee Mulligan discuss the process of creating Cut the Sky, premiering at the Perth International Arts Festival (27 Feb-1 March, 2015), followed by WOMADelaide (7-8 March, 2015).

Tētēma is the new duo by Australian composer/musician Anthony Pateras (currently based in Berlin) and US rock vocalist Mike Patton (singer for Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Fantômas). Geocidal is their first release on Patton’s Ipecac label. Following is the full version of Oliver Downes’ email interview with Pateras about the collaboration, the compositional process and the complexities of “chrono-diversity.”

It comes from Artaud, who I’d been researching a lot due to my involvement in Sylvère Lotringer’s film The Man Who Disappeared (which is loosely based on Artaud’s trip to Ireland in the 30s). We were looking for a band name and it made sense to me to evoke something physical, sensual and unnameable, so of course Artaud’s great for that. There is a part of Fragmentations when he talks about cauterising a wound with a flame, twice over and the word refers to that.

How did you first come in contact Mike Patton? What sort of mutual familiarity with each other’s work was there beforehand? Was there an initial spark to collaborate or did the project germinate more gradually?

Mike became aware of my work through me sending some PIVIXKI stuff to Ipecac to consider for release. I sent my second Tzadik record with the demo also. I really didn’t expect him to listen to either, but as it turned out something on both of those recordings resonated with him (PIVIXKI and he did a show together in 2011). Ultimately the spark really came from Mike—he was on tour with Fantômas in 2009, called me for a beer out of the blue.

Of course I was familiar with his work—Faith No More were huge when I was in high school. After that I was always into the more exploratory side of it—I went to see Maldoror at Joey’s, a duo with DJ Schizo at The Punter’s Club and all ages Bungle shows at the Corner Hotel. I really respected the fact that there was this guy who could basically just cruise on major label royalties if he wanted to, but instead chose a path of interrogation.

How was collaborating with Patton different from previous collaborations you’ve been a part of?

It was unnerving to us both how natural it felt. For me it was just great to see someone in that position to still be asking questions, still be curious, still be respectful of colleagues and 100% committed to making great music. I’ve dealt with a lot less famous people who are all about food anecdotes and career monologues and its incredibly tedious.

Recording wise, I think my favourite part was Mike screaming directly into my ear acoustically to demonstrate the different upper harmonics he could achieve by varying throat positions.

There’s some extraordinary textures on the record, both in the electronics and in Patton’s vocals—what was the recording process? How do you think that process influenced the final work? To what extent was material pre-conceived rather than emerging through the process of recording?

Basically it panned out that I took care of the instrumental parts and Mike took care of the vocals (although he contributed some excellent Moog). The recording process for the instrumentals was long and multi-faceted and then we did most of the vocals in 2014. There was really no deadline for this and I learnt a lot about how that can affect one’s compositional decisions. For example, if you’re trying to squeeze out a certain amount of music for a commission in a certain amount of time, you’re already dealing with a prescribed length of time and I’ve found that can mess with your structural thinking. If you don’t really know what something is, or when it should be done by, anything can happen, right? The sounds, the duration, the intensity—it’s all up for grabs.

As the press blurb states (and has been widely misconstrued), I locked myself away for a couple of weeks with just pen and paper and my record collection. This was in a really shitty part of France, in Picardie to be precise—depressed rural community, lots of drunk soldiers, middle of nowhere. I was in an ex-convent which is kind of like an arts residency (except you gotta pay). I then went to Paris and met with Will Guthrie. I had about 26-28 solid notated ideas that I either sung to him or played on prepared piano for him to articulate on the drum kit. He didn’t have to learn entire songs or anything, so we just went rapid fire through this list in bursts, riffing on variations of the core ideas together, recording the drums and prepared piano simultaneously. I intentionally ran the session to generate the most flexible material possible—things which could be stitched together in unorthodox ways. Ultimately they were just rhythmic cells recorded for maximum elasticity.

Over the next few months, I added synths at WORM and Piethopraxis, editing the drums and cutting sounds in over the top. Songs began to drop off, till I had about 15. I then began to orchestrate the synth lines, first with strings, clarinets, revox, trumpet, then proceeded with orchestral percussion, acoustic guitar and recorders. By the end I whittled it all down to 12 and then sent everything to Mike. He spent ages (almost a year) absorbing the music; then I went to San Francisco for a 48 hour rapid scratch session for the vocals. This was insane not only because we found how easy it was to work together, but how much great work we got done. He then kept elaborating on the vocals over the next six months, sending [them] to me over email, for mixing and comments.

Once we had it all down I returned to Bruxelles, which is where I started the whole thing, and did a lock down at Ateliers Claus for two weeks to mix it. Bruxelles is pretty bleak, Anderlecht even bleaker. Being the “capital of Europe” the place has a sense of doom and disarray, given what a mess the EU is in. You have people in the Berlaymont building trying to run the place while sex trafficking is going on no more than a few blocks away. I guess what I’m trying to say is, this kind of energy, this dissonant theatre of things supposedly working but clearly not, fed into the album.

How does the process of making electronic music differ for you from writing for an ensemble for instance, or creating a piano work? Is a different brainspace demanded or are there more similarities than differences?

This album was very much about creating a sound world from scratch—every sound on it is recorded and edited. Early in, I had the idea to make a “sampler record without a sampler” (or specifically, Dilla’s Donuts, but without vinyl)—to record every single element in the real world and manipulate/edit it electronically. It was a very specific mindset with a very specific goal. I’m sure my ensemble or piano thinking played into that and I’m sure it would’ve impacted on my process of selection, in terms of what sounds came alive to me.

Composition is amophous across the board, all of your experiences in playing, listening and reading feed into everything you do. Its counterproductive to distinguish, because then you get involved with stuff like “this is a classical piece, I can’t do that” or “this is a song, I can’t do that”—when its probably precisely the thing you need to do to give something a life.

A diverse array of musicians were brought together for this project—what were you looking for in collaborators? To what extent were parts improvised by the musicians or pre-composed?

I basically hired people who I think sound great. Will and I collaborated on some of the drum parts, in the sense that his kit has a very specific sound and he has a very personal feel, but ultimately most of the grooves were shaped around the prepared piano and edited in post production. In some cases I muted the prepared piano, so you just have the drums playing along to it without being able to hear it in the mix, which got some pretty odd feels or particularly idiosyncratic rhythmic emphases.

For the rest, everything is orchestration of the ARPs [synthesisers] I used at WORM and the various bits and pieces I used at Piethopraxis. For example, musicians were told to mimic or ornament the synth parts which I had already played in, so there’s always this hybrid electro-acoustic thing going on.

In many cases this approach was informed by Feldman’s observation on what makes Xenakis’ music interesting: taking conventional instruments and bringing them into a world of hallucination, rather than using hallucinatory instrumentation, and bringing it into a world of convention. For example, even though Xenakis used an orchestra with orchestral instruments in something like Hiketides or Synaphaï, the way he organises it in relation to itself recontextualises those instrumental forces into a whole new thing, He succeeds getting the orchestra out of the orchestra (and Feldman does too, for that matter.)

So for me, this record was about trying to timbrally get the song out of the song and to do that, its wasn’t about getting a didgeridoo, or a sheng or some interface to create unique sound palettes, it was about canalising the tools I had into finding a unique constellation and because I was always moving around, those tools were always changing.

The last thing I added, which was Jessica Azsodi’s voice on the track “Irundi,” was extant from this process to some degree, as that material grew out of a solo piece I wrote for her called “Prayer For Nil.” I was working on both things simultaneously and somehow the wires got crossed in a great way.

The album is at times fiercely kinetic and there are many sections that are almost danceable—to what extent were you consciously commenting on or riffing off, I suppose, more ‘commercial’ uses of rhythm?

Rhythm is one of the only fundamental parameters of music that comes to me naturally and I would say timbre runs a close second. So when I was doing something like this, ostensibly writing songs, which normally prioritise pitch and form, I was coming at it from a different angle. Maybe to some people that’s danceable, but to me, it was about creating something physical and not in the macho noise sense of the word, nor the superficial-buzz-word ‘psychoacoustic’ sense, it was about trying to make something which reflects what I love about sound and which has a physical affect on me and that was it. I can’t get involved with what’s ‘commercial’ or what’s ‘experimental’—how do you deal with something like Spring Breakers [Harmony Korine, 2012] when you’re thinking like that? Immediately you’re in trouble, because the reason why a film like that is so powerful, is because it completely sidesteps that whole distinction to make something which exists in its own space and still manages to clearly communicate.

“Geocidal” seems to suggest to me a death or erasure of place, almost having a synonymous quality with the idea of ‘sacrifice zones’—areas of land or communities ruined through corporate practices. Was there an intention for the record to hold those kinds of environmental and political resonances?

Its not about politics, I’m not qualified for that and anyway there’s nothing more sick-making than an artist using the political zeitgeist as a platform for their self-aggrandisement. Sure, its important to be aware of your environment and you do what you can, but for me, what I was more interested in was exploring the idea of the finisterre, or always being on the edge of known territory (my edge, at least). I moved country twice while making this and I was totally castrated. I was constantly insecure and decentralised because I was in a permanent state of adjustment. And that is really amazing place to make music in, because you really have nothing but the material that’s coming out to guide you. And in my experience making this, that always gave a stronger, truer, more vital orientation than sticking to some construct or macrostructure, or trying to fulfill some kind of artist’s statement. I feel that’s what’s wrong with a lot of music—it becomes about filling a brief rather than simply using what one has at your disposal to see what happens.

You say in the press blurb that: “the whole geocidal thing is about coming from no place, re-birthing, watching the place you are from be altered beyond recognition that you have nothing to do with it anymore”—what are your feelings towards Australia at present?

Mostly his, but there was one instance on “Kid Has Got The Bomb” where I sat down and translated the glossolalia from the SF scratch session into words, because I suddenly started hearing phrases within all of these abstracted mouth sounds. I was afraid of giving it to him, because it was the first time I had written lyrics, and you know, its ‘Mike Patton’ and I’ve never written lyrics in my life, but he was totally into it and was like (North Cali accent) “Man these are great, this is what we used to do in the old days in Bungle!” So he’s very open to ideas and through that experience, seeing that he was prepared to trust me on that level, made me see how creatively stubborn I can be, to be honest. We all get caught up in our own head and making work for me is a constant oscillation between letting things in and keeping things out and I find that balance very difficult to judge.

One aspect of the album that really appealed to me was the ritualistic, almost incantationary, quality that seems to hover over it—even a title like “Invocation of the Swarm” suggests an entering into some sacred, alien space. Was this something you envisaged from the outset? Is there any link to Zerzan’s idea of the ‘future primitive’?

I was not aware of the work of Zerzan, thank you, I’ll check it out! If anything theoretically specific, Virilio’s ideas were very important to this music, I mean, the second track “Pure War” is named after his 1983 interview with Sylvère [Lotringer]. I was really into his stuff while making this music, particularly his ideas on chrono-diversity.

I wasn’t aware of Virilio or the idea of ‘chrono-diversity’—perhaps you could flesh out the idea a bit as it applies in your mind to the record?

Virillo’s ideas revolve around the science of speed, or to use his term, dromology. They are, compositionally speaking, very useful when understanding the environment in which we make music now. Basically I found that when I read The Adminstration of Fear [Semiotext(e), 2012], there were passages in there which lucidly articulated what had been bothering me about making music that I couldn’t effectively formulate myself and I was just relieved to find that someone else had to clarity to say them like he has.

Its difficult of course to summarise without doing it some kind of disservice, but in brief, he argues that, largely due to technology, we as a species are losing rhythmic diversity. Our emotions are becoming synchronised, interactions destabilised, we are becoming “de-realised”—we lose our place and our body on a daily basis. A thing I love is that he equates instanaeity with immobility and I think what he means is something like—if you need to know something, you look it up and bang, there it is. But in that process, you don’t actually learn and retain something, you just get shown something and then its most likely gone. Speaking for myself here, but I can feel my memory is compromised now. I can feel my concentration is shot. I feel I could be much smarter but my discipline to commit to knowledge has eroded. Its becoming very fashionable to talk about this and you can even book tech-detox retreats, but Virillo is quick to point out its not an ancients vs moderns debate. In fact, he has been dealing with it since the 1970s and he shows that speed, tempo and our relationship with them largely dictates how we experience and make a life and by extension, how we experience and make art.

So when it comes to music, you see the affects of speed everywhere. Its all geared towards acceleration. New gear and operating systems are not made for musicians, they’re made for the market. Or as Virilio puts it, “accumulation is left behind in favour of acceleration”—instead of accumulating skills, which takes time and focus, we just want to go fast. And I think something dies in that, some inherent energy or level of craft which makes records from 30 or 40 years ago sound a lot different to the ones made today, not just on the level of sound quality, but in the depth of musicianship itself.

So in terms of what I did, how I approached this problem, I was very conscious of somehow magnifying rhythmic and timbral nuance in the music when I could. Preserving as many live takes as I could, coaxing the most idiosyncratic performances I could. I wanted to de-quantise everything, deny instantaneity, create a space where going the long way around didn’t matter, because you find important ideas that way. The idea you open your computer, pull up a few presets…it’s death, but that’s what gets taught as composition these days. We teach musicians how to die before they even start.

Will there be any live performances of the Geocidal material? How will they work?

We don’t know how they will work, but it will definitely be in duo format and possibly with a cinematic element. We’re already working on the next record and won’t be able to play live until 2016 because of Mike’s commitments, so both of those things have a big impact on how it’ll be on stage.

I’m working on my fourth large improvising ensemble piece for a group in Lille, writing an extended electro-acosutic piece for the Audible festival in Paris and releasing a ton of vinyl on my Immediata label. I’ll also be working on the next tētēma album and trying not to be yet another Australian in Berlin who speaks shitty German!

Vic McEwan, the artistic director of the Birrego-based CAD Factory, is no stranger to water. His 2013 work Yenda Rain looked at the devastating impact of floodwater on a small, rural community and in the same year, Tipping Point explored the politics of water in relation to the Murray-Darling basin. But with his interactive, multimedia installation Almost an embrace, McEwan is happy to look beyond the destructive and political aspects of water and focus on its pleasurable and playful sides.

One senses Almost an embrace well before entering the upstairs space at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery. There is a freshness in the air and the sound of running water—an alluring and unusual mix considering we are indoors. Stepping into the space we are quickly won over by what is on offer, and on a fundamental level, our response may well be driven by the fact that 50-75% of our own body mass is made up of water.

What we encounter are 20 hoses suspended from the gallery’s ceiling in the outline of a perfect square, each hose yielding a gentle stream of water into a raised, square pool on the floor. The gallery’s walls complement this movement with 12 column-like projections of glistening, running water. The sense that we glean—within the construct of it all—is of order, beauty and peace. Significantly, the hardware driving the installation is nowhere to be seen; McEwan and his curator, Drew Halyday, have ensured that the purity of the work’s focus is never compromised.

Beyond its quiet mode the installation has much more to offer—it is, after all, an interactive work. By placing one hand on the metal rim of the pool and another into the stream from one of the hoses, things quickly begin to shift. Water, electricity and outstretched hands—the “near embrace” of the work’s title—may sound like a dubious combination, but in this instance our safety is guaranteed and by becoming a conductor we effectively close the circuit and push the installation into active mode. Accordingly, the movement of one’s hand up and down the stream, or in and out of it, triggers a percussive soundscape and a more frenetic response from the projectors—psychedelic, even—and the more people ‘playing’ the installation, the busier and more diverse its response becomes.

From my perspective, the value of the installation’s active mode has less to do with the sense of play that it offers in the moment and more to do with the contrast that emerges when one steps away from the work and it returns to the Zen-like atmosphere of its quiet mode. This is when the work is at its strongest, a testament to the Modernist maxim that less can indeed be more. But beyond this personal preference it is usually the sum of a work’s parts that defines it and generates its appeal. Based on the enthusiasm with which Almost an embrace is currently being received—by locals and visitors alike—McEwan has every reason to believe that with this work, he is genuinely hitting the mark.

The CAD Factory/Vic McEwan, Almost an embrace, curator Drew Halyday, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery; 6 Dec 2014 -1 March 2015

Drums pound in ceremonial commencement; a lone throat singer issues a deep incantatory note; a choir of male voices loom in warning, their mordant harmony blending with a metallic wash of strings, the sound rent by a wailing clarinet; a savage muttering appears, half-formed echolalia cut with madness; the texture rises to a peak, a voice calling out in almost snarled lament, then suddenly cut off, leaving the buzz of a lone insect scuttering over the deep hum of industrial machinery. Then all hell breaks loose.

Thus opens Geocidal, the debut record of tētēma, a new collaboration between Australian composer, pianist and electronic wunderkind Anthony Pateras and maverick vocalist Mike Patton, demi-god of 1990s alternative rock outfits Faith No More and Mr Bungle, high-priest in the church of John Zorn and most recently dapper interpreter of 1950s-60s Italian pop. With Geocidal they have produced a densely visceral offering that endeavours to “create a sound world from scratch.”

The pair became acquainted after Pateras sent recordings of his grindcore duo PIVIXKI to Patton’s label, Ipecac. Something must have clicked, as Patton got in touch while touring Australia with experimental metalheads and miners of pop-culture Fantômas in 2009. “I’ve dealt with a lot less famous people who are all about food anecdotes and career monologues and it’s incredibly tedious,” says Pateras. “It was unnerving to us both how natural it [working together] felt. I really respected the fact that there was this guy who could basically just cruise on major label royalties if he wanted to, but instead chose a path of interrogation.”

A path most certainly shared by Pateras, whose extensive back catalogue of works for solo piano, small ensembles, percussion and electronics regularly pushes into the underexplored sonic terrain that lies between notation, improvisation and electronic programming. Moreover, he cleaves boundaries between the ‘culturally sanctioned’ sphere of traditional composition, offering commissioned works such as most recently A Reality In Which Everything Is Substitution (2014) for solo amplified flutes and electronics or the forty-minute piano solo Blood Stretched Out (2014), while also pursuing more avant-garde projects such as PIVIXKI or Kayfabe, a glitch spattered collaboration of experimental electronica with Natasha Anderson. “Composition is amorphous across the board,” Pateras comments, “all of your experiences in playing, listening and reading feed into everything you do. It’s counterproductive to distinguish.”

From the ritualistic opening of “Invocation Of The Swarm,” Geocidal chews its way through an at times unsettling and often vicious exploration of rhythm and timbre. Patton, who absorbed Pateras’ musical tracks over a year before contributing vocals, uses his extraordinarily versatile voice as much for atmospheric or textural effect as for delivering lyrics. A song such as the seven and a half minute centrepiece “Ten Years Tricked” contains sections of eerie quasi-Gregorian chorus but also deep droning, spitting, gurgling, girlish sighs, imaginary words and other timbral effects. Other songs such as “Irundi” or “Tenz” are built around pulsating rhythms, Pateras’ orchestration providing touches of colour in framing Patton’s voice. “When I was doing this, ostensibly writing songs, which normally prioritise pitch and form, I was coming at it from a different angle,” says Pateras. “Maybe to some people it’s danceable, but to me it was about creating something physical—not in the macho noise sense of the word, nor the superficial-buzz-word ‘psychoacoustic’ sense—[but] trying to make something which reflects what I love about sound and which has a physical affect on me.”

An important undercurrent to this prioritisation of rhythm over other musical elements came about in his response to the ideas of French cultural theorist Paul Virilio, who argues that the accelerated development of technology has disrupted humanity’s natural rhythms. Pateras was particularly drawn to Virilio’s equation of the instanaeity that modern technology provides with human immobility and paralysis—“even when immobile we are in motion” chants Patton on “Tenz.” “Instead of accumulating skills, which takes time and focus, we just want to go fast,” explains Pateras. “I was very conscious of somehow magnifying rhythmic and timbral nuance in the music when I could…I wanted to de-quantise everything, deny instantaneity, create a space where going the long way around didn’t matter, because you find important ideas that way. The idea [that] you open your computer, pull up a few presets … it’s death, but that’s what gets taught as composition these days. We teach musicians how to die before they even start.”

Having developed the seed of the record over a couple of weeks staying in “a really shitty part of France—depressed rural community, lots of drunk soldiers, middle of nowhere,” Pateras enlisted drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie to assist in fleshing out the lacerating rhythms that propel many of the songs. “[We] riff[ed] on variations of the core ideas together, recording the drums and prepared piano simultaneously,” he explains. “I intentionally ran the session to generate the most flexible material possible—things which could be stitched together in unorthodox ways. Ultimately they were just rhythmic cells recorded for maximum elasticity.”

From there, the material was edited and wittled down, synthesisers added and parts written for the diverse array of instrumentalists, strings, clarinet, trumpet, percussion, acoustic guitar and recorders, whose contributions lend the record its dizzyingly multi-faceted texture. “I had the idea to…record every single element in the real world and manipulate/edit it electronically,” Pateras says, “encouraging [the musicians] to mimic or ornament the synth parts…so there’s always this hybrid electro-acoustic thing going on.” As he explains, this approach was informed by “[Morton] Feldman’s observation on what makes Xenakis’ music interesting: taking conventional instruments and bringing them into a world of hallucination, rather than using hallucinatory instrumentation, and bringing it into a world of convention. This record…was about canalising the tools I had to find a unique constellation.”

For a record so preoccupied with the collapse of boundaries – even the word “Geocidal” suggests the death or erasure of place—this concern grew less from any desire to make a broader political point, but emerged from a desire to explore both “the idea of the finisterre, or always being on the edge of known territory” as well as the practical circumstances from which the recording emerged. “I moved country twice while making this,” says Pateras, “I was constantly insecure and decentralised because I was in a permanent state of adjustment. And that is a really amazing place to make music in, because you have nothing but the material that’s coming out to guide you. I feel that’s what’s wrong with a lot of music—it becomes about filling a brief rather than simply using what you have at your disposal to see what happens.”

To kick off 2015 we’ve asked RealTime contributors for a little recap of 2014—what, thrilled, challenged, inspired or knocked their critical socks off. They also let us know what they are hoping to see in the upcoming Year of the Sheep (or Goat) which the ever reputable internet tells us is a symbol for the arts!

I’d like to say that UK performance artist Bryony Kimmings’ Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model was one of the most stirring experiences of 2014, but that would be wrong. The 2014 bit, I mean. I’m far from alone in nominating it as a work that will alter my theatre-going expectations for years to come, and I know of a range of artists and audience members who have already said the same. It was impassioned, outraged, hilarious and heartfelt; a Quixotic attempt to wage war on the culture industry that sells young girls an image of themselves as commodities (see RT120).

Kimmings’ earlier autobiographical work Sex Idiot was also a favourite among many Melburnians last year but Credible… is to me more compelling in the way it sees its maker shifting from a solipsistic practice of self-interrogation to one that scrutinises that self’s place within a larger context, and tries to find some agency through which to change that environment. I’m excited by Kimmings’ next venture here, Fake It ‘Til You Make It (http://www.bryonyandtim.com), in which she collaborates with partner Tim Grayburn to do battle with taboos surrounding male depression. I can’t think of a more capable warrior. (John interviews Kimmings in RT125.)

Red Stitch’s production of George Brant’s Grounded took the theatre of a more literal war as the starting point for something approaching the sublime (see RT122). Kate Cole’s depiction of a fighter pilot landed with a desk job controlling a military drone evoked the heightened electricity of the combat-addict and the soul-crushing alienation of high-tech state-sponsored terror. Far from a ripped-from-the-news-pages war drama, its unfolding was more like a visitation from the beyond.

The Rabble’s Frankenstein was a more cosmic kind of horror, and one bereft of any hope of transcendence. It offered some of the most viscerally upsetting imagery the company has yet dreamt up. While it’s not a world I’d ever want to live in, it suggests at least that there are those among us willing to venture deeper into the darkness than most of us are able (see RT120).

If there’s a common thread apparent in these three works it’s one I’ll be hunting for more earnestly in the year to come: an engagement with issues personal, political or philosophical that doesn’t ‘explore’ so much as push through, taking its audience to a place that hasn’t yet been articulated, leaving them with the task of finding their own way back. Or not. Maybe there’s no way home.

A reason to care for strangers
John Bailey: Bryony Kimmings, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, FOLA
RealTime issue #120 April-May 2014 pg14

Dark mothering
John Bailey: Katie Warner’s Dropped; The Rabble’s Frankenstein
RealTime issue #120 April-May 2014 p41

Ben Brooker

How to hold in the mind a total image of live performance in Australia in the year behind us? Not possible. Better to try for a single impression, a freeze-frame that speaks of what preceded it and what must, we imagine in hope or despair, surely follow.

Perhaps more than anything else, 2014 saw Shakespeare, ever our contemporary, revitalised once again. My year was bookended by two flawed but ambitious and important productions, Malthouse’s King Lear retelling The Shadow King (creators Michael Kantor and Tom E. Lewis, see Stephen Carleton review RT124 & Keith Gallasch review RT119) and the State Theatre Company of SA’s Othello (director Nescha Jelk). Holding up lenses of, respectively, indigeneity and feminism, both productions violently transposed Shakespeare’s canonical texts to the here and now, illuminating the individual and social costs of institutionalised prejudice and subjugation.

In contrast, Toneelgroep’s Roman Tragedies (director Ivo Van Hove, see RT120) eschewed critique, paring back the poetry of Shakespeare’s Roman histories to plain, contemporary English (via Dutch) and rendering the plays with the urgent, pummeling aesthetic of the 24-hour news media. Audience members will recall for a long time performances, especially those by Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Frieda Pittoors and Hans Kesting, of a rare intensity—Shakespeare given back to us by way of nothing more alchemical than the actor’s craft in unencumbered motion.

“If there is a sphere whose very nature precludes all prognostication, it is that of culture, and especially of the arts and humanities.” With Creative Australia shelved and funding for the non-elite arts gutted by the Coalition, Vaclav Havel’s cautionary words resonate freshly. The only certainty looking ahead into 2015 is likely to be uncertainty as our artists and arts facilitators continue to attempt more with less. It is ominous that, judging by reports, the mood at this year’s Australian Theatre Forum was siege-like, culminating in a statement aimed at the Abbott Government and signed by 52 delegates: “… we are compelled to respond by our urgent concerns about the ideologically-driven erosion of our collective social fabric, which, unless checked, will radically reduce our capacity to hope, dream, imagine, build and share.”

While the forum was on, an independent two-week season of readings of new Australian plays was happening in Adelaide.* Eleven of the 14 playwrights were women, many of whom travelled from interstate to share the dreams—bold, angry, messy, beautiful—that they had each built on a shoestring. Perhaps we will always find ways of restaging Shakespeare as though the centuries that separate us are an illusion. This is one kind of vitality that sustains our stages. Another is predicated on the living playwright and it is to her that I hope 2015 will belong.

The imagination writ large
Benjamin Brooker: 2014 Adelaide Festival—theatre
RealTime issue #120 April-May 2014 p22

Urszula Dawkins

2014 felt like a year of individual triumphs and collective headway. I loved seeing events like the Festival of Live Art create critical mass for such a physically, viscerally and psychically engaging form (see Gail Priest review RT120). My 2014 live art highlight was one step at a time like this’s profound and intimate piece, nowhere, which felt like ‘active philosophy,’ setting off deep intellectual and spiritual resonances.

Works that privileged the emotional, without sentimentality, also thrilled me—Roslyn Oades’s Hello Goodbye & Happy Birthday was one. I saw younger artists acknowledging history and making it new (see John Bailey review RT124): James Welsby’s dance work Hex achieved this beautifully re the past and present history of AIDS. It’s been great too to see feminism’s renewal in incisive works by artists like Mish Grigor or I’m Trying To Kiss You (see Jana Perkovic’s review RT121).

I sense growing collectivity and togetherness within the performing arts especially, both in emerging/experimental arts, and across the established/emerging hierarchy. More flagship companies seem to be finding resources to create development opportunities and ‘emerging’ seasons for younger artists. At the same time, I sense ‘emerging/experimental’ artists themselves are collaborating more ambitiously to produce successful, larger-scale independent events. Perhaps there’s a politics of resistance at play, a sense of urgency that if artists don’t get together and do it themselves, things just won’t happen.

In 2015 I’d like to see more of all of this. More togetherness, more art as social intervention, more DIY and more support for the risky, the devised, the collective and the hard-to-define. A busting open of the divides between visual arts, performing arts and literature. More chances for great new work to further develop and tour. More small and medium-scale philanthropy, including creatively interactive crowd-funding. And for arts/non-arts collaborations to burgeon, loosening ‘the arts’ from its categories and letting creativity roam wider in a world where it’s sorely needed.

It’s all about you
Gail Priest: FOLA, Arts House
RealTime issue #120 April-May 2014 p15

In others’ words
John Bailey: Melbourne International Arts Festival
RealTime issue #124 Dec-Jan 2014 p10-11

Risk yields new forces
Jana Perkovic: Next Wave 2014
RealTime issue #121 June-July 2014 p34-35

The primordial present
Urszula Dawkins: Melbourne International Arts Festival: Dance Territories
RealTime issue #124 Dec-Jan 2014 p12

Body/tech crossings
Urszula Dawkins: 2014 Melbourne Fringe Festival
RealTime issue #124 Dec-Jan 2014 p19

Nerida Dickinson

Festivals brought the Perth cultural scene to life in early 2014 with eruptions of performance bookending the year. The summer madness of FringeWorld saw an expansion into suburban hubs and an explosion of diversity and number of acts. Perth International Arts Festival kept standards high and brought new modes of theatre to audiences, with immersive pieces from Punchdrunk Theatre (The House Where Winter Lives) and Rimini Protokoll (Situation Rooms, see Keith Gallasch review RT120), as well as showcasing music in the Festival Gardens. Proximity Festival celebrated the magic of one-on-one performance, expanding horizons of participating artists as well as audiences (see preview RT123 & review RT124. Also pushing artists to the edge of their practice and beyond, the MoveMe Improvisation Festival explored the potential of spontaneous creative performance (see reports in RT125).

Beyond festivals have been steady productions from the Perth Theatre Company and Black Swan, who delivered a range of exciting and provocative new works—including 8 Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography—and solid straight theatre—A Streetcar Named Desire. Independent productions had a good year at The Blue Room Theatre, the highlight being the debut of Finegan Kruckemeyer’s Those Who Fall In Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon The Ocean Floor, and also at PICA Performance Space, where The Last Great Hunt’s Falling Through Clouds impressed on many levels (see RT124). Barking Gecko Theatre Company constantly inspires, with onefivezeroseven pushing theatrical boundaries beyond its nominal teen audience. STRUT Dance Company provided opportunities to see dance creativity in development, from SHORT CUTS, to IN SHORT and PRIME CUTS (see interview RT121). Touring dance companies provided inspiration—Chunky Moves with Keep Everything and Sydney Dance Company’s explosive 2 One Another stood out.

In 2015 if these festivals, venues and companies continue to thrive, they will provide the infrastructure for talent to work in Perth, as well as create new opportunities for artists to develop creative practice. In broader terms there should be plenty of opportunities for audiences to experience new things, feeding back into a vigorous local creative culture. Of particular interest in the next 12 months will be the development of politically charged intimate performance from Toyi-Toyi Theatre, who have been tackling topical issues of social justice and immigration policy (see my review of their The Queue in the Proximity Festival).

Five days in other worlds
Keith Gallasch: 2014 Perth International Arts Festival
RealTime issue #120 April-May 2014 p17-19

Flight from extinction
Nerida Dickinson: The Last Great Hunt, Falling Through Clouds
RealTime issue #124 Dec-Jan 2014 p45

Choreographic boom for WA
Erin Brannigan: Interview, Paul Selwyn Norton, Director, STRUT
RealTime issue #121 June-July 2014 p30

Kathryn Kelly

I spent a lot of last year trying to understand the impact of the rise of TV and the decline of film on Gen-Y and millennial performance. LaBoite Indie, home of hipster zeitgeist was a case in point: three of the four shows by terrific new playwrights displayed experimentation in form and plot but a curious flatness in the naturalistic dialogue (see RT123). This is TV reshaping the cadences of our performance texts.

Screen culture as framed by film has long been old fashioned in mediatised work but last year we went organic with media experimentation in performance: a fluid psychological interiority that echoes the bell chamber of screen culture in darkened media rooms or tunnels of concentration with i-Phones. Highlights for me included Circa Associate Ben Knapton’s projection work in Margi Brown Ash’s He Dreamed of Trains which began with the most subtle distortions within a picture frame that gradually colonised the entire naturalistic interior of the set, as if we were inside the mind of the dead man who owned the home.

Look out for a monograph by academic Sandra Gattenhof in 2015 all about how under 16s go to the theatre for each other, not for the content. Liveness is all. So cause for optimism perhaps? While joyful about the potential of performance as experience in the coming age, I couldn’t shake the feeling last year that we were the New Edwardians and that like them, we have lost the ability to predict the future based on the past.

Australian theatre has finally woken up with a start to its whiteness and maleness and the resulting initiatives are like water in the desert. Big highlights include Future Fidel’s autobiographical show at LaBoite: a live boxing match as Fidel recounts the experience of being a child soldier in the Sudan. Rather than a centre giving way to a margin, this seems to me the way forward: authentic cultural collaboration, artist to artist in rooms of our own, live or digital.

Degrees of risk and violence
Kathryn Kelly: Finding the Silence; Hedonism’s Second Album
RealTime issue #123 Oct-Nov 2014 p35

Matthew Lorenzon

Last year was one of goodbyes. If I can stretch the year to include December 2013, then the year included Margaret Cameron’s Opera for a Small Mammal, directed by David Young (see RT119). An imagination like Cameron’s is rare, a team like Cameron and Young even rarer. When Cameron passed away in October, Australia lost a medium listening at the threshold of theatre and music (see RT’s obituary and archive)

We bid farewell to Australia’s only national contemporary music radio programme, Julian Day’s New Music Up Late, along with the ABC’s live broadcasts for Sunday Live. Without these shows, Australia’s contemporary music scene will become more fragmented and disparate. We were deprived (temporarily, this time) of two excellent ensembles who have contributed so much to our musical life. James Rushford and Judith Hamann from Golden Fur joined their band mate Samuel Dunscombe on the sunny shores of California. The power couple behind Brisbane’s Kupka’s Piano, Liam Flenady and Hannah Reardon-Smith, moved to Brussels.

The year was also one of returning. ELISION made a much-anticipated tour of Australia and Liza Lim returned from Huddersfield. I look forward to hearing more of Lim’s detailed and enchanting music in 2015. Richard Barrett’s visit with Speak Percussion showed that the complex and virtuosic textures of Lim and Barrett’s generation have reached an almost classical maturity.

The Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music was my standout experience last year (see RT123). Under David Chisholm’s careful curation, the intensive three-day festival explored some of the most daring works of the 20th century alongside commission-fresh new music. I might not go to hear Stockhausen’s opera Sirius at midnight in the dome of a 19th century library again, but I probably won’t have the chance either. I certainly will be going to hear more music by Claude Vivier and performances by guitarist Mauricio Carrasco.

In 2015, Chamber Made Opera will wake up from a year of development and mount several new shows. Keep an eye out for a new Liza Lim and anything by the emerging composer Samuel Smith, who recently accepted a commission from Adelaide’s Soundstream Collective with his fascinating piece BUTTERFLY 3. Check in with Melbourne’s quiet achiever the Medley Hall Concert Series, especially for the musical responses to Heather Swann’s “Nervous” exhibition.

Matthew’s music blog Partial Durations is published in association with RealTime; https://partialdurations.wordpress.com

Unerring explorations
Matthew Lorenzon: Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music
RealTime issue #123 Oct-Nov 2014 p41

Reason for travelling

From Oct 2014-Jan 2015 I was in residence in Bourges hosted by the media arts organisation Bandits-Mages in association with La Box, Ecole nationale supérieure d’arts de Bourges (ENSA) as part of the European Media Arts Residency Exchange program.*

Ancient alchemies and future fantasies

Bourges is situated in central France, two hours south of Paris by train. It’s an old, old town inhabited back in the BC by the Romans under the name Avaricum, surviving the invading Gauls due to its strong walls and surrounding marshland. It still boasts the remains of a fourth century Gallo-Roman wall or rampart hidden beneath modern wood and stonework. The end of the Middle Ages saw the town extend beyond the ancient walls with grand constructions such as the awe inspiring cathedral, Saint-Étienne de Bourges, begun in the 12th century, the Palais Jacques Coeur and the Hotel Lallement built in the 15th century and the former 16th century Jesuit seminary which is now the art school. There are of course the requisite sprawling modern suburbs (Bourges has a population of around 70,000), but the centre of Bourges is utterly magical, with cobbled streets, winding lanes and vertiginously tilting Tudor-style houses replete with carved woodwork often still intact. Given its age it’s not surprising that the town that has a strong association with things alchemical and feels a little haunted.

Culture: connectivities, collectives and cooperation

While it’s not always the case that smaller towns breed closer connections, the intimate size of Bourges and its mix of proactive and passionate artists and arts workers results in good relationships between organisations which gives it an immediately tangible sense of community—one with an experimental, queer and underground bent.

For refreshment…

Bourges drinking and dining is in keeping with its ancient surroundings—traditional. A favourite place of those I often dined with is Le Guillotin on Rue Bourbonnoux near the Place Gordaine which offers an impressive array of grilled meats and their lamb and duck are pretty delectable. While I couldn’t bring myself to try to the horse steak tartare it was a favourite with one of my dining companions. At the other end of the Rue Bourbonnoux is La Gargouille which has a similar menu but with a slightly more modern interpretation and offers very nice desserts. I also spent a lot of time at Le Cujas in the centre of the old town because it was well appointed for someone hanging out alone—ie has small tables in corners with windows—and the waiters learned to put up with stumbling, incorrectly gendered French. Their Irish Coffees, with more than a healthy shot of whiskey and topped with cream, are just the thing on a cold afternoon.

And for the wanderer…

If feeling touristic, the climb up to the top of the bell tower of Saint-Étienne cathedral is worth the wheezy 396 steps offering a full 360-degree vista of the town and surrounding region. However be warned that the crypt tour takes 45 minutes (in French, and could be done in 10), making it feel like medieval torture. The Palais Jacques Coeur is particularly impressive. This local 15th century merchant and friend of King Charles VII was at one point the richest man in France. When charged with counterfeiting and fraud he tried to claim his wealth came from alchemy. His house is seriously weird and wonderful—a maze-like affair with ceilings like boat keels, an amazingly ornate personal chapel and what is possibly the first sauna in France.

*The residency was part of the European Media Arts Network: European Media Arts Residency Exchange (EMAN#EMARE) program which in 2014-2015 offers residencies to Australian and Canadian artists, with European artists hosted by Experimenta (see RT124), UTS Creativity and Cognition Studio and QUT’s The Cube. The project is supported by the Culture 2013 Programme of the European Commission and the Goethe Institut.

Gail Priest is a sound artist, writer and curator. She has worked for RealTime since 1998 in various roles, currently as the Online Producer & Associate Editor. In 2015-2016 she is the Australia Council for the Arts Emerging and Experimental Arts Fellow.

Links

Great to see media art playing centrestage on its own terms and in a host of interdisciplinary manifestations in exhibitions and festivals across Australia.

Already underway and showing until 22 Feb is Experimenta’s Recharge, an opportunity to re-estimate your relationship with media art at Melbourne’s RMIT before the biennial show goes on tour 2015-16, admission free. Artistic director Jonathan Parsons tells Darren Tofts that gaming, 3D-printed sculpture and animation—including a rising sea levels work from Japan, aptly designed to run for 100 years—are just a few of the attractions.

Adelaide Festival’s Blinc features free access to 22 international media artworks on the banks of the River Torrens, ranging from intimate interactives to large-scale wonders. As well, there’s a three-venue showing of major works by Bill Viola, who’ll be in town for the festival.

Sydney Festival’s Sound/Unsound program includes Mira Calix’s Inside There Falls in which you enter an immersive world of paper, text, voice and dance (again, free). Also in the festival program is media artist Lynette Wallworth’s collaboration with French organist Bernard Froccoulle, Darkness and Light, and WA company The Last Great Hunt’s Falling Through Clouds (reviewed in this edition), a synthesis of puppetry, animation, music and live video.

Now open and playing to 1 March is QUT Art Museum’s Performance Now, 20 intriguing videos featuring prominent artists and curated by a leading expert on performance art, New Yorker RoseLee Goldberg. The videos aren’t simply documentation; they reveal visual and performance artists inventively engaging with the camera. Only showing in Brisbane, Performance Now will be an obligatory holiday hotspot for performers, artists and lovers of the provocative and the ineffable.

Carriageworks’ 2015 program includes the welcome return of Ryoji Ikeda, this time with a 90-minute large screen work mixed live by two performers, and 24 Frames per Second, a three-month exhibition of commissioned screen works focused around dance and surprising cross-artform collaborations.

Thanks to our readers, writers and clients for your wonderful support in 2015. Have a great art time over the summer. But to our friends at the ABC, including those who produce New Music Up Late, you are victims of ideological assault. We send our condolences. Artists will need to be brave in 2015.

Christy Dena, Magister Ludi, 2014, in collaboration with Marigold Barlett, Trevor Dikes, Cameron Owen

JONATHAN PARSONS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL ISEA2013, WAS SUBSEQUENTLY APPOINTED TO THE SAME ROLE FOR MELBOURNE-BASED EXPERIMENTA. DARREN TOFTS SPOKE WITH PARSONS ABOUT HIS PROGRAM FOR THE ORGANISATION’S 2014-15 BIENNIAL, RECHARGE.

Experimenta’s last biennial Speak to Me was topical in terms of its theme of intimacy. This year’s Recharge seems much more reflective about Experimenta itself, media art and the notion of a bienniale: what’s your thinking on these issues?

It’s both. The theme emerged in response to researching current and recent work from media artists here and internationally. This investigation process coincided with having just joined the Experimenta team in the newly created role of Artistic Director. It’s perhaps not surprising that the 6th International Biennial reflects some broader thinking about the meaning of the organisation’s name and the role of biennials in general.

Biennials by their very nature, in repeating presentation formats, are always in part a survey of current practice. As a curator of these types of visual arts ‘festivals’ you have an opportunity to not only document what’s happening in the present but to also act as a catalyst to foment future developments and directions within the artistic community. Through the presentation of the works and their associated public programs you hope to stimulate conversations and networks that act as a ‘recharge,’ inspiring artists to take the next steps in their practice, find new collaborative partners and for audiences to become more curious and adventurous.

This will be my first biennial since I took on the position, so it’s timely to reflect on where Experimenta has been and where it may go, particularly as it approaches its 30th year of operation in 2016. Not only have I been thinking a lot about what it means to be working in one of Australia’s key media arts organisations, but also the name ‘Experimenta’ itself. While the exhibition title refers to some of the great work happening now it also looks forward to consider what role experimentation plays in culture as it can transform the way we look at the world and recharge our views.

In thinking about this biennial’s theme, along with my associate curators, Elise Routledge and Lubi Thomas, we wanted to focus attention on artists whose work is inspired by and entangled with the past. Arguably all artists look to the past in creating their work but we were particularly interested in asking the questions: does knowledge change when it is presented in different technological forms and cultural contexts? Through processes of experimentation and by producing unconventional perspectives, can artists illuminate existing knowledge for new generations? The artists in the biennial are alert to both the intimate and the broader cultural contexts through which they move and live. By listening, watching, thinking and making, they recharge knowledge and meaning systems, reinvigorating these systems or radically transforming them.

Experimenta has really broadened the scope of the Biennial in that the exhibition’s touring component has become such a strong part of getting the work to a broader public. Where is it touring after its Melbourne installation?

Experimenta produces the only biennial in Australia that travels nationally. It was very clear as we set up the tour after the exhibition opens in Melbourne that we could have continued touring it well beyond the middle of 2016 from the number of requests we have had to present the exhibition elsewhere. This is a real testament to the work of my predecessors who established this model in 2003 and have toured every biennial since then. Through this Experimenta has been instrumental in developing audiences for media artwork across Australia. We plan to tour Experimenta Recharge throughout 2015 until the middle of 2016 and will visit Mildura, Newcastle, Brisbane, Cairns, Warrnambool, Albury and Morwell.

Tell me about the EMARE initiative. This is really exciting in that it consolidates the profile of the biennial as an event involving international partnerships.

The EMARE initiative is a clear indication of Experimenta’s standing internationally. When the European Media Art Network was looking to follow on from their successful residency exchange program with Mexico in 2011-12, they decided they would like to broaden the exchange to involve two countries outside of Europe, choosing Canada and Australia. Having decided on Australia as one of the participating countries it was Peter Zorn, from the Werkleitz Centre for Media Arts in Halle, Germany, who came to Australia to research potential partners and led the application to the European Union. Experimenta was already on his list before he came because of its profile internationally.

The two other Australian partners in this two-year residency exchange program are The Cube at Queensland University of Technology led by Senior Curator of Digital Media Lubi Thomas and Andrew Johnson, Co-Director of the Creativity and Cognition Studios at the University of Technology Sydney. Two of the European artists participating in this exchange program will be featured in the Biennial. Experimenta is hosting Abel Korinsky as part of the three-member artist group Korinsky, who are all brothers, in Melbourne with support from RMIT’s International Artist in Residence Program and the Goethe Institute. He will create a new work for the Biennial entitled Big Bang, an immersive sound installation inspired by the recent announcement by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre that they have documented soundwaves from soon after the birth of the universe. Korinsky’s work asks, ‘What would it sound like to hear all the sounds of the past and present? How would it change our perceptions of time and of death?’

The other artist to feature in the Biennial through the EMARE initiative is Anaisa Franco, a German/Brazilian artist currently in residence at UTS. Three of her interactive sculptures will be presented from her Psychosomatic series, two existing works and a newly created piece. These works will react to the presence of audiences and embody different human emotions. This will be the first time these artists have been presented in Australia and indeed, with the exception of Maitha Demithan from the United Arab Emirates (see cover image), the four other international artists represented in the Biennial will be introduced to Australian audiences for the first time. The culmination of the EMARE initiative will be a group exhibition of all of the participating artists in Halle, Germany in October 2015. This will feature four Australian artists including Matthew Gingold who has previously exhibited with Experimenta.

There are many critical views about the end of media art, or assertions that it should simply be part of the art world generally. What’s your response to this, especially in relation to the work in this year’s Biennial?

I certainly think that it is maturing. Gone are the days when the incorporation of digital media into an artwork automatically made it cutting edge or experimental. With that a certain youthful energy and dynamism has dissipated. This is felt primarily by those who remember the heady days of the 80s and 90s when we saw the invention and proliferation of the personal computer that gave birth to the sector. At the same time, audiences for this work have greatly expanded. I’d say there are larger audiences who on average are having richer experiences. You had to be a pretty dedicated audience member for this work in the early days—so often you would see exhibits not actually working, so by default the work often had to be viewed as conceptual art. As the artists and presenters in this field became more familiar with the technological tools the works have become less about the wow factor of new technology and arguably for audiences the engagement has become richer.

Cake Industries, (Jesse Stevens and Dean Paterson) Simulacrum (detail) 2014-2016, 3D modeled plastic portraits, installation, performance.

Having said that technology is still rapidly evolving. There is a new generation of technologies that, as they become more affordable, are being picked up by artists as the early adopters. Such examples in the Biennial include Cake Industries’ Simulacrum, a re-invention of classical portraiture through the use of 3D printing. So it’s not that the ‘new’ has completely disappeared from media arts, it’s simply that now we have a richer and more diverse range of tools and practices. I expect in the next few years we will see more artists using lightweight virtual reality headsets such as Oculus Rift that have been made for immersive gaming.

In this year’s Biennial you see all of these forces at work. There are exhibits drawing on photography, sculpture and installation, electronic sculpture, sound art, robotics, live art, biotechnology, film and video. There are artists who have come from computer programming while others are from traditional art schools; artists engaged in gaming, who sit on the edges of current definitions of art, such as Christy Dena. Her interactive game Magister Ludi, was especially commissioned for the Biennial. TeamLab’s 100 Years Sea refreshes traditional Japanese screen painting through animation and explores the impact of rising sea levels predicted in 2009 by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. Commenced in the same year, this animation will run for a period of 100 years. So media art now occupies both the mainstream and the edges of aesthetic practices engaged with technology. I hope the diversity of artists participating in this year’s Biennial is a reflection of the thriving and dynamic culture that is media art.

Featured on our cover this issue is the 24-year old Emirati artist Maitha Demithan. Demithan takes photographs of her family in everyday traditional dress and uses a small flatbed A4 scanner to fragment and recompose the images in order to digitally enhance them, especially the colours, as well as playing with two-dimensionality. She writes “the pose, body language and particular scan quality also include an emotional moment.” (sarasist.org). Demithan’s scenographies feature in RECHARGE: Experimenta 6th Biennal of Media Art.

Recharge, 6th International Biennial of Media Art, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 28 Nov, 2014-21 Feb, 2015; touring to 2016; http://experimenta.org/recharge/

MARTIN AMIS SAYS THAT EXPERIENCE IS THE CURRENCY OF OUR AGE AND THIS APPETITE FOR BIOGRAPHY AND LIVED EXPERIENCES WAS BORNE OUT ONSTAGE IN THE PROGRAMMING OF THE 2014 BRISBANE FESTIVAL. BUILT AROUND PHILLIP GLASS’ LATEST ‘PORTRAIT’ OPERA THE PERFECT AMERICAN, ABOUT WALT DISNEY, THE PROGRAM INCLUDED INTIMATE WORKS LIKE TODD MACDONALD’S HEART-WRENCHING ACCOUNT OF HIS DAUGHTER’S ILLNESS IN THE BUTTON EFFECT AT QTC AND THE ELLIPTICAL AND STATELY PHYSICAL THEATRE WORK ABOUT THE BRISBANE FLOODS, DELUGE, BY MOTHERBOARD PRODUCTIONS.

The Perfect American

This was outgoing Artistic Director Noel Staunton’s last hurrah and The Perfect American was a tour-de-force collaboration between local companies Opera Queensland, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, QPAC and Expressions Dance Theatre to bring the work commissioned by the English National Opera (ENO) with the impossibly stellar creative team of Glass composing, Phelim McDermott from Improbable Theatre directing and Dan Potra designing, for an exclusive Australian season in Brisbane.

The work retains most of the debut cast, with the thunderous bass baritone of Christopher Purves as Disney anchoring the opera, his voice soaring and vibrating in each of the 12 self-contained episodes that chart the final days of Disney and confabulate fact with fiction, action with hallucination.

The loose structure is held together largely by Don Potra’s design. A giant gantry looms over the stage with two vast revolving arms that spin constantly like a death star, releasing delicate paper screens filled with moving animations, monochromous and ominous, which flutter to the ground like burnt moths. Even the rectilinear aesthetic of Glass’s most celebrated visual collaborator, Robert Wilson, still holds to the 19th century aesthetic of stage backdrop. Potra brings the heavy industrialism of contemporary performance spectacle into opera with undeniable bravery. Indeed, while the work has met with mixed reviews in London and Madrid, Potra’s design has been praised. For a Brisbane audience, unaccustomed to regular debuts of this scale and calibre it was breathtaking to watch the singers and dancers duck and weave as the gantry spun and shed like a living image machine.

Below the gantry was a simple circular revolve, which signified train tracks, a hospital room, a film set and Disney’s office and home. This circularity was not just functional, but echoed Potra’s whirling gantry and was mirrored by Glass’ score, which, although built around his trademark minimalism was a pulsating, driving and addictive experience. Imagine the sound of an old fashioned train on a circular track, the click of castanets and the surge of horns with the sweetness of a classical chorus that somehow sounds like Lou Reed in 1979. The score is marked by sudden shifts, abrupt changes of instruments and long, heavy drone-like sequences. Indeed, the score was criticised overseas for not having more romantic and operatic sequences, like the opening and closing scenes set in Disney’s hometown of Marceline. However, this seemed to me to embody the politic of the work: the mid-Western, right wing America of Disney being simultaneously feted and exorcised by the liberal New York avante-garde; pop culture and high culture colliding in a sometimes uncomfortable mix.

The libretto had a similar mashing of almost bruisingly trite language and what Potra described as “restrained poetry.” “You were only a moderately successful CEO” sings Disney’s imagined nemesis, the disgruntled employee Dantine, an immigrant worker fired for attempting to start a union. “Everything belongs to me,” sings Disney plaintively as his life is slipping from his grasp. Sadly, despite these genuinely bold and arresting elements, The Perfect American did not lift into that total theatre experience that Glass is renowned for making with Wilson: you could feel the audience resisting journeying into the rabbit hole of meditative reception. Somehow it all existed too much in a literal world, filled with sad and agonised characters, the industrial ghosts of Disney’s pencil drawings. Neither fish nor flesh, the opera refused the lures of sentimentality and melodrama but also the pleasures of abstraction.

Deluge

What was both flesh and fish was Motherboard Production’s Deluge, born out of the agony of the floods in Brisbane in 2011 and the follow-up to the Brisbane Festival smash Underground. Motherboard is a vibrant local company, one of a handful that carry the Brisbane traditions of physical theatre, ensemble training and engagement with Asian theatre forms into the next generation. Deluge sits in that canon very clearly, with large-cast spectacle, slow durational form and a mix of Korean and Australian performers. The show opens with an elaborately casual tea ceremony, with performers in civvies handing the audience the warming beverage on a napkin printed with a Judith Wright poem translated into Korean. Who could ask for more?

While many looked bored, I relished the off-handed pageantry of graceful performers inviting their audience slowly into the dripping cave stage world of Deluge. The often cavernous Visy was shortened by an acoustic wall behind most of the seating bank, which gave Dane Alexander’s mesmerising score added power, particularly when it lifted into throbbing techno at key moments in the show. The work built slowly, as delicate glass containers were lifted into and then out of the space, clinking like seagull cries. Classic Suzuki motifs ensued, like slow walls of bodies moving forward. their tiny gestures charged with intensity. The stately bodies grew slowly more and more fevered, as the imagined water came closer; suddenly, an explosion, with bodies running across stage, hitting each other, falling and running again and the impending doom of the ticking clock. The whole stage was rent with green laser light and bodies rippled and drowned. The delicate set was swept away in the deluge till all that remained was the harsh and beautiful cement wall at the back of the theatre.

Time passed with a mournful traditional Korean song, then the show climaxed with the majestic arrival of Niedeck, the director/choreographer and central performer, slowly gliding into the theatre bare-chested with a train of rubbish behind him. A garbage water god, a symbol of wreckage and renewal all at once. There were long sequences that felt extraneous, or lacked tightness or unison—these physical performance forms are unforgiving, they demand such precision and simplicity—but the intensity of Deluge was undeniable, particularly in the final sections.

The Button Event

The Button Event is an intimate one-man piece about devisor and performer Todd MacDonald’s daughter Lola and her struggles with a rare and debilitating form of childhood epilepsy, Tuberous Sclerosis. However, it shares with Deluge a similar delicacy of form and requirement to navigate the work through the frame of personal experience.

The Button Event begins with an almost empty stage, a tennis ball machine and MacDonald reading us a letter he had written, just in case God existed, to thank Mary MacKillop for the novenas that had been offered up to her to try and help his daughter during the pivotal surgery that would eventually save her life. Indeed, this is the organising principle of the show, the before and afters of Lola’s illness—MacDonald’s life and work and marriage before Lola’s illness and then the chaos and struggle to survive after.

MacDonald is a consummate performer, he has that quality of likeability; you always wish him well and because the story is unashamedly personal, in many respects watching it is like hearing a story at a party from a friend. The various tasks undertaken onstage, many of them connected to the tennis balls, only underscore this sense of ordinary exchange, of being told a story over a garden fence. As Lola’s situation deteriorates and Todd’s anxiety rises the design becomes more and more complex: ladders and boxes and strings have to be arranged, the disclosures sail closer and closer to intimate confessions of weakness or despair. A children’s book is read about a grumpy turtle losing its temper and being abandoned. A sweeping train of tennis balls transforms into a whirling cape, the hunchback Richard in agony. There is such deftness in the choices made here by MacDonald and his director and co-deviser Bagryana Popov and designers Kevin O’Brien and Sam Paxton: the ubiquitous tennis ball, so ordinary, but also capable of such luminous beauty when arranged in constellation or when released from the ceiling to fall like redemptive rain.

I think my only sense of unease about the work came from this very success. The world presented was so relatable, so much ours that I did not question any of it—the authenticity of the personal account left no room to challenge or to even interpret. I suspect this is the danger of lived experience as theatre, that you impose on it the polite protocols of a dinner party exchange. Yet both The Perfect American and Deluge demonstrate some of the difficulties in the opposite approach, where confabulation or aestheticisation does not quite do justice to the experience of problematic genius or the ruinous transcendence of natural disaster.

2014 Brisbane Festival: The Perfect American, composer Phillip Glass, librettist Rudolph Wurlitzer, Concert Hall, QPAC, 15-20 Sept; Deluge, director Jeremy Neideck, sound Dane Alexander, designer Sarah Winter, producer Dave Sleswick/Motherboard Productions, devisor-performers Hoyoung Tak, Younghee Park, Youngho Kwon, Katrina Cornwell, Sammie Williams, Jeremy Neideck, Amy Wollstein, Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse,18-20 Sept; QTC, The Button Event, devisor Todd MacDonald with director Bagryana Popov, design Kevin O’Brien, Sam Paxton, lighting Ben Hughes, composer Guy Webster, QTC, Brisbane, 18-27 Sept

THERE CAN BE LITTLE DEBATING THE ASSERTION THAT AUSTRALIAN THEATRE IS CURRENTLY IN AN ADAPTO-MANIA BOOM CYCLE—ARGUABLY NOW JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CREST OF A WAVE THAT PEAKED IN SYDNEY THIS YEAR WITH RALPH MYERS’ BELVOIR SEASON WHERE SEVEN OUT OF THE 11 SHOWS, BY MY RECKONING, WERE RESTAGED EUROPEAN CLASSICS OR ADAPTATIONS OF CANONICAL UR TEXTS.

The current surge in activity seems to have had its genesis in Melbourne’s independent theatre sector over the past decade or so, with the centre of gravity occurring at the Malthouse Theatre under Michael Kantor’s stewardship (2003-2010). Indeed, this year’s Brisbane Festival—Noel Staunton’s last—sees a new version of King Lear (The Shadow King) co-created and directed by Kantor. It is joined by Melbourne playwright Lally Katz’ new version of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and Melbourne-based indie company The Rabble’s reimagined stage version of Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. Interestingly, none of these three productions’ presenters use the word ‘adaptation’ in their programs or on festival websites. Indeed, in the case of The Shadow King neither Shakespeare nor Lear is mentioned at all; Katz’ text is named as a “new version” of the Ibsen original; and The Rabble’s take on Orlando is described as “a hallucinatory reworking of Virginia Woolf’s classic gender-bending parable.”

A Doll’s House

Of the three adaptions, in some ways Katz’ version of A Doll’s House is the most reverent to the parent text. The playwright’s voice is subtle—and Katz’ voice can quite literally intrude into the text of her plays. There are no overt attempts to Australianise the dialogue, for example, or to place the mise en scène in an idiosyncratic local setting. The most radical intervention the audience witnesses here is with Steven Mitchell Wright’s directorial signature, which sees Nora and the other characters (an excellent ensemble cast led by Helena Christenson as Nora, with Chris Beckey, Damien Cassidy, Cienda McNamara and Hugh Parker as Krogstad, Dr Rank, Kristine and Torvald, respectively) animated as clockwork dummies or music box figurines.

For all but the final moments of the three-act play, the actors avoid eye contact with each other and move in rigid, mechanical trajectories across the stage. We are invited to read the characters as wind-up toys trapped in the eponymous doll’s house that sees wives as properties of convention and their husbands’ estates and reputations. There was a risk the performative trope would become irritating over the play’s three hour running time, but in fact it worked well. The tension was meted out expertly and married beautifully to colour-coded period costume design (by Nathalie Ryner) and musical score (Dane Alexander) that combined to put me in mind of the Vulgarian palace scenes in the children’s film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (and I say that as a good thing!). This was the most disciplined directorial hand I have seen from Wright. He did an excellent job to marry themes and aesthetics together in a rich, compelling interpretation of Katz’ text. As Nora peels herself out of period dress in the play’s famous climax, she transforms into the ‘modern woman’ before our eyes—having sung key moments of subtext that express her psychological entrapment up until now—and the famous door that slams shut on the institution of 19th century marriage re-echoes so loudly here that audience members around me actually screamed as Nora exited.

The Shadow King

Tom E Lewis and Michael Kantor localise Lear dramatically in The Shadow King, resituating the parent text so that it speaks directly to an Australian Aboriginal political constituency, alluding strongly to the fraught issue in Northern Australia of private Indigenous home ownership in communal lands. As in the original text, an ageing, ailing Lear (Lewis) is deciding to which of his three daughters he should leave his property. Firebrand Cordelia (Rarriwuy Hick) doesn’t want anything to do with the ‘blood money’—private ownership of community lands acquired through mining company royalties—so Lear gives the property to Goneral (Jada Alberts) and Regan (Natasha Wanganeen), whose greed and self-interest see them destroy each other. It is left for the Fool (Kamahi Djordon King) to announce at play’s end that “You can’t divide up the land…This land is you.”

It’s a daring, dynamic and delightfully aggressive reinterpretation of King Lear. The politics are raw and piercingly insightful. I could write a page on Paul Jackson, David Miller and Kantor’s set design—a gigantic earthmoving piece of mining equipment that converts into both elevated tropical houses and rusty prison cell. And Natasha Gadd, Rhys Graham and Murray Lui’s videography evokes such wonderful domestic detail of North Australian bush households—rusty fridges on the back patio, dirty eskies, wandering camp dogs. It was a brilliant night’s theatre for me on so many levels, and as close to a game changer in contemporary Indigenous theatrical collaboration and revisionism (of the European canon) as I can think of.

Orlando

The Rabble’s stage adaptation of Woolf’s most challenging of novels is another bold theatrical experiment, and one which reviewers in this magazine have lauded (see RT112, p15). It is a looser, more episodic reinterpretation of its European parent text than the other two plays discussed here. Woolf’s novel itself is, of course, a modernist experiment in structure and form and her spirit of radical gender play is honoured here.

Certain scenes were more theatrically compelling than others for me, with some stock post-dramatic techniques (the reading of lists as text, in this case synonyms for vaginas, for example) more effective for the audience member that hasn’t seen them rendered similarly elsewhere before. But the daring performances in this stark white, sterile set (Kate Davis designs) succeed in transporting us to the Great Frost of 1709 as effectively as to the anachronistic domestic interior of Orlando’s bored housefrau watching an electric jug boil. Its residence in the festival’s curated Theatre Republic ‘sideshow’ season was a fitting showcase for this interesting independent company’s introduction to Brisbane audiences.

A capital city’s arts festival is designed to bring the best of local, national and international work together and place it in regional conversation, and as a trifecta, these three stage adaptations are examples of best practice in many ways. But has the glut of adaptomania reached its zenith, and is it tipping into surfeit? Four out of six mainstage plays in La Boite incoming Artistic Director Chris Kohn’s inaugural 2015 season are restaged classics (of beloved children’s novels, Shakespeare and Euripides) so, in Brisbane at least, the Melbournesque surge continues for a while longer.

2014 Brisbane Festival: La Boite, A Doll’s House, writer Henrik Ibsen, new version by Lally Katz, director Steven Mitchell Wright, La Boite, Roundhouse Theatre, 6-27 Sept; Malthouse, The Shadow King, creators Michael Kantor, Tom E. Lewis, director Michael Kantor; Orlando, creators Emma Valente, Kate Davis, QUT The Loft, Brisbane, 16-20 Sept

WE BORROW ON NERVOUS TERMS. EVEN BEYOND THE LEGAL AND MORAL IMPLICATIONS OF ARTISTIC QUOTATION, THE VERY UTILITY OR FUTILITY OF PASTICHE, HOMAGE, PARODY AND REVISION HAS BEEN ENDLESSLY DEBATED AND THE POLITICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL COMPLEXITIES CONTINUE TO ANIMATE BRITTLE AND APPREHENSIVE DISCUSSIONS.

It’s the kind of situation that leads to the limp toing-and-froing about ‘adaptations versus originals’ that regularly crops up in Australia, or that causes brows to furrow when a work is described as ‘after’ so-and-so. It was hugely rewarding, then, to see a suite of new works at this year’s Melbourne Festival taking on the specific problem of translation between forms with great confidence and sophistication.

These included a poem transformed into a nightmarish multimedia landscape, audio documentary rendered as magnificent ‘verbatim theatre,’ a Shakespeare play as nomadic live art and true crime tale reimagined in a lyrical, almost musical manner.

The Trouble With Harry

The Trouble With Harry is the only one of these to even gesture to the problematic status of artistic debt, through the occasional moment that recognises the epistemological impossibility of ever faithfully recreating a ‘true’ story on stage. The work is inspired by the life of Harry Crawford, a woman whose life as a man in early 20th century Sydney included marriage and parenthood. She came to national attention after a murder that resulted in her eventual outing, and playwright Lachlan Philpott and director Alyson Campbell rightly acknowledge that there are questions that must be faced regarding their responsibilities in addressing such a complex subject. But, just as interestingly, they acknowledge that these are far from the only questions that deserve asking here.

The work is stylistically daring in subtle ways. It employs two narrators dressed in understated contemporary garb, as opposed to the diegetic characters in period costume. Dialogue and narration overlap and at times the lyrical language employed and the tight choreography of movement almost transform the work into a kind of music theatre. At odds with music theatre’s sense of grand community however is the oddly disconnected viewing experience of The Trouble With Harry where audience members are fitted with chunky headphones that afford them access to the intimate discussions of the folk on stage along with an accomplished sound design by Chris Wenn. It’s easy to lose the sense of being in a crowd, given these circumstances, and the work rather lends itself to a kind of voyeuristic sense that is all the more interesting given the events that unfold.

The Trouble With Harry never dips into sensationalism, though it does play with the way its subject was met with prurient or lurid fascination across history. The fear of being discovered forms the background to the piece, rarely made explicit but always simmering beneath scenes. The roles of Crawford’s children are a little overplayed in the way that most kid roles for adults often are, but the performances of Maude Davey as the titular Harry and Caroline Lee as his wife Annie are so finely detailed as to provide one of the most credible on stage relationships I can recall. The play itself doesn’t pathologise anyone involved—rather, there is a wealth that is unspoken here but gently conveyed by these two actors, allowing audiences only the briefest of access to the untold business that exists between lovers.

My Lover’s Bones

Brown Cab Productions’ My Lover’s Bones takes a more explicitly horrifying look at the vicissitudes of the heart. It follows an unnamed Aboriginal man’s quest to track and slay a bunyip in the hope it will win him his love, but the hunt itself becomes a metaphor for his own descent into obsessive madness. The monster may be in his head; this ‘lover’ may be a rapist and murderer; or perhaps he is the victim of a larger system that has entrapped him. If all of this sounds ambiguous, the production is not. It fuses a hard, physical and at times hypnotic performance by Kirk Page, thoughtful design including striking set pieces, well-executed projection and arresting sound design, and text that produces evocative imagery without detracting from the concrete aspects of the work.

At the performance’s end the person next to me sighed, “it was like a poem,” and this was exactly the thought I’d had myself. It’s some marker of success that the work is adapted from a poem by Cameron Costello, but is far more than a presentation of the original with some extra trimmings. Rather, it makes material the spirit of Costello’s text, which is an eerie fusion of Quandamooka legend and Poe-like gothicism. It’s a short, sharp and memorable work.

Since I Suppose

I wouldn’t describe Since I Suppose as short nor sharp, but it certainly featured several sequences that left a lasting impression. Live art collective, one step at a time like this’ last work was en route, a city-roaming audio tour in which urban flanerie was complemented by fragments of spoken word drawing upon thinkers and poets as sources. It has travelled the world extensively and successfully, so it’s easy to see why the group has expanded upon the model with this new outing. It’s a two-to-three hour experience for two people traversing a city, mostly unaccompanied and directed by a mobile device that provides video and audio. Unlike en route, it injects the additional element of narrative.

In this case it’s Shakespeare’s notorious ‘problem play’ Measure for Measure. The original’s concerns afford a neat excuse to take participants to the seats of political and religious power as well as less salubrious sites of intrigue. There’s sometimes a sense of the ghost-hunt to it, as scenes from the past play out on the mobile screen in the same location as the participants now stand. There’s also the chance to put yourself in potentially uncomfortable situations, though it’s by no means a necessarily confronting work.

If it lacks something that en route had, it’s likely simply the aspect of novelty that can’t be repeated. Newcomers to the company’s work will probably find that here in spades. A politically problematic narrative is a tough replacement for the sense of wonder I found in the earlier work, however, and it was only after the work had ended that I felt it held together as a translation of Shakespeare’s play that conveyed both its story and internal tensions without being beholden to form or structure.

Hello, Goodbye and Happy Birthday

On paper, Roslyn Oades’ Hello, Goodbye and Happy Birthday might seem the least ambitious of these translations—even closer to mimicry than anything else. It consists of a style of practice she has been developing for some years in which audio interviews are played live in the ears of actors who then incarnate these speakers in real time (see The Power of Listening, Caroline Wake’s interview with Oades in our Women + Performance series, RT123, p33). So, impressions, basically? The result is anything but.

The raw material here is drawn from the words of a disparate group of 18-year-olds and people in their 80s or older. The sheer number of interview hours Oades must have conducted is staggering, given how much of this is rich with character and anecdotal originality. Then again, perhaps it is the constantly engaging energy produced when the live audio feed allows every stutter or hiccup or stumble or giggle to be rendered in a way that would seem artificial in regular theatre but has an absolute authenticity here.

Also key is the way the actors, whose ages must surely span at least 40 or more years themselves, are given the opportunity to play across generations as well as gender and race. Performers with greying hair produce impeccable portraits of awkward adolescents, while those barely out of their teens themselves seem perfectly cast as people whose bodies or minds are beginning to fade. That these are stories without a conventional sense of the dramatic to them doesn’t matter. They are infused with a terrific sense of life rarely felt in a theatre.

2014 Melbourne International Arts Festival: MKA Theatre of New Writing and Darebin Arts Speakeasy, The Trouble With Harry, writer Lachlan Philpott, director Alyson Campbell, design Eugyeene Teh, lighting Rob Sowinski, sound Chris Wenn, Northcote Town Hall, 17 Oct-9 Nov; Brown Cab Productions, My Lover’s Bones, producer John Harvey, design Alison Ross, lighting Lisa Mibus, composer, performer, projection Anna Liebzeit, choreographer, performer Kirk Page, choreographer Alexandra Harrison, video Ainsley Kerr, Footscray Community Arts Centre, 14-18 Oct; one step at a time like this, Since I Suppose, creators Suzanne Kersten, Clair Korobacz, Paul Moir, Julian Rickert, developed through Arts House CultureLAB, 15-26 Oct; Hello, Goodbye and Happy Birthday, director Roslyn Oades, movement Nat Cursio, sound Bob Scott, Russell Goldsmith, lighting Paul Jackson, design Christina Hayes, audio-script editing Roslyn Oades, script dramaturg Raimondo Cortese, Malthouse, Melbourne, 9-26 Oct

IN THE LAST MOMENTS OF LINDA LUKE’S STILL POINT TURNING, LUKE, LIKE A PENDULUM FINALLY ARRESTED, HOLDS HERSELF MOTIONLESS BEFORE THE AUDIENCE. FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKES MINUTES SHE WATCHES US, SWEAT TRICKLING DOWN HER CHEEKS WHILE A TERMINALLY SLOWING HEARTBEAT FORESHADOWS THE INEVITABLE LIGHTS-OUT.

The closing work in Melbourne Festival’s curated dance season, Dance Territories, Still Point Turning’s end-point set up a reverberating final resonance within two double-bill programs that rippled and shimmered together in a remarkable interplay of difference and harmony, touching, as their titles suggest, upon the sacred, the profane, rituals and the notion of ‘now.’

Tony Yap, Yumi Umiumare and Matthew Gingold’s Zero Zero and Belgian company Mossoux-Bonté’s The Coffee Drinkers comprised Program One, The Sacred and the Profane. But while Zero Zero has its sacred elements and The Coffee Drinkers its profane, the pairing was anything but ‘one of each.’

In Zero Zero, Yap and Umiumare perform in apparent opposition, at either end of a long, white strip; by the end they are both lying on the floor, united, ‘sole to sole.’ They are each ‘channels’ of a kind: Yap seems to draw from the chthonic, at times uttering strained half-words or curled foetally on the floor, while Umiumare pays close attention to the everyday—a bowl of water, then a clock radio with chopping, changing stations. Yap’s dance strongly echoes traditional Asian forms; at one point he rises on the balls of his feet in a delicate, ritualised walk, hands tilted upward, watching his arms as pulses of life tremble through them. Sometimes he twists inhumanly, fingers spasmed. He seems to both absorb spiritual forces and control them, like a shaman both undergoing and understanding his possession.

Umiumare, in her quotidian world, seems fascinated by the radio blurting out its banal communications. She tilts her head like an animal, thinking but not-quite-thinking. She mimes cleaning her teeth; the gesture morphs into a controlled frenzy of shoulder-tensing, near-robotic movement. The feeling of ‘possession’ escalates—a possession by forces cultural, technological and other-worldly alike. In a sequence hinting at everything from butoh to ballet she moves like a crazed praying mantis, arms paddling the air; then caught in some invisible wind she begins to saw and flail, breaking into impossibly flowing flings, supplicant one second and dervish the next, ballerina and automaton at once. Throughout the piece, Matthew Gingold’s sound design unites the two dancers like a third body that breathes, gasps and sighs with them, incorporating natural and synthetic sounds from rippling water to tinnitis-inducing high tones or pummelling rumblings. Like the dance, the sound binds the profane and the sacred, which merge and are parsed by turns.

Like Zero Zero, Mossoux-Bonté’s The Coffee Drinkers (Belgium; concept, direction Patrick Bonté, choreography Nicole Mossoux and Patrick Bonté) evinces an uncanny leakage of the chthonic into the banal, though in a quite bizarre setting. Two (eventually three) identically dressed and bewigged women make, pour and consume their coffee at café tables, in gradually unravelling symmetry. To a part-melodic, part-robotic soundtrack befitting their doll-like characters, they pour, stir and sip, discarding pieces of clothing over time in exaggerated, burlesque moves, comically seductive. Their salacious routine increasingly hints at chaos—a serviette wipes a thick brown smear from an armpit, like menstrual discharge; coffee spills and spreads slowly on a table. As the piece evolves, a third dancer joins them, coming to life in a Frankenstein-like creation scene and initiated into the cloned world of the others. The narrative takes odd turnings: at one point the performers pose curiously in half-naked tableaux vivants redolent of cheap lesbian soft-porn, like three strange ‘Graces,’ or (who knows?) ‘Furies.’ Not only does The Coffee Drinkers conjure the ‘other side’—uncanny, dark, disruptive and sexual—it could also be read as either a feminism-inspired refusal of gendered stereotyping or a troubling conflation of woman/nature.

Opening Program Two, Rituals of Now, French choreographer Eléonore Didier’s Solides, Lisboa is an attempt “to stop dance” (program notes). It almost excruciatingly achieves its aim, creating a potent space for emotional affect. Once again ‘the everyday’ provides the work’s jumping-off point: Didier, attired in corporate skirt and jacket, like Mossoux-Bonté’s coffee drinkers, crawls and crab-walks around a bare stage to a soundtrack of city traffic and passing trams, seemingly trapped by her occupation. She appears to cope with the mundane through her deliberate movements; though at times, too, to be pushed and pulled by invisible hands.

In a second scene Didier moves around two props: a large table and a man, passive, who mostly sits at the table with his back to the audience. The light is bright. Didier is naked. She seems to try things out for their own sake: she slowly balls herself up on a chair, moves into a headstand, tilts her legs sideways to rest on the table, and suspends herself beneath it, gripping with hands and feet. Her face shows the stress of repeated attempt, but there’s a chasm between her emotiveness and her body, which she controls like an object, positioned seemingly without meaning. Eventually she places herself on the man’s lap. He gets up and walks as she clings to his upper torso until, unable to keep hanging on, she slides off.

Minimal and painfully paced, Didier’s choreography seems at times almost Dada; uninterpretable. And yet it intensifies something, creating a sequence of ‘stuck’ emotions in one’s own body which resist definition. Not an enjoyable work to watch, but it left a lingering ‘felt’ experience that became comprehensible as an emotional poetics of attempt, vulnerability, diligence and tenacity.

Finally, Linda Luke’s Still Point Turning: a series of collaged scenes, lyrical and strung together by suggestions of both mundane time and the grand cycles of life and death. Luke totters in rocky, uneven shoes like chunks of meteorite, cable-tied to her feet stepping back and forth mechanically to the sound of a voice reflecting on time and stillness. Her costume is part-Baroque and part steam-punk, coat tails and knickerbockers, elegantly ragged. A large pendulum swings back and forth across the stage, its continuity juxtaposed with Luke’s ever-changing movement. Over time, a rear screen delivers moving black bars, lushly opening buds and dying blooms or fuzzy, static ‘snow.’ Shoes discarded, Luke becomes freer, sometimes reminiscent of a curious insect, flower or animal. She turns her coattails out to become bright red petals. Frog-like sounds suggest primordial swamp and seem to subsume her; the pendulum continues to swing.

Ultimately Luke seems to be played by the sounds, natural and unnatural, ticking and spoken alike; she’s strangely expressionistic, jerking like a silent film character. Still Point Turning is theatrical, romantic, full of both play and decay—“for tomorrow we die”? It’s a lush response to the relentless tick of the clock and, equally, to the finite heart beating—the final minutes stunning, as Linda Luke watches us and sweats; reduced to one living body whose time is slowed right down to nil.

Melbourne International Arts Festival & Dancehouse, Dance Territories: The Sacred and the Profane: Zero, Zero, Yumi Umiumare, Tony Yap; Mossoux-Bonté, The Coffee Drinkers (Belgium), 14-15 Oct; Rituals of Now: Eléonore Didier (France), Solides, Lisboa; Linda Luke, Still Point Turning, choreographer, performer Linda Luke, composer Vic McEwan, video Martin Fox, lighting Clytie Smith, costume Justine Shih Pearson, Dancehouse, Melbourne, 17–18 October

A FIELD OF DANCE, SUCH AS POSTMODERN DANCE, IS AN ECOSYSTEM. IT EXISTS IN THE EVERYDAY LIVES OF ITS DANCERS, IN THE BODY OF THE CHOREOGRAPHER, IN THE STUDIO SPACES IN WHICH IT IS ARTICULATED AND KEPT ALIVE, AND IN THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL MILIEU IN WHICH IT THRIVES. IT IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN SIMPLY BE PRESERVED BY FIAT. THIS IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DANCE AND THE VISUAL ARTS. DANCE STAYS ALIVE IN THE BODY OF THE DANCER. THIS MAKES THE HISTORICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF WORK A KIND OF PROBLEM, FOR THE DANCER AND FOR THE AUDIENCE, ESPECIALLY IF THERE HAS BEEN A BREAK IN THE CONTINUITY OF ITS TRANSMISSION.

The Trisha Brown Dance Company has been making and showing work since the 1970s. Although Brown has herself recently retired, the company continues to show work and maintain its repertoire. A certain lineage has been preserved from Brown, the choreographer, through her key dancers and towards the current company line-up. The question of transmission, from body to body, is a rich and complex process however. It’s not just a question of learning the steps. Something also changes in the passage of time. This was quite evident in the performance of Trisha Brown’s signature solo, Watermotor (1978). Although we must rely on archival footage of early performances by Brown, there was a looseness in her hips and a fluidity in her spine that was not so palpable in Neal Beasley’s dancing. Perhaps it was there but didn’t translate in the proscenium arch context of the Victorian Arts Centre, as distinct from its earlier studio incarnations. The performative intimacy of early postmodern dance fosters a greater kinaesthetic empathy on the part of the spectator.

Early Works

This was presumably why the company chose to show its Early Works program in the North Melbourne Meat Market. This was a good idea. There were no fixed seats. The audience was free to roam. We could stand close by, organise our own bodies in relation to the work and find our own solution to the shifting location of the pieces. Many of these short works were puzzles, calling for corporeal solutions. For example, a number of dances involved long sticks which formed an inflexible meeting point and contrast with the body’s softness and mobility. Dancers had to mould their bodies, maintain contact through the wood, balance and transport the sticks. They had to keep their bodies in play, utterly mobile according to the changing demands of the situation. One of the features of these stick dances was the possibility of failure; through loss of contact with the wood or dropping the stick. The visibility of failure, explicitly acknowledged by the performers, opened up a sense of the real time task of the dancing, of the task itself as producing a new kind of virtuosity and visibility. We see the thinking, the puzzle-solving decisions made in the flux of time, new modes of (kin)aesthetic value that emerged from this period of experimentation and innovation.

Pure Movement

The Pure Movement program, performed at the Victorian Arts Centre, was a different kind of animal: visceral, sensual, rhythmically complex, physically demanding though equally gratifying. The Melbourne audience loved these works and rightly so. The dancing was strong and soft in turns, requiring the force to raise a leg, yet also to achieve softness in the torso. The qualitative shift between muscularity and release requires a certain kind of virtuosity, one which can manage differences in the body in quick succession.

Brown also has a distinctive way of crossing space, without any show of effort, eating space in the blink of an eye, yielding to fall with gravity, pick up the fall and reorient it. Son of Gone Fishin’ (1981) had all these qualities. The Grecian folds of its Lurex costumes harmonised with pulsating waves running through the spine. Brown seems to have worked out when to use strength and when to release, how to access muscles and bones so as to play with gravitational force, building on that to create movement sequences embodying a wide range of kinaesthetic qualities.

Her work is relationally complex, playing with time, space, rhythm and the group itself. She also works the perceptual gestalt of the whole space of the stage, including its edges. Newark (1987) implies movement on and offstage. Action is never fully contained within the space; it flickers on the edges, is initiated offstage, producing entrances already in full flight. Les Yeux et l’âme (2011) was surprisingly lyrical, a partner to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s mythic opera. Although romantic and flowing, its rolling, counter-balances, swings, falls and lifts gave an untimely inflexion to the Baroque tenor of the music. The collective transformations of the group produced a range of life forms, inhuman collectivities, at odds with the aristocratic social order of the time, yet somehow harmonious, working new aesthetic configurations out of the old.

Trisha Brown Company has been in existence for over 40 years. Brown has been making work throughout this period, experimenting, creating, collaborating and, above all, dancing. The transmission of her rich legacy is maintained by her key dancers, Carolyn Lucas and Dianne Madden (Associate Artistic Directors), who understand her work through their bodies. The Trisha Brown Company dancers are young. They hail from a different kinaesthetic milieu than existed when Brown created many of these works. This makes for a certain kind of shift in the quality of the dancing, inevitably so. Perhaps this is why theorist Peggy Phelan claims that performance is ephemeral. The performative nature of choreography means that what we see varies according to the dancers whose bodies are themselves the work of time and place. Yet the history of the body is that which gives depth to the work. Trisha Brown created history through finding new ways to elicit movement qualities, to play and produce, compose and deconstruct. It was a great pleasure to see, at last, so many works from such a significant and beautiful choreographer.

Melbourne International Arts Festival: Trisha Brown Dance Company, Trisha Brown, From All Angles: Early Works, North Melbourne Meat Market, 22, 26 Oct; Pure Movement, Melbourne Arts Centre, 23, 25, 26 Oct

VISUAL AND CHOREOGRAPHIC WIT PLAY OFF AGAINST VERBAL EFFUSION IN THE COMPLEXITY OF BELONGING, A VISION OF FRUSTRATED INTIMACY IN A DIGITAL WORLD. THIS IS THE FIFTH COLLABORATION BETWEEN GERMAN PLAYWRIGHT AND DIRECTOR FALK RICHTER AND DUTCH CHOREOGRAPHER ANOUK VAN DIJK, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF CHUNKY MOVE.

A panoramic horizon of dappled grey clouds over outback scrub spans the back of the stage. Onstage are a blank billboard, cameras and microphones, a desk, whiteboard and a scattering of airport chairs. The ‘story’ begins in an international transit lounge, where daily allegiances and coordinates of identity are dissolved. A young woman (Eloise Mignon) observes in these conditions of globalisation a crisis of identity and intimacy. So she launches an investigation, propelling us through a storm of encounters among nine performers: these are enabled by mobile phones and Skype, often projected live onto the billboard. They are also interspersed with, accompanied by and sometimes embodied in, a volatile dance language.

Using their actual names, the five dancers and four actors perform a fiction woven together by Richter from personal stories they offered him. That we cannot trace these seams doesn’t matter; boundaries are fluid (actors dance and dancers act), in favour of a collective maelstrom, a mood of confession, restlessness and stress.

We see the struggles of a romance conducted long distance: its crisis peaks in a meltdown that is lost in a scrambled Skype connection. One dancer (Joel Bray) is probed about his Aboriginality and finds himself either falling short or feeling fake. Another two (and Tara Soh) reflect on their Asian-ness in Australia. And a same-sex couple (Josh Price and Joel Bray) meets all the milestones of romance by phone, leading to a parenting proposal that is delivered (with anxious tenderness) as a Power Point presentation.

There is a shadow to all this, of a zoo-like, United Colours of Benneton effect, of voyeurism or a sentimental notion of the global or urban tribe. But we are referred back to a profusion of particulars, often back to the body. “I need to feel your body,” someone bawls at their lover at one point on Skype. With sometimes grotesque intensity, the confessional rants propel themselves, building to shrillness, then are severed with a trivial quip and dropped, unresolved, into bathos.

Romantic themes recur above all (the question becoming, to whom do I belong?). Lauren Langlois’ monologue on the ‘perfect man’ shows the obscene demands we thrust on the single figure of partner-as-saviour-and-soulmate. As it crescendos, doll-like manipulations are enacted on her by another dancer, turning to drollery. These ironic, playful moments abound throughout. But the enveloping movement in the work as a whole reflects transience, with its temporary clusters that fracture and dissipate, the dancers breaking away as free fragments again and again. (The set and props undergo parallel treatment.)

These ailments of globalisation are in the end addressed with a level gaze, with a suggestion of freedom and reinvention prevailing over stress. And as for digital media, in all its stage presence it exudes paradox, as both a cause and a remedy, an uneasy medium for modern intimacy in itself.

Melbourne International Arts Festival: Melbourne Theatre Company and Chunky Move, Complexity of Belonging, script, direction Falk Richter, choreography, direction Anouk Van Dijk, Southbank Theatre, Melbourne, 6-25 Oct

When the Mountain Changed Its Clothing, Heiner Goebbels, Melbourne International Arts Festival

“WHAT DO LITTLE GIRLS DREAM OF?” “KNIVES, AND BLOOD,” INTONES CARMINA SLOVENICA, A SLOVENIAN CHOIR COMPRISING 40 YOUNG WOMEN AGED 10 TO 18, UNDER THE DIRECTION OF HEINER GOEBBELS.

This blend of innocence and darkness infuses all of When the Mountain Changed its Clothing, a work devised in 2012 that continues to tour the international festival circuit.

There are the vocal textures of the choir, so often in minor keys, droning, warping, sometimes with a hint of horror. Yet these sounds are generated by seeming ingénues in pastel 50s-style skirts and blouses, holding fluffy toys.

Then there is the set, with its square of bright, fake lawn centre-stage, backed by painted nature scenes successively unveiled throughout: a kind of three-dimensional storybook completed by tableaux vivants. But the texts delivered here (ranging from Adelbert Stifter to Ian McEwan to Gertrude Stein) are probing, absurdist dialogues, often interrogations as the choir crowds around a girl or two to examine mortality and lay bare the passage of time.

Despite their surreal and luminous look, many scenes have an earthy, old world feel. A girl visits a neighbour bearing a loaf of bread. Two others sit by a campfire with a small roast on a spit. Two others sit and sew while discussing poverty. At least, at a glance they seem to be sewing, with innate grace and efficiency. But in fact one is eviscerating her teddy bear and the other is bundling the white stuffing into clouds on strings, which they then drift across the lawn while the rest of the choir sings. The loss of innocence is implied in all of this. But so too is the role of youth as the voice of wisdom.

Still another facet of innocence shines in the exuberance of the girls’ physicality. They bustle round the stage like worker bees, rearranging the set between scenes. At one point all 40 gather on the lawn to chant and clap and yelp in vigorous syncopation; and they bring full-throated verve to choral works by Slovenian composers along with Brahms, Sarah Hopkins and Yugoslavian propagandists. Even when a chthonic chill hangs around the fake lawn, their vivacity remains intact. There is vitality, without naivety, in their dramatic presence.

They’re not ingénues after all, I think to myself in those moments. More like sibyls. Poised on the threshold of womanhood, as future mothers they stare beyond the threshold of death. Into history too: “Do you remember when your mother was a little girl?” they ask. This ‘tracking’ and flexing of represented time is the most haunting aspect of the work.

Visually, time’s changes trickle early in the piece, through costuming. Appearing first in contemporary dress, the ensemble gradually and seamlessly rolls back generations, with just a few performers changing at a time. In a group this size, there’s no way to notice individual changes. Instead we witness this mass effect as an unveiling of years, a slow emergence—wonder, an allusion to the title?

When the Mountain Changed its Clothing has no narrative or sense of linearity. Rather, its unfolding feels kaleidoscopic. And in its shifting scenes we watch the play of colour, light and darkness that is present in life’s mysteries and elemental changes.

Melbourne International Arts Festival, Heiner Goebbels and Vocal Theatre Carmina Slovenica, State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne, 23-26 Oct

IT’S BECOME INCREASINGLY COMMON TO CATCH BRAVURA PERFORMANCES DURING MELBOURNE FRINGE THAT ARE AS IMPRESSIVE AS ANYTHING ON OFFER ELSEWHERE DURING THE YEAR. THE REASONS FOR THIS MUST BE MANY, AND MIGHT INCLUDE INCREASING OPPORTUNITIES FOR TRAINING AND PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE FOR PERFORMERS AS WELL AS THE INTEREST SEASONED PROFESSIONALS HAVE IN USING THE FRINGE TO TEST OUT MORE EXPERIMENTAL IDEAS.

I think it’s also to do with an increased cultural literacy among performers, who are able to expose themselves to a breadth and depth of work throughout the year that may not have been available to previous generations.

Everyman and the Pole Dancers

Auto Da Fe Theatre’s Everyman and the Pole Dancers was an example of the tensions between new and old. A confusing excess that highlighted the importance of a sorting principle in any attempt to process centuries of theatrical convention, its own kitchen-sink approach was also part of its anarchic pleasure.

Drawing on the Morality Plays of 15th century England, the work presents a gloriously grotesque family beset on all sides by a fiendish figure who variously assumes roles such as cop, sex worker, psychoanalyst, umpire and others. The family members themselves are just as labile, with mother deciding she is a gay man, grandpa at times apparently channelling a dog spirit, grandma romantically attached to a seven-year-old who also seems a kind of priest, and even the ashes of a deceased grandparent continuing to display the same abilities of reinvention as everyone else.

This carnivalesque spirit can be overwhelming, as is so often the case, and it is Maude Davey who provides almost the only anchor on offer here. Her performance confirms her as a national treasure, both assured and playful enough to allow the rest of the work to stray as much as it does.

Nick: An Accidental Hero

Another Fringe performance with a stellar impact was found in Renee Lyons’ solo show Nick: An Accidental Hero. A recent trend at Melbourne Fringe seems to be the annual inclusion of a solo work from New Zealand that is exquisitely crafted and performed and Lyons is an outstanding example. The work was created around the true story of Nick Chisholm, an Auckland man who suffered a stroke during a rugby match and became afflicted with locked-in syndrome. The narrative here follows the impact this has on a number of people in his life, including the recovering alcoholic who appoints himself carer and a woman from the other side of the world who begins a relationship with Nick over the internet.

Lyons’ accomplishments here are many. She produces uncannily detailed character work that is alternately hilarious and moving, and employs simple theatrical devices to convey urgent medical procedures, the passing of time and the changes in an entire community. She also manages to produce great sympathy for several characters who would essentially be reduced to boofhead roles in many works, but who are indeed central to this narrative. Nick himself is never bestowed with any heroic status, and in fact one of the boldest moves here is in Lyons’ choice never to actually incarnate the work’s central character until a brilliant coup-de-theatre in the production’s final seconds.

Chinese Whispers

The live art work Chinese Whispers also featured a surprise ending that both complemented and went well beyond what preceded it. The bulk of the experience involves a single audience member navigating an installation of billowing white fabric studded at intervals with small vignettes. An accompanying audio track weaves together interviews with survivors of the May 1998 riots in Indonesia, during which ethnic tensions saw the mass rape and murder of many Chinese-Indonesians.

Creator Rani Pramesti’s audio work here is first-class, producing a provocative and heartbreaking tapestry with little unneeded editorialising. The initial presentation was marred by sound-bleed issues, and it’s the kind of overall production that could sorely use funding support to reach the level of excellence it could attain. Its ending, however, was a delight—exiting the maze, each traveller finds themself alone with a performer of ethnic Chinese-Indonesian descent surrounded by Indonesian snacks and treats and invited to partake. What followed, for me at least, was a chat about racism in both Indonesia and Australia that was unexpectedly illuminating and which provided both of its participants with a number of “wait, really???” moments.

Dr Professor Neal Portenza Performs his Own Autopsy Live on Stage…one night only (Obviously)

Such moments are also a starting point for the bizarro comedy of Josh Ladgrove’s alter ego Dr Professor Neal Portenza. Portenza fits somewhat into the already unstable category of art comedy that has swollen in the last decade in Australia and includes performers such as post’s Zoe Coombs-Marr and the former members of Pig Island. Ladgrove’s is a unique entry in the class, bringing a deconstructed type of clowning to the mix and working less with ideas of anti-comedy, deliberate failure and flatness and more with audience dynamics to provide the punchlines.

His Dr Professor Neal Portenza Performs his Own Autopsy Live On Stage… is a masterclass in the form. Its rough structure is a short series of acts he will attempt, but these are merely a hook upon which to hang astonishingly quick-witted moments of audience engagement that build and build until the crowd itself feels emboldened enough to get in on the act. Ladgrove handles his audience so deftly that he is able to dress one member as the good Dr Professor and have them ad lib their own unscripted comedy. On the occasion I visited, this random punter’s routine was as funny as the ‘real’ show that framed it. It’s one thing to produce your own bravura performance, but to evoke one from an onlooker is a kind of magic.

Melbourne Fringe Festival: Auto Da Fe Theatre/Shinjuku Ryozanpaku, Everyman and the Pole Dancers, writer, director Lech Mackiewicz, Installation Naomi Ota, Mechanics Institute, 1-11 Oct; Nick: An Accidental Hero, creator, performer Renee Lyons, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, 19-26 Sept; Chinese Whispers, creator Rani Pramesti, design Shane Thompson, Bluestone Church Arts Space 3, 23-28 Sept; Dr Professor Neal Portenza Performs his Own Autopsy Live on Stage. One Night Only. (Obviously), creator-performer Josh Ladgrove, Tuxedo Cat, Melbourne, 22-8 Sept

A GLIMPSE OF THREE OF THE MORE CROSS-ARTFORM SHOWS AT THIS YEAR’S MELBOURNE FRINGE REVEALED BOTH CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES IN MERGING GENRES AND TECHNOLOGIES, IMMERSING AUDIENCES AND ATTAINING COHERENCE AT THE EDGES OF CONVENTIONAL DRAMATURGY. OSTENSIBLY DEALING WITH SNOW, FIRE AND SOMETHING CALLED THE “CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC INFUNDIBULUM,” ALL EXPLORED TO DIFFERENT DEGREES THE INTERPLAY OF HUMAN SENSES AND THE AGENCY OF BOTH PERFORMERS AND AUDIENCE.

Infundibular

At the high-tech end, the collaborative work Infundibular brought together three dancers with a team of creators including interactive media artist Mark Pedersen, and a curious inflatable set by Stanislav Roudavski. Developed as a series of scenes during a Fringe residency at Dancehouse, Infundibular, according to Pedersen, was loosely ‘retrofitted’ to the narrative of Kurt Vonnegut’s 1959 sci-fi novel The Sirens of Titan. The work moves from an Earth in revolutionary chaos to the imposed control of a Martian Army; explores symbiotic harmony on Mercury; and ultimately plunges into the all-encompassing world of the “infundibulum,” where time, space and destiny mysteriously coalesce.

At the core of Infundibular is Pedersen’s interactive design, a system in which the movement of dancers triggers light or sound, which in turn the dancers respond to, creating human-technological feedback loops (for more on the technology see RealTime’s review of SoundLabyrinth at ISEA 2013: www.realtimearts.net/feature/ISEA2013/11176). Strong image-and-sound impressions are formed on Earth when a dancer attempts to escape an invisible circle, her movements synaesthetically ‘becoming’ the roar of a rioting crowd; and on Mars when advancing dancers are repelled by harsh, audience-triggered static.

Most successful is the Mercury scene, in which a solo dancer attracts diamond-shaped scraps of light on the floor around her—like Vonnegut’s vibration-attracted beings, called “harmoniums” in the novel. As the dancer moves, the lights follow her like sharp, bright creatures, multiplying as the dance progresses, until finally she backs away and leaves them, a swimming gathering of life left behind on the floor.

The infundibulum itself is a giant, translucent worm, inflating slowly for the final scene, like billowing cloud. Once it’s fully inflated, the dancers are able to play inside and outside of it amid shifting light and darkness; it’s an extended, elating moment in which the physical interaction of bodies with the skin of the worm, the light and the moving air become primary. If only we as audience could play too.

Symphony of Strange

Gareth Hart’s Symphony of Strange took a low-tech approach to body/sound interaction, fusing Hart’s improvised choreography with the clamour, song, crunch and howl of some 50 “non-musical instruments,” played by five musicians. Hart’s intention was, he says, “to create an immersive experience that teetered between the decrepit and the delicate.” The result feels subtly synaesthetic, as sounds like crumbling leaves, tearing fabric, escaping air, drummed gas bottles or a scraping hacksaw seem to both set his body into trembling, recoiling or flailing motion, or to be triggered by the motion itself.

Yet Symphony of Strange doesn’t feel like flowing fusion so much as a ritual of sorts. The cavernous Substation venue, lit peripherally by tea-light candles, is set up with ‘stations’ where different interactions take place—a circle of leaves and twigs; an altar-like central platform; and the “junkyard orchestra” at one end of the space—with the audience free to move from station to station. Composer Edward Willoughby’s jagged layering of sounds evokes the arrhythmic patterning of everyday life, feeling strangely ‘natural’ despite the plastic, metal and glass of many of the ‘instruments.’ At one point, well into the work, the musicians smash light globes into a box, the sound of glass shards shifting the mood suddenly into one of beautiful destruction. On the night I attend, a strong wind brilliantly augments the ‘orchestra,’ adding the metallic clamour of the roof iron to the cacophony of human-played instruments.

Snow—a quiet circus

Skye Gellmann is building a reputation with his stripped-back, participatory circus shows—his previous work Blindside (with Kieran Law) had audience members fumbling in the dark with smartphones, seeking out sounds in gloomy corners in between watching Chinese pole tricks. His new work, Snow—a quiet circus, eschews technology in favour of large quantities of butchers’ paper, more pole tricks and, for much of the show, silence. The audience wears earplugs; not to suppress a loud soundtrack (nor the slash of metal-guitar from the nearby rock venue), but because, as Gellmann tells us at the start, if we pause first and adjust to the silence “the ringing in your ears becomes the soundtrack.”

Snow proceeds with a mix of audience games and circus tricks, focused around a central pole covered in taped layers of paper that are torn down over time. Gellmann, ever keen to get his gear off, it seems, performs naked for much of the show, as in Blindside—though what draws our gaze is his physical power and control, especially in managing to perform on the paper-clad pole, with that inkling of ‘calm fear’ in his focus. In one entrancing sequence, Gellmann repeatedly pirouettes and slips from a rolling ball. A moving Grecian statue, all torque and form and marble skin, he displays playfulness, virtuosity, attempt and failure all at once. From the ‘live-art’ participatory perspective, Snow’s high point is the ‘snowball fight’ that Gellmann orchestrates: the audience balls up paper into rounded clumps and goes for it with the abandon of several dozen primary school kids let loose in their thermals and mittens. Faint giggles, ripping paper and the thud of feet on the polished floor seep through the earplugs.

Infundibular, Snow and Symphony of Strange are all ambitious in their merging of technologies and artforms, opening up sensual, cross-genre and synaesthetic territories that firmly invite further exploration. All three shows might have been stronger with concentrated direction (none credits a director, as such); as an audience member there were moments of wanting to be more involved, or feeling involved but somehow distant, ‘invited in’ and yet still separate. It will be great to see how these artform and body/tech crossings crystallise, either in further iterations of these shows or in the future works by these creators.

2014 Melbourne Fringe Festival: Infundibular, choreography Rachael Heller-Wagner, Ashlee Bye, Moriya Rosenberg, interaction design Mark Pedersen, music Jess Keefe, Camille Robinson, Roger Alsop, visual projection Travis Cox; Dancehouse, 25-28 Sept; Gareth Hart, Symphony of Strange, choreographer, performer Gareth Hart, composer, performer Edward Willoughby, performers Alex Elbery, Alex Gates, Justine Walsh, Stephen Weir; The Substation, 30 Sept-4 Oct;Skye Gellmann, Snow—a quiet circus, artist Skye Gellman; The Melba Spiegeltent, Melbourne, 1–5 October

HELD AT THE FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE, THE WARREN-LIKE STRUCTURE OF SANDSTONE, COURTYARDS AND GARDENS OF A RE-PURPOSED MENTAL ASYLUM, THIS YEAR’S PROXIMITY FESTIVAL MICRO-PERFORMANCES TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE VENUE’S HISTORY, QUIRKS AND HIDDEN CORNERS. PERFORMANCES HAVE BEEN THEMATICALLY CURATED INTO GROUPS OF FOUR EACH FOR PROGRAMS A, B AND C, EASILY FOUND WITH THE AID OF THE UNIQUE GUIDING PROGRAM FOR EACH PARTICIPANT, COMPLETE WITH A MARKED VENUE MAP, AND THE STRATEGICALLY LOCATED, HELPFUL USHERS. TIMEKEEPING IS ENFORCED BY A SYSTEM OF HANDBELLS, RUNG PRECISELY ACROSS THE SITE TO SIGNAL THE START AND END TIMES OF EACH PIECE.

Program A is the top pick for anyone unfamiliar with one-on-one performance. It’s full of new experiences, providing plenty of interesting moments to share afterwards—learning to twerk, teaching someone to drive, crafting a clitoris out of sweets and undergoing an interview for the right to stay in Australia. Each of these presentations delivers more than its basic premise, but the standout work is Toyi-Toyi Theatre’s The Queue where you are reduced to just another item on the list of tasks for the presenter to process, the emotional challenge amplified by its contrast with the friendly interactions with other presenters in the program.

By the door is a stack of clipboards, with pens. On the bell, I obediently fill in a government-style form, only to be interrupted by the door opening and an impatient Tarryn Runkel telling me to skip through it but to pay attention to the last page and sign my acceptance of the condition that to fail this Right to Stay interview will result in deportation to my “home country” without the right to see my friends or family here again. I sign. I am tested on my knowledge of Australian history, slang and how to pass in Aussie Rules football. Physical tests include arbitrary complexion and hair inspection, the piece climaxing with a modern version of the notorious dictation test before the inevitable stamping with “DEPORTED” and brisk removal out the door. The personal and political merge, my sensation of helplessness and outraged reaction exacerbated when I realised that the relief I felt at having failed stemmed from racist assumptions.

Program B is the choice for the thoughtful participant, open to new ideas and challenges to engage in mindful activities. Experiences encompass a workout session completed while sharing a specially designed suit with the trainer, an invitation to embark on an emotional fast, a dialogue in the language of flowers and an intimate experiment in generating oxytocin. Each piece requires full engagement to be effective, and each continues to provide food for thought long after the final bell.

Of this program, Tetherweight (for Adrian Howells) stands out as the most challenging work, an antithesis of traditional performance in its demands for an introspective response from each audience member, and yet perfectly executed in this celebration of one-on-one performance. The initial knocking at the door, the soothing music selection, James Berlyn’s gentle voice in the darkness and a heaped pile of clocks all create a waking dream. The carefully scripted text, with its references to “the swing,” makes it natural to move onto the tilted gym equipment, which is set in motion in pitch blackness. The swing, unobtrusively evoking emotional states with its movement, creates a sensation of weightlessness while simultaneously combining the comfort of a cradle and the thrill of a rollercoaster. Moving to a quiet space to write, I accept the invitation to record what triggers strong positive and negative emotions in me and to place it in an envelope as a gift to my future self. Accepting Berlyn’s proposal to commence an emotional fast, I leave with an anklet gently offered to mark its beginning. I am feeling incredibly refreshed and a little dream-laden, as after deep meditation.

Program C has most to offer to those accustomed to one-on-one performance, happy to dive deep into its potential for surrealism. All pieces play on sensation and perception, with a bar offering tastings of air from different eras, a physical challenge to attempt tasks while deprived of selected evolutionary advantages, wafts of scent unfolding an unsolved mystery and a bombardment of words travelling through time before the entry of a surprise dance partner.

Each of Program C’s presenters show mastery of the intimacy and mind manipulation possible with a single audience member, but Dance with Me amazes on two fronts. Sylvia Rimat creates an intimate experience without being physically present, and then shocks me by introducing a dancing wolf.

I enter a sparsely furnished room, dismissing the disembodied voice that greets me on entry as a recording, until it describes my physical appearance. Following the voice’s instructions, I find myself performing innocuous tasks such as sitting at a table, adjusting a light and pouring water. Pressing ‘play’ on a cassette recorder introduces overlapping voices: instructions together with descriptions of people from bygone times in an increasingly dense and hallucinatory auditory experience. As I obediently feel the texture of a wall and read a note about hot shrimp from a pile of crumpled pages, suddenly the measured voice of a man is twinned with the order to pick up a glass and break it over his head. More voices crowd in, filling the empty room lit only by a table lamp, before a blast of music and flare of light from hitherto unnoticed stage lights. A side door opens and a slim figure, bearing the head and neck of a wolf, lightly dances its way in front of the lights before standing by me, inviting me to dance. We take simple steps, gradually moving into an old fashioned waltz, the bulging plastic eyes of the mask looking deeply into my eyes with an odd sense of intimacy.

The music ends, the wolf bows and leaves, the lights fade and a bell rings… I leave the room and its whispers to return to the calm ushers and excited participants mingling in the corridors.

Proximity Festival 2014, co-curator, producer Sarah Rowbottam, co-curator Kelli Mccluskey, artists James Berlyn, Caroline Garcia, Jen Jamieson, Cat Jones, Loren Kronemyer, Tanya Lee, Emily Parsons-Lord, Sylvia Rimat, Hallie Shellam, Ian Sinclair, Alina Tang and Toyi-Toyi Theatre; Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle, 22 Oct-2 Nov

CARRIAGEWORKS GROWS AND GROWS, VERY EFFECTIVELY INHABITING THE ADDITIONAL SPACE IT’S BOLDLY TAKEN ON AND ENLARGING ITS PROGRAM ANNUALLY INTO WHAT INCREASINGLY FEELS LIKE A YEAR-ROUND CONTEMPORARY ARTS FESTIVAL. ABOVE ALL, THROUGH ITS OWN INITIATIVES AND THOSE CO-INSTIGATED WITH AN EXPANDING NUMBER OF PARTNERS, ITS PROGRAM IS UNDERPINNED BY LONG-TERM CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT, NURTURING NEW WORKS AND EXHIBITIONS ACROSS TWO TO THREE YEARS FOR FUTURE ANNUAL PROGRAMS. AN OTHERWISE EXUBERANT LISA HAVILAH, GUIDING ME THROUGH HER FOURTH PROGRAM, MODESTLY DECLARES, “I THINK WE’RE GETTING MORE GROWN UP AS WE GO ALONG. MATURING SLOWLY.”

24 Frames per Second

Central to the year is a program of screen-based works “at the nexus of dance, film and visual arts” by 18 Australian and six overseas artists. Principally supported by the Australia Council it’s titled 24 Frames per Second and has been three years in the making. The list of participants represents a striking cross-section of adventurous Australian art making: Tony Albert and Stephen Page, Alison Currie, Nat Cursio and Daniel Crooks, Brian Fuata, Antony Hamilton and Byron Perry, Vicki Van Hout, Sophie Hyde and Restless Dance Theatre, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Murphy, James Newitt, David Rosetzky, S Shakthidharan, Aimee Smith, Latai Taumoepeau, Christian Thompson, Lizzie Thomson, Branch Nebula (Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters) and Khaled Sabsabi. The international artists are Siobhan Davies and David Hinton (UK), François Chaignaud (France), Ho Tzu Nyen (Singapore), Sriwhana Spong (NZ) and leading international choreographer Saburo Teshigawara (Japan).

Havilah tells me, “The screen-based work we’ve commissioned from Teshigawara is based on Broken Lights, the work he presented at the 2014 Ruhrtriennale” for which he made a large shallow internally lit box full of broken glass on which the dancer performs with the choreographer’s trademark ecstatic slowness.

Havilah is emphatic, “24 Frames per Second is delivering the Australia Council [$300,000] Screen Dance Initiative. I hope that it really talks about all that’s happening (in dance on screen) which has changed so much. I hope this program will challenge some of those who see visual arts as co-opting dance” (see “Was there dancing?” RT123, p29). 24 Frames per Second will also feature live performances at the opening of the show which will be exhibited over three months and doubtless attract a large audience well beyond dance fanciers and visual arts lovers.

Ryoji Ikeda

“We’re really excited,” says Havilah, “to be bringing Ryoji Ikeda back for his first-ever live performance, Superposition (see p3), an Australian premiere in partnership with Adelaide’s OzAsia festival. You’ll enter a one and a half hour live performance in the huge Bay 17 with two performers onstage who do the live video mixing for, I think, about 40 screens with text, sound and Ryoji Ikeda ‘things.’ That’s in September.” Carriageworks presented Ikeda’s datamatics [ver 2.0] as part of ISEA2013 (go to ISEA2013 on the Features pages of www.realtimearts.net) drawing a huge audience onto the magnificent projected grid that mutated magically beneath their feet.

Ho Tzu Nyen, Ten Thousand Tigers

“We’ve partnered with The Esplanade in Singapore, the Asian Art Centre in Guangzhou and Vienna’s Wiener Festwochen,” says Havilah, “to bring this amazing new work, Ten Thousand Tigers, by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen to Australia. He’s created large-scale video works for the Venice Biennale and has also been in the Auckland Triennale, but this is a one-hour live work with performers, many screens and objects. “An ensemble of automated objects come to life and recount the tale of the Malayan Tiger’s numerous deaths and returns across a thousand years” (press release).

Zhang Huan, Sydney Buddha

Further connecting us with Asian culture, Carriageworks begins the year with Sydney Buddha, a work by Chinese artist Zhang Huan showing as part of the 2015 Sydney Festival. “It’s been shown in only three other places around the world,” says Havilah, “and continues our commitment to mounting large-scale visual art works. In the past we’ve hosted Brook Andrew, Song Dong and Christian Boltanski. Zhang Huan hasn’t had a major installation like this in Sydney. He just had a big survey show at Storm King Art Centre in the US, which was incredible.”

Michael Tuffery & The Royal Samoan Police Band

This new work, Siamani Samoa, is by Michael Tuffery a New Zealand-based printmaker, painter and sculptor of Samoan, Rarotongan and Tahitian heritage whom Havilah had worked with at Campbelltown Arts Centre. The work continues her commitment to bringing the art of the South Pacific to Australia, as she has done with the three productions of dance works by Lemi Ponifasio’s Mau over as many years. “Tuffery is collaborating with the Royal Samoan Police Band who we’re bringing to Sydney on their first-ever international tour. The work will be a fully immersive projection installation work in Bay 17 and includes a series of four live performances by the band. ‘Siamani’ means ‘German’ and it’s about the centenary of the end of the German occupation of Samoa. Every day the police band marches down the main street of Apia playing traditional German music—so the German influence is still very strong. In Samoa it’s a very positive story of colonisation.”

Carriageworks residents

One of Carriageworks’ great strengths is its resident organisations—Performance Space, Erth, Force Majeure, Marrugeku and Stalker—now joined by Sydney Chamber Opera, Felix Media and the Aboriginal theatre company Moogahlin Performing Arts. Havilah says, “There’s more and more collaboration between Carriageworks and the resident companies in terms of commissioning new work and co-investing in major works, which you’ll see throughout the 2015 program. The amazing Sydney Chamber Opera will present with us the world premiere of an opera by composer Elliott Gyger and librettist Pierce Wilcox based on David Malouf’s classic novel Fly Away Peter, with Imara Savage directing.”

Force Majeure, Nothing to Lose

Havilah is proud to have co-commissioned with Sydney Festival Nothing to Lose, the final work for Force Majeure by artistic director Kate Champion. “We’ve been supporting this work through all of its development right up to presentation. I think it will be a festival highlight.” In a society preoccupied with ideal body shape, anorexia and obesity, there’s little room for a nuanced response to the stereotyping of ‘fat’ bodies as obese and ugly. Champion has collaborated with artist and “fat activist” Kelli Jean Drinkwater “to celebrate the sculptural splendour of the large dancing body.”

Performance Space

Carriageworks’ partnership with Performance Space continues with the co-commissioning of a Jonathan Jones installation and presentation of the performance event Day for Night in collaboration with the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. “The first one last year was very successful. A new range of artists will be in the 2015 incarnation—Matthew Day, White Drummer Nell, Emma May, Técha Noble from the Kingpins and Bhenji Ra—curated by Jeff Khan and Emma Price.” Performance Space will soon launch its own 2015 program (see RT125).

Faithful to Redfern

With Redfern still a hub for Aboriginal culture, despite impinging development, Havilah is resolute: “We’ve tried to stay as true as possible to the whole vision that we started with in terms of reflecting the social and cultural demographic of the place in which we’re located, Redfern. We’re investing more in our Aboriginal arts strategy and in new contemporary Indigenous work. With Moogahlin we’ll present the second Yellamundie National Aboriginal Playwriting Festival, continue our three-year relationship with NAISDA and present Stephen Page’s re-imagining of Ochres (1995) for Bangarra on the work’s 21st anniversary as well as Jonathan Jones’ new installation. This will be the first time we’ve worked with Bangarra. Each year we sponsor an Aboriginal artist at our Park Road Studios in Alexandria. This year it’s dancer Ghenoa Gela. And next year it will be Microwave Jenny and the year after, Tony Albert.”

New Music

Louis Garrick, formerly of Sydney Chamber Opera, is Carriageworks’ new music curator. Havilah says, “He’s established a relationship with Brisbane-based Lawrence English’s Room 40. For their 15th anniversary, we’ll be presenting Open Frame, a two-day program” featuring potent composer-musician-visual artists Grouper (Liz Harris & Paul Clipson,(US) and William Basinski (US) plus fellow looper and installation artist Austin Bucket (AUS).

Branch Nebula, Wade Marynowsky, Xavier le Roy

Havilah is pleased that Artwork commissioned by Carriageworks for Sydney performance company Branch Nebula is coming to fruition: “This is a really experimental work, employing people who have never been onstage before performing a series of tasks directed by Branch Nebula. There’s also the premiere of Prehistoric Aquarium, a new work from Erth and of Wade Marynowsky’s Robot Opera, which has been developed with Branch Nebula from the artist’s Nostalgia for Obsolete Futures. As well Carriageworks will have its first collaboration with Kaldor Public Art Projects, presenting French choreographer Xavier Le Roy’s Self Unfinished.”

In-Development 2015-16

Carriageworks’ In-Development 2015-16 program includes commissions for a major work by American artist Nick Cave, a dance work with Kristina Chan, composer James Brown and designer Clare Britton; a project about the history of the Redfern Block [for 2017] with commissioned artists Vernon Ah Kee, Kev Carmody, Romaine Moreton and Warwick Thornton; and we’re partnering Marrugeku’s Cut the Sky and supporting Milk Crate Theatre on the creation of a new work. We’re also a partner in the new Art and the Moving Image Commission, between Adelaide Film Festival, Samstag Museum and University of Western Australia with the first new media work [currently being filmed in Iran] by Hossein Valamanesh. The producer is Brigid Ikin of Felix Media, one of our new resident companies.”

Disability Arts Strategy

We conclude our meeting with Havilah telling me about the importance of Carriageworks’ Disability Arts Strategy coming into play in 2015: “We have a mission to commission 10 new works over five years from the Disability Arts sector. The first will be a new piece by Rosie Dennis called A Simple Infinity and then Phillip Channels from Dance Integrated Australia will create a new work with Force Majeure. It’s about having a structured program that provides pathways for artists with a disability into contemporary practice.”

Carriageworks has radically increased its audiences over several years and staged commercial events (Fashion Week, Sydney Contemporary) which financially benefit the overall program while not being culturally removed from the organisation’s ethos. It feels that maturation is coming fast, underpinned by a cogent vision, partnerships and collaborations that address a wide spectrum of contemporary art practices and, not least, needs—for artists and audiences who deserve the best. All praise to Lisa Havilah and her dedicated staff.

Allora & Calzadilla, Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy, No.1 2008, modified Bechstein, installation View: Gladstone Gallery, New York

David Regen © Allora & Calzadilla, courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Allora & Calzadilla, Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy, No.1 2008, modified Bechstein, installation View: Gladstone Gallery, New York

NO BREEZING THROUGH THIS SHOW. YOU’LL NEED HOURS, MAYBE DAYS. IN PERFORMANCE NOW, A COLLECTION OF SIGNIFICANT WORKS WILL BE SIMULTANEOUSLY EXHIBITED ON SCREEN IN THE MUSEUM. THEY COMPRISE VARIOUSLY BRISK, EPISODIC AND DURATIONAL CREATIONS—SERIOUS, WITTY AND PROVOCATIVE—BY PERFORMANCE ARTISTS, VISUAL ARTISTS WITH AN INCLINATION TO PERFORM (OR HAVE OTHERS DO IT FOR THEM) AND FILM, VIDEO, THEATRE AND DANCE MAKERS, EXPANDING OUR SENSE OF WHAT COMPRISES PERFORMANCE TODAY.

While some films and videos document significant performance art works, others are stand-alone exemplars of inventive interplay between performance and video art/filmmaking. Most have been made since 2000. The show is co-organized by Independent Curators International, New York, and Performa, the influential biennial of performance art organized by performance art scholar and curator RoseLee Goldberg. Goldberg, author of Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present (1979) is a former director of the Royal College of Art (RCA) Gallery in London, curator at The Kitchen in New York and teaches at New York University. Performance Now is the logical extension of her many years of staging exhibitions and symposia and encouraging extensive archiving. Above all, this widely travelled show is evidence of growing interest in performance art and in new kinds of art performance that overlap with a diversity of live art practices.

Performance Art itself made a comeback in the 2000s, with Marina Abramovic centrestage, training a new generation of artists and wielding commercial clout. A limited edition video of her 1977 work Imponderabilia, with partner Ulay, sold to galleries and private collectors for 180,000 euros a copy at the 2012 Art Basel. Gallerist Sean Kelly promotionally re-staged the work at the narrow entrance to his booth, requiring those entering to squeeze, as in the original, between two still, naked performers.

In Sydney in 2013 The Kaldor Project’s 13 Rooms (RT115, p5-7) excited the public imagination and angered others who felt performance art had been turned into a sideshow with live art entertainments and overly managed durational works. In the same year, Mike Parr in Daydream Island kept his body and its tortured durability centrestage but added a surprising theatricality (RT120, p5). Performance art is mutating—Parr was an early venturer in transmitting his work Malevich online in real time from Artspace where he was performing in 2002 (RT52, p28).

Just where the internet will take performance art has yet to be seen, but it will doubtless be partly judged in the same terms that screen documentation used to be: that it devalues the primacy of the body and the liveness of the performance by favouring the screen itself. Performance Now, with its mix of documentation and works that can only exist as film (like William Kentridge’s animations) will challenge doubters. Of course, as some performances become screenworks, they also become collaborative, with performers relying on the skills of others. The original, highly individualistic impulse of performance art—rejecting the commercialisation of art and the dominance of galleries by turning to the authenticity of the body—is still with us, but the forms it can take have been extended, as has its reach. Tino Sehgal is certainly keeping to the spirit of the pioneers—even as he rakes in the dollars (sales figures not disclosed)—accepting only verbal contracts for his works which are driven by spoken instructions and must not be documented, thus retaining immediacy and still highly-prized ephemerality.

Marina Abramovic performing Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965) performance; 7 Easy Pieces, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2005

At the centre of Performance Now, certainly in terms of viewing hours as well as influence, is Marina Abramovic, soon to visit Australia again. She appears in the documentation of her Guggenheim Museum seven-day, seven hours per day Seven Easy Pieces (2005) in which she “channelled” performance art greats in classic works: Bruce Nauman (Body Pressure, 1974), Vito Acconci (Seedbed, 1972), Valie Export (Action Pants: Genital Panic, 1969), Gina Pane (The Conditioning, 1973), and Joseph Beuys (How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, 1965). These are shown alongside Entering the Other Side (2005) and Lips of Thomas (1975) in which the ingredients are the artist naked, red wine and honey (to be consumed), flagellation (self-applied), cutting (a pentagram into the stomach) and an ice cross. These works are shown unedited, simultaneously and the screens arranged in a circle—an interesting way to deal with focusing and switching attention with onscreen durational works.

Among video works is the laidback, sitcom-ish (pay attention to the dialogue) activism of Stealing Beauty (2007) by Guy Ben-Ner whose fun critique of consumerism and the nuclear family features the artist, his wife and children illicitly inhabiting IKEA display rooms in various countries. Stealing Beauty resonates nicely with the family in Kevin Wilson’s very funny novel The Family Fang (Picador, 2011) in which children are trapped in their artist parents’ interventions. The Ben-Ner kids however seem fine, but you do wonder.

In Christian Jankowski’s Rooftop Routine (2007), citizens of New York’s Chinatown happily hula-hoop on rooftops—so can you with the hula-hoops provided in the gallery.

In darker territory, choreographer Jérôme Bel’s Véronique Doisneau (2009) features a corp de ballet Paris Opera ballerina who simply talks about her career and the torturous conditions in which she works. In Ryan Trecartin’s acclaimed video A Family Finds Entertainment (2004) “a black-toothed kid named Skippy (played by Trecartin) borrows money from his parents, is filmed by a documentary filmmaker, is hit by a car, then filmed again as he lies in the road…his soul seems to rise from his body when it hears the sounds of a rocking house party” (program note).

William Kentridge, Drawing Lesson 47 (Interview for New York Studio School) 2010, Single-channel video, colour, sound, 4 min., 48 sec.

Elsewhere in Performance Now, William Kentridge stages an interview between his ‘good’ and ‘bad’ selves in Drawing Lesson 47 (Interview for New York Studio School) (2010) deploying his virtuosic animation skills in which the world constantly reconfigures. Another South African artist, Nandipha Mntambo, reflects darkly on colonial violence by playing a male Mozambiquean bullfighter preparing to fight in an abandoned Portuguese arena in the brief film Ukungenisa (2008).

These are just a few indicative examples of the range of art making involved in Performance Now, a show that demands pilgrimage from across Australia and all the durational immersion you can gladly muster.

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Art Museum, Performance Now, 6 Dec 2014-1 March 2015, Brisbane

I TELL DAVID SEFTON THAT I THINK HIS 2015 ADELAIDE FESTIVAL PROGRAM HAS MORE THAN A TOUCH OF THE LATERAL ABOUT IT, INCLUDING OSAKA’S OPERATIC NOISE, STRINGS, PIANOS AND VOCALS BAND VAMPILLIA. HE LAUGHS, “I THINK I’VE GOT ALL POINTS COVERED THIS YEAR.”

Blinc

“Actually, you took the words right out of my mouth! Blinc, for example, is a massive, free, digital art expo we’re doing on the river and surrounding areas. It’s not just ephemera or ‘look at the shiny lights;’ this is a curated exhibition, an A-list of digital artists that just happens to be outdoors. It’s like a survey show of the latest in digital art—artists like Tony Oursler, who’s just had a major gallery show in London and whose work will be on Pinky Flat next to the Adelaide Oval here. It will be on free every night of the festival alongside the broadest ever showing in Australia of the work of Bill Viola, arguably the world’s greatest video artist.” Including Oursler, the Blinc contingent numbers 20 artists from Europe, the USA and Japan with works that range from laser projection to intimate interactives. Although Australian artists, so strong in this field, are strangely, and disappointingly, absent, it’s good to see electronic arts centre-stage in an arts festival.

Bill Viola

In contrast with last year’s epics—John Zorn and The Roman Tragedies—Sefton declares, “we’ve taken a different definition of ‘spectacular,’” as programming Blinc indicates. Bill Viola will be showing in three spaces: “in a gallery, in the cathedral and in a theatre space—because it was the only venue with a ceiling tall enough to fit the nine-metre high video screens. I’ve just seen his latest work in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Because spirituality is so much a part of what he does, churches tend to be good places to see the work. I’m doing a platform discussion with Viola over the opening weekend.”

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet

On the dance front, Sefton has focused on one company with two large-scale programs. “Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet from New York is an extraordinary entity insofar as they are a fully funded American dance company. That’s almost a contradiction now in that culture. They have one patron who enables them to cherry pick the best dancers in America and the world’s greatest choreographers as well. They’re a company I’d worked with in the US and we’ve been in discussion for a couple of years. They’re quite a young company in the scheme of things. We’re doing two major projects with them: one is a triple-bill with Jiri Kylian, Crystal Pite and Hofesh Shechter works made for the company. The other project is a whole evening’s work made for them by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. So it’s a huge commitment from us to one company in their first and exclusive Australian appearance.”

Gavin Bryars

Music is one of David Sefton’s great passions. I ask him where it’s taken him for his 2015 program. After the magnificent John Zorn tribute in 2014 (RT120, p20), Sefton has this time secured the presence of another great artist—UK bassist, improviser and post-minimalist composer Gavin Bryars—in a sizeable program of his works. “It’s not that he’s never been to Australia before but his ensemble hasn’t and the breadth of his work has never really been seen and heard here. He’ll be a kind of composer-in-residence for the festival. The symphonic Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet is obviously a signature work with Bryars conducting the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

“His ensemble will do a concert on their own and then one with guests including Song Company from Sydney, whom he’s worked with before—he’s a big fan. That concert will feature for the first time in Australia the suite of Tom Waits’ songs Bryars arranged at Waits’ invitation. We’ll also stage one of his operas—Marilyn Forever—another important aspect of Bryars’ work. It’s a chamber opera based on the life of Marilyn Monroe that’s only ever been seen in Canada where it was commissioned. Again, these works will be staged across a range of venues—the Town Hall, Elder Hall for his Ensemble concerts and ABC Studio 520 for the opera.

Unsound Adelaide

A challenging but popular dimension of Sefton’s Adelaide Festivals has been the international Unsound music program. Sefton says, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I do like to change the look of the festival but in this case it’s such a rich seam of places to go with the electronic music world, there’s absolutely no reason not to continue it. Even though I was inordinately happy with the first two I feel like this is the strongest one. The program includes Forest Swords (UK), Shackleton (UK), Lawrence English (AUS), Vatican Shadow (US) and a work from Robin Fox (AUS) and Atom™ (Germany), which is a commission between us and the Polish branch of Unsound. We were able to get Fushitsusha (JAPAN) to come, led by rock experimentalist Keiji Heino—that’s a huge deal in the new music world. And there’s The Bug from the UK. We’ve ventured more into slightly clubbier territory for the first time. Basically the best way to describe a group like Model 500 is Detroit Kraftwerk.”

Tommy

Oddly for an international arts festival, there are two musicals, of a kind, in the 2015 program. Sefton admits, “I’m on record as saying I’m not a person that likes musicals and now, ironically I end up with two in the festival.” One is the re-imagining of The Who’s Tommy with producer Hal Willner at the helm—the other is Fela!, the concert version of the Broadway show featuring the work of Afrobeat master Fela Kuti. “The conversation about programming Tommy has been going on for something like six years. Eric Mingus came to me when I was still in Los Angeles and said, ‘Look, I wasn’t quite sure where to take this idea so I thought I’d come to you.’ Turns out for the best part of the previous decade he had been in communication with Pete Townshend about creating his version of Tommy. It seemed such an unlikely proposition but Pete Townshend has been 100% behind the idea from the start and has been working on it with Eric remotely. It never happened in Los Angeles and we got lucky because it is the 50th anniversary of The Who next year.

“It’s along the lines of an elaborate semi-staged concert with multiple guests. Hal Willner is known for that—the Leonard Cohen Came So Far For Beauty concert and so on. Eric is a much under-rated composer and arranger in his own right. He’s completely re-scoring Tommy for a jazz band—but with quite unconventional forces. He’s the musical director of the project. He’ll also take some of the singing roles because he’s got a fantastic voice. And, like his father [the great jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus], his instrument is the bass. So he’ll be performing, arranging and singing. There are about half a dozen guest-singers.”

Kid Koala, Nufonia Must Fall

Fans of Montreal’s Kid Koala will be ecstatic; the virtuoso scratch DJ, music producer and graphic comic book artist will be presenting an onstage version of his book Nufonia Must Fall. Sefton tells me, “There’ll be a dozen small puppetry stages projected onto a large screen over the artists and performed to a score—played by Kid Koala and the Alfara String Quartet—which I’ve heard and which is beautiful. He’s on the road as a turntablist in Australia in the month before the festival.” The production is directed by KK Barrett, the designer for Spike Jonze’s feature film Her (RT120, p28).

La Merda

A work on the 2015 program I’d not heard of was La Merda. I ask Sefton where he found it. “I saw the show in Edinburgh three years ago and it completely knocked me sideways. Silvia Gallerano tours the world with it and has won a string of awards. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” I ask if it’s a confessional monologue. “Its like somebody allowing you to take the top of her head off to get a glimpse of a terrifying mind.”

Other monologues include the State Theatre Company’s Beckett Triptych (Footfalls with Pamela Rabe, Eh Joe with Paul Blackwell, Krapp’s Last Tape with Peter Carroll), Riverrun, from Ireland, which features the writing of James Joyce and Big Mouth’s SmallWaR (Belgium) about the nature of war, in a live/digital mix. “At the other end of the spectrum,” says Sefton, “we have Dylan Thomas—Return Journey(UK), another extraordinary performance. It’s the official Dylan Thomas centenary show remounted at the request of the estate. So the program’s ended up exploring the range of things that can be monologue.”

David Chisholm’s The Experiment

Australian composer David Chisholm’s The Experiment to a script by UK playwright Mark Ravenhill is a Major Festivals co-commission with the Sydney Festival and a work, Sefton thinks, “the Unsound audience should really come to.” There’s an electric guitarist—Chilean Mauricio Carrasco—centre-stage, performers, images by Emmanuel Berndoux and media art by Australian Matthew Gingold: “It’s very much a cohesive multimedia piece, and unsettling. It’s unquestionably a total theatre piece.” The work asks if we’d experiment on a child at the risk of their life if we thought it would save thousands more.

Chiara Guidi, Jack and the Beanstalk

In another work involving Australians in an international collaboration, Chiara Guidi of Italy’s Societas Raffaello Sanzio has created Jack and the Beanstalk with Australia’s Jeff Stein, Erth Visual and Physical Theatre and Insite Arts from a commission by Campbelltown Arts Centre and Adelaide Festival. This vivid work for and about children, who participate directly in it, visit the ogre’s incredible, towering cardboard home, encounter “slinky worm creatures,” a golden goose and the ogre himself—“a chilling apparition shrieking the kind of blackness you just might find in nightmares.” Bryoni Trezise concluded her appreciative review with the observation that “The children in the room…seem[ed] unnervingly content with this bleak but complex image of themselves” (RT 122, p42).

There’s a final recommendation from David Sefton: “When I got this job I did tell the powers that be here that there wasn’t any way I saw myself putting on anything in the Entertainment Centre because that’s not what I do. And then Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton appeared on my radar and I thought well, never say never. The composer will be conducting but he also actually sings. Not many shows can claim that. There aren’t many things I’d consider cool enough to put into a 6,000-seat venue but I think in this case I’m prepared to make an exception.”

BY WAY OF EXPLAINING THE SOUND/UNSOUND COMPONENT OF HIS 2015 SYDNEY FESTIVAL AT CARRIAGEWORKS, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR LIEVEN BERTELS FILLS ME IN ON HIS BACKGROUND IN AND PASSION FOR MUSIC AND SOUND ART, WHICH IS EVIDENT IN OTHER WORKS IN THE PROGRAM: THE KITCHEN, PUNCTURE, ATOMIC BOMB, ON THE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF TOBACCO AND DARKNESS AND LIGHT. BUT IT’S MORE THAN MUSIC: IT’S MUSIC IN THE MIX OF INSTALLATION, THEATRE, SCREEN AND DANCE.

Bertels comes from a background of classical music and sound art, having trained in the late 80s, early 90s as a musicologist and composer at the University of Durham where there was a state of the art electro-acoustic studio at the time of the transition from analogue to digital. After graduating with his second master’s degree in 1994 he abandoned the notion of pursuing a career in composition, “but it gave me insight into sound art and a love of the manual labour, the craftsmanship of composing.” The same period was rich with postmodern diversity, opening Bertels’ listening, confirmed and expanded by the invention of “the democratising MP3”—often surprising himself with things he has stored and plays randomly.

Sound/On Sound

Bertels kindly offers me a copy of Recovery/Discovery, 40 Years of Surround Electronic Music in the UK (2008), a CD he conceived and produced featuring composers Jonathan Harvey, Harrison Birtwistle, Javier Alvarez and Mira Calix. Calix is a key guest in the 2015 Sydney Festival with an installation at Carriageworks as part of Bertels’ Sound/On Sound program. He notes, “It’s not the first time it’s happened but the convergence between theatre, installation art, music making in its concert form and electronic music consumption is significant. There are people in the visual arts who essentially make sound art installations, like Janet Cardiff. Others come from DJing and hip hop.”

Mira Calix

“Mira Calix started as a sound artist musician on WARP,” says Bertels, “a very important label in the early 90s in electronica and still the label for people like Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. She was the only woman on that label. I got to know her when I was at the Brugge Concertgebouw and I co-commissioned a work which combined the music of Steve Reich and Phillip Glass with Squarepusher, Aphex Twin and Mira Calix—real name Chantal Passamonte—who did a piece for the string players of London Sinfonietta and 100 live crickets, which we had to source—nice challenge! So we had a terrarium full of crickets and we needed to give her control over it because she knew the crickets would sing at a different speed depending on the temperature. She could then orchestrate the sound of the crickets and the speed of their ‘beating’ (or whatever you call it) to the music, which was beautiful.” It was then that Bertels invited Calix to be part of Recovery/Discovery and, subsequently, she expressed an interest in coming to Australia to do an installation, having been taken with a novella by Australian journalist and editor Brett Clegg—“a kind of stream-of-consciousness text called Inside There Falls. Clegg listens to a lot of electronic music and is a fan of Mira Calix and had managed to trace her email and sent her this text. She was fascinated by it, and wrote to him asking ‘what do you want me to do with this because I love it? Can we do something together?’ Then it was a matter of what they wanted—a big space to build an installation that would research these boundaries of concert performance, dance, installation and sound art. It is, of course, a leap of faith. This is the kind of risk you want to take in a festival.” Calix also wanted a live physical dimension for the installation so she approached Rafael Bonachela, inspired by what he had done in the Kaldor Project’s 13 Rooms.

“There’s an antechamber where you wait until there’s a group of about 20 and then enter as a group into Bay 17—the big space which will be transformed into a giant paper labyrinth you wander through, discovering elements of sound and text as well as encountering dance interventions.” Access to the work is free and there’s a tactile tour for the blind on 17 January.

Tamara Saulwick, Endings

There are two other commissions. Endings, commissioned by Sydney Festival, Arts House and Performance Space, is Melbourne performer Tamara Saulwick’s new work. By way of background Bertels recalls that when Edison patented the phonograph he didn’t foresee its future as delivering music: “The first two uses he listed were to record the words of famous people and of dying people as mementos. And now, 125 years later, how many people would feel comfortable about [recording] their dying relatives? It’s very confronting because the voice is way more personal than an image. It’s fascinating because at the same time it’s intangible. Sound memory is not very precise. If I try and remember the voice of my father it’s very hard. I can recognise it, just like a smell, but you can’t bring it back, you can’t recreate it. So that’s what Tamara Saulwick is working with—all kinds of sound recordings that have to do with endings. She’s cutting her own acetates and pressing the LPs she will use onstage in quite a ritualistic, theatrical kind of way.”

David Chisholm, The Experiment

The other commission—from Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals through the Major Festivals Initiative—is The Experiment by Melbourne composer David Chisholm, founder and director of the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music. Bertels says, “He’s a composer who’s very dear to me and should be heard way more often. I tried to get him to the Holland Festival before I came here. He’s a 21st century version of an Australian larrikin: witty, funny, outspoken. He’s also got an amazing sense for drama. The subject matter in The Experiment is essentially ethical: if you were close to solving a massive medical issue but you knew you had to kill a child, would you do it? He’s chosen a 19th century musical theatre form called monodrama—essentially spoken word and instrumental music. A guitarist performs in an installation with electronic sound. It’s a performative work with a beginning and an end but inside an installation as if we were part of the experiment.”

Greg Barrett, SpongeBob SquareTimes

“This is a very funny little work, also quite melancholic and very beautiful. It’s a bit of an experiment.” It’s the work of well-known Australian dance photographer Greg Barrett who lives between Melbourne, Palm Beach in Sydney and New York where “he had a fancy new camera which caught on video one of those sad buskers, like those who impersonate Disney characters. This was a SpongeBob character—and not engaging at all successfully. And that’s what he filmed for 48 minutes—a guy unsuccessfully trying to make some money until finally a family engages with him and gives him a few dollars. When Greg saw this footage he said he felt this was something he wanted to present as an installation with music that reflects loneliness for him—one of the seminal minimalist music pieces from Europe, Canto Ostinato by Simeon ten Holt, a piece for anything from two to eight pianos. So Greg chose to present it as two player pianos, two pianolas, to reflect that loneliness. I’ve just received from the Simeon ten Holt estate a MIDI version played for us by two people to be programmed onto massive Yamaha Disklaviers, the modern player pianos. The installation will be two lonely pianos playing with the video.”

Bernard Foccroulle, Lynette Wallworth, Darkness and Light

Darkness and Light, another work connecting Australian and European artists (and commissioning partners), is a double projection screen work by Lynette Wallworth with music by Sofia Gubaidalina (the show’s title comes from a work of the composer who proudly describes her self as half-Tartar, half-Slav”), Bach, Buxtehude, Messiaen and rising star Toshio Hosokawa played by Belgian organ virtuoso, Bernard Foccroulle, the director of the Aix en Provence Opera Festival. “In this collaboration,” says Bertels, “the challenge has been to balance music and video because “your brain needs 85% of its capacity to decode the image [which means] you’re not listening any more. The artists presented the work for the re-inauguration of the organ at Royal Festival Hall in London and then took it to Brussels.” Wallworth’s expansive projections, drawing on the Australian landscape and NASA astronomical film footage, will doubtless resonate powerfully, if subtly, with the Sydney Town Hall organ.

Theatre Des Bouffes du Nord, On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco

Another of Bertels’ other music-oriented recommendations is Theatre Des Bouffes du Nord (the Peter Brook company) with its On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco, adapted from the Chekhov story to music by Bach, Tchaikovsky and Luciano Berio. It’s smaller than previous festival works Semele Walk (2012) and Dido and Aeneas (2014), says Bertels, but in line with his commitment to blending live music with theatre. “This is a good example because it’s part Chekhov monologue and part concert on a very high level and there is a very funny, classy actor in it, Michel Robin, who is 83 years old who, in daily life, walks with a walking frame but onstage suddenly shakes off 20 years.” I ask how the music is integrated with the monologue. “As little interventions by three schoolgirls in ornate 19th century frocks designed by Christian Lacroix. They sing, they play piano and violin and interact with the man.” Chekov’s subject should be delivering a talk to us about the evils of tobacco but finds himself ranting about his domestic situation.

Atomic Bomb, The Music of William Onyeabor

“Another show with music we’re very proud of is Atomic Bomb,” says Bertels. “On his record label Luaka Bop, David Byrne released a compilation of the surviving albums of a really enigmatic and slightly odd Nigerian musician from the 80s called William Onyeabor. He’s still alive, a newborn Christian now, and doesn’t necessarily want to perform his own music any more. But Byrne did, with NY-based African musician Sinkane, Onyeabor’s original backing vocalists and guests. It transferred to London where Byrne’s MC role was taken by Damon Albarn from Gorillaz. We wondered who would be right in Australia and we approached Gotye, who is between albums and working on new material and was very keen to perform.”

Vicki Van Hout, Long Grass

A likely highlight in this year’s About an Hour program at the Seymour Centre will be Indigenous choreographer Vicki Van Hout’s Long Grass. An idiosyncratic artist who draws on Aboriginal and modern dance traditions and has an acute theatrical sensibility and design eye, Van Hout engages in this new work with the lives and culture of Indigenous people who live on the streets and in the parks of a modern city, Darwin, where they are perceived to be homeless, without character and are labelled “Long Grassers.” Bertels says, “the work looked very promising from the first workshop version. At the end of this festival, [we’ll have presented] 30 new Australian works over these three years—as presenting partners, or commissioning or co-commissioning. We didn’t commission Long Grass but it’s a very important work for us because of its Indigenous elements but also that kind of small-scale experimental dance doesn’t have a lot of outlets.”

More in About an Hour

Other shows in About an Hour include the hyper-physical theatre work The Long Pigs (RT120, p42; from Melbourne), featuring a trio of nasty clowns in search of a lost nose with bloody consequences; Perth-based The Last Great Hunt’s Falling Through Clouds; and shows from the USA—Adrienne Truscott’s Asking for It, a scathing exploration of rape language in the everyday and especially in comedy—and from Ireland, Have I No Mouth, in which a family and their real-life therapist deal with a death.

Also on at the Seymour Centre will be Australian Theatre Forum, curated by David Williams, featuring conversations and provocations on the role theatre has in shaping our culture.

Force Majeure, Nothing to Lose

Another Australian dance work is Force Majeure’s Nothing to Lose—a Carriageworks and Sydney Festival co-commission and the last of the exiting artistic director Kate Champion’s productions for her company. It focuses on body weight, body aesthetics and dance. Local artist and “fat activist” Kelli Jean Drinkwater is Champion’s collaborator and Torres Strait Islander dancer Ghenoa Gela is providing additional choreography. Bertels tells me, “Champion workshopped with a number of people with very large bodies and explored all the language around being fat—‘obese,’ ‘oversize’ etc—and the work taps into the meanings quite beautifully. Kate’s strength is she’s good at making ensemble dance pieces that also tell important stories.” Like Long Grass, Nothing to Lose should be a ‘must see.’

Legs on the Wall, FORM and VOX Choir: Puncture

Puncture is set on a dance floor—in the broadest sense—as the site for masked ball, tango, fox trot, mosh pit, classical and pop dancing—on a monumental scale with 12 dancers (led by Kristina Chan and Joshua Thomson to choreography by Kathryn Puie) with the Sydney Philharmonia Vox Youth Choir and percussionist Bree van Reyk performing a score composed and arranged by Stefan Gregory that ranges from Monteverdi to Madonna. As well, there’ll be the physical theatre you’d expect from Legs, electronics by Bob Scott and video by Mic Gruchy. Pina Bausch’s dance-hall Kontaktoff it won’t be but a work with something to say on its own terms about the social and ritualistic nature of dance, dramatically puncturing formal dancing with the styles that have constantly challenged and sometimes corrupted it.

Roysten Abel, The Kitchen

In the footsteps of the sold-out The Manganiya Seduction in 2010 with its wall of Indian musicians comes The Kitchen. “Again, it’s a work with a simple dramaturgical arc,” says Bertels, “building energy through music. What’s new here is that there’s a story. A couple are cooking a temple sweet from Kerala, the region where Roysten Abel, the director, comes from, which will be served to the audience at the end. The idea is that you need to be ‘cooked’ to get ready for life. The aromas of the cooking will waft out over the audience as it takes in wonderful music from 12 drummers.” Also in the festival’s 2015 program is ancient Kandyan dance from Sri Lanka in Dancing for the Gods.

Urban Theatre Projects, Bankstown

For Campbelltown Arts Centre and the 2011 Sydney Festival Rosie Dennis created MINTO:LIVE (RT101, p16) in suburban outer Sydney. In 2014 Karen Therese created FUNPARK (RT119, p15) in Bidwell, Western Sydney. These works effectively brought together local and visiting artists and communities. For the 2015 festival, Dennis, now artistic director of Urban Theatre Projects, presents Bankstown: Live, a four-hour, four-day event featuring nine new works created in collaboration with local residents who have offered their homes as the sites for performance, screen and audio works or the telling of their own family histories.

Alwin Reamillo and locals will build a bamboo house that will be carried through the streets “in homage to Bayanihan, a Filipino tradition of the community helping to re-locate people from one village to another” (press release). Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s novel The Tribe about three generations of a local refugee Lebanese Muslim sect and their difficult place in the community has been adapted for performance by Janice Muller. Rosie Dennis’ documentary film Bre & Back focuses on Indigenous motherhood and cultural leadership. Emma Saunders is leading The Bankstown Dancing Project, working weekly with locals to prepare for dancing publicly on Northam Street and singer Sofia Brous and some great UK musicians will perform an array of local lullabies in Lullaby Movement. And there’s much more in what will doubtless be a revealing and embracing event.

As this mere sampling of a huge program indicates, Lieven Bertels’ third Sydney Festival is rich in cultural diversity and experiments in form and collaboration where adventurous Australian artists figure prominently.

FOR OVER A DECADE NOW THE ALICE SPRINGS DESERT FESTIVAL HAS GATHERED ARTISTS AND PERFORMERS FROM AUSTRALIA AND ABROAD FOR A FIVE-DAY SHOWCASE IN THE RED CENTRE. IT’S A SMALL AND INTIMATE AFFAIR WITH A LOT OF INTERACTION BETWEEN PERFORMERS AND THEIR AUDIENCES. IT IS ALSO A CHANCE FOR NEW AND LOCAL ARTISTS TO PRESENT WORK ALONGSIDE MORE ESTABLISHED ACTS.

As with a lot of art from this part of the world the desert landscape played a role in some of this year’s offerings and one performance in particular explored the human interaction with the dry river that runs through town.

Out Hear in Alice Springs

For thousands of years the Todd River and its underground aquifers have given life to the various people and animals that inhabit Central Australia. For most of the year, however, the Todd is a dry sandy riverbed, devoid of surface water. It is a silent but often neglected reminder of how life in this part of the world is inextricably linked to this precious resource. In a series of performances called Out Hear in Alice, artist-musician Dale Gorfinkel and performer Fina Po used the dry river as both a stage and a medium to create an audio and visual experience that evoked the gurgling and bubbling soundscape of water and of the indifferent human interactions with the river.

Audiences walk along the river on a wordless tour of a series of sound and performance stations. At some of these stations Gorfinkel has assembled a scrappy looking collection of rubber hoses, bits of wire and empty bottles to create a water-themed soundscape. We listen to the bubbling sounds of ping-pong balls bouncing up and down inside discarded plastic bottles with tiny electric motors attached to them. The gentle bubbling and humming mesh beautifully with the melodic pulsing of the birds in the trees above. At another station we find Po walking frantically in a tight circle as she mesmerically recites a series of simple phone conversations. While this mindless melodrama unfolds Gorfinkel uses a simple foot pump to push sound through a kind of pipe organ he has buried in the sand. The rubber hoses capped with tin horns and empty wine bottles at first emit a grating, choking sound but as Gorfinkel adjusts the valves he transforms the cacophony into a deep and resonant pulse that drowns out the actor with the phone.

Walking between stations Gorfinkel keeps up a steady gurgling hum by blowing sound out through a brass horn that he has attached to an extended rubber nozzle. Approaching the penultimate station we watch Po’s character talk herself to death in a shallow grave and Gorfinkel literally burying her with sound by using the end of his horn to cover her body in sand. The Saturday performance of Out Hear ended with a wonderfully unplanned exchange as Gorfinkel’s soft sounds were drowned out by an aggressive white cockatoo who screeched from a tree in his part of the river.

The Package

Part of the Desert Festival’s mission is to showcase local talent. This year audiences were treated to a touching tribute to life and memory with the premiere of The Package. This hybrid of mask work and puppetry is the creation of Alice Springs artist Katlend Griffin, the 2014 recipient of the Arts Incubator Award, a grant designed especially to foster the work of local artists for presentation at the festival.

Through music, dance and puppetry The Package illuminates the final moments and the lifetime of memories of a dying woman. The action starts with the sorrowful sounds of an accordion as a frail elderly woman lifts herself onto a hospital bed at the centre of the stage. After a seemingly grim diagnosis from her doctor a puppet bird arrives and urges the dying woman to open up one of the cardboard boxes that have started to pile up around her bed.

From the first box the woman removes a doll and her demeanour begins to brighten. A red-haired girl puppet appears, plays with the doll and grows older in a series of memory-vignettes staged by two performers alternating roles as actor and puppeteer. At one point the girl emerges from the box with a young man beside her. They are naked and both display ridiculously large genitalia. In the old woman’s mind features like these seem to bear enormous significance; later when the puppet of the pregnant young woman gives birth to a ridiculously large baby we witness a similar effect in the memory’s ability to distort. In the end, the elderly lady lifts an old and nearly lifeless puppet from the boxes—she is holding herself and is ready to say goodbye.

Griffin’s The Package is a both sorrowful and playful musing on life’s transitions and the retention and manipulation of memory. Its positive reception affirms the value of fostering such homegrown productions and sets a standard for similar projects in years to come.

Alice Springs Desert Festival: The Package, creator Katlend Griffin, Red Hot Arts Incubator Program, Totem Theatre, 11 Sept; Out Hear in Alice Springs, artist, musician Dale Gorfinkel, performer Fina Po, Alice Springs, 13, 14 Sept

“IMAGINE YOUR SOUL, THEN, AS TIMBER; YOUR MIND META-MORPHOSED TO MYRTLE; YOUR LIFE A FOREST OF THESIS AND CHANT. WALKING HERE, AMONG ELDERS, MAKES A GARDEN OF ME; I AM CURATED, TENDED AND CONSERVED.”

These words from poet Mark Tredinnick capture the essence of this year’s Siteworks at Bundanon, and are displayed in the Singleman’s Hut by artist Janet Laurence as part of her long-term major project Treelines Track. The work is a new commission in partnership with Landcare Australia that “tells stories” through the planting of trees (once there, but no longer) in a new conversation with their native surrounds.

Reflecting on Tredinnick’s thought meditation, I see it as one response to activist Naomi Klein’s request that “we need to think differently, radically differently” if we are to effect some kind of change in the face of a worsening, potentially irrecuperable environmental crisis. For Klein it is necessary to address the failings of capitalism; for the scientists, ecologists and artists that gathered in the kangaroo and wombat-clad hills of beautiful Bundanon, the need is to look to imagination, our capacity for empathy toward earth and other species and the evocation of deeper perceptual structures, where we watch, listen and feel differently.

From curated discussions, disciplinary exchanges, creative collaborations in situ and immersive bush and river walks, the weekend’s cliffhanger for me was the dilemma of individually ‘knowing how’ to change, but ‘not knowing how’ to change collectively, as a global community. Both science and everyday experience evidence a heating planet, rising sea levels, natural disasters and loss of biodiversity. We are at a point where, as climate change ecologist Brendan Mackey soberly announced, “all the numbers have been crunched.” Whether we believe in some variation of the ‘holocene’ age where humanity and its damaging effects are understood as a ‘mere blip’ in this particular epoch of earth’s history (it’s only a matter of time until the land asks us to leave), or we invest in the virtues of the ‘anthropocene’ where human impact is all pervading, entailing responsibility, the promise of solutions, and more sinisterly, control, the commitment to change comes not from defending a position, but from allowing ourselves to feel, think and reflect differently. Siteworks continues to be a unique forum that gently reminds the most converted of us to do so.

Art is a way to blur conceptual boundaries. Rosemary Laing’s The Paper (exhibited as stills) reflects both epochal views in her carpeting of the bush floor with “truckloads” of newspaper pulp: human impact is everywhere and effaced by bush regeneration.

The Earth Law conference co-convened by Michelle Maloney and Jules Livingstone of Australian Earth Law Alliance, Tess De Quincey and Tom Rivard took place on Friday. The brainstorming session involved experts from the fields of science, arts, the law, education and finance who distilled topics for Siteworks attendees (1,100 registered for 2014) to discuss in small rotating groups during Saturday’s main conversation “Finding our Place in the Anthropocene”, hosted with wit by science journalist Robyn Williams. The main panel with Dr Shane Norrish (Landcare Australia), Michelle Maloney and Mindjingbal man Clarence Slockee (Education Officer, Sydney Botanic Gardens, who appears on Gardening Australia) was lively and informative. Each reflected on what a “sense of place” means to them, localising recognition and the effects of the anthropocene and the reimagining of our laws to support a deeper connectivity with the plants, animals and land through “earth jurisprudence.”

On the performance trail we first gather under the hovering drone used in Leon Cmielewski and Josephine Starrs’ site-specific work Dancing with Drones. Performer Alison Plevey reproduces, with slight delay, the movement we see projected onto a screen, shot overhead by the same drone in various locations at Bundanon. The footage is composited as a split image, juxtaposed with black and white footage of Plevey taken from a human standpoint. Here, the colour footage taken by the craft sensitively records nuanced movements of the dancer in a vertical duet, reconstituting the role of the drone as filmmaker, rather than as an instrument surveilling a target.

De Quincey Co’s Mountain and Water draws us to the banks of the pond between Henry’s Bridge and the Jetty. A hunched, squatting figure (Victoria Hunt) emerges from the inky black heaped in a robe of colours, intensifying the beginnings of vertical ascension and layering of ancestors. From within the cacophony of frogs, we hear Amanda Stewart’s voice, a word here a phrase there and sound from musicians Jim Denley and Dale Garfinkel. I think of the absurd logics of consumption: an ugly mountain of incoherency. The slamming of words together provokes normative thoughts: how should we live? From across the water, a leaking angel (Peter Fraser) floats towards us arcing and flooded with light. Boundaries, borders and membranes are transcended.

From the banks we return to the homestead to the projected 3D-structural drawings of Creature (Stalker Theatre and UTS Creativity & Cognition Studios). Water birds, wombats and sugar gliders swell and swirl into being, dissolving from their edges. Fixated we anticipate emerging forms in gasps of delight. A live dancer disturbs the particles with large sweeping extensions. Creatures disappear. Audience are invited to interact, make their impact; the anthropocene felt.

Black Nectar (Keith Armstrong, Lawrence English, Luke Lickfold) asks us to deepen our perceptual listening and seeing in the darkness of Bundanon’s Amphitheatre. Minimising the thick, noisy content of everyday experience, our attentiveness to the life of the bush is sharpened. In procession we are led to await the appearance of fibre optic lights in a subtle choreography drawing on the complex flowering patterns of the Eucalypt nectar that affects the migratory trails of the Grey Headed Flying Bat (mapped by Peggy Eby). Sonically the sounds of the bush are thickened. Only to the local ear, or one who listens carefully, can the layering of amplified and introduced birdcalls and insects be detected in vibratory channels of momentary electronic noise. Black Nectar exposes the perceptual tunnels we seek comfort in and with which we veil our ignorance.

The evening ends with Nigel Kellaway on piano viewed through the window of the homestead (15 Short Scenes on the Dichterliebe) and swaying with red wine in plastic cups to the convivial tunes of Olive and Concetta (Annette Tesoriero and Cathie Travers) under a marquee. Then it’s off to the Biopod for one lucky person who floats the night away in Nigel Helyer’s “micro-architectural structure.” Tiny spaces have an interesting effect on the senses: expanding, shrinking, amplifying or confusing. Helyer emphasises the aural experience in this “overnight acoustic vigil for a single person” who adds their narrative to the “capsule’s log” in a digital archive. Here the imaginary re-flavours reality: Who are we? Where are we?

Sunday culminates with a number of Bioblitz walks, activities focused on Citizen Science whereby amateurs collectively look, find and record an array of flora and fauna local to the property, adding this documentation to the Atlas of Living Australia. By Sunday afternoon with the city’s grip on my senses loosened, I was able to listen intently and capture the unique movement and colour of feathery creatures bouncing from tree to tree; and closely inspect, taste, touch and learn of the historical and cultural uses of plants, flowers and fruits with Clive Freeman on the Indigenous Plant Use Walk.

Siteworks is an event where one can imagine the soul as timber, and feel sensuously engaged with the surroundings within an expertly framed conversation. If only all Australians could be given the opportunity to reprioritise their energies and be opened by such experiences, we might begin to sustain the earth in return.

CHINA: FAVOURED DESTINATION OF TRADE DELEGATIONS, THE FOCUS OF OUR HARDEST FOUGHT FREE TRADE DEAL AND THE BEDROCK OF THE ASIAN CENTURY. THE CLICHÉS GO ON. YET FOR ALL THE POLITICAL RHETORIC AND ACRES OF PRINT PRODUCED ABOUT THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC, IT’S CLEAR THAT MOST AUSTRALIANS—OUR POLITICIANS INCLUDED—KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT THE PLACE, ITS HISTORY OR ITS CULTURE. AND WITH ONE EXCEPTION, NO AUSTRALIAN DOCUMENTARY MAKER HAS PRODUCED A SUSTAINED BODY OF WORK FOCUSED ON CHINA. THAT EXCEPTION IS NICK TORRENS.

Torrens’ fourth and latest China-focused work, China’s 3 Dreams, is also his most ambitious, adopting a deep-focus historical take on the country’s contemporary situation. The main thread follows the attempts of Zhang Lei, a troubled young café owner and single mother in Chongqing, central China, to unravel her family’s traumatic history. Her tale is contrasted with another Chongqing couple as they struggle to buy an apartment and achieve their material ambitions on minimal wages.

For anyone who has spent time in China, the vacuum of historical knowledge among the younger generations is striking. At one level history is everywhere, as the state trumpets “5,000 years of civilisation” on a daily basis and Japanese wartime atrocities are replayed nightly on television. But ask anyone under 40 what happened during Mao’s reign or in the 1980s, and you’re unlikely to receive more than the sketchiest of answers.

“I wondered what the impact of that lack of historical knowledge might be on the future for all of us, not just China,” muses Torrens. “What effect will that have on China and on the West when the current generation become leaders?”

A millennium-old community in Chongqing known as Ciqikou seemed to offer the possibility of finding a way into answering these questions, but it took Torrens two years to find a local who could help with his quest. It took the same time again to gain her trust. “Zhang Lei wasn’t going to open up right at the beginning,” explains the director. “She felt different from her contemporaries. She felt alone, unhappy, and thought love had been devalued by contemporary developments. The story became her gradually understanding that the way she felt was based on the problems of China’s past—the Anti-Rightist Movement of the 1950s that put her Grandfather away for 22 years, and the Cultural Revolution that was responsible for the ‘bad parenting,’ as she put it, that she experienced. Then she realised the whole of China has this story. So maybe it’s a national problem.”

Although several independent Chinese documentaries have delved into similar issues, it’s rare for a film by an outsider to tackle the complex historical questions posed by China’s 3 Dreams. The film could perhaps have benefitted from more time unpicking Zhang Lei’s story and less time on the parallel tale of the house-seeking young couple. The rather superficial treatment of the couple’s dreams makes them appear somewhat facile next to Zhang’s troubled ruminations, which is possibly a disservice to their struggles and aspirations.

Nonetheless, Torrens’ film is far more nuanced and complex than much of the simplistic documentary work on China produced in the West—a result of the many years Torrens spent on the project, and the three China-related films he made before this one.

Hong Kong as a bridgehead

“It was Hong Kong that started my interest in China,” explains Torrens, recalling his first film made in what was then a British colony in 1984. “I was learning every second of every day about a whole new culture,” he says of his first weeks there. “Then I couldn’t leave it alone.”

Torrens’ initial time in Hong Kong produced Running From the Ghost, an observational work about poor Chinese struggling in the cracks of the colony’s burgeoning economy of the 1980s. Viewed today, the film provides a fascinating snapshot of a time when sprawling shantytowns occupied land on Hong Kong Island now worth millions. The film is also a reminder that many of the urbanisation problems presently being experienced on the mainland were evident in British Hong Kong during earlier decades.

Torrens’ friendship with a local Hong Kong businessman, Vincent Lee, provided the focus of his next film, and a bridge into the vast land over Hong Kong’s border. As the territory approached its handover to China in 1997, Lee and his Canadian business partner Mart Bakal began looking for ways to grab a piece of the Chinese economy, already in the midst of a boom. Torrens traced their efforts across two films, the hour-long To Get Rich is Glorious (1998) and the feature-length The Men Who Would Conquer China (2004).

Through Vincent Lee, these documentaries provide a rare glimpse into the inner workings of one of the mega-rich families that dominate Hong Kong, and the often contradictory ways in which they view mainland China. Even more eye-opening for a Western audience is the naivety of Mart Bakal, a North American businessman who seems to regard it as his mission to bend China to Western capitalism. The lack of reflection underlying Bakal’s actions and comments in the films is breathtaking, but it’s a testament to Torrens’ skill that he got these businessmen to open up so unselfconsciously for his camera.

The end of a documentary tradition?

Torrens’ work, in both its style and prolonged attention on a particular place, sits in a tradition of independent Australian documentary making established by directors like Dennis O’Rourke and the partnership of Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson in the 1970s and 80s. Across a series of films, these filmmakers probed the cultures of our neighbours in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific and the complexities of our relationship with these societies. Despite this illustrious heritage, and the fact that China’s 3 Dreams is Torrens’ strongest and most insightful China work, it’s also the film that he has had most difficulty getting to audiences.

“I went too long past the time television wanted these films,” Torrens comments ruefully. “When I started on this project [in the late 1990s] these kinds of films were very viable, but broadcasters no longer want open-ended, layered documentaries. They want factual entertainment with a formula and narrator.”

Although the two premiere screenings of China’s 3 Dreams at the 2014 Sydney Film Festival sold out within days, no local broadcaster has purchased the film. Torrens claims that current commissioning and purchasing practises at the ABC and SBS mean a whole tradition of Australian documentary making is in danger of being strangled—or at least being cut off from much of its audience. “With the public broadcasters’ embrace of commercial imperatives, a whole approach to open-minded filmmaking is really forever lost,” he claims.

If we are serious about so-called “Asian literacy,” then films like China’s 3 Dream should be the mainstay of Australian television documentary. At the very least, films like this provide welcome relief from the endless cooking programs that now pass for serious engagement with other cultures on SBS. More importantly for our local documentary sector, committed filmmakers like Nick Torrens should be recognised and supported as the leading cultural figures they are. Unfortunately, they are more often made to feel like pallbearers for our incredibly rich independent documentary tradition.

ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS’ NEW NATIONAL STADIUM FOR THE 2020 TOKYO OLYMPICS IS DECLARED TO BE “A PIECE OF THE CITY’S FABRIC, AND URBAN CONNECTOR WHICH ENHANCES AND MODULATES PEOPLE MOVING THROUGH THE SITE FROM DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS AND POINTS OF ACCESS.” TOKYOITES ARE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE BULLDOZING OF ONE OF JAPAN’S MOST IMPORTANT PSYCHO-CULTURAL EDIFICES OF THE POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION.

The original National Stadium is the ground zero of Japan’s rebirth for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. It’s where Katsuhiro Otomo sites Neo-Tokyo 31 years after the Third Nuclear War in his anime allegory for Japan’s mid-Showa era of advanced industrialisation, Akira (serialised 1982-1990). He famously compared the stadium’s concave black hole to a convex white detonation, suggesting that Bubble-era Japan was doomed to karmic cycles of decimation.

In this sense, the National Stadium is a sacred site. ZHA’s New National Stadium misses this point: instead of accepting negative space as form, it negates space to construct form. It tolls the bell for a diminishing spatial respect for which Japan is renowned. A wake of sorts was held at the original National Stadium. But it wasn’t organised by city planners or architects, or even sports people. Over two days and nights, a stellar array of Japanese pop and rock artists staged a festival to honour one of the major venues for live music in Japan. Broadcast by BS-SPTV and NHK World, the stand-out performance was by Perfume: a trio of Idol singers from Hiroshima who in the later 2000s became Japan’s most successful ‘Techno-Pop’ band, crossing over from being a pure Idol invention into a group produced by Yasutaka Nakata (originally from one of the key Shibuya Pop groups of the late 90s, Capsule). For Love Japan Night, Perfume performed a selection of their hits in modified presentation from their earlier tours, which cannily resonated with the significance of the event and its site.

Prior to the band’s entrance, three giant screens stand spread across the stage. On the side screens, a circle is drawn in phosphorescent lines. It quickly becomes a pair of cross-hairs, rotating and tilting, transforming into a portal from which a teeming waterfall of light shoots upwards. Typical of anime physics, everything is reversed, as a zillion particles form an energy beam which distorts gravity. From this reconstructed zone, six stiletto shoes appear. The audience screams in delight; Perfume are in the house. Neither live nor living just yet, they’re being invented and constructed before our ears and eyes. In a vertically rising reverse strip-tease, the stilettos grow feet, calves, thighs. The light intensifies, as does the cheering crowd. At crotch-height, a cloud of blinding light particles rises, then morphs into the glowing upper-body silhouettes of the three members of Perfume: Nocchi, Kashiyuka and A~chan. There they now stand, thin waifs of vaporous wire-frame form, each with hair resembling a perfect wig: short, medium, long. Molecular transporting in Star Trek was never this erotic.

The glow of the three formed bodies is reduced as they stand, silent and faceless. They’re transparent cellular creatures from fathomless oceanic digitalia, born of light, now rendered as exo-shapes. Then, a red heart beats in each of them, recalling the red beating orb of Neo-Tokyo in Akira. In perfect synch to their joint pulse, a battalion of glow-sticks in the audience throbs red (itself an amazing technical feat of wireless convergence). Everything glows red for flashing seconds with each heart beat. This isn’t just Perfume as a band: this is symbolic of life being created, stimulating the audience as part of the ritual. Their life forms fade into black, leaving only the three red hearts.

After a second of silence, the side screens blast us with giant close-ups of the faces of Perfume. Head and shoulders like an ad for hair conditioner. Faces bleached and glowing white like the creation of the fake Maria in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1925). In vocoded tones they chime: “Welcome To The New Arrival.” The audience knows the track well: “Edge” from their 2009 album Triangle. It was claimed to be their 80s- inspired album, but like all such projects, it’s completely of its own era. A phalanx of bass-synths percolating in a mix of pseudo-analogue warbling and sharp digital grunting straddles three decades of synth programming in a recombinant DNA effect of what in Japan is called “Techno Pop.”

To this instrumental opening, the three screens create a wide panorama of tilting neon-tubes, like a Dan Flavin exhibition shot through a kaleidoscope. This is Perfume’s music visualised appropriately as a network of patterns—interlaced, braided, convolved, matrixed. It sounds like Kraftwerk put through an aural kaleidoscope. Then in the centre stage, three six-metre tall light boxes are pushed out from the centre screen. They each show a life-size video image of Nocchi, Kashiyuka and A~chan, beautiful cyborgs striking a sassy but casual pose with arms folded. The music continues its dramatic ascent as their bodies slowly rise upwards, engulfed in a series of pulsing halos, again referencing Metropolis. From within these boxes, the three girls of Perfume emerge from rising platforms, perfectly synched to their projected images. The virtual becomes real; Perfume is now in the house. They launch into their Autotuned vocals with low-key synchronised movement, somewhere between calisthenics, synchronised swimming, postmodern anti-dance and plain preening in front of the mirror. Indeed, it’s the hybrid of these forms of movement which constitutes Perfume’s choreographed charm. And they pull it off effortlessly, like glacial catwalk models liquefied into a series of poses as if they’re waiting to be served at a department store.

Beyonce’s amazing projection-mapped performance of Run The World at the 2011 Billboard Awards is a landmark for this type of integrated body-staging. The prowess of her integrated corporeality defines her stage presence as she literally controls the screenic space. Conversely, Perfume are ciphers, vessels, figurines that meld with the screenic space. They become indistinguishable from it. While Beyonce quotes military multiplication and self-empowerment, Perfume quote figurative phantasm and self-sublimation. Throughout their set, their physical bodies are treated as miniature figurines engulfed by their own supra-images and meta-forms. At one point, they even sit on the floor with their backs to the audience and sing along with their giant projected faces. Calmly, they ponder their own existence within the vortex of simulated data all around them. It’s like they’re not even there. Within the context of a celebratory mourning of a site about to be destroyed, they become sacrificial maidens offering up their audiovisual selves to the sacred site of the National Stadium. I hope their spirits haunt the New National Stadium.

ELMA KRIS WAS RAISED ON THURSDAY ISLAND AND IS A DESCENDENT OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WESTERN AND CENTRAL ISLANDS OF THE TORRES STRAIT. SHE IS ONE OF BANGARRA DANCE THEATRE’S LONGEST SERVING PERFORMERS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS. KRIS’ LEADING ROLE IN MATHINNA (2008, 2010) GAINED HER SIGNIFICANT RECOGNITION AS A PERFORMER, MARKING A PIVOTAL SHIFT IN HER CAREER.

The company, under the leadership of Stephen Page, has been responsible for the development of many Indigenous performers and choreographers. Page recognised Elma Kris’ capacity and empowered her to make the transition from performer to choreographer.

When we talked in April 2014, Kris provided a deeper insight into the relationship between culture and dance from a Torres Strait Islander perspective. Her use of language to describe the importance of story and closeness to country in this relationship is simple but evocative and poetic. We discussed her training as a dancer, her second choreographic work for Bangarra, About (2011), and a current project that she is still in the process of developing.

Kris is grateful for her five years of training at the National Aboriginal Islander Skill Development Association Dance College (NAISDA), which provided vital stepping stones to her career with Bangarra. This training provided her with opportunities to “grab onto” cultural knowledge and traditional teachings of dance through cultural tutors who are drawn from specific communities around Australia and who engage the dance students in immersive workshops. Her experience with NAISDA allowed Kris to “nurture myself for my culture.”

Growing up, Kris only ever observed cultural events such as song and dance being performed by her parents or elders of neighbouring islands as she was not called upon to participate. Through the cultural tutors, NAISDA enabled Kris to experience the diversity of the Torres Strait dances and their link with musical patterns and rhythms through the study of both music and dance. “I think coming to NAISDA and seeing similar dances performed… [I was] able to connect with our culture… not only that, it was my first time to actually pick up an instrument and learn how to play it,” she says. Among these instruments were the Warup drum and Kulap rattle, which are both used to accompany dance in the Torres Strait Islands.

Kris is a powerful dancer who is able to evoke strong emotions directly through movement. In About, the first segment of Bangarra’s 2011 production Belong, Kris recreated the visceral experience of the four Torres Strait winds named Zey, Kuki, Naygay and Sager. This was inspired by her parents’ perspective: “This is what mum and dad used to talk about—the winds… their moods, what they do and how we respond and how they paint the sky and land, and how they can make the sea very calm.” She describes how the foam on the beach indicates the violence of the wind and “how the wind will rattle the sea a little bit to make different type of winds.” As a choreographer, coming directly from the rich heritage of Thursday Island, Kris is able to combine her deep cultural knowledge with contemporary artistic expression to create evocative dance theatre in the Bangarra style.

She explains that her choreography is inspired “by something way back home,” which usually emerges from stories passed down to her as a child. “A lot of stories are told that constantly remind us about the spirituality of land, the sea and the sky… and how we’re connected with the environment. They can’t speak but they can show signs and colours, whether it’s aggressive weather or whether it’s good weather.”

In About, there is a profound spiritual resonance in the way Kris is able to recreate the feeling of the Torres Strait winds embodied in the dancers’ movements and supported by David Page’s score. She enacts an extension of traditional cultural transmission by engaging with Indigenous knowledge and customs through the mode of contemporary dance theatre. Kris’ stories invite spectators to engage with and understand the value systems of Indigenous Australian cultures that are presented in ways both evocative and direct. She hopes this gives Indigenous Australians the inspiration to connect back to their culture. At the same time, there is a large emphasis on the importance for non-indigenous Australians “to understand as well… because they’re in darkness without any way of knowing how to connect.” So, Kris’ work reflects Bangarra’s vision to preserve culture through sharing it.

In 2012, Kris was given the opportunity to affirm this vision when she was invited to become a part of the “Engaging Objects: Indigenous Communities, Museum Collections and the representation of Indigenous Histories” project. Consequently she has been involved in extensive research over several years which will culminate in an exhibition in 2015, part of the Encounters project, a collaboration between ANU and the British Museum. Kris will be one of the Australian National University ‘fellows’ who have been asked to engage with key objects from the British Museum’s Australian Indigenous Collection dating back to the 1800s. The resulting contemporary responses and experiences will be a part of the final exhibition. Kris is the sole Torres Strait Islander performing artist working on the project and sees her role as an opportunity to use dance as a vehicle to re-awaken these objects.

At the foundation of the deep spirituality of Elma Kris’ life and creative work is her ability to connect past with present—in Engaging Objects, she tells people about significant objects that have appeared in dreams: “Do you know when you dream and something comes to you in another way and it actually wakens you and it awakens itself to you… and then you ask: What was that? What was I woken by? What was its purpose? Why? So it’s this spiritual thing that comes through your dream and it gives you the ability to waken these other [objects].”

Nonetheless, Kris acknowledges the necessary restrictions of culture, such that only people of a culture are able to access specific knowledge: “there are certain things that we are allowed to awaken or we can’t awaken unless we have gathered protocol[s] to be able to tell it in the deep ways of it… [and] there are things you don’t want to exploit. It’s more about engaging with it and being able to tell a story.” This has prompted Kris to focus on the “awaken[ing] of things that are intrinsic to the woman…” throughout the life of the project. “I wanted to actually engage with a lot of the women’s stuff: to actually express how in our society it’s so important to be able to engage with these objects that have been taken away and how we can preserve them and bring them back… So that way, we are still able to practise things such as weaving baskets because we still need to [continue these] practices.”

Elma Kris has chosen four culturally significant objects that hold intrinsic feminine importance to traditional Torres Strait Islander practice from the British Museum collection. Her contemporary narrative response to these objects will be expressed in a short film featuring Bangarra dancers in an exhibition at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, November 2015.

SIX DANCERS, NATIONS AND CULTURAL STORIES STAND SIDE BY SIDE DOWNSTAGE, LOOKING AT US, US LOOKING AT THEM. WE SEE THEIR WORLDS OF DIFFERENCE. SPACE HELD EQUIDISTANT BETWEEN. THE FRIEZE IS A STRIKING EMBLEM, MARKING CHOREOGRAPHER ANNALOUISE PAUL’S COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO INTERCULTURAL DANCE, MUSIC AND ART MAKING.

Tellingly from this first image (returned to in the closing moments) the individual cultures, dances and rhythms are authentically retained. As intercultural dance goes, this approach is in ‘collision’ with new forms, not a blurring or leaking inbetweeness or hybridity—though Western training is clearly in these bodies too. Paul is well defined in her aim. The questions are what and where are these “new futures” she sees emerging as “world cultures collide”? Are they choreographic, or more deeply human? Are their “sacred geometries,” as Paul puts it, universals that transcend uncompromised cultural specificities?

Pivoting at right angles, each dancer breaks free of the line. Clapping begins. Bodies as percussive instruments: skin on skin, thudding, slapping, cupping air in palms, scraping, pausing, sonic codes of communication. Many tongues speak at once, sometimes listening, sometimes responding and initiating. The structure and nuance of clapping is as varied as the body and intentions of the person who claps. Played hard and soft in relative degrees we see how dialogue of any nature might be possible.

A chequered grid is projected centre stage in ‘Atari’ neon green, drawn over in chalk then mysteriously numbered. Costumed in same fabric and styled to suggest their traditional dress, dancers Andrea Adidi, Geraldine Balcazar, Aletta Fauzi, Patrick ‘Lucky’ Lartey, Gregory Lorenzutti and Govind Pillai assume positions in the grid, taking turns to posit or provoke a gesture, spin or leap. Like jazz musicians they solo, challenge for space and movement intensity in competitive jams or move together in isolable, individuated frames—a spectacular aviary of limbs flicking, pounding, arching, reaching and bobbing.

Kinetically, Mother Tongue is a sculpture park of rich, exotic forms coming from Torres Strait, Chile, Indonesia, West Africa, Brazil and India. A distinct difference between genders exists in the dancers’ use of space, weight, gesture and focus. The relationship of pelvis to the ground: shifting high and low for the men, contained and horizontal for the women. All styles sprout an ornamental display of head, arms and legs floating or flung from a chest buoyant and open toward nature and the heavens, face alive, engaged for interaction.

Clapping with vocal percussion becomes a careful conversation. Sitting in a semi-circle, flesh and floor become prime surfaces for polyrhythmic play forming on tongues, deeply in throats and on hands. Percussionist Tim Foley roams the globe to join the assorted chatter of nation leaders articulating their individuated timbre, tempo and tone in a united score.

With indubitable enjoyment we share in the exciting motion, shapes, forces and textures of these places embodied by these dancers. Since Paul does not innovate from appropriation, strict fusion or exploding traditions, and maintains the integrity of colliding cultural forms, her seeking “new choreographic futures” for intercultural dance proves an admirable challenge. There are moments in Mother Tongue when movement and gesture founded on the primordial geometries of collective motion and sound sublimely commune towards a unique horizon.

Mother Tongue, choreographer Annalouise Paul, performers Andrea Adidi, Geraldine Balcazar, Aletta Fauzi, Lucky Lartey, Gregory Lorenzutti, Govind Pillai, music Tim Foley, Greg Sheehan, lighting Toby Knyvett, costumes Tobhiyah Feller, Art Saranjit Bird, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Sydney, 3-5 Sept

TWO RECENT PERTH PRODUCTIONS HIGHLIGHT CONTRASTING WAYS IN WHICH DANCE CAN CROSS AND PROBLEMATISE THE BORDERS OF COMPREHENSION. AIMEE SMITH AND BEN TAAFE’S FORAY INTO BORDERLINE OUTLINES THE STARK CONTOURS OF COMMUNICATION THROUGH MOVEMENT AND SOUND, WHILE DANIELLE MICICH (DIRECTOR) AND SUZI MILLER’S (WRITER/CO-DEVISOR) CONCEPTION OF OVEREXPOSED, WITH DRAMATURGY BY KATE CHAMPION, SHATTERS THE CERTAINTY OF UNDERSTANDING. BOTH BRING INTO QUESTION THE LIMITS OF PERFORMANCE: NEITHER GIVES DEFINITIVE ANSWERS.

Borderline

Aimee Smith is a wizard at constructing penetrating images whose barbed irony agitates and/or needles into matters of environmental concern. Borderline continues to explore this crafting although, on this occasion, the movement pictures and their reverberations are locked in a pervasive sense of doom. Even the dancers’ sometimes astounding wrestling with the demons of this age of herd obeisance, excessive waste and purported individualism bows to a bleak evaluation of human destiny. If the work is an anguished protest against the insanity of our behaviour in and for the planet, as I am sure it is, the cry is harsh and unremitting, seemingly devoid of any hope of rebirth. The gold glitter and hysteria-whipped bodies of the final image, indeed, act like incisive punctuation marking the withering of human imagination.

In three sections, the work begins with a weighty social organism lurching “Into the Fold.” Random impulses for freedom and/or escape conveyed through individual dancer’s unleashed limbs and torsos are crushed as the herd mentality re-ingests the errant body back within its turgid vortex. Choreographically impressive as it is, the tenacious grip of this community is born of containment not of support.

Hints of wasted social relationships become literal in “No Man’s Land” as Laura Boynes tentatively advances across an empty space only to be submitted to a barrage of fabricated rubbish and dumped bodies hurtling around her. The debris amasses, leaving her poised like the Statue of Liberty or the feminine symbol of justice garlanded in a glut of grime and senselessness. It’s a haunting image of silenced freedom and equity. The anti-visionary triptych concludes with “Trans Form,” flipping the herd anxiety of the opening into a cult of individuals blindly chasing the glowing capitalist shrine of fulfilment. Even given the tongue-in-cheek voice-over of Ben Taafe’s soundtrack, I couldn’t dismiss the association of a trail of ever-smiling and vaporous ‘selfies’ supplanting their human originators. Pointedly, perhaps, the dancers only showed their backs as they advanced and recircled towards the edge of the illuminated madness. Was Smith and Taafe’s message to turn around and face the terms of our own self-destruction?

Overexposed

Surveillance in theatre enters into a double-bind or conundrum as the audiences of Overexposed watch, record and judge what transpires before them, for the most part, from the anonymity of darkness. However, if the topic of the performance is framed and bound to policing human behaviour, its secrecies, disorientations and lies are curiously turned back onto its audiences, who might find their normal privileged role eroded. Danielle Micich’s Overexposed does not take this approach directly but the nett effect of its structure unmoors spectators from familiar logic and lands them in an alien territory of evaporated rights.

The promotional material indicates that the protagonist, Marisa, is inexplicably detained on her arrival into the home airport after a trip. What happens after this Kafkaesque premise occurs in two rooms. Obviously, surveillance is involved, which is playfully reinforced by a security check on spectators’ arrival for the performance. For inexplicable reasons, some members are stamped red in this process, while others are given official clearance in spite of the tell-tale bleep signals at the metal detector archway. It turns out that the stamping is a lottery determining to which viewing room the spectator will be allocated, neither of which tells the complete story, if in fact a complete story is ever to be told.

With this strategy, Overexposed becomes underexposed. Whatever the source of the surveillance, you become aware that exposure to the work is but a semblance of truth, couched in fear and a weird logic which reduces the complexity of human behaviour to ciphers of blame. The filtered communication is further complicated by isolating the movement and text, commonly associated with a dance theatre format, into two halves, one to each viewing space. Text delivered by performer Humphrey Bower, so I later gathered, dominated one space, while movement permeated the near silence of my room, where performer Micich, chased by a roving spotlight, emerges from the audience and is led into the stage’s imprisoning landscape of metallic towers. Her body, initially compliant, is soon subjected to invasive and unexplained interrogation procedures. The physical disintegration is painful and, till this point, eloquent in its delivery.

Time then stretches like a taut membrane over meaning, where both Micich’s and my interpretation become wired into some sort of psychic realm in which her body appears to spin repressed dreams of agency. There were possible narrative hooks via projected text but from my vantage point—and corresponding with the production’s logic—sight was obstructed by the towers. Left to my own devices in the alien interpretative space, I had to trust in a corporeal storytelling, in the performer’s internal fantasies given some semblance of form. Pleasures of puzzling through Micich’s sudden switch to expansive almost abandoned movement mixed with tensions of mis-readings. Had her disorientation pushed her over the edge? Is insanity the ultimate objective that surveillance inflicts on both of us?

I was still floundering when Micich exited and Bower, full-voiced with accusations, entered. The act provoked a powerful bewilderment, exacerbated when the back wall opened to reveal the other room where Micich, but more so the other audience, watch the watching. Bower’s words, which now seem to admit guilt for accusations of infanticide fired at the accused, have less impact than being exposed to the watching of the watchers be they audiences, performers or the state. Inconclusive as this response may be, Overexposed conveyed a disquieting message, if always veiled and inconclusive, about surveillance’s propensity to unhinge identity.

Borderline, devisors Aimee Smith, Ben Taafe in collaboration with dancers Laura Boynes, Bernadette Lewis, Storme Helmore, Jenni Large, Tyrone Robinson, Tony Curie, Isabell Stone, Ella-Rose Trew, music Mental Powers, Phil Stroud, Beppu, costumes Holly Boyton, lighting Trent Suidgeest, State Theatre Centre, 1-4 Oct; Overexposed, director, performer, co-devisor Danielle Micich, performer Humphrey Bower, writer, co-devisor Suzi Miller, dramaturgy Kate Champion, sound Kinsley Reeve, lighting Chris Donnelly, costumes Colleen Sutherland, State Theatre Centre, Perth 22 Oct-Nov 1

IF THE DANCE FLOOR IS A DEMOCRACY THEN RESTLESS DANCE THEATRE’S IN THE BALANCE REMINDS US THAT ITS BORDERS ARE FRAUGHT WITH, IN THE WORDS DIRECTOR MICHELLE RYAN USED TO INITIATE THIS NEW WORK WITH THE COMPANY’S YOUTH ENSEMBLE, “FLIRTATION, REJECTION, INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION.” WHILE MEMBERS OF THE ENSEMBLE TAKE TO THE FLOOR IN CHOREOGRAPHIES OF ONES AND TWOS, THE REST HOVER ON THE PERIPHERY, HERE A FURTIVE EXCHANGE OF GLANCES, THERE AN INTRODUCTION MADE AWKWARD BY LOUD MUSIC OR A LACK OF CONFIDENCE.

The anxieties only dissipate, replaced by exhibitionism or exuberance or a muscular masculinity, as the performers in turn peel off from the throng and become the focus. Each brings with them a fiercely individualised energy informed by their physical capabilities, their dynamic within the group and their relationship with the space: at ease, listless, assertive. And the space itself? A glittering state of decay, designed by Gaelle Mellis and Meg Wilson that, with its fallen, shattered mirror ball and messy assemblages of hanging ropes, tinfoil and paper lanterns, recalls the apocalyptic/hedonistic bifurcation of Prince’s 1980s heyday: “Everybody’s got a bomb/ We could all die here today/ But before I’ll let that happen/ I’ll dance my life away.”

The breadth of the stylistic diversity between the vignettes and the vim with which they are performed maintains interest, even as the production’s conceptual slightness is revealed. Chris Dyke’s lurching, sexually charged athleticism provides a fine contrast, by way of an example, with Kathryn Evans’ tender, curiously touching solo routine with an exercise ball. Intermittent group work, such as when the performers chaotically transport two sets of chairs from one side of the stage to the other, provides an additional, if still inadequate, layer of complexity. The production ultimately circles round on itself, having travelled nowhere in particular, its constituent parts diverting but disconnected. There is an elusive metaphorical quality to Ryan’s direction that remains unresolved, and only tritely treated in the program notes: “We stumble, bounce and back flip on the awkward journeys we make to become who we are.” I would have been more convinced had Ryan managed to embed something of the shape of this transformation in the work’s overall contour.

More successful are Geoff Cobham’s characteristically sinuous lighting design and The Audrey’s rootsy soundtrack, equal parts alt-country languor and T Rex-ish stomp. The Adelaide band’s 2008 single “Paradise City” makes for a fitting, if unexpected, accompaniment to Dana Nance’s introspective, yearning solo: “In this town we all bear our own load,” moans singer Taasha Coates over Tristan Goodall’s plaintive guitar, “‘cause we know what’s waiting at the end of the road.” As though stirred into action by these ill-boding words, the Ensemble subsequently unites again and In the Balance concludes as it began, with a jubilant, freewheeling group choreography.

Ryan’s darker purpose, however, remains unexpressed as the audience enthusiastically applauds each member through a final, brief solo before they bounce from the stage. If only they had begun the journey that led them there from a deeper, darker place, I might have felt like I was clapping for more than just an ending already seen, a destination arrived at rather than one never left.

Restless Dance Theatre, In the Balance, director Michelle Ryan, performers Josh Compton, Darcy Carpenter, Felicity Doolette, Chris Dyke, Kathryn Evans, Jianna Georgiou, Michael Hodyl, Lorcan Hopper, Nigel Major-Henderson, Caitie Moloney, Dana Nance, Jesse Rochow, Tara Stewart, lighting designer Geoff Cobham, designer Gaelle Mellis, Meg Wilson, music the Audreys; Odeon Theatre, Adelaide, 16–25 Oct

JENNY NICHOLLS, FORMER PACT ACTOR, DIRECTOR AND BOARD MEMBER, HAS WORKED AS A TEACHER, THEATRE DIRECTOR AND CONSULTANT FOR THEATRE COMPANIES AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND SAT ON THE DRAMA COMMITTEE OF THE AUSTRALIA COUNCIL IN THE LATE 80S. SHE’S A SENIOR LECTURER AT THE INSTITUTE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD AT MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY, SYDNEY. MORE THAN THAT, SHE GREW UP WITH PACT FROM THE AGE OF 13.

When, on the occasion of PACT’s 50th birthday, I interviewed Nicholls—who still recalls those early years with exuberance—it became clear that PACT had shaped her life and career, as it has doubtless done and still does for many others.

Originally housed on the edge of the Sydney CBD, near Darling Harbour, PACT was founded by a group led by Robert Allnutt, Jack Mannix and Patrick Milligan in response to the Federal Government’s Vincent Committee Report that “highlighted the dire state of Australia’s performing arts, film and television industries.” PACT (Producers, Authors, Composers and Talent, and later Producers, Artists, Curators, Technicians) aimed to develop a range of practitioners who would enrich Australian culture.

Central to Jenny’s experience of PACT was Jack Mannix, whose sense of community was shaped by the Depression and by the Catholic School Fellowship which encouraged young people to get involved in social activities in the 1930s. Thirty years later, when Jack teamed up with Patrick Milligan (Spike’s brother) and Bob Allnutt an ABC producer to form PACT, she says, “I think Jack’s mandate was to bring young people into the organisation and it was inherently about cultural leadership and access—and culture as a way to drive change as much as it was about an aesthetic. He felt there needed to be a way to be innovative.” There were PACT folk concerts, playreadings, a sub-group that called themselves The Leper Colony and a psychedelic theatre group, The Human Body, at a time in the late 60s when Australian playwriting was emerging.

Nicholls joined PACT in 1974 when free drama workshops were offered to teenagers. “Jack was very keen to bring in kids who didn’t have much access to culture. Culture! I use the term very broadly. I grew up on the northern beaches and I didn’t have much more access to culture than a kid from Fairfield really. I had the beach. No drama in schools. Virtually no after-school creative activity or anything like that.” Nicholls and 200 teenagers were introduced to “the great Australian do-it-yourself pantomime.” Not the English model. “No script. It was all up and down improvising, ‘OK, you go next… OK, now you swap parts.’ We were divided into groups according to where we lived and participated in three-day workshops over the school holidays. Between August and Christmas the groups alternated on weekends to rehearse and then five productions went on simultaneously throughout Sydney in late December.”

As well as going to PACT on Saturdays each week, Nicholls found herself attending Wednesday night events, mixing with older participants, many of whom were studying at university, “experimenting with poetry, movement sequences, sound, lighting, somebody walking slowly up a ladder while somebody else was reading a poem…” Later these became events titled Abstractions.

“Even though I wasn’t particularly aware of it at the time, I understand now that it was so much about aesthetics.” She quotes George Mannix (Jack Mannix’s son) from a speech at the PACT 50th Birthday celebration on 11 October, “People in the room knew something extraordinary was being created. You could have been acting or waiting your turn or doing the lighting or the music but we were all thinking, ‘Wow,’ this is amazing.’”

“PACT shouldn’t necessarily be privileged here because I think ATYP (1963) and Shopfront (1977) were also emerging. What was interesting however was that PACT moved from being a venue for folk concerts and playwrights to ‘This is great but we need more, we’ve got to do things on a bigger scale, we’ve got to get out to the suburbs and get young people in.’

“In 1976 we took the pantomime to the Chapter House at St Andrews Cathedral for a four-week season as part of the Festival of Sydney. At other times PACT would say, ‘We’ve been invited to take the pantomime to Telopea in the September holidays; who wants to do it?’ So those who volunteered would be packed off in a truck with somebody who had a driver’s licence and we’d turn up at a school or hall or whatever, put plastic black-out on the windows with gaffer tape, set up the lighting box and the reel-to-reel music and off we’d go. What an introduction to theatre at 15-16!

“I was growing up with PACT,” says Nicholls, as the organisation itself was developing its vision. She remembers being in Mannix’s productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, describing it as “environmental theatre.” It too was performed in the Chapter House, “a beautiful space—making use of the stairs and the balcony above with the audience on the floor and actors moving in and around them. Before that we did Eros and Thanatos based on the writing of [Marxist philosopher Herbert] Marcuse. We performed that downstairs at the Seymour Centre.”

Nicholls had become more than a participant: “The way the pantomime worked was that whoever did it the year before taught the next group coming in. Very privileged for me when I look back. At 14 I learn it and at 15 I’m teaching others.” There was only a scenario for the pantomime: “It was about a schoolteacher who didn’t like children and who was informed by a goodwill spirit that he had to put on a pantomime so he could learn to appreciate children. On the way he meets a whole lot of funny characters. It was interactive so at any moment you would have anything from 50-100 children on the floor of a hall and during the performance the children would be up and doing things—pretending to play a game of football or dancing around Cinderella’s coach, or holding up Jack’s beanstalk. Not only was I learning about aspects of theatre i was learning about children.”

Nicholls spent her teenage years with PACT. “We toured to Byron Bay, Canberra Theatre Festival. Then we started going out west—Dunedoo, Condobolin, Deniliquin—doing pantomimes and other performances—The Hobbit, Under Milkwood. By Year 12 I had to step back—Jack didn’t want anyone in Year 12 performing.”

So what was life like post-PACT? “After the HSC I had to decide what I was going to do. Am I going to work in theatre or is this place my family? And it had been my family. When I started at PACT I don’t think I knew much about what university was really. But according to Jack, all of us kids were going off to university—it was the Whitlam years—and we did. Well, not everybody but it was expected.” Clearly PACT itself provided quite an education: “You can just imagine hearing all these poets being talked about and quoted in performances—like TS Eliot. At 15 I knew the entire script of Midsummer Night’s Dream. We all did. I played Helena one year and Puck another year.” Nicholls chose the University of New England in Armidale: “In 1979 there were few universities offering a drama course with a strong practical focus.”

Drama at university was quite different from PACT: “I loved it. It completely challenged me because suddenly I’m doing warm-ups in drama classes. We never had warm-ups at PACT. At PACT it’d be, ‘If you want to get to know each other, go into the office and have a coffee’ and ‘Now we’re rehearsing.’ At uni it was great, full-year drama courses, sometimes two a year from Ancient Greek classics right up to “read two Australian plays a week, discuss them and write our own!”

In her final year Nicholls re-connected with PACT: “George rang me to say that he couldn’t go down to Berrigan in the South-West Riverina with the PACT production this year, would I like to. By now I’d finished my degree and had my teaching diploma. So I went and did something similar where I created a show with young people over three weeks. This led to a 12-month teaching appointment as a drama consultant in the Riverina.” The following year Nicholls was accepted into the directors’ course at NIDA, even if short on some of the technical audition demands. “I tell this story to my students. I didn’t need to be an expert in everything. I needed to have a vision, which is in fact what Jack had and everybody came along with his vision. I don’t put myself in Jack’s category but I think I’m visionary and innovative in my work.

“So I went to NIDA for a year, was an Associate Director at STC for 12 months, did some work for Jigsaw Theatre Company, travelled overseas for 12 months and came back to be met at the airport by current PACT staff and friends who asked me to work as artistic co-ordinator. And so I did. It was half time, not even that. PACT received a tiny amount from the Australia Council. I supplemented that by doing casual teaching and I helped organise the transition from Sussex Street to Erskineville, when we got kicked out.”

IN 1989 Nicholls staged the first full-scale production in the new PACT home in Erskineville, Playing for Time, an Arthur Miller film script—based on the life of Fania Fénelon, a Jewish prisoner of war in Auschwitz who formed an orchestra in the camp. Beginning outside the theatre, Nicholls separated the audience from their partners and moved cast and audience around like inmates. This ‘environmental’ tradition continues to this day at PACT with the constant, inventive reconfiguring of the space and its outdoors.

By 1990, says Nicholls, “I really couldn’t survive any more on a part time salary. I completed a Masters Degree in Theatre Studies at UNSW and was offered the opportunity with Sydney College of Advanced Education, teaching drama courses—and I was getting paid well.” The SCAE was amalgamated with Macquarie University and Nicholls moved into the area of Early Education. She says her teaching over many years is still grounded within the artistic philosophies of her years in PACT. In 2008 she was awarded a citation for outstanding contributions to Student Learning by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council for her innovative work in student engagement in drama and online technology.

Nicholls was on the PACT Board when Jack Mannix died in 1989: “He had a heart attack and was on life support for a while. I can remember everyone was running in and out of his hospital room playing music and singing pantomime songs, combing his hair…He hated having messy hair.”

I ask Nicholls to describe Mannix. She responds thoughtfully, “I think he was a visionary. He had extraordinary patience and a great relationship with young people. We thought he was the opposite of a father or grandfather figure; he was just an amazing adult. I don’t think anybody thought that he was particularly old. He just was. He smoked a pipe. The way that he created shows with young people was extraordinary—the discipline he demanded, the self-confidence he developed in kids from all backgrounds; and the ideas he introduced us to—art, literature, music. It was about getting young people to rise and rise to the best of their ability. I think that for a lot of people who’ve left PACT and gone on to make their own creative work, that’s [something they took with them.]

“And it was also about making beauty. George and I were talking about this last night and he said, ‘It’s hard to talk about beauty now. We talk about truth when we go to the theatre.’

“Jack was caring and gentle and absolutely of the belief that culture should be accessible and people should be able to have the opportunity to participate in the making. He said it better: ‘instrumentation of creativity.’ He was also very inclusive; nobody was excluded; there were no auditions, no try-outs. It was just that gentle way he had of saying, ‘You try reading Helena or you do Bottom.’ He just intuitively knew.”

Jenny Nicholls completed her many years with PACT by becoming Chair of the PACT Board FROM 1988 to 1994. She reminds me at the end of our interview, that her story is only one of hundreds from young people who were introduced to theatre (and so much more) at PACT.

In RealTime 125 (Feb-March 2015) we’ll look at the years since and the artistic directors and teachers who have maintained the PACT vision in their distinctive ways.

UNFORGETTABLE, WHETHER WHEN WE FIRST SAW HER IN 1986 AT PERFORMANCE SPACE IN ULRIKE MEINHOF SINGS, DIRECTED BY NICO LATHOURIS, OR ON THE MAINSTAGE IN JENNY KEMP’S PRODUCTIONS OF CALL OF THE WILD (1989) AND JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH’S NIGHTFALL AT THE SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY IN 2000 OR, ABOVE ALL, IN HER OWN THINGS CALYPSO WANTED TO SAY (1990) AND KNOWLEDGE AND MELANCHOLY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION IN 2004, AGAIN AT PERFORMANCE SPACE.

We wish we’d seen her later performances and more of her acclaimed directing, which we first glimpsed in Aphid’s 2003 puppet-play trilogy A Quarreling Pair and last witnessed in Chamber Made Opera’s Minotaur The Island, for which she also provided the text for David Young’s composition, in the Aurora Music Festival in 2012 in Sydney’s west.

Acting, directing, writing or just being, Margaret was a dynamic presence, at once authoritative and intimate. Her idiosyncratic weighting of words, the lateral lilt of her sentences and that distinctive tone, all at one with her art, will long be recalled and treasured.

In the archive

Margaret on acting

Virginia Baxter’s hithero un-archived 2000 interview, “The other side of Nightfall” (RT 37, p29), with Margaret and fellow actor Ian Scott, also appears in the November edition of Profiler. It’s a wonderfully incisive account of the nature and complexity of acting in general and in response to Joanna Murray-Smith’s play Nightfall, Jenny Kemp’s direction and Elizabeth Drake’s score.

In Nightfall, Margaret and Ian play a middle-class couple, Emily and Edward whose daughter Cora (Victoria Longley) disappeared when she was 16, assumed abducted. But seven years later a go-between, Kate, arrives to negotiate the return of Cora—who is revealed to have left home of her own accord. In most respects Nightfall is a conventional play, well crafted, suspenseful and morally complex, but Cameron, Scott and Kemp made it something more in the perturbing rhythms of the playing. Cameron’s approach brought the same kind of subtle attentiveness to a naturalistic play that she would to an experimental work with powerful results.

“The approach to the play for me was a matter of the whole body physically listening. The listening body is like an animal: you can get caught, suspended; you’re hunting the sense and the emotional sense. Jenny Kemp is a very good director for me in that she loves to see that. If you get stranded halfway, held in space, Jenny’s in a state of delight because it’s dangerous. She credits the invisible world. She understands it as present.”

“[Emily’s] emotional/physical world is adrenalin, huge expectation and capping and locking a terrible fear that things might not be all right. It’s a paradox she starts with, an expectation equaled by massive fear. And they’re balancing each other. That’s her place. And she keeps working towards the belief that Cora will come in that door at any moment. She’s sincerely trying to help Kate. And the pressure will shift me around emotionally so that if on a particular evening there might be a point reached in the graph, which is a little bit unexpected or the intensity is less than last night, what happens is that it goes somewhere underneath. It’ll curve around and sort of push you in another sequence. So you’re playing the essentials every night but where they occur is moveable and very volatile. It’s quite frightening to perform.”

FROM 26 SEPTEMBER TO 12 OCTOBER, THE TIME_PLACE_SPACE LABORATORY TRAVELLED FROM SYDNEY TO KANDOS, GANGUDDY/DUNN’S SWAMP, CANBERRA, NARRANDERA AND BACK TO SYDNEY. EVERYONE INVOLVED, AND INDEED EVERYONE WHO CAME INTO CONTACT WITH THIS TRAVELING EXPERIMENTAL ART LABORATORY AROUND REGIONAL NSW WAS UNANIMOUS IN ADVOCATING THE WONDERFUL VALUE OF THE PROJECT.

Despite numerous debriefings with participating artists in the weeks since, however, there’s a difficulty in articulating what the experience means.

By virtue of the democratic structure and Open Space philosophy that governed our time together, the lab possessed a genuine responsiveness that allowed everything to be adaptable according to the desires of the 20 diverse artists present, as well as the facilitators and provocateurs. This included everything from how and where we lived together, to how we should work together, and on what exactly we should work. Working time (there was an incredibly vocational attitude taken by all involved) was split between collaborative making between artists within the specificity of the locale and situation, and artists running workshops.

Workshops were not about teaching per se, but about sharing and responding, about seeing how different practices and outlooks speak to your own, and how yours speak back. The true value of the trip can perhaps be located within this conviviality, in the self-reflexivity the time provoked in us as individuals and as a temporary community. Away from normality and everyday lives (including the internet, which was sadly a significant factor), we were away from a knowingness of our methodologies. In this space we were able to shine light on the unknown unknowns of our own and others’ practices.

These unknown unknowns began to become transparent in an exercise early in the laboratory with provocateur Karen Therese. Karen’s exercise was itself a throwback to the very first Time_Place_Space that she participated in as an artist in 2002. We shared with each other our individual artistic manifestos and then commenced quick-fire performed manifestations of these there in the bush with each other. How was the work we were making out here different and how was it the same? What does this work reveal and not reveal about us as artists, and about the world today? How do we decide what to do and what not to do?

What we were doing was symbolically epitomized a few nights later when artist Megan Cope undertook a “toponymic intervention,” projecting the Indigenous name for the land on a rockface of the Cudgegong River, Ganguddy. It was inspiring, not just in terms of reclaiming Australia’s geographical places, but also in terms of what this trip was about. We were not traveling to colonise, but to decolonise. We were decolonising our own practices. We were peeling back layers of methodology and understanding established over time.

Time_Place_Space: Nomad was about having a look at what it is we really do, with all known frameworks stripped away. We were decolonising time, place, space and the act of thinking for each other, and were doing so through our work. We were also doing this for the members of the public we encountered on the trip, through sharing and collaboration on what we were up to. A Xanadu Swamp processional-art-rave at Ganguddy/Dunn’s Swamp was followed by a number of events and exchanges in and around the Narrandera showgrounds the following week.

It feels fair to say that this process created a degree of doubt in all who participated—the sort of doubt that takes place before the self-examination that leads to transformation. A safe space to raise such doubts and such self-examination is certainly a good thing, even if it is a struggle to articulate what that good thing actually is. No wonder then that it has been difficult to articulate the outcomes, for the outcomes are incredibly personal and shifting revelations of personal traits and dispositions.

Performer and video, sound and installation artist Zoe Scoglio wrote of “a shifting of my axis, a broadening of my points of reference, an exciting newness that I’m eager to see unfold in my practice…re-affirming the importance of aligning one’s way of living with one’s artistic ideology.” Artist Mish Grigor (performer and member of post) found a similar fascination in “the way that the lines between art and life became increasingly blurry” across the laboratory, noting “by the end we were a nebulous cult society, where every meal had a conceptual framework.” These meals included Fluxus “Identical Lunches” by TPS provocateur Song-Ming Ang (a Singaporean live artist/ musician) and a dinner led by cross-disciplinary artist Tessa Zettel made entirely of food bartered for, foraged and found. Mish too wrote of an enthusiasm for the more concrete outcomes of the lab, without knowing what or when they might be: “[TPS] required serious consideration of every moment’s possibilities. It will be interesting to see what repercussions it has for the structures, communities and artworks that we operate within over the next couple of years.”

Weeds advocate, forager and artist Diego Bonetto offered a spirited provocation towards realising the outcomes of the lab: “Fuck manifestos! Fuck channelled visions, however well-meaning and educated they might be. Fuck defined, preconceived and goal-oriented efforts. Humanity needs to be much more fluid than that, adapting and fast moving, unpredictable and crafty, ever changing, finding communal visions and driven by constant questioning.”

It was this constant questioning that drove our decolonising. It drove our composting and sambal, our drones and rock sundials, our tyvek bubbleheads and twilight choreographies, our evacuation procedures and boguing, our hammock time and bird watching, our mobius spiralling and silent walks, our wombat poo necklaces and shadow play, our nature dying and heavy drinking. It was our constant questioning that drove more questions to arise—about climate change and how we live, as much as any about artistic practice.

A communal vision was found in Time_Place_Space: Nomad that exemplified the connections and culture that can be made in a relatively short amount of time when privileging process, which doesn’t happen this way in metropolitan contexts. We realized this decolonised vision together, as artists, researchers, zealots and playful children. Special mention must be made of co-curators Bec Dean and Angharad Wynne-Jones for making it happen. In the end, we all drank the kool aid together and returned to our respective versions of the ‘real world.’ Changed, somehow. Nascent projects and processes latent for action. The answers to most questions are still TBA, possibly forever. Not least for me: What do you really mean when you use the word ‘amazing’? And, how exactly do you find an ending?

Time_Place_Space: Nomad is an Australia Council initiative to invigorate interdisciplinary and experimental arts practice in Australia, with an emphasis on collaborative performance-making, site-specificity and artistic resilience. The first six laboratories were managed by Performance Space, 2002-09.
Australia Council for the Arts, Time_Place_Space: Nomad, co-production Performance Space, Sydney, Arts House, Melbourne, participating artists Connie Anthes, Diego Bonetto, Megan Cope, Mish Grigor, Sophea Lerner, Jamie Lewis, Jessica Miley, Fee Plumley, Greg Pritchard, Bhenji Ra, Zoe Scoglio, Ria Soemardjo, Latai Taumoepeau, Nathan Thompson, Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal, Malcolm Whittaker, Tessa Zettel, Julia Carr, Joshua Jackson, Helen Yung; provocateurs Song-Ming Ang, Lee-Ann Buckskin, Karen Therese, Lee Wilson; facilitators Bec Dean, Angharad Wynne-Jones, Richard Manner, Michael Petchkovsky, Sophie Kitson, Kate Brown, 26 Sept-12 Oct

THE MEETING POINT FOR REHEARSALS FOR RICHARD SCHECHNER’S PERFORMANCE WORK, IMAGINING O, BASED ON PAULINE RÉAGE’S CHARACTER O FROM HER CONTROVERSIAL 1954 NOVEL, STORY OF O (WHICH SCHECHNER DESCRIBES AS A LOVE POEM) AND HAMLET’S OPHELIA—WITH A FEW ADDITIONS FROM SOME OF SHAKESPEARE’S OTHER FEMALE CHARACTERS—WAS THE DIRECTOR’S OFFICE AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.

Adorned with ancient masks, photos and thousands of books from his many years as Founder and Professor of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, the office is the nerve centre of The Drama Review and the home of the brain behind the birth of the Wooster Group/Performance Group in the 1960s and is crammed with an eager cast from around the globe. Fourteen women and one man are all ready to dive into an intense six weeks (six days a week) working on Imagining O. All set for an investigation of sexuality, abjection and power and one of those ensemble experiences where people respect each other’s work and where you are given freedom to exercise your creative imagination. How often does that happen in life?

Richard greets me with a warm hug. We had last seen each other the previous year in Brisbane where my company, Tashmadada, had invited him to conduct a four-day Rasabox master class at the World Theatre Festival. Schechner devised the Rasabox training in the 1980s-90s, based on the Natyasastra, an ancient Indian text on stagecraft. It’s a training methodology to give performers concrete physical tools to access, control and communicate eight key emotions for performance. It was an essential part of the rehearsal process: when working on scenes, Richard would prompt us with a specific ‘rasa’ to explain an emotion he was searching for—or a phrase of dialogue. Some chunks of text had a different ‘rasa’ for each sentence—or even within one sentence.

I jumped right in—straight onto the floor and working physically. And straight into the transgressive subject matter of O—a character whose sexual fantasies involve unusual “alterations” of the body. No room for puritans in O’s cupboard. Not that this particular ensemble needed much prompting, everyone displayed great ease with their bodies. Richard, at the epicentre, created an environment in which trust, bravery and a feeling of ‘I can do anything’ existed. inhibitions dissolved quickly.

Each day for the next six weeks started with yoga—a specific form that Schechner has been practicing daily since the 1970s—and he is testament to its effectiveness. At age 80 the mind is sharp and the body still flexible—he often sits in lotus position. It’s a yoga series given to him by his Indian teacher and is invigorating without being too strenuous. As well as physical poses, the yoga includes vocal work and a very particular breathing series, which required tissues at hand.

After the daily trip to the Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair, where the rehearsals took place (necessary for this site-specific promenade work) and the performances were to be staged and hosted by Peak Performance Festival, we were fuelled by caffeine and a passion for the new found material. Lunch was sporadic and dinner at 10 pm after coming back to Manhattan—who cared as the days were full of stimulation.

One of the daily theatre exercises included crossing from one side of a defined space to the other but infused with specific instructions. The exercise was a template for exploring all sorts of ideas—such as Schechner’s interest in slow motion as a tool to train the body, focus the mind and to create intense relationships between members of the ensemble. One variation saw us crossing the space as slowly as we possibly could (with Richard side coaching us to go even slower) and, on meeting each other, slowly swapping clothes. After the clothes swap we could continue our extremely slow walk. If not all clothes were swapped we had to be totally still until the exercise was over. It took at least an hour to cross the small space and it engaged every muscle in my Suzuki trained body, tested my focus and challenged my tenacity—all of which, until then, I had felt were strong.

United by the training regime and collective film shoots around Manhattan—including filming some of us performing movement sequences as we plunged into the waters off Coney Island, and on an early morning train in our ‘dressed to kill’ clothes—the ensemble forces grew stronger and the groundwork was laid for us to devise our own material. At one stage, in the final performance, the audience needs to perform tasks in a carnival scene before being allowed to progress to the next stage of the show. I ended up on my back on a specially made see-saw exhorting members of the public to feed me real flowers—they weren’t shy and I often had a number of them at once stuffing as many into my mouth as they possibly could (that image ended up accompanying the glowing reviewof the production in the New York Times, 12 September).

We were charged with devising solo pieces, our ‘dispersals,’ to explore whatever interested us in relation to the themes of Story of O. I was more than ready to abandon myself to whatever boundaries were to be transgressed. Thematically, I was particularly interested in the physical and emotional decomposition of both the O and Ophelia and their ultimate demises. My piece involved an atmospherically lit bathroom (thanks to lighting and set designer Chris Muller), hanging flowers, dripping liquid, a soundscape, a naked body (slightly faulty) and instructions for the audience to draw on my skin. I won’t say more as I am developing this into a durational piece.

Six weeks living and breathing with a power ensemble of gorgeous and talented women, of immersion in the art of Richard Schechner, one of the fathers of avant garde theatre (he is a grandfather now) with his lively, curious, razor sharp mind and endless energy, has breathed such life into my own being that I will treasure the experience for a long, long time to come. The sold-out shows for Imagining O have provided great external recognition but nothing compared to the internal emotions and sensations still resonating in my body.

Peak Performances: Imagining O, rehearsals commenced 4 Aug; season, Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, New Jersey, 10-14 Sept

Yalin Ozucelik, Richard Roxburgh in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac

IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THREE PRODUCTIONS IN SYDNEY IN RECENT WEEKS—TWO OF THEM OF NEW AUSTRALIAN PLAYS BY WOMEN ABOUT WOMEN AND ONE A CLASSIC BY A MALE ABOUT A MALE—SHARED A REVEALING FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE. CYRANO DE BERGERAC, A FEMALE STAND-UP COMEDIAN AND A FAMOUS NOVELIST, PATRICIA HIGHSMITH, ALL BECOME EMOTIONALLY UNSTUCK WHILE ATTEMPTING TO SUSTAIN PERSONAE THAT MASK VULNERABILITIES.

STC, Cyrano de Bergerac

A man of enormous pride and charisma, a popular poet and accomplished swordsman, Cyrano de Bergerac nonetheless dooms himself to misery in the belief that he is unloveably ugly. Richard Roxburgh as Cyrano delivers the requisite crowd-pleasing bravado with panache and deals his enemies just the right degree of cruelty, verbal and physical. But, deftly and incisively, Roxburgh reveals the cracks early on—a palpable fragility, sentences that come unstuck when Cyrano’s not on show—preparing us for a darker, less melodramatic demise than usually anticipated: a tragedy imbued with a touch of the manic depressive.

Eryn Jean Norvill’s Roxane appearing at first a delicate flower is soon shown to be intelligent, forthright and physically robust—an ideal partner for Cyrano, if only… Chris Ryan’s Christian is a charming innocent, played with a kind of engaging Ocker ease. Josh McConville’s Guiche is convincingly both scary and comic. The mobile 17th century stage within the Sydney Theatre’s large open space presents numerous opportunities for lively staging and amplifies the sense of performance that is Cyrano’s outer world; the inner one he cannot enact. Sharp-eyed, witty direction and economic adaptation (Andrew Upton), fine period design (Alice Babbage), an immersive sound world (Paul Charlier), characterful casting and a superb Roxburgh all made for a seriously memorable Cyrano de Bergerac.

Cast: Fiona Press, Madeleine Benson, Susan Prior, Nat Randall, Genevieve Guiffre, Is this thing on?, Belvoir Downstairs

Belvoir, Is This Thing On?

The very title of Zoe Coombs Marr’s Is this Thing On?, a riotous depiction of the life of a female stand-up comedian, Brianna—played by five actors across her life—is telling. If the mike is not on, what next? Or what if you stand before it and you can’t speak—that’s the very first and very young Brianna (Madelaine Benson) we see. The stage is then seized by an MC (Susan Prior) who treats us as comedy club innocents, spitting out bad jokes, letting us know she also works the bar, gossiping about fellow comedians.

The script loops back to a younger Brianna, Genevieve Giuffre, finding her way in stand-up, studying veterinary science, and then another, Nat Randall, more confident, dropping out of university, coming out and unleashing a string of crudely funny, discomfiting fisting jokes. An older Brianna (Fiona Press), back in the business after a breakdown, is relaxed, cynical, the jokes grosser, still working the bar, prone to anger, violence even against a male comedian friend who left her show stranded.

It’s Susan Prior’s Brianna who cracks—she’s unstoppably frantic, barely leaving space for laughs in case there’s silence, bullying her audience, relentlessly on the move, no longer able to veil the anxieties breaking through an already unstable comic persona. It’s an unnerving performance, loud and rarely funny in a conventional sense.

Zoe Coombs Marr writes in her program note, “Since we first met, comedy has been like a charismatic but occasionally abusive lover that I haven’t quite been able to turn away from.” A member of post and a solo performer, Coombs Marr started out in stand-up when she was 15. Is This Thing On? is a grimly articulate account of engaging with your craft, its limits, dangers and a little of the joy of connecting with your audience, and it achieves this by doing it—making us witness how stand-up does and does not work and the pressures that build behind confident facades. There’s little detail in the show about life beyond stand-up, like family or love—save the charismatic abuser mentioned above, comedy itself—but fragile self-love and the courage to perform to make an audience love you, these are revealingly and depressingly on display.

Sarah Peirse and Eamon Farren in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Switzerland

STC, Switzerland

Actors and stand-up comedians are public performers, writers are deemed private if increasingly having to front their audiences at writers’ weeks and in the media to ensure book sales. The great American crime writer Patricia Highsmith, self-exiled to France and then Switzerland after having felt underappreciated at home and finding herself much admired in Europe, did her fair share of interviews, but not always agreeably. She was even less amicable socially as she grew older and irascible in private. For all her many friends, numerous female lovers and several sustained if fragile relationships, Highsmith seems to have been a loner of a kind with her racial prejudices and fetishes, including a love of snails, fascinated as she was with their sex lives, keeping them in a pocket or leaving them about her house. The oddities of her Texan upbringing, the eternal tensions between herself and her mother, her New York youth and early career (as a well-paid comic book writer during world War II), a promiscuous life in the lesbian community and the failure to break through into the pages of The New Yorker, all combined to create a distinctive personality, bristling with contradictions (Jewish good friends, flirtations with men) which yielded an acute alertness to moral ambiguity with insights into double lives, jealousy and criminal desire—principally realised in the form of her male characters.

Joanna Murray-Smith conjures up Highsmith’s final days in a Swiss mountain ‘bunker,’ alone, bitter and alcoholic, dealing with a young publisher’s representative determined to coax her into writing another Ripley novel. The previous envoy suffered a breakdown, believing that Highsmith had threatened him in his bed with a knife. The new arrival appears to be destined for the same, or worse (he wakes with a nick on his neck). For all his naivety—he can’t handle Highsmith’s caustic wit and relentless abuse—he is oddly determined, eventually finding his way to break through, largely through discovering a shared blokey interest in guns and then urging the writer to improvise the opening scenario for a new Ripley novel, which she does, but imposing on him the responsibility of deciding how the murder is committed—a decision she will regret since it will play some part in the young man’s transformation—a very Highsmith one.

Switzerland is an entertaining and suspenseful two-hander. Sarah Pierse is an ideal casting choice as Patricia, not only having something of the look of Highsmith about her, but with her slight drawl, her staggered walk and a pained stoop she conveys both old age and something predatory. It’s a shock when, alone, she dances falteringly to a beloved show tune (one of the real Highsmith’s pleasures). Eamon Farren’s young man, Edward, has the indeterminant demeanour of a Ripley, his persona mutating across the play’s three acts—innocent, then manipulatively probing and then… Like Ripley, he’s a performer. In Act One we believe him, his American clichés failing to cut though Patricia’s well-established obstinacies and prejudices. In Act Two, he’s a touch smarter, doubt creeps in.

The three-act structure is not perfect. Act Two, instead of following up on the cut the young man finds on his neck in the morning and entwining it suspensefully with what follows, moves rather expositionally on to everything we need to know about Highsmith, with a consequent slackening of pace and suspense if interesting in itself (her obsessions, paranoias, her objections to America etc) and providing some fuel for the young man’s machinations (guns, vulnerabilities). Act Three begins strikingly, some of the audience laughing with surprise at something as simple and so telling, plot-wise, as a costume change.

If you buy the conceit that Highsmith finds herself trapped in a plot very much like the ones she wrote, then you’ll be satisfied with Switzerland, but you wouldn’t want to think about it too much. A long-term Highsmith fan, I greatly enjoyed Switzerland, despite Act Two’s slackening and Act Three’s less than inventive ending; the performances are engrossing and there are moments when Murray Smith captures Highsmith’s creepily crystalline way of describing the world and her capacity to throw us into moral confusion.

Unfortunately, the inner-dramaturg on automatic, I thought too much about Switzerland and had to ask some difficult questions. Is Patricia Highsmith, who has told us so much about criminal minds and readers’ perverse desires (for Ripley to ‘get away with it,’ or “the complete corruption of the reader,” as Patricia puts it) and who was cruel but never herself a criminal, due the punishment Murray Smith deals her? What kind of wish fulfilment is going on here? Secondly, why run with the obvious Highsmith formula—why not replace Edward with a young woman who might re-ignite a spark of sexual desire in the dying Patricia and make more pivotal and more ambiguous the “You excite me!” passage in Act Three.

Highsmith kept her writing about women discrete from her crime writing in the non-crime novels and in Carol, her ‘lesbian’ novel, but here’s an opportunity to bring the two worlds together that co-habited the writer’s psyche. When Patricia, who obstinately lives in the past, asks Edward to speak to her of New York diners and the young women who lunch there, he informs her that there are very few diners anymore—and that young women have changed “Don’t do that!,” she snaps, upset. Patricia lives in the past—in my Switzerland she would be confronted by the present as it was in 1995, the year Highsmith died. Different play, different writer, but questions worth asking and which tell us something about the conservative nature of Murray Smith’s otherwise admirable venture.

Few crime novels are perfect, onstage crime plays even fewer, but fans, as with most genre writing, are forgiving. Also Switzerland is pleasantly not unlike seeing a movie in a cinema: it’s wisely interval-less, the soundtrack like a moody film score (initially a distant, piano and lush strings, later dramatic big guitar and continental mandolin) and it has a low ceilinged ‘widescreen’ ultra-real set—apparently a replication of Highsmith’s final home, replete with the loved portrait of her younger self, thumbs up, in red. Switzerland is a cosy, intelligent entertainment, blessed with an excellent performance partnership in Peirse and Farren directed by Sarah Goodes.

Sydney Theatre Company, Cyrano de Bergerac, writer Edmond Rostand, adaptation, director Andrew Upton, original translation Marion Potts, Sydney Theatre, 11 Nov-20 Dec; Belvoir, Is This Thing On, writer, director Zoe-Coombs Marr, co-director Kit Brookman, design Ralph Myers, Belvoir Downstairs, 2 Oct-2 Nov; Sydney Theatre Company, Switzerland, writer Joanna Murray-Smith, designer Michael Scott Mitchell, composer Steve Francis, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, 3 Nov-20 Dec

Nadeena Dixon, Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor, The Fox & The Freedom Fighters, Performance Space

I’D LIKE ALL PERFORMANCES TO BEGIN WITH SOMETHING LIKE THE INDIGENOUS SMOKING CEREMONY. THE EFFECT IS CALMING AND PREPARES US TO ENTER ANOTHER REALM. SUCH WAS THE FEELING AS WE WERE WELCOMED INTO THE SPACE FOR THE FOX AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS BY UNCLE MAX (MAX DULUMUNMUN HARRISON), A YUIN MAN.

The ‘fox’ refers to Aboriginal activist and social pioneer Charles (Chicka) Dixon (1928-2010). Three years in development, this work has been conceived and co-created by Chicka’s daughter Rhonda Dixon-Grovenor and granddaughter Nadeena Dixon with a team of collaborators including co-writer and dramaturg Alan Valentine and director Liza-Mare Syron.

Three components of the design (Nadeena Dixon, Clare Britton) combine to reflect the work’s structure: a large central screen for film sequences (and doubling for an ASIO document); a small platform with a microphone for sung segments; and a spare living room set-up where mother and daughter casually exchange memories of the man who radically affected their lives. The spare design is enveloping and incorporates a set of striking woven sculptures by Nadeena Dixon, which grace the walls and cast enigmatic shadows. As they converse, Rhonda separates raffia threads while Nadeena weaves the circular forms of a new piece.

The performative style aims to be laidback but at times the demands of conventional theatrical dialogue appear to hinder the rapport we sense between mother and daughter. The powerful film segments (Amanda King, Fabio Cavadini) are more effective with the women appearing to be unscripted and more spontaneous. Generous archival footage provides insight into the important work of Chicka Dixon-—his involvement in historical events such as the 1967 Referendum, the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the Aboriginal Arts Board and a visit to China in 1972. All this is woven together with the quietly intense statements on the impact of this activism on family life delivered individually to camera by Rhonda and Nadeena.

Most engaging in this work is the opportunity it offers us to meet two very interesting women and to share with them the unravelling of an intimate and difficult truth. “Don’t you for a minute think that there isn’t a cost to every single moment of this fight for freedom,” says Rhonda. And we don’t. As they reveal with passion and humour the highs and lows of life with an admired patriarch—his many absences, the alcoholism, which he eventually overcame but which clearly affected their early lives and manifest in stress and abuse in subsequent relationships—we experience the recovery of intimacy with their father and grandfather along with their own unfolding activism, all woven into the complex issues of everyday life.

The Fox & The Freedom Fighters, concept, creation, performers Rhonda Dixon Grovenor, Nadeena Dixon; Performance Space, Carriageworks, Sydney, 13-22 Nov

SPECTACULAR PUPPETRY, INNOVATIVE VIDEO AND HAUNTING MUSIC IN THE LAST GREAT HUNT’S FALLING THROUGH CLOUDS CONVEY A TALE OF IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS. ONE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER BIRDS HAVE DISAPPEARED, DR MARY MILLER HAS FOUND A WAY TO BRING THEM BACK AND HAS BEEN GIVEN A YEAR TO HAVE THEM FLYING. FROM HER OPENING DREAM OF FLIGHT, THE DEVOTED DOCTOR’S DELIGHT GRADUALLY TURNS TO STRESS AND OBSESSION.

In a dream-infused narrative, a research facility is established, eggs are fertilised, incubated and hatched. Mary monitors the growth and development of Henry and Jenny as they grow into their long necks, bills and legs. Teaching them to fly is frustrating, but the joys of interacting with Henry’s mischief and Jenny’s affection seem worth the worry, until deadline day. In a nightmarish sequence, Jenny is taken to the top of a cliff and sent over the edge—she panics, twitches her wings and plummets to her death. Mary’s instructions to end the failed project include specific directions to destroy all biological specimens herself, leading to a memorable chase scene with Henry and a beautiful sequence leading to the titular notion of Falling Through Clouds.

Adriane Daff (Dr Mary Miller) is a joy to watch. Her face conveys emotion intensely, amplified by combined techniques of theatre and hand-held camera working to produce a sense of real-time documentary. She rises to the acting challenges presented by film and stage, simultaneously, particularly in her dream sequences and also at the magical moment featuring a bird’s eye view of her from the interior of an eggshell breaking open.

As with previous works by this team, truly wonderful puppetry emerges, even when using balls of shredded paper. From the first tiny hatchling wing shivers to the clack clack of the feet of growing birds and their inquisitive and mischievous head and neck movements, close behavioural observation and dedicated puppetry technique bring birds to life with as much excitement as if they really were the first avian life in a century.

The set constantly changes, a particular highlight being the creation of the research facility using sheets of paper. It features a micro set of the island on the dark expanse of the stage, with hot air balloons flying above, changing our perspective, and fans that create the winds also clearing the ‘set’ once done. This sequence epitomises the careful simplicity sustained through the performance.

Thoughtful technical work sees simple projection used with low-tech ‘screens’ to create dreams of flying birds and a beautiful night sky. Use of simultaneous projection with the hand-held camera is particularly effective in Jenny’s failed flight attempt and wonderful when tracking Henry’s curious roaming around the closing facility. Classic puppetry provides elegant presentations of flight and weightlessness, contrasting with the chillingly creepy use of a moulded mask of Daff’s sleeping face. Henry’s escape is a beautiful collection of visual techniques, smoothly transitioning from live video streaming to a theatrical depiction of overhead lights, a simple exterior shot and then a sweet animation clearly telling his tale without any text distracting from the scene’s magical whimsy.

Integral to the performance, the sparse use of text is made possible by Ash Gibson Greig’s sound design and song selection, featuring poignantly weighted lyrical timing.

A visually beautiful work, accompanied by beguiling sound design and a mesmerisingly sweet narrative, Falling Through Clouds celebrates the considerable talents and achievements of its creative partnership.

Falling Through Clouds features in the 2015 Sydney Festival’s About an Hour program; Seymour Centre 16-18 Jan

PICA & The Last Great Hunt, Falling Through Clouds, initiating artist, co-creator, performer Tim Watts, co-creator, performer Adriane Daff, co-creator, performer Arielle Gray, co-creator, performer Chris Isaacs, composition, sound design Ash Gibson Greig, PICA, Perth Cultural Centre 22 Sept–11 Oct

WITH THE SLASHING OF SENIOR CITIZEN ENTITLEMENTS AS PART OF THE BUDGET RELEASED EARLIER THIS YEAR AND SEVERE CHANGES TO ACCESSING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, REBEL ELDERS, A COMMUNITY-BASED ART PROJECT FOCUSING ON THE PAIRING OF ELDERLY PERFORMERS WITH YOUNG MUSICIANS COULD HAVE BEEN A DARK AND SOMBRE AFFAIR.

Instead, musician and community facilitator Rose Turtle Ertler conceived a work where the audience experienced a mischievous interruption to the looming social welfare cuts. Inspired by the Australian Human Rights Commission’s “Facts or Fiction: Stereotypes of Older Australians” (2013), Ertler gives us a refreshing and heart-warming celebration of diverse intergenerational storytelling through interview recordings, music and performance.

It’s fitting too, that this project takes place in Ballarat, known for its historical uprisings. In the theatre space of the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka, Rebel Elders takes a more personal road when addressing civil disobedience. Seated on a line of hard backed chairs, the elderly performers face the audience and listen intently to the introductory sound fragments of their newly remembered stories, then one by one move forward to elaborate physically. It’s a silent interaction—with each other, alone and occasionally engaging with props, adding dimension to the recordings we hear.

Ertler’s process is an inclusive one; eight Ballarat elders were interviewed about rebellion in their lives. These stories became the departure points for young local musicians to produce radically different works to accompany them. We hear hip hop, ballad and guitar rock soundtracks alongside micro stories of rodeo and radio, a soldier going AWOL, secrets being divulged, Violet Crumble thievery, youthful runaways and a boxer not wanting to be boxed. Always with gems of elderly wisdom attached: “There’s always an upstager wherever you go, there’s always a knocker.” The emotional significance of these connections between old and new holds weight. Rebel Elders lends us an empathetic ear, stitching up the tear in our society and reaffirming the similarities between generations.

The random pieces of the sound design mimic the way we retrieve events in our lives and how these change subtly with time and location. They’re also episodic, encoding both mind and body: the bold act of a 14-year-old girl to wear fashion not fit for the 50s and the dramatic parental response — to “cut the skirt up, break the heels of my shoes”—is the catalyst for a runaway. The surprising twist to this guitar riffing tale was that in the simple act of not giving her name to police the narrator was placed in a convent for bad girls for over five years. These stories speak to us about the double-sided nature of defiance, dislodging the usual stereotypes of the elderly while also highlighting the need to find a place in the world.

The music was as varied as the stories. An elderly man decked out in an old military jacket and flying goggles with which to navigate the stage, spins circles in his wheelchair and plays air guitar with unflinching bravado. His tale slows to describe siphoning petrol while the beatbox soundtrack uses mouth and guttural utterance to amplify our sense of the experience.

With direction and choreography by Michelle Heaven, there is an impressive renovation of memory. Contrasting and complementing the recorded dialogue between the ages, Heaven picks up these rebel yarns and knits us a curious fabric of embodiment: a meshwork of repetitive gestures, thumping hearts and chance happenings. She relocates our perception with a simple use of movement evocative of the honesty in the words we hear. The choreography generates a place where the storytellers re-enact their very own characters, as if co-starring with their younger selves.

There’s a constant shift between literal representation and movement cycles that are more ephemeral in nature. Lighting by Bluebottle delivered simplicity, with occasional moments of visual trickery—larger than life shadows thrown on the backstage wall, the flickering of mismatched lamps highlighting the range of characters emerging. The performers do well to create cohesion in their storytelling, the errors in their movement real and endearing, serving to express how the elderly are misrepresented in mainstream media. Then we drift into a ballroom sequence evoking love and it’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

Rebel Elders reveals the importance of voice, where mining the mind is a personal act of rebellion within itself, a quiet protest. When it’s filtered through a combined 635 years of life there is resonance in the air, signifying that small choices can create huge change. The performance itself was the most interesting act of rebellion and the incredible people within it defied all labelling. They were real.

Rebel Elders, concept, sound design Rose Turtle Ertler, director, choreographer Michelle Heaven, lighting Bluebottle, Elders: CJ Ellis, Helen Gower, Uncle Murray Harrison, Victor Linane, Sue Morse, Kath Morton, Tom Rush, Trevor Williams; Young Musicians: Beatboxbo, Joint Beatz, Jake Dunmill, Rhiannon Howard, Reece Kelly, Jessica Moller, Kate Moran, Tabitha Rickard, Tobi Sam-Morris, Jennifer Rose Smith; City of Ballarat and Victorian Seniors Festival; M.A.D.E. (Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka), Ballarat, 31 Oct, 1 Nov

BRON BATTEN GETS AROUND. TESTING OUT NEW PERFORMANCE (MELBOURNE’S LAST TUESDAY SOCIETY), EMBODYING THE POWER OF HYPNOSIS (USE YOUR ILLUSION, RT123, P37), AND HERE SHE IS IN REGIONAL VICTORIA, WELCOMING US INTO THE BEAUTIFUL BLUESTONE OF ST MARY’S IN KYNETON—HALF WAY BETWEEN THE CULTURAL EPICENTRES OF MELBOURNE AND CASTLEMAINE—SEATING US WITH LOCAL FAMILIES KEEN TO SEE THEIR FATHERS’ FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSES LIVE ON STAGE. AS SPEAKERS BLARE ROLLING STONES (TO INFURIATE PUNTERS AFTER THE BAND’S CANCELLATION AT NEARBY HANGING ROCK), WE’RE READY NOW FOR THE DAD SHOW.

Bron (this show calls for first names) introduces herself and her dad James via slide show and poorly executed jokes (hers and his). For a previous show Sweet Child of Mine (2011) she tells us having spent a number of years on stage dressed as a humpback whale, she went around with a video camera to her parents’ home to ask them, “What do you think I do for a living?” Soon realising they had no idea, she decided to help by bringing them on stage. Here, she continues the theme, asking various father-and-son/daughter combos to perform their roles, variety style.

After a ‘real live dad’ hands out hot, weak Milo (the taste of camping), Sarah and Robert read their relationship through email, exploring what memory looks like (plasticine), how hard it is to say you don’t believe in God (when your father does) and how excruciating it is sitting in the front row watching The Vagina Monologues (when your daughter’s starring in it). The dynamic between seasoned performer and novice is negotiated carefully (and this continues through all the acts): as Sarah projects, Robert reads shyly from his notes. It is his reticence that draws my attention. So too with Bob Snelling, who takes his son Wes on a sketchy fishing expedition—ritual for the modern male—a love/hate affair. As fish-out-of-water Wes turns the radio up loud and refuses to touch worms; Bob gently coaxes him into using the rod and pats his shoulder uncertainly when tears come; salt of the earth meets high camp.

Hal and Michael (guitarists and singer-songwriters, 20 years apart) play each other’s songs for the first time together. One hipster-shaggy, the other baby-boomer-cool, they share a stance and straight-legged jeans, and as their shadows merge into one behind them, their acoustics throw off awkwardness and find comfort in convergence. The son’s face becomes joy. Henry Vyhnal’s face becomes grief as he plays his father’s violin and revisits Antonin Dvorak’s “Humoresque,” a piece of music he played at his father’s funeral. While father and son may share the language of music and moody phrasing, this act explores what’s left when one of you is gone. Hannah and Bernie share a storytelling language too but their words don’t quite relate. As Hannah reads from her journal about slowly starving to death, her father sings “Your looks are laughable, un-photographable” and dances in the moonlight; a tug-of-war between who most wants to be centre-stage.

While a loose framework of variety-hour connects the acts, The Dad Show doesn’t quite hang together. Bron’s patter before and after each performance doesn’t add to the overall cohesion, but she does make you feel like you’re hanging out with that try-hard relative who makes you cringe and want to escape the kiddies’ table. A New-Faces-Frank-Sinatra duet with her dad, where he sings “Something Stupid” and she brings in contemporary dance, is a good place to end. But what’s missing, given the show’s family focus and the building we’re sitting in, is a sense of Kyneton. I wish Bron’s dad had done a snapshot history, a male-jokey narrative of the place and its people and how the dads of the show fit into it.

The most powerful dad moment of the night comes via video. Literally lost in translation, Christian is interviewing his father Barnabus and asks him to tell a joke. While father and son arrived from Hungary in 1980, Barnabus is now in a residential care facility with Parkinson’s disease. On camera and up in bed drinking with a straw that occasionally sneaks up his nose (not an intended joke but funny nonetheless), Barnabus tries with difficulty to pull words and concepts together — running priest, minister, nurse—sometimes in English, mostly Hungarian, while the humour (tears stream down my face) comes from our imagining what the joke might be and exquisite if unintended timing. The punchline is irrelevant. When Christian asks his dad, Do you love me?” he answers, “I love you and all the other kids too.” Off the side of the stage, Christian (tears stream down his face too) explains that before he made the video, he hadn’t seen his father smiling or laughing for seven years. It took a dad joke to do it.

The Dad Show was developed and presented as part of Punctum’s Seedpod Amplified extended residency program, encouraging performers to make new work in regional settings.

The Dad Show, Punctum Inc and The Last Tuesday Society, performer, curator Bron Batten, featuring Christian and Barnabus Bagin, James Batten, Hannah and Bernie Monagle, Hal and Michael Langley, Peter and Sarah Lockwood, Wes and Bob Snelling, Antonin and Henry Vynhal, St Mary’s Hall, Kyneton, Victoria, 7-8 November.

JUST AS TRAVEL CAN BE ENLIGHTENING AND TRANSFORMATIVE, SO TOO CAN THEATRE. BOTH HAVE POTENTIAL TO CHANGE THE WAY WE SEE THE WORLD, AND OURSELVES IN IT. PACKED, A CO-PRODUCTION STAGED IN ALBURY-WODONGA BETWEEN HOTHOUSE THEATRE, BRISBANE’S METRO ARTS AND THEATRE GROUP THE ESCAPISTS, PUTS TRAVEL AND TRAVELLERS UNDER THE MICROSCOPE IN A DYNAMIC PIECE OF THEATRE.

It was clear from the outset that Packed was going to do things differently. The B52’s classic travel anthem “Roam” played as the audience took their seats, while Timothy Dashwood—beer in hand—left the stage and wandered around the theatre striking up easy conversations with patrons about their travels.

Packed tells the story of two characters, simply referred to as He and She, who represent the extremes of travel personalities. He (Dashwood) in his beer logo singlet, is the likable, loutish Aussie bloke who has swapped his 9-5 responsibilities for a life of travel, ticking off his travel experiences with an equal love of drinking and selfies. She (Neridah Waters) in her sensible walking boots, cargo pants and scarf, is the hard-working anthropologist, writing about and observing the world at one remove. They collide, literally and hilariously, in an unnamed foreign land, where despite the vast gulf of their differences, they fall in love.

Lucas Stibbard (Book) cleverly plays both He’s travel guidebook and She’s anthropology manuscript. By personifying these two books, as vastly different as their owners, Stibbard’s character adds a whole other riotous dimension to the plot and themes.

He has his beer; She has her notebook. He unashamedly wants to suck the marrow out of his experiences, “I’m a tourist, we touch everything.” She is above the consumerist tourist mentality. Eventually though, She realises she is merely “hiding in a study of the world that doesn’t have me in it.”

The script (co-written by Matthew Ryan and Stibbard) is fast and tight; a hilarious swirl of anthropological theory, observation and travel stories. Even random German words are explained in formal lecture style. The cast give standout performances throughout the, at times, manic scenes—lots of climbing, running and leaping. A sense of movement is also conveyed with small, careful effects like She’s wiggling her ponytail on the back of a motorbike.

The deceptively simple set, consisting of a section of white carpet and three carpeted cubes, was used to maximum effect, creating everything from towers to planes and motorbikes. The large screen on stage added a more complex layer to the story constantly transforming the stage to keep pace with the busy script. Animations (by Pete Foley) were a clever addition to the text-heavy story, transporting the audience to a whimsical faraway land of flying ‘sky yaks.’

There were funny asides about Pluto no longer being a planet and cats having supernatural powers. The audience hit giant balloons around the theatre and the typed pages of the anthropology manuscript floated down on the stage. Like the very best travel adventures, Packed was full of laughter, wisdom and quirky, unexpected delights.

Hothouse Productions, Metro Arts & The Escapists: Packed, co-creators: Keith Clark, Jonathon Oxlade, Matthew Ryan, Lucas Stibbard, writers Matthew Ryan, Lucas Stibbard, design Jonathon Oxlade, lighting Keith Clark, composer Chris Perren, AV design Pete Foley, The Butter Factory Theatre, Wodonga, Oct 23-Nov 1

A SELF-CONSCIOUS REJOINDER TO THE NOISINESS OF THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT ON THE ONE HAND AND THE SO-CALLED ‘NEW ATHEISTS’ ON THE OTHER, DAVID WILLIAMS’ QUIET FAITH WEAVES ITS MEEK PRESENCE FROM THE REAL LIFE THREADS OF THE FAITHFUL ORDINARY AND A BURGEONING CHRISTIAN ACTIVISM AS EMBLEMATISED BY THE ‘LOVE MAKES A WAY’ PROTEST MOVEMENT.

In his familiar manner, Williams recorded interviews with 20 Australian Christians of varying ages and denominations in preparation for the work and it’s their words, replicated verbatim down to every last, drawn-out “um” and “ah”, that constitute Quiet Faith’s text. The conversations Williams held with interviewees emerged from three questions: “How would you describe your journey of faith? How does faith manifest itself in your everyday life? And what do you think is, or should be, the relationship between religion and politics?”

Reviewing Williams’ program notes now, I’m put in mind of George Pell’s terse response to David Marr’s recent Quarterly Essay, The Prince: “Marr has no idea what motivates a believing Christian.” In that case, Pell was shutting the door on the possibility of a non-believer grasping such a thing; in Quiet Faith, it is Williams’ avowed intent to open it, to let a little light and air into the largely internalised beliefs of Christianity’s silent majority. It is, seemingly, a project that has been conceived with atheists and agnostics in mind, those who, like both Marr and myself, are more at home critiquing the Christian religion’s institutional failings and archly conservative social activist agenda than engaging with the views and lived experiences of everyday believers.

Williams is joined onstage by just one other performer, the significantly younger Ashton Malcolm, whose performance style provides a sometimes-jarring contrast with Williams whose approach is mimetic, soft-voiced and poker-faced, shot through with, no doubt, many of the same false starts and fillers he has detected in the responses of his interview subjects. Malcolm’s, conversely, is more embroidered, less attentive to the faltering rhythms of ordinary speech; a clear persona emerges that is warm, amused and defiantly daggy. Williams’ performance, moreso than Malcolm’s, seems calculated to drive home the dissimilarity between grassroots Christianity’s quiet emphasis on the pursuit of good works and the evangelistic social conservatism of high-profile Christian politicians like Cory Bernardi and Bob Day. Bernardi, Day and their ilk—and this, of course, is the point—seem worlds apart from the reflective, softly-spoken small-l liberals on whose words Quiet Faith is built.

“I would have said probably 10 years ago,” one of Williams’ interviewees told him, “it would have been unthinkable for a Christian in the conservative churches to not vote Liberal.” Now, such people are not only not voting Liberal in significant numbers, but are staging sit-ins at the offices of ministers on both sides of politics in protest at Australia’s continued, bipartisan policy of offshore detention of refugees.

In addition to providing a useful sketch of this shift in the relationship between religion and politics in Tony Abbott’s Australia, Quiet Faith also foregrounds the minutiae—the hymns and prayers, the church services and greetings of peace—with which the faithful daily ritualise their beliefs. Set designer Jonathan Oxlade’s rings of wooden pews, gorgeously lit by Chris Petridis’ suspended halo of lights, establish a tone halfway between intimacy and ethereality that is subtly redolent of places of worship. The performers move among, sit beside and address their dialogue directly to audience members as candles flicker here and there. At times we are called upon to stand and sing or recite—“Amazing Grace,” The Lord’s Prayer—while at other times Bob Scott’s immersive sound design, incorporating sacred organ and choir music and ringing bells, surges and then drains away. We hear, too, whispering voices: muted, indistinguishable waves of human speech that might be prayers or verses of scripture.

Finally, Malcolm and Williams embody two ministers as they debate the baptism of a stillborn baby, an act expressly forbidden by their doctrine. It is the only palpably dramatic moment of the evening and serves, inadvertently, to point up the insipidness of the preceding hour. There is no doubting the production’s elegant visual and aural design or the appeal of its careful, convincing restatement of progressive Christian values, but in its quest to achieve a meditative atmosphere Quiet Faith tends towards the simply soporific. More forgiving were the audience members who, judging by their post-performance responses, had had a Christian schooling or upbringing. Over them, at least, the work seemed to leave a pall of happy nostalgia—a mark of the successfulness of its verisimilitude, if not its ability to fully engage the uninitiated.

RACHAEL MAZA IS THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF ILBIJERRI, VICTORIA’S ONLY PROFESSIONAL INDIGENOUS THEATRE COMPANY AND, TOGETHER WITH WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S YIRRA YAAKIN, ONE OF ONLY TWO SUCH COMPANIES IN AUSTRALIA. SHE HAS JUST RETURNED FROM DUBLIN WHERE THE COMPANY’S PRODUCTION OF JACK CHARLES V THE CROWN PLAYED AT THE SAMUEL BECKETT THEATRE AS PART OF THE DUBLIN THEATRE FESTIVAL. ASKED ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE SHE IS ECSTATIC, “OH MY GOD, JUST BRILLIANT. THE WORK ITSELF …IT STANDS UP AT AN INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL.”

While not a woman’s story, Jack Charles’ was one that Rachael believed needed to be told and this remains her major consideration when selecting a work. “The thing that really fires me up is the politics…a carry-on from the generation before me and my forefathers.”

Rachael’s father Bob Maza founded, with Jack Charles, Australia’s first Aboriginal theatre company, Nindethana, in Melbourne in 1972 and produced a version of The Cherry Pickers by Kevin Gilbert, considered to be the first Aboriginal play. Later the same year Maza moved to Sydney where he was actively involved with Redfern’s National Black Theatre. Rachael remembers these as “high energy times” with “the men very loud and public,” so much so that they caught the eye of the media to the virtual exclusion of many incredible women.

Given this background it’s perhaps not surprising that Rachael became an actor, although there was a time when she was determined to find a different career. Her first love was music, playing bass guitar in bands. However, while working at a community school in Woolloomooloo she found herself thinking, “Maybe I’d like to do acting.” A work colleague mentioned a course in Lismore that offered acting and dancing classes and she decided to give it a try. Lyndon Terracini, now Artistic Director of Opera Australia, was her acting teacher and she credits him with influencing her to do a ‘proper’ acting course. This College of Advanced Education course had provided her with the stepping stone she needed to enable her to complete a three year acting degree at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).

As Rachael explains, coming to acting via a circuitous route meant self doubt has always been an issue for her: “I’ve taken nudges, required people to bolster my confidence because it wasn’t there innately.” She has never seen herself as ambitious or driven and has tended to take a year-at-a-time outlook on her career: “It’s like I’ll see how it goes; if it’s going all right I’ll keep going…otherwise I’ll do something different.” In her current role she is aware that she often tends to step back, handing the credit to all the other creatives involved. “You know you’re good at what you do…but I grapple with this inbuilt uncertainty that kicks in at all points.” Asked how she deals with this her answer is simple, “I don’t know. I just power along.”

Rachael Maza’s way of working is intuitive and collaborative. “I listen from my gut and through that am able to navigate my way creatively through the space. Often I find myself sitting back in the room and letting the creatives put their input in and then tend to come in and feel like I’m steering it…that’s how I cope, that’s how I work best.” She also works best when she manages to strike a balance between work and family life—an ongoing struggle.

The challenges inherent in her current role are many and varied. One of the biggest is the shortage of Indigenous arts workers at every level of the creative process: actors, writers, directors, designers, production managers, producers, you name it. There is a mass of talent within the community but for some reason not many have gone on to pursue professional careers in the arts. llbijerri does its best to nurture and develop talent but no one theatre company can do everything. Indigenous artists need to have other opportunities to develop their skills and gain experience over the longer term, to have viable career paths.

Rachael does not believe there is a male/female imbalance within the Indigenous arts community, but she does find that the women tend to be less inclined to “talk themselves up.” In contrast men come across as far more confident in who they are, what they have to offer and where they see themselves in the future. “I am very aware of concerns from the community that we need more women’s stories.” This is probably why Ilbijerri has three women’s stories (by Katie Beckett, Tammy Anderson and Wilma Reading and Jane Bodie) currently in development.

The reality of limited funding is always challenging; development/rehearsal time is limited and “we have to be very vigilant to ensure Indigenous protocols are followed.” Without exception, when developing a new project at Ilbijerri, the protocols involved can mean a very lengthy process of talking to and working with everyone impacted by and involved in that story. The budget is never enough to research, develop and rehearse a work as much as one would like which puts added pressure on all concerned. “Jack Charles v The Crown was one of those blessed experiences, despite the limited budget, because we had the right team in the room and because that story was determined to be told—we got there! Four years later it’s still touring. Beautiful One Day [with version 1.0] was another exception to the rule because it was backed by Sydney’s Belvoir, giving us the luxury of five or six weeks’ development followed by five weeks’ rehearsal.“

Despite all the challenges Rachael Maza is optimistic about current opportunities for Indigenous arts and artists. “It’s a fantastic time to be in the arts; it’s a struggle, but there is massive room for growth…a real opening up for Indigenous story-telling. I think a crack’s happening in the veneer. There’s been a long history of not wanting to go there because it’s so ugly, painful, raw. I think something’s cracked, there’s a want to hear these stories…I think that some time in the future we’ll be able to celebrate because this is what makes us unique in this country, something really special, something we can all learn from.”

Rachael Maza’s fIlm and TV roles include the AFI award winner Radiance (1998), Cosi (1996), Lillian’s Story (1996) and My Year Without Sex (2009). She’s also worked as a TV presenter, narrator and Indigenous Liaison Advisor on films such as Rabbit Proof Fence (2002). In 2012, she worked as dramaturg on the production of Coranderrk: We Will Show the Country. As performer she’s appeared in the Belvoir production of The Sapphires (2005) and Bell Shakespeare’s The Tempest. She won a Sydney Theatre Critics Award for her role in Radiance (1994) and a Green Room Award for Holy Day (2002). Her directing credits include Stolen (1992) for Ilbijerri Theatre Company, Sisters of Gelam (2009), Jack Charles Vs The Crown (2010), Foley (2011) and Beautiful One Day (2012).

OPENING THE LIQUID ARCHITECTURE 2014 FESTIVAL BOOKLET FOR THE FIRST TIME WAS A DISCONCERTING EXPERIENCE, AS LOOSE PAGES FELL TO THE UNSUSPECTING READER’S FEET. THE PAGES FEATURED ARTISTIC STATEMENTS, QUOTES FROM FRENCH THEORY, ROCK LYRICS, BUT NO PAGE NUMBERS. WHERE WERE THE FESTIVAL DATES? WHO WAS PLAYING WHERE? WHAT ORDER DID THE PAGES GO IN? THE FESTIVAL WEBSITE WAS SIMILARLY DISORIENTATING.

New festival Artistic Directors Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela had warned us that audiences this year would be confused, angry and divided. The festival booklet’s fluid hierarchy and lack of easy answers augured this challenge. With the theme “The Ear Is A Brain,” Liquid Architecture 2014 encouraged audiences to listen and think critically. They proved sturdy enough to accept the challenge with gusto, selling out the majority of events on the Melbourne leg of the festival and on more than one occasion becoming participants in performances (both voluntarily and unwittingly).

It was clear from the moment the audience entered the Meat Market for the opening night concert that things were not going to be made easy. As the crowd of 500-plus filed in, they gradually became aware of an irregular knocking coming from the PA. Melbourne artist, Helen Grogan, was crawling around the perimeter of the space, tracing its edges with a live microphone. Grogan’s Concrete Room, performed previously in much smaller gallery spaces, was executed with a single-minded intensity that emphasised the work’s ritualistic nature. Grogan’s microphone negotiated carpet, skirting boards, bluestone and at times the feet of audience members. The long microphone cord tailing behind her forced the audience to physically negotiate the performance by stepping over it.

Most of the capacity opening night crowd had come for Robin Fox’s headlining RGB Laser performance. This was expertly staged as a large partitioned wall opened to reveal a spacious extra wing of the venue, with Fox’s smoke, laser beams and jagged electronic tones spilling out. The crowd strode into the smoke like entranced cultists for a truly immersive sound and light experience, with Fox presiding over it all from a raised platform like a new Wizard of Oz.

Yet the most interesting performance of the night was Christof Migone’s Mixer. The first of several works by the Canadian artist on the festival program, Mixer was performed by a group of volunteers briefed shortly before the concert. The work took place on the main stage in between the more ‘official’ performances with the participants enacting a series of simple, repetitive actions, mostly involving microphones. These included repeating your age for an equal number of minutes, and giving other participants backrubs with a live microphone. These unheralded episodes were largely ignored by the large crowd, whose own sound world of reverberating pub chatter created a distinctly odd juxtaposition against Mixer. The audience’s dogged ignorance became part of the performance.

The following evening’s Stutterances program at the National Gallery of Victoria attracted a more attentive crowd. Most of it took place in a lecture theatre setting with speech/text-based performances from touring and local artists. Some artists ‘detourned’ various visual communications technologies: from overhead transparencies (Kusum Normoyle) to crappy PowerPoint presentations (New Waver). Johannes Kreidler’s taxonomy of heavy metal with short accompanying audio examples (black metal, power metal, poser metal, true metal…) was a highlight, as was Alessandro Bosetti’s circular spoken text and its interaction with a pre-recorded female voice that could have been that of a lover or a phantom ‘voice in my head.’ Local conceptual/parody project New Waver’s overdue return to live performance was a winner, coaxing the ponderous audience to sing and clap along to that ode to real estate and gentrification, “We Built This City on Indie Pop.”

Both the opening night and Stutterances event featured performances that, if not exactly spectacular, were provocative in the concepts they explored and the tropes challenged. Yet some acts struggled to rise above middling in their conceptual depth. The Friday night program in the Trench under Federation Square had its moments, but for the most part performances lacked a dynamic arc or failed to convey the complexity that artists such as Migone and Kriedler had done so elegantly. The Donkey’s Tail performance of noise ensemble with soprano was beautifully staged from a platform overlooking the audience situated below in the subterranean industrial cavity of the Trench, but other acts wavered between extreme obscurity and the plainly undergraduate.

The success of various lectures and workshops prior to and throughout the festival also varied, with James Parker’s “The Jurisprudence of Sonic Warfare” standing out as the most accomplished. The festival’s gamut was ambitious; the fact that not every act was a resounding success shouldn’t be construed as marks against it. Experimental arts practice needs room for failure, and opportunities for formal discussion of sound practice are all too rare in Australia and should be encouraged.

Migone’s mass participant piece, Hit Parade, was an undoubted success. The closing event of the Melbourne program, it pulled many of the festival’s ideas together through the primal act of banging a microphone on the ground. Migone gathered 50 volunteers of all ages to the National Gallery of Victoria’s Great Hall and armed each with a microphone and guitar amplifier. Fifty bodies lay face down bashing their microphone into the floor at their own chosen pace and intensity, one thousand times each. Sonically, Hit Parade differed depending on whether you walked around the prone performers in the hall itself (like being in a room with dozens of people knocking on the walls around you) or listening to the racket distantly from the nearby galleries. The visual aspect of the performance in concert with the sound was the most arresting aspect. Hit Parade looked like an act of mass civil disobedience; a peaceful yet doggedly single-minded protest where the only violence was sonic (and to the poor microphones). As each participant gradually reached their one thousand hits, Hit Parade lessened in density until fewer and fewer hits were sounded. All participants remained facedown; their action complete, silent but present.

The sublime bookending between Grogan’s ritualistic inauguration and Migone’s mass microphone action conceptually framed the festival’s various themes, including sound as power/violence, mass participation in performance and authorship, and voice/text as music. Liquid Architecture 2014 was always going to flirt with the danger of deconstructing until all that remained was a conceptual gruel of no real interest to anyone, but happily the festival managed to dance around this intellectual precipice without irrevocably stumbling in. Liquid Architecture pushed the boundaries of not only what could be considered music, but what constitutes sound performance. Many of us are looking forward to the challenges offered next by this reinvigorated Liquid Architecture.

Members of Decibel perform Michaela Davies’ Goldfish Variation, After Julia concert

“THE REACTION TO MY BEING THE FIRST FEMALE PRIME MINISTER DOES NOT EXPLAIN EVERYTHING ABOUT MY PRIME MINISTERSHIP, NOR DOES IT EXPLAIN NOTHING.” JULIA GILLARD

Live concert events are theatrical, in that the kinetic presence of performers always invites some degree of visceral engagement from an audience. Whereas what we expect to see and hear from performance ensembles can be disrupted by the addition or subtraction of instruments, electronica per se also brings in invisible elements which can charge and redefine what we experience in new ways.

After Julia, works by women composers commissioned by the artistic director of the Decibel acoustic and electronica ensemble, Cat Hope, centres on the Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard and the discrimination to which she was subjected. Hope offered seven composers the opportunity to ‘give voice’ to their responses to this aspect of her term in office. Here, the parallels and interplay between visible and invisible, spoken and unspoken or muted forces at play, both politically and musically, were appropriately matched.

Gail Priest takes as starting point Gillard’s “everything and nothing” speech, turning the letters of her statement into a melodic line via simple MIDI transcription. Alto flute opens with a phrase of simple stepped notes, the piece becoming an imitative fugue first on clarinet, then strings. Cello and violin lengthen the first note of the phrase, allowing flute and clarinet to return—like some of Gillard’s detractors—with petty, trill undercuttings. The vibraphone builds turbulence until the overall melodic contour reaches a distressed high ‘b.’ The piece comes to a sudden stop: as in politics, endings can be short and sharp.

Thembi Soddell’s Your Sickness is Felt in my Body is inspired by studies published in 1995 on the physical and psychiatric effects of sexism on the female body. A scratchy ‘ill wind’ blows through flute and clarinet bores. Tonalities begin to widen between instruments; interventions from electronica prompt clarinet protests and squeals. A wire brush scrapes and irritates the bass drum; when assertive white mallets begin to strike, we finally see an overt source of pressure that builds and builds.

A crescendo peak falls back into a thin, tight, scraping. What caused this neurotic interlude? Who was responsible? It is perhaps in Soddell’s piece that the power of the ‘invisible forces’ of sexism—what Gillard calls “the small things that all add up”—is given strongest illustration.

Cat Hope’s Tough It Out begins in a sonic charting of the popularity ratings of national leaders over the past 20 years. String glissandi illustrate the rise and fall of polled ratings. Via headphones, the composer directs ‘interruptions’ inciting disruptions to the performance. The clarinettist coughs, splutters, shifts and stands; the violinist dislocates the cellist’s score; the clarinettist plays the back-end of his own bore. The piece ends with whispers ‘in a corridor.’ Who was in charge anyway? Gillard, a guest of the evening, quipped in a mid-concert interview, “I hope they are still talking to each other.”

Cathy Milliken’s Schifrorl opens with flute signalling a standard ‘homing cadence’ of V (dominant) rising to 1 (tonic) in a plaintive and slightly melancholic song. The flute fans open to a fugue with clarinet until a surprise mallet drops onto the kettle drum. Then, more ambiguous and disrupted cadences follow. Hammered piano chords are countered by slides on the cello. This is unstable ground.

Milliken’s piece is the least programmatic overall. Its textural contrasts—rattles, rolls, chips and gliss that thicken and thin—insinuate rather than illustrate a ‘court of intrigue.’ Which of the instruments—or who, or what—really holds power? Its closing stage brings a hint of ‘ill wind’ in its almost hurdy-gurdy sounds. Three harmonicas rasp and etch against a single piano bass note, and finish with an invisible yet audible and unnerving electronic thrum.

The presence of a goldfish in Michaela Davies’ Variation was a refreshing device but incompletely realised. Two musicians sit facing each other, a bowled goldfish placed on a plinth between them. What follows is an earnest, if timid, rendition-in-voice of the fish’s movement ‘score’. When the fish gets sleepy, vocalisations wane, until the whole is enlivened when a pinch of fish-food is dropped into the bowl.

While fish and bowl serve as a nice metaphor for the politician exposed to constant scrutiny of her every move, the piece would have benefited from more stringent dramaturgy. There is room for a much more dynamic engagement between fish, voice and singers’ bodies to amplify the absurdity of relentless scrutiny, small-minded commentary (small voices) and the hyperbole to which public lives are subject. The space per se, pared back to two + fish performers, cried out for this degree of theatricality. For instance I would have loved an extended extempore ‘melisma of the tail.’

Kate Moore provides an oracular poem to accompany her piece Oil Drums. Cross rhythms between piano and violin suggest tribal antagonisms. I picture battles in vast desert landscapes, shattered horizons, the incendiary threat to a vulnerable oil commodity. There is more than a hint of global economic, political and climactic pressures impinging on local concerns.

I’ve never heard a high ostinato before but the keyboards play it, high-flying sand blinding the air. This is a contemporary Apocalypse Now, both reminiscence and foreboding, wondering at the place of non-partisan decision-making that perhaps makes it Moore’s statement rather than one Gillard would have made.

The sound balance is unsatisfying, therefore it is quite hard to distinguish the interweaving of electronic against acoustic tonalities. It was an ‘I-could-have-heard-but-didn’t’ event. The final phrases, however, do seem to express the heroic in the career path of those ‘called to serve.’

Andree Greenwell’s Arrows I and II show the composer’s passionate belief in harnessing the expressive power of music to highlight both noble and mean-minded sentiments and reveal moral pressure points. Six young women, dressed in black, enter and line up behind microphones. There is a soloist and choir of three citing Gillard’s Prime Ministerial acceptance speech in a melodic sprechgesang, while the youngest two bark aggressive invectives such as those levelled at Gillard during her incumbency (‘bitch,’ ‘cow,’ ‘liar’). It is powerful to have the invectives delivered by the young. How conscious or unconscious is misogyny? Bowed vibes provide a high sharp note, leaving an ironic question hanging in the air: Why?

Arrows II is composed to a poem by playwright Hilary Bell. Greenwell provides sweet melodic anchors to counterpoint these sharp ethical questions, echoing Bell’s lyrics about ‘little arrows with poison tips,’ hinting at slow death by invisible forces. The ire and fire of politics. From the mouths of babes.

After Julia, Decibel New Music Ensemble [Cat Hope, Lindsey Vickery, Stuart James, Tristen Parr, Aaron Wyatt, Louise Devenish], vocals Helen Grimely, Sonya Holowell, Poppy Duwenbeck, Helen Hughson, Nicola James, Minna McLure; ABC Classic FM, Eugene Goossens Hall, ABC Ultimo Centre, Sydney, Nov 8

NO INSTRUMENT HAS BEEN WRENCHED FROM OBSCURITY AND THRUST INTO THE SPOTLIGHT BY CONTEMPORARY MUSIC LIKE THE BASS CLARINET. THE INSTRUMENT HAS INSPIRED AN IMMEDIATELY IDENTIFIABLE REPERTOIRE OF EXTENDED TECHNIQUES INCLUDING SHOCKINGLY-PERCUSSIVE TONGUE SLAPS, GUTTURAL GROANS AND FEROCIOUS, MULTIPHONIC ‘DINOSAUR NOISES.’

But the bass clarinet is also a gentle giant capable of enveloping the listener in a glowing aura of sound. It is this latter quality of the instrument that Australia’s most versatile clarinettist, Aviva Endean, explored in the resonant Norla Dome.

The dome is set inside Melbourne’s best kept secret, The Mission to Seafarers building. Built between 1916 and 1919, the Mission continues to provide lodging and services for seamen, as well as offering five different performance spaces ranging from the grandiose main hall to an enclosed courtyard. Most striking of all is the dome, which was once festooned with rigging for sailors to climb while on shore. It features a completely disorienting acoustic, with a focal point in the middle of the room where you can hear your words repeated back to you dozens of times. When the room was used as a boxing ring, being punched in that spot would have been a remarkable experience.

For In the Half Light, Aviva has teamed up with lighting designer Danny Pettingill and set designer Romanie Harper to create an immersive experience. The audience sits on cushions in cardboard pods around the space. On one side of the dome is a brooding pile of brown paper resembling a giant wasp nest. In the centre a pedestal displays a dish of water. A soft electronic tone (operated by Sam Dunscombe) emanates from the nest as light fades up inside. A clarinet begins to play against the tone, altering its tuning to produce strong beats. Endean emerges from the nest (through a side entrance; we are spared a ‘birthing’) and walks around the space, the mellow tone of the clarinet bending slightly as she moves.

The show is also full of charming site-specific details. From small holes in the nest, rays of light shoot onto the domed ceiling. Even the traffic on the nearby freeway and the crying of seagulls is somehow sublimated into something enchanted within the space. This effect is enhanced by Pettingill and Harper’s Gondry-esque crafted reproductions of the mundane, such as the small mobiles of mirrors that, when spun, shoot rays around the dome like passing car lights.

Within the frame of electroacoustic music, instruments are usually stationary sound-sources and speaker systems provide the means to diffuse the instruments’ sound throughout a space. In this work, Endean is mobile and the electronics are fixed. The dome, furthermore, throws Endean’s sound seemingly independently of her own movements. Sometimes it comes from behind you, or whispers in your ear. I cannot imagine a better space in which to explore this concert’s repertoire—including works by Endean, Sciarrino, Lucier, Grisey and Ambrosini—than the sound-microscope of the Norla Dome. But given the saturation of Australian contemporary music programs with whispering works on the very edge of hearing, I am beginning to look forward to the return of the dinosaurs.

Aviva Endean, In the Half Light, Norla Dome, Mission to Seafarers, Melbourne 14 Sept

TO CELEBRATE ITS 15TH YEAR, THE MARAIS PROJECT—ITS AIM IS TO PLAY “ALL THE WORKS OF MARIN MARAIS (1656-1728) AND OTHER SIMILAR MUSIC FOR THE VIOLS”—MOUNTED AN INTRIGUING CONCERT TO PLACE THE MASTER’S FAVOURED INSTRUMENT, THE VIOLA DA GAMBA, IN A 21ST CENTURY CONTEXT.

First up was Marais un-re-imagined—a mellow E minor Suite from 1725 in which the viola de gamba seemed a little uneasy tonally and rhythmically, but after which the playing was immediately more confident. Three of four movements of saxophonist Paul Cutlan’s engaging Spinning Forth were presented, viola da gamba and harpsichord in dialogue, reaching atypically sweet heights and dark depths while retaining a Baroque feel, the viola da gamba at times harp- and even koto-like.

Pianist and composer Matt McMahon was looking for “an approach that takes the viola da gamba out of its traditional setting” (program note) in “At Carna,” an attractively melodic, folk-ish evocation of Ireland, for piano and a melancholy seven-string fretted electric version of the instrument, with its sometimes steely sound. Siebe Pogson’s “Dark Dreaming,” for bass and viola da gamba, both electric, and inspired by Jaco Pastorius, was song-like, layering the melody with a variety of techniques including plucked bass and seemingly extempore wordless vocals that headed in the direction of rock with nightmare intensity—the instruments becoming one disturbed voice.

McMahon’s “For Thomas Wyatt,” the 16th century innovative English lyrical poet, courtier and lover of Anne Boleyn, is eloquently elegiac, its melody Celtic, its tone dark; electric viola da gamba, piano and bass guitar in melancholy embrace. In jazz bassist Steve Hunter’s Three Rivers, as arranged by McMahon, viol and bass build the melody and are fluently joined by tenor saxophone (Cutlan) on its way to a full-bodied compelling solo, rising with feeling over the jazzy warmth of the ensemble. As ever, McMahon’s rich pianism produced beautiful, unexpected resonances. Finally, his arrangement of Guy Strazz’s Zawi (Ode to Joe Zawinul) paid tribute to the great Weather Report pianist in a performance that suggested both sadness and soaring liberation.

Re-Imaginings certainly conjured other ways of being for the viola da gamba, especially in its electric incarnation—releasing a greater range of sound: double bass and cello-like, firm but warm—in Jenny Eriksson’s more than able hands.

THE SECRET NOISE IS COMPOSER AND DEVISOR DAMIEN RICKETSON’S RESPONSE TO THE WAYS HIS CONSCIOUSNESS BECOMES HEIGHTENED WHEN HE PERCEIVES STRANGENESS IN SOUND OR SENSATION. IT’S A POETIC NUDGE AT THE SECRECY STILL ENTRENCHED IN STAGED ART MUSIC—WHERE PERFORMERS USUALLY WEAR BLACK, ACTING AS DEPERSONALISED TRANSMITTERS OF OTHERS’ GENIUS, WHERE THEIR EXPERIENCE IS NOT THE SUBJECT OF PERFORMANCE.

This collaborative music/dance/theatre work communicates not only the sound of music but also the experience of musical process as reception, memory and fantasy. It’s a critical commentary on our understanding as concert-goers of interpersonal musical exchange. What if ‘classical music’ were individually tailored and responsive at all times?

Ricketson was curious (his company/website is Curious Noise) about how to present those elements of music that are personal, undisclosed or mysterious. His exposure to private musical encounters that happen in public space, like ours, are frequent and often unworthy of mindful note. But those moments on the fringes of public experience inspire this collection of musical scenes which, coupled with dance from Kathy Cogill and Narelle Benjamin, and theatrical moments from Katia Molino, stage a world of absurd yet anything-but-hokey utterances. Ricketson, Ensemble Offspring and stage director Carlos Gomes have struck the right balance of exploration-to-permissible action here with the subtle coercion of parents, highly attuned to the rebellious habits of those they lead. Their psychology is always a step ahead of ours, guiding us to come to their realisations about the diversity of public and private musical sensations.

Our tickets are A4 and graphic scores that we can colour in or otherwise mark. As we enter a very gruff door-bitch (Molino) inks them violently with a Secret Noise stamp before ceremonially snapping a CD in two as a passing ritual. We are lead into the giant, low-ceilinged room below Sydney’s Town Hall in which five large seemingly fire-lit tents glow invitingly. From each sounds emerge, but there are no instructions, we must follow our noses and snoop. Each tent allows three curious folk in at a time and our tickets become the musical instructions for the performers inside. In one Claire Edwardes rings hand bells; in another Jason Noble has an assortment of whistles and a lyre; in another dancer Narelle Benjamin contorts into pretzel shapes with Indian hand-cymbals dangling from her toes while staring intently into the eyes of the few lucky entrants. Do bells sound better when your lower limb is perched on your shoulder? How about when they’re so close you can smell the metal?

Before we’ve had time to explore every tent we’re ushered towards seats that frame a long and narrow stage. The ‘real music’ begins. Dancers slink into the central space, spinning objects attached to strings over their heads. On close inspection we agree the objects are (brand-new minty-fresh) toilet brushes. One whirling brush makes a whizzing sound. In combination, two sound like currawongs. Three make for an R&B synth solo. This spinning gesture returns with other objects attached; later Molino flings a thicker one that sounds like a far-away traffic jam or distant train. Meanwhile clarinettist, Noble, lies down, gliding across the floor on his back while contributing a steady tone. Together they create the drone of the dreaded mozzie that keeps you up all night.

A more conventionally musical moment, where seated players staring at music stands made sounds, seemed the kernel of the work. The dancers couldn’t contain their curiosity and buzzed around the musicians, responding to the secretive sounds. Some interrupted the players with movements and exaggerated faces; their interference produced the energy that the musicians then encoded in sound. One dancer became a stole that slipped down the back of the seat behind a player. A chaotic tango arose —polyphonic in the extreme—in that each player emoted and swayed, performing with exceptional lyricism, in absolute ignorance of the ‘musical genius’ around them: every one a soloist. This scene captured the sensation of playing in an ensemble of battling egos—the music sounding as that circumstance feels. This tango grew legs, slipped to centre stage, abandoning the mass-ensemble. It tripped and drowned purposefully between Bree van Reyk on a fully unfolded accordion that became one with a sinuous Benjamin.

There were loud hailers, tubular bells, decks (turntables) and two saws played with violin bows, vibraphone, drum kit, black gowns and skulking chairs in which the dancer-actors slid towards the music. Under Carlos Gomes’ direction, the mediums for the performers became equally musical, theatrical and choreographic—it didn’t matter whether sound emanated from the action or energy was transferred. They communicated something else, something formless that belongs to all of us.

Throughout The Secret Noise, Ensemble Offspring and friends created an exploratory space that really worked (where many similar collaborations fall short): it felt natural, feasible and, at times, familiarly facile, as when we find ourselves alone, listening to the chatter of the air-conditioner or the hiss of our own nervous system.

Audience participation in The Secret Noise felt comfortable—no awkward, self-conscious delays—those displays of learnt humility—upon invitation to join in. The creative team fashioned an environment and culture that invited inquisitiveness. Towards the end cushions were delicately laid about the stage. Again, no instructions were given, but somehow we knew that we were invited to inhabit the stage, to lie on the floor and perhaps glide as the performers had earlier. So we too experienced the music on a horizontal plane, while locomoting backwards, navigating space and strangers.

As Saturday nighters bustled above the venue, dance music and drunken antics often bled into the space. Given the eclecticism of The Secret Noise’s aesthetic, this ‘noise’ was not unwelcome. It situated the work in the city and layered our attention on multiple simultaneous scales. No sound ever exists in isolation and yet many expect perfect art music performance to happen in a coughless, car horn-less vacuum. The partiers had no idea what we were listening to, seeing or feeling—it was our little underground. They showed us, in their obliviousness, how special these secret noises and moments were that we shared.

The Secret Noise, Ensemble Offspring, concept, composer Damien Ricketson, director Carlos Gomes, devising performers Bree van Reyk, Claire Edwardes, Jason Noble, Kathy Cogill, Katia Molino, Narelle Benjamin, lighting design Fausto Brusamolino, Lower Sydney Town Hall, 20-22 Nov

ABOUT HALF AN HOUR OUT OF AVOCA ON THE ROAD FROM BALLARAT YOU ENCOUNTER A PARTICULAR TREE-LINED STRETCH SUBTLY DIFFERENT FROM THE USUAL AUSTRALIAN COUNTRY ROAD. DIFFICULT TO IDENTIFY AT FIRST. WHAT MAKES IT SEEM UNCANNY IS THE REGULARITY OF THE TREES, PLANTED CAREFULLY TO MOMENTARILY HEIGHTEN THE PERSPECTIVE OF ROAD TRAVEL. THEY REMINDED ME OF NORTHERN ITALY.

Like the wineries and tiny steep-roofed chapel along the roadside, this intervention marks the agricultural enterprises and aesthetic expectation that continental European settlers brought here. Australian cities celebrate their multicultural heritage, yet too often the diverse cultural influences of rural Australia, of the various populations that have cultivated and re-imagined this land over the years, are subsumed into the homogenising voice of a predominantly English colonial history. There is a history of intertwining landscape aesthetics written into these surroundings that remains under-explored.

Almost entirely absent from Avoca and the surrounding landscape are obvious traces of the tens of thousands of Chinese miners who travelled to Victoria to create a future for themselves in the Gold Rush of the 1850s. Largely shunned by European populations at the time, the Chinese miners had a difficult experience on the gold fields and many returned to China, even posthumously, after the gold rush had run its course. Issues of singular and exploitative economies such as mining, along with the immigration, cultural exchange and xenophobia that accompany them, become questions that are historically specific for Avoca, yet still contentious for many parts of Australia.

Towns of the Victorian goldfields give us a glimpse beyond those heady days of dynamic economic possibility. Avoca was one of five very small towns in Victoria (with populations under 1500) awarded funding under the Small Town Transformations project instigated by Regional Arts Victoria (RAV), funded to commence in May 2013 and to be completed in October 2014. “This project is all about the creative power of art to make place. It invites you to be ambitious in imagining what transformation might mean for your town—now, and into the future” (http://smalltowns.rav.net.au). This project opens up space for an important dialogue about how communities struggling with the after-effects of structural economic change and the dwindling populations that accompany it might imagine their own transformation through art. The provocation by RAV is specifically to explore how art-as-infrastructure might contribute to creating resilience and longevity. In doing so it offers an alternative, and potentially a challenge, to more familiar forms of cultural intervention in rural Australia, such as travelling shows and/or transient or event-based community development projects.

The Garden of Fire and Water is Avoca’s response to this question of transformation. A garden is an interesting spatial model to explore: artistic gardens have a unique historical position as places of pleasure that exist external to requirements of function, embodying opportunities for events and durational inhabitation as well as aesthetic and internal contemplation. “For the garden is both spectacle and stage, existing simultaneously as an artwork in itself and as the site of the representation, conjunction and synthesis of all the other arts.” (Allen S. Weiss “Unnatural Horizons: Paradox and Contradiction in Landscape Architecture”, Princeton Architectural Press, Jan 1998).

For Avoca, the opportunity for evolving curation, such as for Chinese New Year, will be an important aspect of its transformative impact. Due to a garden’s unfinished qualities, requiring constant cultivation and attentiveness, the collaboration with the community also necessarily unfolds into the future. Within the space of the garden itself, the project therefore also invites the community to co-create its future unfolding. In deciding on a Chinese garden, the project throws out a further interesting challenge: to consider questions of identity, aesthetics, belonging and land in Victoria. Lindy Lee, a celebrated contemporary Australian artist, whose work explores questions of identity and authenticity, including her own Chinese-Australian heritage, led the project.

Lee worked on the project with Lyndal Jones (artistic director for the garden and associated events), Mel Ogden (designer and project manager) and Martin Wynne (soil expert) as well as a local residents’ committee led by Jane Howe. Jones, who is Professor of Contemporary Art in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT University, bought the neighbouring Watford House around 10 years ago to create a durational art work The Avoca Project (http://www.avocaproject.org/). As she describes it, the prefabricated house imported from Hamburg in 1850, as were many structures during the Gold Rush, is itself an immigrant. Layer upon layer of intermeshed meaning and reference, as a deliberate blurring of situation and art, characterises her curation of the house; and now the Chinese Garden.

Alongside the launch of the garden, the Avoca Project hosts an exhibition exploring ideas of ‘China’ by a number of Australian artists, as well as serving as a sort of index to the garden project in its inclusion of drawings by Ogden and Jones’ own work inspired by a journey to China in the 1980s. An ongoing collaborator, Ogden has designed courtyard spaces and verdant platforms around Jones’ house that are also anticipated as spaces of unexpected performance and celebration. Wynne has also previously been involved with Jones at the Avoca Project, creating soil cocktails for a project called “XSpecies: Soiree of Earthly Delights.” The entire team seem to share an attitude of duration and careful attention in their own practices: from Lee’s Zen Buddhism, Wynne’s soil cultivation, Ogden’s landscape gardening to Jones’ long term and inhabitable artwork.

The result of their collaboration occupies a simple rectangle of earth on a gentle slope tucked behind the main street and facing the Avoca River. The remnant frames of the old timber sale yard fences enclose it. A small public space along this section of the street connecting the pub down to the river flats was also created in the project. Monthly farmers’ markets are held at this corner, spreading out along the riverside. Trees planted along the edge of Cambridge Street, once they grow taller, will contain the garden visually and provide much needed shade for the public space. Through circular metal garden gates, clear paths lead to a central pavilion: a shaded space to stop and contemplate, as well as framing a view that borrows from the bucolic river flood plain.

Lindy Lee’s scorched metal sheets, that continue her long-term engagement with ideas of the element of fire, provide simple ornamentation to the pavilion structure that is also clearly influenced by the Australian shed. “I think what we’re creating in this garden is a really beautiful and particular kind of Chinese-Australian vernacular” (http://vimeo.com/106165131). The garden’s vegetation too is a combination of borrowed species, such as bamboo and cherry blossom, brought together with natives. Downhill from the pavilion you pass a small pond with water lilies and reeds. In keeping with the frugal sensibilities of a region used to making the most of scarce resources, the pond and tanks perform the double purpose of capturing and filtering storm water from Avoca’s main street. At the very bottom is a stone garden, for which most of the rocks came from local farms. Nestled among them is another of Lee’s contributions—a polished-metal scholar stone. Through its framing and borrowed referents this garden contributes a new layer to the complex and ongoing aesthetic dialogue written into this local context.

Yet the Chinese Garden in Avoca is not as exotic as it may at first appear. Architects and artists who travelled to China at the end of the 17th century returned home to Europe richly inspired by the irregular beauty of Chinese garden design. This exotic influence led to a shift away from the regularity of traditional European gardens marking a larger paradigm shift in the development of European landscape aesthetics, a process at its height when Australia was being first settled. This aesthetic arguably acted as a transformative filter, reflecting the cultural and economic desires of the settlers and inscribing them on the landscape. With their eyes looking for the picturesque interest of the European landscape, Paul Miller identifies regular references to monotony in settlers’ written account of this unfamiliar land. “An utterly monotonous landscape bears no relation to the travellers’ world, to their history or their culture, and that is to say that for a particular landscape to be or not to be a part of culture depends on whether that land is a priori part of the mind that experiences it” (Paul Millar, “Monotony and the Picturesque: Landscape in Three Australian Travel Narratives of the 1830s,” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 1997).

It is worth pondering how Chinese garden aesthetics, or a straight row of trees along the side of a road, are more familiar to my narrowly trained eye than any signs of Indigenous culture and guardianship of the land. Looking across the river flat, where the new pavilion sits as a garden folly, Lyndal Jones remarks how unexpectedly the Chinese Garden sits far more comfortably in Avoca than at first anticipated.

Regional Arts Victoria, Small Town Transformations, Avoca Chinese Garden, Avoca, Victoria, opened 11 Oct; other projects are The Quarry Ephitheatre, Dookie; The Verj, Natimuk; Neerim Bower: Inspired by Birds, Neerim South; Mallee Up In Lights, Ouyen.

PERFORMANCE SPACE’S BURUWAN SEASON, FOCUSED ON CULTURAL FORGETTING AND RECALL, INCLUDES MAJOR WORKS BY LONDON-BASED WEST AUSTRALIAN KATE MCMILLAN AND CAIRNS-BASED TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER KEN THAIDAY. INTERVIEWS WITH THESE ARTISTS AND IMAGES OF THEIR WORKS CAN BE SEEN ONLINE IN REALTIME PROFILER 7.

Kate McMillan’s The Moment of Disappearance elegiacally conjures islands on multiple screens and cardboard rocks in an installation funereally draped with veil-like curtains. These places are ‘isles of the dead,’ where Aboriginal Australians were imprisoned, perished and forgotten—Rottnest Island (Wadjemup) and Tasmania (Lutruwita), Port Arthur in particular. McMillan also invokes a third island, Pontikonisi, alleged to be the Isle of the Dead featured in Arnold Bocklin’s famous 1880s paintings of that name. Here she stages one man’s representative flight into madness, his isolation, his ferocious grappling with nature and his ghostly fading. In her interview, McMillan describes the making of the work and her feelings about these islands and their forgotten or repressed histories.

Ken Thaiday’s impressive array of Dhari headdresses—his “dance machines”—are exhibited in the Carriageworks’ foyer. Meant to be worn for ritual dancing, they embody the power of Torres Strait Island totem animals—the shark and the frigate bird. Thaiday, a keen innovator, has integrated modern materials (including recycled waste) into their construction, which include moving parts—wire, fishing line, clips and hinges. A giant, three-metre tall Dhari, designed to frame a performance, dominates the space.

Thaiday sustains Torres Strait Island culture with his Dhari and other sculptural works (which include a magnificent, meticulously crafted lobster). In our interview, Thaiday speaks of the purpose of his work, his materials and his fervent commitment to Jesus, who provides him with the inspiration to preserve his traditional culture.

These two shows bring home the power of art as active remembering and reinvention and politics as denial or calculated forgetting.

Carriageworks & Performance Space, Ken Thaiday; Performance Space, Buruwan: Kate McMillan, Moment of Disappearance, curator Bec Dean; Carriageworks, Sydney, 2 Oct-23 Nov

OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, ERIN COATES AND HER TEAM HAVE BEEN CLIMBING THE PUBLIC ART AROUND PERTH AS WELL AS APARTMENT BLOCKS, HIGHWAY RETAINING WALLS AND SUPERMARKET BUILDINGS. HER EXHIBITION KINESPHERE IS THE CULMINATION OF ALL THIS EFFORT, SHOWING OFF BODIES AS THEY LUNGE AND TENSE FROM ONE HOLD TO ANOTHER. A VIDEO OF THEIR CLIMBS, AND SOME PARKOUR TOO, IS PLACED INSIDE A SEVEN-METRE BLACK MONOLITH THAT RISES IN THE CENTRE OF THE GALLERY. IT IS A MONUMENT TO THOSE MONUMENTS AROUND THE CITY THAT COATES HAS REPURPOSED.

The best video footage is of the climber at risk, when Coates herself is suspended underneath a ridiculously ugly public sculpture, swinging from side to side, hanging precariously for our viewing pleasure. At such transcendent moments the point of Kinesphere comes to the fore, as physical performance confronts the legacies of modern art, the ecstatic affects of the body in motion bringing the dead spaces of our civilization to life. In watching performances like this our neurones enact the same pathways as the climbers themselves, and their pleasure becomes our own.

There is another video here too, a brilliant little film called The last climber alive must keep herself fit and ready, in which a pint-sized performer climbs walls and exercises high on the rooftops of a miniature model city. She lives in a world without people, a single body lost amid the concrete. The last climber… is an intimate contrast to the massive ambition of the central installation, with its towering geometries and bodies at their limit.

The most innovative part of the show, in which art and climbing comes together most evocatively, is in a series of bouldering walls tucked into one of the gallery spaces. The room is decorated with colourful handholds and lines drawn between them, geometries of colour and line tying the body and the eye together. Here the art really is climbable, and during the exhibition many children clambered over each other in a wonderful array of splayed little bodies. At last, I thought, PICA have coincided their exhibition program with Perth’s Awesome Arts festival for children, which always lives up to its name with a packed program of quality installations and performances that impress kids and adults alike.

Alas, the young invigilators were unhappy with this proliferation of fun and joy in the gallery, and prevented the youngest from climbing, telling their parents the installation was not for children! Coates’ installation proved once more that art galleries are failing to do what they are designed for, to affirm what we all share as human beings, to poke and prod at the ways in which we have been embodied in the world, to celebrate life and its vicissitudes. Such aims are better achieved outside the gallery, aloft and clinging with a climber’s nimble hands, or even on the internet, where videos of such performances abound.

Erin Coates, Kinesphere, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, 13 Sep-2 Nov

Book: Alex Frayne, Adelaide Noir

From Adelaide’s stylish Wakefield Press comes Adelaide Noir, an evocative large-format photographic account of the city by local artist Alex Frayne. Filmmaker Matthew Bate writes in his introduction, “[Alex has] found a portal into our sleep. He’s able to take snapshots that he can bring back and show us. It sounds like the plot of a bad 80s sci-fi film but these one-frame narratives are cinematically compelling. Long exposures reveal the shimmer of events just missed or about to happen.”
3 copies courtesy of Wakefield Press

DVD: Nick Cave—20,000 Days on Earth

Inventively directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, this fictionalised documentary about a day in the life of the musician and writer offers us a Nick Cave persona to ponder. Get out of bed with him, deal with the kids, go to therapy, to a recording session, perform in a concert and bump into friends, like Kylie Minogue. The UK Guardian described it as “[l]ess of a biography than a widescreen installation with script and music (Cave’s co-writing credit confirms the artifice), this flits between handsome neo-noir pastiche and ripe psychological melodrama” (21 Sept, 2014).
5 copies courtesy of Madman Entertainment.

DVD: The Double

Directed by UK actor Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd, Gadget Man), who also made the acclaimed Submarine, The Double is about a young man who is faced with the frightening arrival of a more confident, identical version of himself at work—no one else notices. Based on Dostoyevsky’s The Double with a touch of Cyrano de Bergerac, this is an intelligent dark comedy with Jesse Eisenberg playing self and other, with Mia Wasikowska as the object of their joint desire.
5 copies courtesy of Madman Entertainment

Email us at giveaways@realtimearts.net with your name, postal address and phone number.

Artist Kate McMillan discusses her work The Moment of Disappearance, an immersive landscape of sound and video that traces legacies of the Enlightenment to their colonial manifestation in Australia.

Presented by Performance Space, Sydney, Thursday 6 – Saturday 29 November 2014.

Renowned Torres Strait Islander artist Ken Thaiday talks with Keith Gallasch about his major exhibition, which showcases a range of his works, traversing dance, installation and kinetic sculpture.

Presented by Carriageworks and Performance Space, Friday 3 Oct – Sunday 23 November 2014.

Angus Cerini was supposed to have an audition the day before we spoke recently, but turned down the part after realising who he was being asked to play. “I always get asked to audition for thugs and it’s just not me,” he says. “Don’t send me for drug dealer parts. It’s not what I’m good at… I did ballet for 10 years and I’m in my body. Give me shit that’s big because I’m a performer. There’s no point trying for these silly roles because other actors can do that and they’re good at it and we’re going to waste everyone’s time.”

It’s not hard to see why casting agents would make such errors. For the better part of two decades Cerini’s theatrical practice has presented viscerally confronting takes on masculinity, abuse and the relationships between violence and power. To reduce to the status of ‘thug’ any of the characters he has so scarily embodied is itself a bit harsh, but he knows he’s not going to be offered a romantic lead on the strength of his stage output, either.

For those who have followed Cerini throughout his career, it’s tempting to see it as the sort of continuous oeuvre quite rare in Australian theatre, in which the same questions and concerns run through every work, and each of his tortured torturers offers another aspect of a kind of ur-male that can never be fully represented.

“I reckon everything I’ve done has really been a meditation,” he agrees. “I feel like I’ve always been looking at why men do this, why this happens. There’s this really bad person, this young man. It’s been more about philosophy. And also about worship or prayer or somewhere to have power. Much bigger, in my own mind, than just putting on a show.”

Cerini’s monstrous young male was most recently incarnated in the form of the bomber-jacketed entity at the centre of Resplendence, a bundle of nerves at first attempting to punch the universe but eventually battered down by existence itself; earlier, he found a fascinating voice in the two-hander Wretch (2009), and can be traced back to the cryptic figures of Saving Henry (2003), Detest (2007) and Puppy Love (2006).

I’m surprised when Cerini even traces a thread back to a work in which we both performed close to 20 years ago, a university production of Clive Barker’s The History of the Devil. No prizes for guessing who Cerini played. “I was a bit mad at the time but I sort of summoned the fucking devil. Every night before the show I’d shave my head and I’d draw the pentagram on the mirror and fucking ask that fucker to fill me. We all started in the auditorium and at the very first show I was sitting there in a chair in that St Martin’s Theatre and I felt a fucking presence in the back right corner of that theatre, like a big massive bloaty fat flabby thing, and I turned around and there was this energy.”

His performance was certainly memorable, and much more committed than the usual uni theatre outing. “Anyway, after the show had finished I was back at Mum’s house in Vermont and I was out the back telling the devil to fuck off, like that’s enough,” he continues. “And no shit, this massive storm of crows, probably a hundred of them turned up. The backyard was full of crows. Yeah, I was a little bit mad.”

Cerini knows that the story is over-the-top, but the places he wants audiences to go require that bold leap into darkness. I don’t know that he ever did completely rid himself of the devil, since every one of his subsequent works has the quality of an exorcism. “Yeah,” he says. “Let’s go in there together but let’s go as dark as we can, let’s bring the fucking evil out, then once we’ve brought it to life let’s fucking put it to death. Let’s sic the fucking animal on it. Then what happens if the devil kills the animal that you’ve got to protect you? What have you got left? It’s going to the darkest places in order to work out how to defeat them.”

His efforts in recent years have drawn much recognition. Wretch earned him the Patrick White Playwrights Award, Save for Crying won two Green Room Awards and an RE Ross Trust Award, and most recently his script The Bleeding Tree won the Griffin Award. It’s testament to the quality of Angus Cherini’s practice that such a physical, embodied performer can also sculpt language that carries as much energy on the page. “It’s interesting because I reckon Wretch and Save for Crying and probably Resplendence, the later stuff, I don’t think you can approach them as an actor. You have to approach them almost as spoken word or poetry. Rather than working out what you’re trying to say… We need to just say it and let the lines speak. It’s about the bigger journey.”

Selected articles

Intuiting change
John Bailey: Angus Cerini, This Thousand Years I Shall Not Weep
RealTime issue #71 Feb-March 2006 pg. 29

poplectic apocalypto
Tony Reck: Angus Cerini, Chapters from the Pandemic
RealTime issue #81 Oct-Nov 2007 pg. 38

Julian Day is an artist, composer, writer and broadcaster based in Sydney, though compiling this profile involved chasing him as he presented work around the world. Beside his busy schedule as a visual artist, Day performs as An Infinity Room, co-directs participatory performances under the name Super Critical Mass and is perhaps best known to Australian audiences as the regular host of ABC Classic FM’s New Music Up Late.

Day’s installations explore the interaction of architecture and sound using simple and visually striking sculptures. In Lovers, which I recently saw at the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music, four wood-veneer Casio keyboards are pinned to the floor and ceiling with metal poles. The poles hold down keys across the entire range of the keyboards, sending chords of layered sevenths and ninths humming through the space. The gently beating harmonic rainbow shimmers and shifts as you move about the space, a sonic sculpture in itself. It is also a clever sculptural representation of an inversion, with the pole pressing the highest note on one keyboard also pressing the lowest note on its twin. Day finds enduring fascination in this form, which he has developed in over a dozen iterations. As he explained via email, the sculptures produce “a spatial interplay between the static physical objects, their continually expanding drones and the spectator’s compliance within this field. The constantly emanating sound activates the so-called ‘negative space’ of the room, occupying the site with subtle yet persistent energy—what critic and essayist Steven Connor designates “spatiofugal and spatiopetal space.”

Beyond formal experiment, the installations explore a variety of themes and poetic connotations. The history of the materials forms a layer of meaning unto itself. When Day first began using 1970s/80s electronic keyboards in the installations, it was as a statement about cheap consumer electronics and the “fetishization of musical objects,” in particular when there is a steep price tag attached. The original intention was to work with a “museum of unloved objects,” the sort that are usually sold cheaply or given away in garage sales. Now, his vintage Casio keyboards are collectors’ items, implying “an additional museological arc” to the installation.

Other motivations are more personal. Day hears the installation as “a conceptual endgame: twins forced into constant relationship through separation, mute objects brought into life through puncture, sound as a perpetual death cry.” The installations also provide a way of coming to terms with personal failure and “the many seemingly lost years I spent trying to learn the piano, all the while at an insurmountable professional disadvantage of starting at the unbearably late age of 12 and only obtaining a piano at 15 (finally I didn’t have to beg neighbours or recede into music shops on weekends). Here I am finally occupying spaces and situations as if I’d become a professional pianist but with the dumbest means possible.”

Lovers is another example of Day’s career-long interest (stretching back to early minimalist installations with his collaborator Luke Jaaniste) in “making the invisible visible.” Day borrows the maxim from Alvin Lucier, with whom he has studied. This interest comes to the fore in perhaps the most developed version of Lovers, entitled Requiem, exhibited at the Chatswood Concourse in Sydney. “The Chatswood work was an iteration of Requiem in which I very discreetly positioned two pairs of matching small synthesizers within the entranceway to a busy arts centre. One pair of brown keyboards was positioned between two parallel brown window frames and one pair of white keyboards was positioned between two parallel white walls between a staircase and a wall. In both instances the instruments were either somewhat camouflaged or completely out of sight unless you craned your neck to look. The sound floated through the space but was quite soft and so hovered around the bass noise floor. Combined with the constant footfall, opening of doors and speech the sound field was almost more felt or unconsciously registered than fully heard. Nonetheless, as the two pairs of keyboards used slightly different chords you could still distinguish different affects as you moved throughout the space and you could differentiate where the two keyboards were, almost like a treasure hunt for the ears.”

Julian Day is still making the invisible visible in his most recent works, including a series of installations at the Stederlijk Museum, Amsterdam. In this series, Day “[brings] hidden phenomena to surface—a slowly descending glissando sine tone suddenly triggering a lone snare drum in the middle of a room, for example, or the strange beating patterns (like an invisible dissonant being) when an instrumental septet play against an undifferentiated held electronic tone.”

The 135th meridian of longitude bisects the Australian continent and can be seen metaphorically as a connecting thread running through the Northern Territory and South Australia. In fact, from 1863 to 1911, the Northern Territory and South Australia formed a single colonial entity.

André Lawrence, the recipient of the 2014 Australian Experimental Art Foundation’s Emerging Curator Fellowship, has assembled a major exhibition of artwork by 14 NT and SA artists in which he addresses the art of Central Australia and the relationships between its many communities. He states in the exhibition catalogue, “135th Meridian—East is a proposition for an ongoing relatedness across Country that remains rich in zones of contact, exchange and history… As sites of discovery and experience, the conversations evoked in this project highlight these ecologies within a geographical area so rich in culture and history it defies delineation.”

At the exhibition opening, local Kaurna people welcomed all communities and particularly artists from the Indigenous communities of the north. The ceremony acknowledged the breadth and length of the region bordering the meridian, and the exhibition itself welcomed viewers to the unique cultures of the region. Before the large audience and including the playing of the Yidaki, this welcoming was a powerful performance promoting mutual recognition and respect the length of the country.

Born in the Territory, Lawrence lived in France from age eight to 20, and on his return to Australia studied art at Charles Darwin University and the University of SA. He lives in Adelaide but frequently visits NT and maintains close relationships with communities there. Influenced by his father’s political engagement and involvement with Indigenous communities, Lawrence sees himself primarily as an artist but came to curating through his concern for cross-cultural collaboration.

He has been a tour guide, taking tourists along the 2,800km Stuart Highway, connecting Adelaide and Darwin, that runs almost parallel with the meridian and which acts as a cultural spine. The exhibition itself unfolds as a journey and the first work viewers encounter is a ceiling-high drawing of an Adelaide CBD streetscape by Adelaide artist Thom Buchanan. The final work is a montage of videos of Indigenous ceremonies assembled by Wukun Wanambi, and viewers encounter a range of artworks along the way. 135th Meridian-East is thus a journey not just from south to north but from an emblematic site of modern western culture to traditional culture.

There is an extraordinary range of approaches to art in this survey exhibition. Ali Gumillya Baker’s video Ahoy! Nungas re-enacting white patriots re-enacting their murderous invasion of the Lucky Country (Part 1) addresses the issue of Indigenous sovereignty [see Bound and Unbound, for more on Baker’s work]. Dutch-born Maarten Daudeij’s work explores the Flinders Ranges and Northern SA, using rusty, barbed fencing wire to form lettering that spells out “Not my will but thy will.” Sue Kneebone’s compelling installation Hearing loss (Volume III) comprises a 19th century desk connected by a telegraph wire to an original pine telegraph pole; on the desk sits a candelabrum of kangaroo skulls, her work highlighting early colonisation through the establishment of the telegraph and the destruction of wildlife through farming. “Lots of works play on the gap between the colonial and the post-colonial,” says Lawrence. James Tylor’s Postcards from the Frontier (An Anthropological Study) comprises a series of photos recording aspects of the region to critique the anthropological viewpoint.

Naturally, many of the Indigenous artists’ works are about place and post-colonial ideas of place. Pungkai’s painting Longa Longa Time, I bin Mine My Business, Now Everyone Cummin Mine My Business depicts a desert landscape with tyre marks over it; attached to it are plastic toys representing road works, mining camps and other commercial interventions. Another James Tylor work, A Nautical Journey of Country, is a wall-mounted assemblage of sticks and shells forming a rough map showing the regions in which he has lived, from western Victoria through SA, NT and the Kimberley, with the Stuart Highway shown. Tylor is of Aboriginal, Maori and English origin and the form and materials of this work refer to Polynesian seafaring charts. Sera Water’s Fritz and the rose garden is like an aerial view of a garden—made from woven felt, calico, string and cotton; hung like a painting, it refers to the rose garden her immigrant German grandfather maintained in the arid area of SA where he settled. And the husband and wife team of Lena Yarinkura and Bob Burrumul show two Wyarra Spirits, traditional totemic figures representing bush spirits.

In explaining why the exhibition was set out as a journey, Lawrence states, “I wanted people to feel immersed in the landscape—they can see the horizon but must negotiate obstacles and landmarks to get there.” Importantly, the final work is Wukun Wanambi’s montage of videos, from the archives of the Mulka Project at Yirrkala. The Mulka Project is a media production house and library which collects material depicting Yolgnu culture with the intention of reinvigorating its traditions while acknowledging Yolngu law and governance, a project in which Yolgnu people are retaking ownership of their culture and its dissemination.

Lawrence says he is encouraged when people from diverse backgrounds come together and connect, and prior to mounting this exhibition he had been wanting to bring NT artists to Adelaide to recreate or reveal their cultural interconnections. In 2013, he curated an exhibition at Adelaide’s Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre in which he explored cultural hybridity. He has previously shown the work of NT artist Frank Gohier at the AEAF and has shown SA artists in a corresponding space at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (formerly 24 Hour Art) in Darwin. For example, James Dodd is based in SA but works extensively in the Territory and has developed a strong appreciation of it. Dodd contributed three paintings to 135th Meridian—East: two show abandoned cars in the desert, symbolising the country’s impenetrability to modern machinery. The third shows a police van in the desert, acknowledging the tension between law enforcement and the central Australian population—there is graffiti over the surface of this painting as if the painting, an emblem of western culture and authority, has itself been vandalised.

Lawrence is interested in how artists respond to locale and to circumstances, and worked with the selected artists, many of whom created new pieces for this exhibition. His detailed exhibition catalogue provides a sensitive, nuanced and critical view of the country and of the significance of the works. In it, he orders each work thematically under its own heading: Binary Landscapes (Buchanan), Sovereign Voice (Baker), Familial Histories (Waters), The Highway (Dodd), Pushing North (Kneebone), Spaces of Contention (Pungkai) and Culture Alive (the Mulka Project). Significantly, he does not privilege any particular culture or community over another, but honours the presence of all, providing a forum for dialogue between communities.

135th Meridian East, Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 5 Sept-4 Oct, 2014

Making art is more than a job and it’s more than a life-style choice—for many, it’s an all-encompassing way of being. This can make living with an artist a difficult feat, unless both are of like constitution. So it’s not surprising that in the art world there are many couples who share both their lives and their art.

RealTime is run by such a couple, Keith Gallasch and Virginia Baxter, who, before their foray into publishing, also produced a large number of contemporary performances as Open City, often drawing on personal experiences and their relationship or, as Apartners, working as consultants for other artists.

Of course it’s not all smooth sailing—one’s partner is often one’s harshest critic, but perhaps this is a key to the conceptual rigor often illustrated in the creative manifestations of couples. To get to the bottom of this, in Profiler 6 and 7, we asked a number of art couples about their collaborative practices. We thank them for their generosity and their honesty.
Gail Priest, Online Producer

Clare Britton & Matt Prest

Clare: Matt has supported my practice in so many ways—with humour, intelligence and kindness. So many projects I have worked on were made possible by Matt caring for our little boy and having the generosity, at the end of a long day, to still be interested.

We have made a lot of work together but it still feels like we are only just starting. Every now and then I see him out of the corner of my eye and it really makes me laugh. We had a pretty crappy winter—the wheels were just falling off.. Our car stopped working and it was the one we brought our son home from hospital in. Matt did this work at Alaska Projects. He was dancing with our broken Corolla and our crappy heater in front of a seating bank full of sceptics (he won them over as the performance went on, but this was early days) and he was just—I don’t know—brave and honest. It was so beautiful – the view I had of him. I have no idea where this is all going.

I want to see what Matt’s going to do, what I’m going to do and what we are going to do together. We have a residency next year at the Watermill Centre (Robert Wilson’s performance laboratory in New York) where we are going to work on separate projects side by side—I can’t wait to see what comes out of that.

Matt: Our life and work crosses over in a sort of haphazard, unplanned way. It’s like we do one thing and then another thing that balances the first one out. Our son Les has started to be a bit involved with our work. And he has started to involve us in his. For his school Halloween thing he began designing a costume in January and employed the services of Clare to help make it happen. As it neared completion, Les came forward with a new business proposition, Les and Clare Industries, and he immediately began to talk money (a promising sign for struggling artist parents). A few days later he came back suggesting 80% of profits go to the Siberian Tigers.

Clare makes beautiful things. This feeds our life together and with our son. She seems to be constantly working her butt off and is always in demand for her skill and talent. This year Clare has been studying visual arts and I’m excited to see her follow her ideas and intuition and see where that takes her and us. We are still growing up together, learning more about ourselves and each other. It feels like we’re both very much at the beginning of things.

Vincent Crowley & Ingrid Weisfelt (Torque Show)

Vincent: Ing and I met while we were dancing with Meryl Tankard’s Australian Dance Theatre. We were colleagues for a year before we became partners.

I think that basically we work together because we’d like to be the other person creatively. We value the skills and talents that the other possesses more than our own. I guess that makes us creatively complementary in a slightly envious way. We also share a long history of performing, making and watching shows that shapes and influences the types of performances we are interested in making ourselves.

We’ve worked together as dancers in other people’s work (in multiple companies and projects), as performers in each other’s and as collaborators creating work together. Each of these configurations has its own dynamic and its own up side and not so upside. By far the easiest working relationship is when we dance together, in our own work or someone else’s. There seems to be a pleasure and ease and lack of complication in this physical conversation that we struggle to achieve in our other creative endeavours together.

We’ve found through trial and error that when we’re creating our own work things seem to work better if one or other of us takes the overall responsibility for the work. Two heads are better than one in our case as long as there’s one head that gets the final say in unsolvable arguments, points of contention and matters of taste.

We don’t work exclusively with each other either. We each have projects that involve other artists. Partly this is because we’re independent artists and we work where we can, but I also think these projects are important to help us maintain our sense of individual identity which in turn allows us to bring new ideas and fresh perspectives to our work together.

We also have the extra complication of adding a third non-partner to our partner-art collaboration. Ross Ganf is the other member of Torque Show. He gets to be the odd man in. He brings another set of skills, talents and energy to the creative process. I suppose this three-way unit dilutes the pure partner-art-ness of much of Ing and my collaborative work. This third voice in the Torque Show creative conversation does make negotiating the difference between our personal and professional relationship much clearer and straightforward. The three-headed relationship we have at work is a different beast to the two-headed one we have at home. There might be times when Ross feels like this is not the case and he’s stuck at home with us. But that would be a different article: “Partner plus one.”

Torque Show’s next work, Madame, will be premiering in April next year as part of the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s 2015 Season.

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth

Right now we are working on a video project in Melbourne’s western suburb of St Albans, where Maltese immigrants maintain the tradition of Spirtu Pront (or “quick wit”), a singing style that developed in a peculiar way on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Part singing, part public argument, part entertainment and part public psychotherapy, these finely executed song duels emanate from working class bars on the island. Our project presents an anachronistic form where ritualised argument can be a positive social force, providing a public platform for the resolution of conflict.

Many of our works emerge from specific sites or social situations, often involving real world participants and different types of performers. These settings introduce varying degrees of unpredictability into the practice, as we try to negotiate our way towards making an artwork without controlling all the variables.

When we are outside the studio we are often in unfamiliar territory, filming in a particular location or cajoling all types of people to participate in a project. It’s a good thing that our projects are so outwardly social, as our work as a collaborative duo pretty much dominates our lives. We are good travellers and our practice really benefits from the challenge of research-based residencies. Last year we spent three months working intensively in a rarely-visited Russian city for our project Zaum Tractor, where we relied most heavily on each other’s personal resources.

Back home, most of our work revolves around researching and planning, perhaps editing sound and video, and we recognise that we both need long periods of solo focused work each day. We have separate studio spaces at each end of the house, keep in touch via WIFI messages and typically meet up for an hour in the middle of each day for more detailed discussion. We often take a walk to discuss things or visit each other’s spaces; all of our moments of personal contact are opportunities to discuss various aspects of the work-in-progress.

Our projects are built up over time through research, discussion, recording and editing, often in short bursts and often in different sequential order. We like to think that we are ‘makers’ who collaborate as much as possible, and together we try to cover all the skill-sets so we don’t need to pay outside crew. It’s a great thing to have flexibly and confidence in the dialoguing process, it generally serves to lift the spirits rather than create conflict.

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, Zaum Tractor, 2013, 2 channel HD video (Video still)

THE PRODUCTION OF JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH’S PLAY NIGHTFALL DIRECTED BY JENNY KEMP PREMIERED AT PLAYBOX IN NOVEMBER 1999 AND WAS SIX WEEKS INTO ITS SEASON AT SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY IN MAY 2000 WHEN I SPOKE TO IAN SCOTT AND MARGARET CAMERON WHO PLAYED THE CENTRAL ROLES.

Nightfall concerns Edward and Emily Kingsley an upper middle-class couple whose daughter Cora has mysteriously left home with no explanation. She’s been missing for a number of years when the Kingsley’s are visited by Kate Saskell (Victoria Longley) a go-between who has come to prepare the way for Cora’s possible return. I asked Ian Scott and Margaret Cameron to elaborate on the construction of their remarkable performances in this production.

Margaret: The approach to the play for me was a matter of the whole body physically listening. The listening body is like an animal: you can get caught, suspended; you’re hunting the sense and the emotional sense. Jenny Kemp is a very good director for me in that she loves to see that. If you get stranded halfway, held in space, Jenny’s in a state of delight because it’s dangerous. She credits the invisible world. She understands it as present.

Joanna’s text is like a score. There’s ‘beat, pause and silence.’ And there’s ‘dot, dot, dot and dash.’ And they are absolutely accurate, except she’s prepared to shift them around if, after trying everything, they can’t be spoken.

Ian: The words dry up but something else keeps going and I’ve realised there’s a whole world there in those dots. You can be observing someone, or your face carries the thought. More than other plays I’ve done, I think this sort of writing can produce some wonderful performances where there are no words.

Margaret: That’s going on all the time in these characters. Emily goes into a place where she can’t talk. It’s as if the play’s a grid and there are references all the time to things that can’t be said.

Ian: If you took a negative of all those pauses and put them on paper, you’d have another map, another text through the play. There are a lot of things that Ed says, like, “What is it you’re…Just say what it is you’re insinuating…Where did this all…I can’t…” He can’t actually use words because they fix it and he can’t have that happen.

That inability to speak is expressed physically. For instance, I became aware of all the little muscles along the side of Ian’s jaw. Also Dale Ferguson’s design locks you into a small square surrounded by the outside dark. How do you respond to the physical confines of the space?

Ian: You think of it as a technical thing—that you can’t occupy a place and stay there—because the emotions of the unfolding will project you into different places. Jenny was very conscious that it has to arrive naturally. So then you realise other things are important: that you can’t use your back to the audience; that you can be in a position where you’re uncomfortable.

Margaret: You know that your whole body is being read, wherever it is. You are completely visible. There’s also the wonderful exaggeration of the in and the out. Because Cora may be out there in the garden; it feels like an amphitheatre and you’re able to have double faces. You present one face inside the living room and then you turn to the audience and go, “What is she talking about?” So the audience is in the place of reading the inner feelings of the characters when they’re looking out.

Are these elements written into the script?

Margaret: They’re in the design, I think, and the direction.

Ian: I think of moments of stillness and the moment in the play when Kate starts telling us that Cora has been depressed. She’s revealing bits and pieces of information and the room goes almost deathly still.

Ian: Receiving that information and being victims of Kate’s knowledge produces a kind of paralysis. When that breaks we say things like, “Let’s get this thing back on the road” and we all have trigger points. One of Ed’s is to get up and tell a story and rebel against the visitor. The stories become physical escapes. Sometimes those things follow in a predictable fashion but there are unusual moments like when Emily hits Ed. It is written in very detailed fashion but there is something else there that takes over despite the way it’s written. It’s a particular form of physical moment.

Margaret: The play starts right on an edge but then it’s actually something that needs to be held and contained and contained and contained. You can’t break out of its parameters or it loses resonance. It doesn’t hold. And formally speaking, you have to hold and hold and hold. You never really go for the dramatic moment. You just hold form. Then, right at the very end, it breaks. Emily is trapped behind the couch and she does this elision. Her line is, “I, I felt less than nothing. I can tell you I wanted to vanish.” The audience might think that she’s answering the question, “What was it that Cora remembered?” but she’s not. She’s eliding under emotional pressure into just talking. Structurally, if it dips emotionally too strongly anywhere else, you lose that break. And it’s a very subtle breaking point. So the drama leaks, it leaks out of the structure if you don’t play it muscularly.

Are your performances fixed, do they vary much?

Ian: It’s one of the tightest shows I’ve ever done.

Margaret: But the personal physicality I find shifts around depending on how the emotional graph of that particular evening goes.

Can you describe this emotion graph?

Margaret: It begins and that’s all I know really. And I know I must have a particular cocktail ready—Emily’s cocktail. Her emotional/physical world is adrenalin, huge expectation and capping and locking a terrible fear that things might not be all right. It’s a paradox she starts with, an expectation equaled by massive fear. And they’re balancing each other. That’s her place. And she keeps working towards the belief that Cora will come in that door at any moment. She’s sincerely trying to help Kate. And the pressure will shift me around emotionally so that if on a particular evening there might be a point reached in the graph, which is a little bit unexpected or the intensity is less than last night, what happens is that it goes somewhere underneath. It’ll curve around and sort of push you in another sequence. So you’re playing the essentials every night but where they occur is moveable and very volatile.
It’s quite frightening to perform. At certain pitches in the thing when you’re going along, like when Ed suggests to me what this woman is actually thinking, Emily’s response is silence and then, “But that is…but…look Miss Saskell, look, I understand that you are…” She goes somewhere else. “You are concerned for Cora,” She goes walking into the unknown all the time. “But if this is, if Cora said, if that is true…” And I find it hard. You’ve got all this uh-uh-uh stuff going on all the time. You’re swallowing like that all the time. You’re swallowing the language and at a certain point, you’ll have a spot where it just goes Pchew! And you’ll get a chance to respond.

Ian: The moment when you hit Ed, and from your point of view, there’s a release, but also for the audience a sense of relief that…
That a sentence has been completed.

Margaret: There’s been a break.

It’s a very powerful moment.

Margaret: It’s also impotent. She only enacts it. It’s not the actual break. The pain becomes visible but it’s not resolved. Then begins the lie. Is she telling the truth or is she just trying to get Cora back? In the first scene Emily says, “Imagine ripping down the walls.” I’m going pitter patter on Ed’s chest and then I turn and the whole house tilts and I see the walls of the suburban house gone and I’m just floating in orbit. From then on, for me the play becomes very abstract. I’m actually working in an amphitheatre then, not in a living room set. Right out. Right out. At the very end of the play I try to use this. I empty my mind as if to say to the audience: my mind is the theatre; it is a space for your imagination. Whatever you can imagine is here. I am empty now, so what do you see? Whatever you see is possible. This transaction really to me is what the play is about.

How does Elizabeth Drake’s score affect your performances?

Ian: I say, “You know, I had a dream last night that I had been living in a world without sound.” I use it to quiet Emily but when I think of the way the sound is used in the production, I think of that story, “I wondered for a moment if this was death—to be somehow conscious but without feeling. Then the noise started, Earth music.” The pulsing of the sound throughout the play is a bit like the mind seesawing, the inner things that need to come out and the outer world sort of changing places until finally one wins.

Margaret: It creates a fantastic ‘listening.’ It actually enables the play to go a bit abstract towards the end I think. It pulls the walls of the living room down to way outside the theatre because it amplifies the listening, and the silence. It is possible then to become very intimate vocally at certain points. You can really do things in a kinesthetic way.

Margaret: You can touch people almost because the voice does. It goes into the body. Because it shifts around the listening air, you’re able to touch that. And it is also possible to locate the audience towards the end of the play. Sometimes I have this feeling, as Emily, coming up front saying all that stuff. I see people after that breaking point with the hitting, I see someone sitting forward like this and I think, ‘Do you need me to say this? I will say this for you.’ There’s a transference that goes on. It’s possible to be very plain with this text. Just to say it. And I’ve found that from the very beginning. Just to read it. Just-to-say-it.

Do these qualities make Nightfall an effective piece of writing for performance for you?

Margaret: I do think it is well written and there’s Jenny Kemp’s angle on the play, her a priori position that the unconscious is territory. It is a landscape and it involves travel and it has treachery and it dips and there is an underworld. It’s almost like this play meeting that idea and not much more has to be done. When you’re with a person, a certain transmission goes on. So there has been a transmission of Jenny Kemp’s consciousness, mine and Ian’s and Victoria’s. We participate. I love the fact that the characters are intelligent, that they see themselves but that they’re also poised on this little pivot where the drama has to take place and the stakes are high. To fall off is to drown in a whole lot of feeling. And I’m fascinated by the capacity to play that little pivot and to observe and just keep observing it.

Ian: Kate has this line, “This is normal, don’t you realize?” It reminds you that in the everyday, people say such things. Wonderful films like American Beauty and Happiness uncover things that were always regarded as the things you didn’t talk about. They deal with ideas with such openness and they’re having the success they deserve. This is a play that takes those ideas and deals with them in a similar way. We have to find new ways to look at manners or morality and social convention. There’s something really strong there. At the end of the millennium, these works point us towards new ways of thinking and working, a new kind of art, which actually bypasses the blockbuster.

Finally, can you describe what it feels like to walk around all day with a play inside you?

Ian: It’s a kind of burden that’s carried. There are some plays that leave you completely exhausted but refreshed.

Margaret: You can’t really rest because you have to begin again the next night. There’s a certain amount of emotional courage we all bring to it. It’s not as though in your resting you can retreat into a kind of inertia. You actually…I can feel in me just a little bit of a gulp going on all day. It has to be considered again this evening. And it really is ‘considered again’ because there are unknowns.

Ian: It’s a constant kind of grappling with this thing and trying to find the way to be true to yourself, to know when to get angry, when to give in to sleep, when to get up and do something else.

Margaret: It’s a physical task—athletic. You look at someone who’s training and they do this gigantic run—their stomach is gone when they get to that line. Sometimes I’ve come offstage and looked at my body and it’s hollowed out from holding it, for this tiny voice to come out.

Ian: You try to use all the actors’ training but you can’t be stress-free when you’re going into these sorts of territories. I suppose what you do is try to minimise the damage and to be as aware as you can. Particular parts of the body are affected. When I come offstage, my back! I think it’s standing behind the sofa when Emily’s confessing.
Margaret: I usually come off panting. I feel sick at the thought of doing it again tonight.

Ian: So, we’re both on wheatgrass and guarana. No 17 from the Kings Cross Juice Shop.

Unforgettable—whether when we first saw her in 1986 at Performance Space in Ulrike Meinhof Sings, directed by Nico Lathouris, or on the mainstage in Jenny Kemp’s productions of Call of the Wild (1989) and Joanna Murray-Smith’s Nightfall at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2000 or, above all, in her own Things Calypso Wanted to Say (1990) and Knowledge and Melancholy: An Autobiographical Fiction in 2004 at Performance Space. We wish we’d seen her later performances and more of her acclaimed directing, which we first glimpsed in Aphid’s 2003 puppet-play trilogy A Quarreling Pair and last witnessed in Chamber Made Opera’s Minotaur The Island, for which she also provided the text for David Young’s composition, in the Aurora Music Festival in 2012 in Sydney’s west. Acting, directing, writing or just being, Margaret was a dynamic presence, at once authoritative and intimate. Her idiosyncratic weighting of words, the lateral lilt of her sentences and that distinctive tone, all at one with her art, will long be recalled and treasured. – Keith & Virginia

The RealTime archive includes responses to Margaret’s work and an article by her, “Art & care: where life and death connect,” which she wrote for us in 2013.

Virginia Baxter’s un-archived 2000 interview, “The other side of Nightfall,” with Margaret and fellow actor Ian Scott, also appears in this edition of Profiler. It’s a wonderfully incisive account of the nature and complexity of acting in general and in response to a particular text, Joanna Murray-Smith’s Nightfall, and Jenny Kemp’s direction.

The text of Margaret Cameron’s Things Calypso Wanted To Say is included in the Currency Press volume Performing the Unnameable (1999).

Selected articles

Bernadette Ashley (centre),
Mime Kings, El día de los Muertos celebrations, Movimiento, Townsville, 2014

Biography

'Career' is a label too suggestive of a deliberate trajectory to be applied to the way my professional life has unfurled. My working life is actually inseparable from my life in a wholistic sense: a series of strands of experiences variously nurtured, neglected, dormant, reawakened, chosen, accidental, imposed, laughable, naïve and wonderful.

I started as a cadet journalist on a newspaper in country Victoria, and I now direct Movimiento, my own world dance studio in tropical Townsville. Those colourful strands have finally woven together into a multi-disciplinary existence of dance, choreography, teaching, performance, design and occasional reviewing of dance and new media arts.

As well as supporting music, dance, art and cultural diversity via my venue, I've been a weekly galleries columnist for the Townsville Bulletin, a judge for ScreenGrab, a creative culture sessional teacher at James Cook University and have served on the boards of several arts organisations.

A month spent in Cuba last year indulging my obsession in Afro-Cuban dance and music, while brushing up against murky Santería and quirky Caribbean Socialismo, has sharpened my aspiration to become fluent in Spanish for future journeys into Latin America, the better to get to the heart of things.

Exposé

'Better to get to the heart of things' could also serve as an explanation for why I write. I sporadically keep a journal to elucidate meaning and direction from my somewhat chaotic existence; similarly, I see reviewing as a way to describe and distil the relevance of events and objects, but for an audience external to the action.

My experience as a practitioner of visual arts and dance gives me an appreciation of the layers of conceptual development, artistic decisions and technical concerns which occur before I see a finished work. This structural curiosity rarely detracts from my enjoyment (or otherwise) of a work I am seeing. Scrawling notes in the half-light of a live performance sometimes draws me in deeper and creates an urgency to suck every iota of nuance from an exceptional work.

I began writing for RealTime in 2007, having just finished a BVA and a study tour of some major European art events. I have a great deal of respect for RealTime's unique role in arts reviewing in Australia and the tenacity of its instigators in retaining that position through years of arts climate change.

Selected articles

movement is rewarded
Bernadette Ashley: Bonemap, Cove
RealTime issue #97 June-July 2010 pg. 24

exorcising addiction
Bernadette Ashley: Dancenorth, The Cry
RealTime issue #98 Aug-Sept 2010 pg. 24

messing with media
Bernadette Ashley: Screengrab, Townsville
RealTime issue #101 Feb-March 2011 pg. 30

the heart: savage & pained
Bernadette Ashley: Dancenorth, Double Bill
RealTime issue #103 June-July 2011 pg. 30

Biography

I am an Indigenous independent choreographer with Wiradjuri, Dutch, Scottish and Afghan heritage. I trained at NAISDA Dance College and the Martha Graham School in New York. It was my extra curricular studies that influenced my approach to performance making, living on the fringes of the punk scene, as a part- time squatter in the infamous Woolloomooloo Gunnery in the 80s, while still in high school, with various interdisciplinary acts travelling to play in one of its many spaces, and then working for Tish and Snooky’s Manic Panic (a punk and hair dye store in the East Village, run by the first back up vocalists for Blondie, later forming their own band The Sick F#cks).

Expose

I am interested in the unexpected and realise the great achievement, in making the smallest of inroads, toward charting new territory.
I have shamelessly used my obsession with dance as a vehicle for exploring other creative disciplines including dabbling in the creation of simple interactive installations, writing monologues and simple non-linear narratives. I try to embed my work with practical activities that affirm my identity, for example, creating a song cycle in Wiradjuri to promote speaking and hearing local language, creating a large dot painting made from playing cards, encouraging the cast and crew to participate in preparing the dance ground, and a wall of tall grass utilising traditional basket weaving and other techniques live onstage to represent the inherent interdisciplinary nature of Australian indigenous cultures.

I am inspired by the human imagination and those who wield it deftly. To grasp a sense of the ridiculous and recognise the need to make time for play; to watch it and be involved is important. To be given the opportunity to access, articulate and share the pleasure derived from cultural expression is a bonus.

Selected articles

brilliance, shimmer & shine
Keith Gallasch: Vicki Van Hout, briwyant
RealTime issue #103 June-July 2011 pg. 32

Treasured Photos of Random Strangers, James Dive, The Glue Society for Art and About Sydney

Right time, right place during the City of Sydney’s annual Art & About you could find yourself part of a group portrait taken by James Dive of the aptly titled Glue Society in the series Treasured Photos of Random Strangers. Why not celebrate the joys of randomness? Nice change.

Philip Brophy and Dan Edwards were impressed by films about music from Nepal, Britain, Bali and India in the documentary program of the Melbourne International Film Festival, surely countering psychologist Stephen Pinker’s view that, in terms of human evolution, music is now merely “auditory cheesecake for the mind.”

If the Grain of Wheat Does Not Die, closing performance Odin Teatret, 50th Anniversary

Odin Teatret’s 9th triennial Holstebro Festuge, a large-scale, public performance event, invited groups of international artists from diverse backgrounds to stage community collaborations, performances and cultural interventions in the Danish municipality of Holstebro and its surrounding villages.

In keeping with the theme Faces of the Future, Ghosts and Fictions, the festival’s artists were predominantly groups of young people trained in distinct performance styles. Facilitated by Odin Teatret and Odin’s emerging artist associates, international groups collaborated with local youth, staging actions that materialised as apparitions across the towns, in multiple shifting locations. The works wove formal aspects of performative and everyday life together to transform public life in the towns for the nine days and nights of the festival.

My perspective on the festival is framed by my role as participant, observer and, in the month preceding the festival, as an intern at Odin Teatret. My experience reflects the creative and pedagogical opportunities the festival offered its participants. It also attests to the festival’s disorienting nature, which the company’s director Eugenio Barba assured me on arrival would be an important part of the process, and through it I would find my own thread. The thread I found ultimately led me to a reflection on Odin’s examination of theatrical language over its 50 years as well as the language that it has developed itself, a unique material dialogue with the fictions embedded in performance and everyday life.

Over the festival I was primarily involved with two projects, Altamira Laboratory’s (Italy) collaboration with Wagnerhus Kindergarten (Denmark) and Isadora Pei’s and The Jasonites’ (Italy, Spain, Brazil) Living Island, two examples of the festival’s multiple collaborations with schools (of which there were five in the festival) on one hand, and the festival as a stage for exchanges between participants (Odin artists, international colleagues, emerging associate artists, local and international youth) on the other.

Altamira workshopped with children aged three to five over three months at Wagnerhus preceding the festival, composing dance and movement sequences using large pieces of coloured cloth. In the final performance children moved to live and recorded music, dancing in different cultural styles around the cloths, on top of them, hiding beneath them, and chasing them through a field. The movement scores had a kaleidoscopic quality suggesting the vital relationship between bodies, sounds and materials. The piece was presented as a performance exchange, first with the The Koinonia Children’s Team (from Nairobi’s periphery, trained in acrobatics by Father Kizito as an alternative to street life) and then with the local Taekwondo club. It had a marked effect on the kindergarten, teachers commenting children had become more outgoing over the collaboration.

Living Island was a floating performance space on rafts built by local Scouts ritually setting fire to ‘the past’ and hosting visiting performance groups. The space, on the town’s central river, was framed by large sail-like patchworks sewn with invented emblems, evoking the cultures of the participating groups. The island was surrounded by an installation of ‘relics,’ an auto-ethnographic museum of everyday life.

The 9th Holstebro Festuge, Faces of the Future, Ghosts and Fictions; Odin Teatret 50th Anniversary

Each day of the performance, Scouts sailed a new raft up the river, joining it to the others and hosting a different combination of performance events. The week began with a single raft and lone dancer from the Balinese Sanggar Seni Tri Suari school, accompanied by fire and instrumental music played on the bridge. Across the week performances included Odin actors Roberta Carerri, Jan Faslav and Tage Larsen, the Mercurial Family (Odin’s Julia Varley, associates Deborah Hunt, Carolina Pizzaro and Francesca Palombo), Lle Omolu Orixa dancers (Brazil), a local clown group and the Scouts themselves. The island was ushered and managed by Pei’s team of zombie Scouts (of which I was one). The work functioned as a parade of otherworldly, comic, archetypical and intercultural performance images that emerged from the Scouts’ fire. Their burning of ‘the past’ was a means of transforming and transcending everyday life. The piece climaxed with a final bonfire, after which the space was emptied completely, leaving participants haunted by the interactions that had taken place.

As with the other events at the festival Living Island was remarkably well attended, audiences returning daily to follow its progression over the week. In all, audiences paid avid attention to the festival program and were skilled in navigating its culturally diverse practices. Artistic literacy across the festival was a visible result of Odin’s half-century collaboration with Holstebro Municipality, where cultural awareness has developed through working with locals, as well as through the works presented at the theatre’s laboratorium.

The festival’s closing performance, If The Grain of Wheat Does Not Die, attracted hundreds of spectators. Staged in the town’s main park it ended with letters spelling Odin 50 in flames on the lake. Barba curated fragments of performance from across the festival for this final piece, arranging them to create a dialogue between performance styles. Junior Banda de Spina (Italy) marched through the centre of the cloth where Dynamis Teatro (Italy) were fighting: a sharp crease in a chaotic field. Kenyan acrobats exchanged their grass skirts for tutus, forming a conga line with the ballerinas. Paolo Comentale (of Casa di Pulcinella, Italy) and Kai Bredholt’s (Odin) polar bear, Otto, fed spaghetti to the young Balinese soloist while Mr Peanuts (Julia Varley’s skeleton in a tux) sang Peking Opera in conversation with an accordion, violin and instruments from the Barong.

The montage became a frame for the performance fragment featuring Odin’s parade of characters: Roberta Carreri’s Geronimo, a mistral clown with duck whistle, Julia Varley’s Mr Peanuts, Jan Ferlev’s Doggy (a dog skeleton in a suit playing the guitar), Tage Larsen’s Munken (a robed and masked monk), Kai Bredholt’s Otto and Iben Rasmussen’s half masked Trickster, each of the figures composed of a montage of performance images and materials. Working between performance archetypes to open up a new, rejuvenating space they function as curios or ambassadors of a still unknown tradition. They are emblematic of Odin’s work, founded on and yet creating openings within performance codes. Their fragmented singing of “We Are the World” presented an ironically anachronistic image of youth working between codes, stepping into the unknown—a youthfulness paradoxically derived from 50 years of dedicated work.

Clear Enigma, an outdoor retrospective following the festival, celebrating the company’s anniversary, exhumed material from the Odin Teatret oeuvre from Ornithofille (1965) on. The performance of these fragments, enacted first on a fortress made of dirt and then aboard the ship Talabot, blurred the distinction between bodies that enacted past performances and the physicality of past performances that animated the bodies of the actors now. The work concluded with children invading the space and piling Odin’s costumes and props onto a conveyer belt that dropped it all into a large pit which a bulldozer filled. A wooden frame with ropes was installed—a swing above the newly levelled ground.

The Holstebro Festuge and Clear Enigma reflected the importance of tradition and innovation for Odin Teatret. They formed a cyclical, ritual event that provided opportunities for youth as well as creating actions that revived the youthfulness of the theatre itself in a gesture of celebration and negation—or “disorientation” that opened onto a new space of the unknown.

Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, In-Habit: Project Another Country, 2014, installation detail, Samstag Museum of Art, University of South Australia

Adelaide’s annual OzAsia Festival, which began in 2007 as a cultural bridge to Asia, spotlights the cultures of the disparate nations of the region. Elements include the family-oriented Moon Lantern Festival, symposia on cultural exchange and politics, a film festival, crafts, cuisine, workshops and traditional and contemporary theatre, dance, music and visual art. Such a wide-ranging and illuminating exposition also sows developmental seeds.

Visual Art

The Samstag Museum is hosting two contrasting exhibitions highlighting postcolonial South East Asia and extending the perennial consideration of the nature of art: Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan’s In-Habit: Project Another Country, and Berlin-based art dealer Matthias Arndt’s Mooi Indie—Beautiful Indies. ‘Mooi Indie’ refers to the early 20th century Indonesian art movement that used Western forms to depict sanitised, beautiful images of the Dutch colony. The term is now used ironically, as the artists parody colonial, Western culture. Jumaldi Alfi’s Rereading Landscape—Mooi Indie (I know where I am going) is a painting of an unframed Mooi Indie painting. He reframes and thus reconsiders the traditional Mooi Indie landscape subject. Wedhar Riyadi makes enlarged copies of found historical photographs of people posing in Western outfits, and then overlays them with vividly contrasting cartoon graphics, questioning the culture that spawned the photos and the imported values they represent.

Eko Nugroho’s sculpture Under Pillow Ideology is a mannequin in a traditional Javanese mask hiding under a quilt and cushions, suggesting a traditional performer obscured by contemporary interior decoration. His La Rue Parle #9, made in France, is a tableau of images rendered in machine-embroidery that speak of urban European life, clashing the concept of urban culture with the mechanised form of a traditional handicraft. The Tromarama collective’s Ons Aller Belang is a set of dinner plates, printed with urban rather than decorative scenes, displayed together with a projected animation of the urban scenes. The reality of urban life thus displaces the typical decoration in these household goods, and animation displaces the static image. Arndt states, “If we observe the journey of Indonesian art from the colonial era to its present development, we can conclude that modern Indonesian art is a reflection of the struggle of local artists to achieve freedom, not only from colonialism, but also from Western domination.”

In-Habit: Project Another Country takes a very different approach. In this touring work, the Aquilizans build and rebuild a series of massive cardboard honeycombed structures representing ramshackle housing. The structure grows organically, like biological life enveloping the planet, and refers to the housing of the Badjao community of the Philippines. The Badjao are traditionally semi-nomadic, living on boats on the coast, but have been obliged to make more permanent homes. Built from whatever materials they can find, their houses sit on stilts over the water’s edge. Their culture is being rapidly overtaken.

Mounted within the cardboard structure are video screens showing Badjao life, including children giving rap performances for which they earn a little money. Embedding the videos in the cardboard structure metaphorises the invasion of contemporary technology. Rap is becoming a universal modus operandi of those affirming identity, and the Badjao children are thus synthesising a new culture. In creating the cardboard structures, the Aquilizans work with school groups in cities where they exhibit—again, it will be children who carry forward this new cultural awareness.

At CACSA, Cao Fei’s exhibition of videos is an excellent introduction to her compelling oeuvre, in which she analyses contemporary Chinese society through a range of cinematic devices from realism to animation and virtual reality. Her beautifully crafted video Haze and Fog shows the tedious, battery-hen existence of zombie-like people who are alive but whose souls are dead, an outcome of rural migration into high-rise urban life. Whose Utopia shows the desolate lives of factory workers, with dancers surreally appearing on the factory floor. Her animation RMB City Opera is evidently influenced by the propaganda plays of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, with their roots in traditional Chinese opera, and relates to her RMB City project, which is based in the VR Second Life. Her animation People’s Limbo shows a philosophical debate between Mao, Lao Tze, Karl Marx and a Lehman Brothers banker, and her Cos Players video documents people acting out role-playing fantasies, equating role-playing with real life. Cao Fei shows how the human spirit challenges the orderly but sterile high-rise life.

Music

Legendary Australian percussion ensemble Synergy joined with Korean five-piece Noreum Machi for a memorable concert that opened and closed with the two groups performing together. In between, they performed separately, and in the first half of the concert, Synergy gave us some classics of modern percussion—John Cage’s Third Construction, Nigel Westlake’s Omphalo Centric Lecture and a work by Synergy leader Timothy Constable.

Noreum Machi, performing traditional Korean music known as samulnori, opened the concert’s second half with a processional entrance, Gilsori, from the back of the auditorium. Based on traditional forms—percussion, dance and singing—but redesigned for contemporary audiences, Noreum Machi’s music attracts those interested in Korean traditions. It’s high-energy and fun. The complex rhythms have an infectiously jazzy feel, building up to fast, intense crescendi. During this performance, we were invited to participate in a voice percussion work but the performers soon left us behind. Noreum Machi also use reed instruments, the low-pitched piri and the wailing higher-pitched taepyongso, which sound like declamatory human voices. Kim Yong-jun’s taepyongso solo, East Wind, was hypnotic.

For the riotously joyous concert finale, Noreum Machi and Synergy joined forces, Constable blowing a conch shell to match Kim’s taepyongso. This is a dialogue between cultures and between the ancient and contemporary. The two ensembles expound their own traditions as well as working together, offering three genres of challenging but totally engaging music.

In a concert combining art with music, Japanese calligrapher Hiroko Watanabe made work on stage to the accompaniment of jazz-rock-taiko fusion band Above the Clouds, her action projected on a screen above the stage. Following an introduction that reminded us of the origins of calligraphic ideograms, she responded to the music by rapidly executing dozens of large-scale gestural works in heavy black ink on paper mounted on fold-out cardboard boxes that she then stacked around the stage until she was surrounded by a forest of images. Afterwards, ensemble members autographed giveaway CDs. With screaming guitar and energetic taiko drumming, this is theatrical entertainment, but it extends the appreciation of calligraphy and taiko through reinvention and popularisation. Watanabe’s calligraphy emphasises the spontaneity characteristic of such art. Her work is displayed at the Art Gallery of SA alongside traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean calligraphy, some of which is centuries old.

The Western domination of which Matthias Arndt speaks is not only economic or political and is not confined to visual art—cultural appreciation and criticism are frequently Western-centric. OzAsia Festivals bring us traditional culture, hybrid, modernised culture and cultural and political critique that press us to re-consider our own perspectives. In celebrating cultural diversity and cross-fertilisation, festivals such as OzAsia precipitate and encourage artistic development, and the emerging forms develop their own trajectories and aesthetics, accelerating cultural evolution.

8th OzAsia Festival 2014: Mooi Indie—Beautiful Indies, Indonesian Art Now, curator Matthias Arndt, and In-Habit: Project Another Country, Alfredo & Isabel Aquilizan, Samstag Museum of Art, 1 Aug-3 Oct; Cao Fei’s Theatrical Mirror: living in-between the Real and Unreal, Contemporary Art Centre of SA, 12 Sept-19 Oct; Synergy Percussion Meets Noreum Machi, Space Theatre, 12 Sept; Hiroko Watanabe and Above the Clouds, Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide, 13 Sept; http://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/ozasia-festival/

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