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Awuol Deng, Awek Akech, Claudette Clarke, My Name is Sud
photo Adam Hollingworth
Awuol Deng, Awek Akech, Claudette Clarke, My Name is Sud
my name is sud
My Name is Sud, pronounced ‘soo-d’ (and meaning ‘black’) is a theatre work developed by members of the African community and premiering at Blacktown Arts Centre in Sydney’s west. The 2006 Australian Census counted almost 2,500 families from Sudan, Liberia and Sierra Leone, many of them refugees, who had settled in Blacktown. In response to the tensions that have arisen from a such a large influx of migrants, Blacktown Arts Centre committed to a three-year project that would give the African community a voice and an audience an opportunity to listen.
Written by an ensemble of first time Sudanese writers, Yuol Yuol, Akoi Majak, Monica Kualba and John Garang, My Name is Sud “follows the story of a family who have escaped the conflicts of war in Sudan and now face the conflicts of freedom in Sydney. Daughter Akoi dreams of being a writer. Her brother Machar struggles for a new identity. Their mother Kuei fears losing her son to the ‘streets of Blacktown’ and to his Australian girlfriend.”
Drawing on the strong traditions of storytelling and performance in these communities, South African director and writer, Robert Colman, has mentored writers and actors while resident artist at Blacktown Arts Centre.
Blacktown Arts Centre, Sydney, Nov 19-28, bookings: 9839 6558; Forum Nov 28 10.30am
wayfarer v 2: urban agents, melbourne
Media artist Kate Richards and performer Martyn Coutts are taking their locative, multiplayer media game, Wayfarer, to Melbourne after successfully premiering version 1 for Performance Space at Sydney’s CarriageWorks (see review). Version 1 was played by audiences tracking and directing a group of performers. In version 2, this time on the streets, the audience who sign on become the performers.
In the artists’ words, “teams of urban agents armed with mobile phones…will create and enact socially responsible experiences—large or small, planned or improvised including art projects, urban renewal, improvisation and drifting, liminal explorations, parkour and skate, gifting, green living/carbon neutrality/light footprint, flash mobs—anyway and anywhere they want to engage ethically and positively in the city. Videos of the experiences are streamed from players’ mobile phones directly to the Wayfarer website. Here web visitors, futurists and expert commentators in the field of social media will view, discuss and vote on the videos and drive a broader discussion about social responsibility.” For information and to register to play, go to www.wayfarer.net.au or info@ wayfarer.net.au; Arts Centre, Melbourne, Oct 26-31, Nov 2-7
real time collaborators: saskia falls
A group of Adelaide performers who have cheekily titled themselves Real Time (but with respectful spacing) are being hosted by Adelaide’s Vitalstatistix as part of that company’s Incubator program. Emma Beech, Sarah John and Holly Owen subject a returning traveller, Saskia, to existential fundamentals around the concept of home. An audience of 25 is invited to meet Saskia in real time, face to face: “You will have the chance to be curious, to be nosy while you explore the gallery of a life. Look at Saskia’s pictures, listen to her phone calls, touch her things and move through her space. It’s up to you how much you find out.” Saskia Falls, Waterside, Port Adelaide, Oct 7-18; www.vitalstatistix.com.au
craig walsh, artefact h10515
Australian media artist Craig Walsh’s magical large scale installations have appeared over the years on RealTime covers and in our pages. He’s filled Martin Place bank windows with (projected) fish and the Art Gallery of NSW portico ceiling with giant cockroaches. Now he’s created Artefact H10515: “Living within a large museum-like showcase, Artefact H10515 is highly responsive; moving and breathing within its physical boundaries and feeding on digital sources supplied via the web. Feed it your favourite objects.” Put more precisely, “Artefact H10515 prowls around feeding on content from a variety of sources from across the internet including the Powerhouse Museum’s own collection to present a constantly changing organism.” Anyone can contribute.
The work is the result of a collaboration with Powerhouse Museum, programmer and 3-D animator Steven Thomasson and composer and sound designer Lawrence English. http://artefact.powerhousemuseum.com.
danielle freakley, quote generator
Performance artist Danielle Freakley’s epic project has taken her to many countries. She’s in New York now and soon will be in Adelaide as part of the Experimental Art Foundation’s series, gone in no time (gone in no time). The series “proposes the EAF exhibition space as a site for making and being, as opposed to its usual function as a space containing objects and actions made or devised elsewhere. Eight artists have been invited to occupy the 25 by 10 metre space for a period of two weeks each and engage in their particular determination of creative action.” For most of the series, two artists at a time will occupy the space each fortnight. Freakley will be partnered by Austrian artist Margit Brünner, October 13-24.
Freakley has bravely committed herself to collecting, documenting and recalling statements of many kinds from daily life and then delivering them back to the world. The effect, on screen, is amusing and slightly alarming when quotes roll off her tongue, suggesting a human who might just be programmed. Freakley herself is The Quote Generator, “read[ing] aloud the quote in its ordinary speaking voice, not in character. The quote is always followed by a spoken reference.” She says of her performance at www.thequotegenerator.com, “The Quote Generator is absorption of unoriginality. The Quote Generator is a regurgitation library to live by. The Quote Generator is a frustrating constant acknowledgement of ever-present, inescapable mimesis.” Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, www.eaf.asn.au
Quindell Orton, The Garden, Jambird
image Eva Fernandez
Quindell Orton, The Garden, Jambird
new dance: launceston, hobart, perth
Tasdance is premiering works from the idiosyncratic talents of Frances Rings (who has danced and choreographed for Bangarra) and Anton (ADT, Tanja Liedtke’s Twelfth Floor etc) at the Earl Arts Centre, Launceston,?Oct 16-24 and Theatre Royal Hobart, October 30-31.
In the 2009 Fremantle Festival, hybrid performance company Jambird (Chrissie Parrott, Jonathan Mustard) present The Garden, which “will transform the entire Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery into a dark secret garden, filled with the sound of one hundred music boxes…altered and adorned by some of WA’s top visual artists.” The six galleries in the building will house immersive installations created in collaboration with artists from theatre, dance and music as well as the visual arts in a work Parrott describes as “more like performance art than a regular dance work.” Performances: Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, Fremantle Nov 4-15, 8pm; installation: daily 10am-5pm; producer Performing Lines.
Strut, Perth’s support organisation for independent dance, is going ambitiously mainstage with Counter Point at His Majesty’s Theatre. The program features French choreographer Didier Theron’s Harakiri, “a highly physical and emotive exploration of notions of self-sacrifice”, Jo Pollitt’s Re-Render in which Chrissie Parrott? performs revealing aspects of her dance career, and Soul Searching from WA Ballet dancer Cass Mortimer Eipper. His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth, Nov 13-14, www.strutdance.org.au
RealTime issue #93 Oct-Nov 2009 pg. 20
