foto by K. TamasiVale Jackie Orszaczky
news article here a blog tribute
4.2.08
3.2.08
An acrostic poem lands Burmese poet Saw Wai
in big trouble with the generals : click here
General Than Shwe, not happy30.1.08
This coming Saturday:
JOHN FORBES
Ars Poetica
John Forbes scrutinizes the latest issue
of New Zealand literary magazine 'Landfall'
at 'a-little-loungeroom-reading' poetry party
at our home in Ultimo, Sydney
in Summer 1996
On January 23rd, 2008 it became 10 years since the terrific Australian poet, John Forbes died suddenly, at the age of 47. To mark the anniversary of his death, John’s fellow poets, his family, friends, fans and poetry-lovers in general, are invited to come and remember his life and work.
Readers include: Jaya Savige on the influence of John Forbes’ work on a younger generation of poets, Pam Brown on knowing John in the 1980s in ‘Petersham Days’ and John Tranter, Alan Wearne, Steve Kelen, Rae Desmond Jones and Gig Ryan.
Raving against the space
where the poem sounds
like a revolving door that
makes the noise a car makes
bumping into the dole –
that’s the target.
John Forbes, ‘Ars Poetica’
free event
3.30pm for 4pm
Venue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
RSVP: gleebooks - 9660 2333
Info: Click here
Books available at Gleebooks:
John Forbes Damaged Glamour
John Forbes Collected Poems
Ken Bolton (editor) Homage To John Forbes
published by (Brandl & Schlesinger)
26.1.08
Ngapartji Ngapartji is the title of a theatre piece currently in performance in Sydney. It is ambitious, unwieldy, sometimes rough-edged, sometimes perfect. As a theatre experience, it is very powerful. It tells the story, in Pitjanjatjara and English, of the dispossession of Indigenous people by British nuclear tests at Maralinga in the South Australian desert in the late 1950s/early 1960s. But it has a global reach that encompasses Afghani, Japanese and Australian soldiers’ perspectives on atomic testing. It is told through dance, story, song and film. Hearing Talking Heads' Once In A Lifetime and Bob Dylan's The Weight and other songs in Pitjanjatjara is a unique pleasure.
ngapartji ngapartji :
I give you something - You give me something
Produced by Big hART, a group of professional artists, arts workers and producers who have been making work together for 15 years – creating theatre, film, television, painting, photography, dance, new media and radio.
Big hART most often works in small communities around the country, with people experiencing the effects of marginalisation in regional, rural, and geographically or socially isolated communities. Big hART experiments with the process of making art with such groups over three-year periods, honing the quality of their work, which is showcased in national and international festivals and media. This often creates new opportunities for participants, helps build skills in communities, assists regional development and helps foster a more inclusive Australian culture.
In addition to Ngapartji Ngapartji, Big hART is currently running a number of other projects around Australia, including Gold (Griffith and the wheatbelt, NSW); Lucky and No Comply (Tasmania’s north-west coast); Street Survivor (Melbourne); and Radio Holiday/Drive-In Holiday (north-west coast, Tasmania) and has recently completed the Northcott Project (Surry Hills, NSW) and Junk Theory (Cronulla, NSW).
Performance Information : click here
On now - Season Ends: 10 February 2008
Belvoir St Theatre
25 Belvoir St,
Surry Hills
Sydney
23.1.08
21.1.08
This is the film, Rock My Religion, that was a component of the retrospective exhibition of Dan Graham’s work that, when I saw it some years ago in Paris, provided the impetus for my poem
Patti Smith Was Right
Patti Smith was right
these cold, known objects
are not very likeable –
aluminium frames
& curved glass with optical tricks –
but I am ‘at ease’
at this show,
there are some nice little-grin ideas –
like television
screening outside
on the suburban home’s front lawn,
& time-delay verité videos
to amuse the usually uncrackable
hardened gallery-goer
∇
have I flipped ? into a strangely placid
political zone a lack of clutter
and environmental concern -
these things are so simple,
two hours here & I begin to enjoy
Dan Graham
more than Soutine, Braque, Delaunay,
Bourgeois, Basquiat, Sherrie Levine,
Agnes Martin - although
I can not deny my memory
of her beautiful mid-1960’s picture -
‘Milk River’ -
nor her small collection
of pick-up trucks - the green Chevie
glinting with polish – the very driveable
Dodge parked
outside her desert home.
∇
I spend over an hour watching,
surrendering to
Dan Graham’s big “Rock/God” video
that makes a simple
anthropological connection
between US tribal & religious ritual -
group dancing, shaking, speaking in tongues-
and mosh pits and rock music -
so when Patti Smith sings
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins
but not mine”
I am converted.
∇
Patti Smith was right,
twenty-five years ago,
to say that rock music,
meaning, then, for her, punk-rock,
would replace painting
& sculpture
as representative of untranscended
life itself.
You can find brief notes on Agnes Martin here
16.1.08
the NOW now 2008
is on this coming weekend
18 - 20 January
at Wentworth Falls
for program and tickets click here
15.1.08
Went to the cinema today. What a truly great film - I'm Not There. (Me neither, maybe.) Todd Haynes is a brilliant film-maker. The musicians include Tom Verlaine, Jeff Tweedy, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Cat Power with a fabulous rolling organ just like The Band's, Sonic Youth, Richie Havens, Antony and the Johnsons and, and, and just listen to Stephen Malkmus singing 'Ballad of a Thin Man' and the gorgeous, bright kid, Marcus Carl Franklin, the only actor who actually sings in the film - 'When The Ship Comes In' - and Cate Blanchett and the other actors' perfect lip synchs. Lateral timing, layering, representation of how identity is never fixed, how anyone is a different person every five/ten/whatever years and Bob Dylan is an imaginative imagination. Post-modern, beautiful and terrific.
of course you can click on it to see this retro 70s poster in larger format
http://www.IMNOTTHERE-movie.com
9.1.08
John Forbes
Ars Poetica
Raving against the space
where the poem sounds
like a revolving door that
makes the noise a car makes
bumping into the dole –
that’s the target.
John Forbes, ‘Ars Poetica’
On January 23rd, 2008, it will be 10 years since the death of the Australian poet, John Forbes, at the age of 47. To mark the anniversary, John’s fellow poets, his family, friends, fans and poetry-lovers in general, are invited to come and celebrate his
life and work.
Speakers include: Jaya Savige on the influence of John Forbes’ work on the younger generation of poets and Pam Brown’s memoir, Petersham Days.
Readers include: Pam Brown, John Tranter, Alan Wearne,
Morgan Smith, Steve Kelen.
John Forbes' …insistences are always exciting, both intellectually and viscerally. He marries The Vulgar and the Elevated in a fashion no one else does, demonstrating the true function of Popular Culture and Cultural Studies is as subject matter for poetry. His vision is constantly making the ordinary extraordinary. His always brilliant similes renew the world, and the word…
Don Anderson, cover note to 'Damaged Glamour' (1998)
Saturday, February 02, 2008
3.30 for 4pm Free Event
Venue: gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Rd, Glebe
RSVP: gleebooks - 9660 2333
Info: Click here
Ken Searle
INTROSPECTION : New Drawings
Opens: 6-8pm Wednesday 16 January 2008
Closes: 5pm Saturday 2 February 2008
Watters Gallery
109 Riley St.
East Sydney
Tel: 61 2 9331 2556
info@wattersgallery.com
www.wattersgallery.com
Hours: Tues and Sat: 10am - 5pm
Wed, Thurs, Fri: 10am -7pm
click on image to enlarge
20.12.07
Jan McKemmish, writer and academic 1950 - 2007
Only four weeks after becoming ill with cancer, my friend of thirty-one years and my co-writer of various performance texts,
Jan McKemmish, died at the Freemasons' Hospital in East Melbourne on the evening of Xmas Eve. My partner Jane and
I deeply mourn her death.
(poster by jan mackay)Rumi
A Community of the Spirit
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
And be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
To see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
If you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
*
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
Michael Hurley read these selections from Rumi’s poems at Jan’s funeral
in Richmond, Melbourne on Saturday 29th December.
Jan McKemmish, Redfern, Sydney in the mid 1980s
(fotos by Margot Nash)
19.12.07
16.12.07
This snap of an oniomaniac, (that is the word, isn't it Melissa?) shopaholic, (well, the trolleys must have been full once), alcoholic, kinda bleak-yet-arty Australian xmas tree arrived in my inbox today, via the University of Technology Sydney academic staff's xmas-greeting emails. I hope visitors to the deletions can appreciate it and meanwhile, I'll wish you, my three or four (five or six?) friendly, faithful readers, all the best for the silly season and for 2008
Santa says 'remember, click on pic to enlarge'
15.12.07
7.12.07
wonderama fluoroama diorama
A museum in a town called Mount Victoria - it's kind of Victorian
Stuffed, embarrassed or bashful, fauna
click on the images to enlarge them, if you're game
1.12.07
Adelaide, the Athens of the South, has been hosting an international guitar festival that wraps up this weekend. If you stay on in town until Tuesday night you can catch the final in the Lee Marvin Readings - for details CLICK HERE
'I'm looking forward to Tuesday night'- Lee MarvinAlso - just published -
The last issue of Jacket magazine for 2007
(special stocking-stuffer issue!)
Click Here To Read Jacket 34
Editor: John Tranter | Associate Editor: Pam Brown
26.11.07
Steve Evans has published the 2007 Attention Span - responses to his annual invitation for listings of what poets are reading. To visit this year's list CLICK HERE
For my contribution to Attention Span CLICK HERE
Steve Evans and Rrose Selavy, 2005
21.11.07
GALATEA RESURRECTS (A POETRY ENGAGEMENT)
November 30, 2007
Edited by By Eileen Tabios
Galatea Resurrects (A Poetry Engagement) is pleased to release its Eighth Issue with 64 new reviews/engagements including Pam Brown on John Tranter’s Urban Myths : 210 Poems, Peter Minter’s blue grass and Philip Hammial’s Voodoo Realities
Red Room Radio, the audio branch of The Red Room Company, profiles contemporary Australian poetry and poets through interviews, readings and spoken adventures.
In December 2007, a New and Selected Summer Series will be broadcast over the Community Radio Network. Individual shows will include an interview between Johanna Featherstone and the poet, plus poets’ readings. The profiled poets include Pam Brown, Adam Aitken, Claire Potter, Ella Holcombe, JS Harry, Emily Ballou, Jane Gibian and Jaya Savige.
Beginning 4th December 2007 from 6.04 pm (EST) Red Room Radio will be broadcast via the Community Radio Network on Tuesdays. Phone 02 9310 2999 for more information on how to receive this broadcast.
16.11.07
7.11.07
Bert Flugelman's Pyramid Tower a.k.a. The Silver Shish Kebab
(from 'Sydney' magazine)
Yes, that’s right - that’s Bert Flugelman’s silver sculpture in a more yellowy-green light than usual, in this glamorous photograph from the monthly glossy supplement to Sydney’s daily morning newspaper.
In the 1990’s the sculpture was, without consultation, removed from Martin Place ( by then re-named, without consultation, ‘Martin Plaza’) and placed (or 'dumped') in a city council depot yard in Ultimo, just around the corner from where I lived. It lay there, on its side, for years, until its reinstatement, without consultation, in a small space in the city near the revamped York Street.
Here are my old poems that mention these events and others about My City Of Sydney (and Tommy Leonetti's too) from a decade ago and then later, around 2000.
In Surry Hills
faintly scribbled in sky-blue pencil
on the front wall of my house
in Surry Hills in 1971 -
“is this the hostel where the lazy & fun-loving
start up the mountain”
I don’t think anyone entering the house
had heard of F. O’Hara,
their T-Rex records under their arms,
sauntering
out to the kitchen to lean against
the fur-lined door I’d made
to honour Meret Oppenheim
& for a sensual lean
as well
At the Ian Burn show
MCA 1997
at the Ian Burn show
there’s a badly recorded
b&w video of Ian Burn
& colleagues performing
anti-authoritarian art spiels -
drumkit, keyboards, guitar, voice -
it’s the ‘Art & Language’ days,
the mid-seventies - recorded,
most likely, on a Sony portapak
(I set one up - a tripod
in the lounge room
of our communal house
& let it run full twenty-minute
brackets to film quotidian comings
& goings).
ah - here’s Terry Smith
with plenty of hair - a stringy beard
&, possibly, an Afro - singing along
in the refrain -
“...ee...gal - it - tar - i - an...ism...!”
gustily.
I’m chuckling now - this is
amazingly cheering - I feel
it’s my culture - or was - &, easily,
could become
karaoke !
as it contains, for me,
equivalent nostalgia.
ingenuous, idealistic
and schismatic !
direct-action practising populist artists
(anti-institutional-intellectual-academy)
vs
theoretical conceptual post-object artists
(yet not always nor certainly pro-academic)
it was my schism too, our exegesis,
“artists think” ? well, maybe -
they did, for a decade
all under the same
tin roof
In Ultimo in ‘98
I maximize my traipsing
round the district -
at the end of Bay Street
Bert Flugelman’s silver shish-kebab
lies abandoned
in the Sydney City Council yard
behind the garbage trucks garage
(“Living City”
say the
t-shirts)
Another think coming
on time,
speeding into the cold shade
in the mica-blue daihatsu,
hailstone dings patched
with felt-tipped pens
and nail polish,
towards York Street,
the only street
left standing
after two centuries
of demolition –
its sandstone Victoriana
like a row
of determined invalids
suddenly brought into daylight,
stunned in a gone world.
cement-dusted street corners
draped with orange vinyl netting -
framing the unannounced return
of Bert Flugelman’s
silver shish-kebab.
an un-hoped-for cityscape -
two clocks
on the same building
displaying different times
having, so far,
dodged all civics conferences -
now, punctually, I attend
stressed-finished
seminar rooms -
a beautifully literal
painted-on patinae
of grime and cracks.
buoyed by
off-to-the-second-
day-of-a-conference-
eagerness,
this flâneur
drives everywhere,
imaginary ram-raider
skittling that bricoleur
clutching a fascinating
collection of spoils
in a palm organiser.
attention, attention ,
may I have your
attention
sorry no -
I’m reviewing a few
windows of opportunity
from my workstation desktop,
on the actual desk –
the pale golden colour
of white ginseng
steaming in a china cup
perched on a silvery
compact-disc coaster,
screwed-up pages, red ball-point,
small black radio emitting news -
political party supporters’ dreams
weakened by boom time fluctuations
like comets in a spin
were ‘we’
not to apply
serious scholarship
to metro profit margins’
most pressing questions -
‘we’ might find ‘we’
have
another think coming.
money now
determines class,
focus, promise, function
& an era
of boredom
tolerated by
the middle classes
ends
mistaking the ruins
for decoration
the dig reveals
bits of polyvinyl chloride,
ribbons of audio tape,
the usual aluminia –
the site becomes a museum,
the souvenir shop’s
elegant glass counters
house miniature replications
of christianity’s clean spires
carefully erected by
gigantic Russian helicopters
in time for the international
sports event
some time back
in the year 2000
5.11.07
Interesting articles and discussions of the marginalisation of women poets can be found in the latest issue of the US-based magazine Chicago Review including links to further discourse on various blogs. And there’s a forum on the perceived exclusion of womens’ experimental poetry by patriarchal poets in the UK in the upcoming issue of Jacket magazine.I think this discussion needs to be raised again in Australia. Are there any younger women poets out there with the time and dedication to construct a survey and write it up ?
dear readers, remember, if you click on the bolder, darker grey words in the text they will link you to web sites
31.10.07
To view more of Trish Davies' photos of Kurt Brereton's exhibition opening at Hat Hill Gallery on November 3rd click here
art opening this coming saturday 3rd november
Rise: Kurt Brereton
Hat Hill Gallery
3 Hat Hill Road
Blackheath
Opening talk by Pam Brown
6pm Saturday 3rd November
Exhibition continues until 25th November
More info click here
From the catalogue notes : “The title of the show RISE alludes to a host of connotations – of climatic increasing in sealevels, air temperatures and greenhouse gases. There is also a play on the risible; humorous play acting - taking the piss out of the deathly serious - as an antidote to the morbidity that surrounds us at every media news corner.”
Snorkel Issue 6 is now available for perusal. Edited by Cath Vidler with assistance from associate editor Nick Reimer. Poems by Michael Hall : Pam Brown : David Prater : Kerrin P. Sharpe : Changming Yuan : Harry Ricketts : Nirmala l. Vasikaran : Sarah Jane Barnett : Todd Swift : Ruth Arnison : Martha Hardy-Ward : Mary Cresswell : Greg McLaren : Chris Price : Carol Jenkins : Sue Fitchett
24.10.07
22.10.07
You know summer is on the way in Sydney when there are suddenly so many events to choose from that you just feel like lying down on your outdoor recliner in the shade of a tree with a book and going to nothing . . . but (!) it's still only spring so you'll hop across to all of them . . .
In Place : Virginia Coventry
13th October - 3rd November
Tin Sheds Gallery
Architecture Faculty
University of Sydney
City Road
Darlington
The two Kens
Ken Searle Ken Whisson
17th October - 10th November
Watters Gallery
109 Riley Street
East Sydney
Painting by Ken Searle
Painting by Ken Whisson
Belle of the Cross by Angelika Fremd
13th-28th October
Tap Gallery
(upstairs)
278 Palmer Street
Darlinghurst
Sam Wagan Watson reading poetry
Friday 26th October 6.30pm
Performance Space,
Building 3,
University of Technology Sydney
(Corner of Harris St. and Broadway.
Entry on Harris St)
Sundays @ 2pm Poetry readings
Whiteley Studio
Raper Street
Surry Hills
Sunday 28 October
* Jane Gibian
* Petra White
Sunday 25 November
* Greg McLaren
* Elizabeth Campbell
I’ll have to go to this one because Kurt has asked me to give a speechette at the opening…
Rise: Kurt Brereton
1st - 25th November
Hat Hill Gallery
3 Hat Hill Road
Blackheath
more info click here
FourW New Writing magazine launch
2.30pm Saturday 17th November
Gleebooks
49 Glebe Point Road
Glebe
16.10.07
Dry tropics
every minute counts
four lines a day
snap frozen
*
Lorine Niedecker,
what would she have to say
(‘pick up that bucket’)
*
my brief career
as a shopkeeper
kaput
my new life
begins,
tending the demented
*
exit gaps stuffed
with strips of newspaper
against the western chill
locally
‘chill factor’
has become
‘feels like’
*
in a pastoral
regeneration,
blackened eucalypts
might dance
for me, it’s useless
imagining
a treeless plain,
then describing it
continually changing landscapes
are way too much
sickly yellowing weeds,
bogged gullies,
cracking surfaces
pesticides
ruining pristine reefs
and so on
*
the wind gusts furiously,
the verandah lattice
blown from its frame
like living
in a light house
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
raise the blinds
turn up
that medina music,
start keening now
*
Twenty+ Ways to Teach Poetry
Without Comprehension Questions
and
Tristan Tzara
To Make A Dadaist Poem
preparations for the poetry class
*
dinner out
at the Renee Geyer cabaret,
neon turning blonde hair pink
warm cocktails
in a harbour bar
the old beauty
of an autumn evening
*
in a gadda da vida
and other stormy music
*
a million droplets,
influenza
*
world gone somewhere,
dry tropics
*
in Bangalow
revisiting the site
of my truck crash
a new shop
has been built
in the ditch
*
10.10.07
listening to segu blue
Bassekou Kouyate is a virtuoso of the ngoni (West African lute), approximating the larger kora (West African harp) in sound but with a tougher, more percussive edge. Outside his home country of Mali, where he is widely celebrated, Kouyate is known for his work with artists like the late guitarist Ali Farka Toure—he was featured on Toure's posthumous album Savane (World Circuit, 2006) — kora player Toumani Diabete and American roots musician Taj Mahal.
Segu Blue is, Kouyate's debut recording as leader. It's an album of understated but awesome beauty, full of lush melodies and supple rhythms, deep, peaceful and healing; happier sounding than Ali Farka Toure's music, but equally weighty and mesmeric.
Kouyate's band, Ngoni Ba (”the big ngoni”) is a quartet of ngoni players — treble, mid range and bass — augmented by Kouyate's wife, Ami Sacko, on lead vocals, and two percussionists. Guest singers and musicians are also featured. The earthy tenor Zoumani Tereta takes lead vocals on two tunes; shades-of-Ali Farka Toure electric guitarist Lobi Traoré is featured on another. All the tunes are drawn from, or closely based on, traditional Bambara music from the Segu region of Mali: three are traditional, all but one of the others are composed by Kouyate.
The album is almost as much Sacko's as it is Kouyate's (in the Malian capital, Bamako, husband and wife are the musicians-of-choice at wedding celebrations, feast days and other traditional gatherings). She's known locally as “the Tina Turner of Mali,” but this must be for her looks more than her voice, which—apart from her cathartic delivery on “Lament For Ali Farka”—is lightfooted and soft-textured.
Bamako Market, foto by Peter Ptschelinzew
Behind Sacko, the four ngoni players weave in and out of each other's lines with such intricate intimacy that, pitch aside, it's often hard to tell where one instrument stops and another one starts. The effect is rather like hearing a broader-ranged kora played by eight hands. The treble and mid range players favour crisp, brisk, tumbling riffs, the bass anchors them with more measured ostinatos. “Segu Blue” itself is one of just two instrumental tracks, and the piece closest to Ali Farka Toure's savannah blues in feel and notation.
Segu Blue was produced by the British writer and broadcaster Lucy Duran in Mali, and mixed by Jerry Boys (of Buena Vista Social Club repute) in London.
(With thanks to Chris May of ‘African Jazz’)
9.10.07
sound poetry in melbourne
Starting this coming Thursday,
La Mama Poetica
presents Voiceprints as part of the
Melbourne International Arts Festival
La Mama Poetica: Voiceprints, an eclectic polypoetry (literally poetry of many possibilities) mini-season. The programme includes live works by visiting Japanese sound poet and composer Tomomi Adachi, Sufi-inspired World Jazz by Ali Alizadeh and musicians Elissa Goodrich and Ria Soemardjo, Sydney-based poet Amanda Stewart, TTO and visual artist Sandy Caldow, Ania Walwicz, Emilie Zoey Baker, Peter Murphy and jeltje with the improvising chorus Unamunos Quorum.
Amanda Stewart, 2005
Voiceprints has been inspired by international polypoetry festivals in Ghent (krikri), Berlin and Barcelona, and strives to widen conceptualized expectations of what poetry is. The performance-orientated pieces bear witness to the struggle of finding a contemporary and authentic voice in times of language crisis - something beyond the page, sometimes even beyond the confines of language itself.
La Mama Theatre
205 Faraday Street
Carlton
Melbourne
Thursday October 11 and Friday October 12 @ 8pm
Matinees: Saturday October 13 and Sunday October 14 @ 2.30pm
Sunday Oct 14 fully booked
Ticket prices: $25 full/$15 conc.
Running time: 2 hours 15 mins. approx.
To gain an idea of Amanda Stewart's kind of unique vocal performance work,
here’s an excerpt from unexpected synergies by Bernadette Ashley -
a review of recent ‘see hear now’ performances in Townsville
(from the current issue of realtime)
performance 4: untitled
The most effective incorporation of visual art was achieved in Performance 4.
Movement artists Nicole Keen and Kate Hooper were wrapped together in a single stretchy white sack centrestage. As they contorted in response to Amanda Stewart’s vocal performance, visual artist Michelle Deveze drew on the cloth. Slower passages allowed her to make deliberately directed work, while at times the movement artists’ staccato responses caused Deveze’s charcoal marks to become random and opportunistic, confined to wherever she could establish contact with her heaving canvas in the moment. A further layer of intrigue was added by local artist Donna Foley’s simultaneous responses using a data tablet, the images projected onto the dancers and walls.
Stewart’s voicework and Foley’s projections carried a heightened synergy underpinned by Foley’s specialisation in the intersection of the visual and aural. Just as Stewart pares back language from the coherent into its component parts, Foley’s calligraphy, using stylus on data tablet, is like pre-writing scribble, almost fooling the audience into believing they could decipher, in Foley’s chaotic, lacy marks, what Stewart was vocalising.
The intensity showed in Stewart’s mobile features and taut neck muscles as she worked rapidly back and forth between two microphones. An unbelievable array of effects was conjured. At times it was like someone quickly turning an old radio dial across stations, or overhearing the sighs, whispers and tragedies of the inhabitants of a whole apartment block all at once.
In between evoking echoes of kissing, popping, chattering teeth, ripping velcro, rain, trains, Morse code from space or a penguin colony in distress with her hoarse, breathy scat, Stewart threw in the odd, tantilising word, which she later described as “a rant for the underlings; women and low caste people.”
Foley’s projected marks changed colour, overlapped, intensified until the screen was practically filled, emptied and the process begun again. The lighting replicated changing weather. Photographer Glenn O’Mallley ducked and wove through the action, adding his shadow to the backdrop as he recorded Deveze trying to tame a ground which behaved like a large, unruly and reluctant animal.
Eventually Stewart’s vocals wound down from disturbing to soothing, ending quietly with “fait accompli...the economics of us...” She walked away from the microphones cueing Foley and Deveze’s last slow lines as they all eyed each other.
These disparate elements married to produce a multidimensional, sensual and random collage. The eye was kept moving, the ear straining and the mind racing to connect the nuances of voice, hand and body: an engrossing journey.
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