Ancient Imaginings

Ancient Imaginings 

an interview for Sovereign Apocalypse Zine with Jenny Fraser 2015

Sovereign Apocalypse: Can you provide some thoughts on your future imaginings of sovereignty?

Jenny Fraser: Even though Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are only a 3% minority in Australia, Indigenous people internationally make up 6% of the worlds population. While it may not seem like we've got the numbers, we are actually the largest of all the minority groups, and we manage to cover 20% of our planets land mass, and therefore 80% of the worlds remaining Biodiversity.

It's a good feeling to think that as times get tougher, we maybe able to rely on each other, and our cousins in the international community, for sharing knowledges and resources required toward survival and longevity.

With that in mind, maybe it can help to rise above oppression and relax more into committing ourselves to our own direct stream of consciousness, and be able to unfold a greater, inherent understanding of ourselves, as a culture, as living spirit. If we make efforts to decolonise, to go with our own flow, and are true to ourselves, then I'm sure that our ancestors will smooth the way for us.

Sovereign Apocalypse: How do Indigenous knowledge's of creation or cosmology influence your work and practice?

Jenny Fraser: Although Indigenous Knowledges and cosmology are sometimes difficult to search out, and there is a considered silencing of this in the Australian vernacular, I am always interested in redressing this by quoting and referencing other Aboriginal people in my own projects.

The namesake of our recent online art project titled Superhighway across the Sky is inspired by a song from the world famous Aboriginal band Yothu Yindi.

Leading Yothu Yindi songman, Dr M Yunupingu and his visual artist sister, Ms G Yunupingu, both of whom only just died during the culmination of this project in recent years, were solid cultural leaders from the bush, with international profiles.

Over the years, I have gained a lot of inspiration from Ms G Yunupingu both in her work as an artist and also importantly as a healer. Motivated by stories from her father, she developed her own design style which is known as Garak the Universe, which are 4 pointed stars, that also reference connection between all people who look up and see constellations. Her designs and explanations are very powerful, both visually and conceptually. So, along with the song title for the project, I also tried to reference this important and worldly perspective on the Superhighway project T-shirts, by using an X in repetition. The shirts were a cyberTribe 15^th anniversary limited edition and offered exclusively as gifts to the project participants and our Native Canadian hosts.

superhighway across the sky project Tshirt design

The official launch of Superhighway across the Sky, at the 2014 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto was meant as a fitting and touching tribute to these Yolngu leaders and their lifelong inspirational and innovating art practices. As much as we would have loved to launch the project in Australia first, it is a crying shame that there is now no longer any Indigenous Media Arts award categories or venues to do so.

Sovereign Apocalypse: Do you believe in “Aliens”? Do you think the concept of extra terrestrial “Aliens” is misinterpreted?

Jenny Fraser: When we watch mainstream alien invasion films we witness a great fear of the “other” and the unknown, but my analysis of that is basically just the ideology that perpetuates an age old human fear of foreigners.

To me, the concept of aliens just literally means outsiders. However, I do often keep my eyes skyward. One night, when I was on Thursday Island, I spotted a UFO, which seemed to be following my direction along the beach... I had already started running, before I realised that it was on is own trajectory, and later found out that it was probably just a really low flying weather balloon, or small satellite. Thankfully I haven't had a real UFO sighting, as just the thought of it is really frightening, but I don't discount others stories of their own first hand experiences. I enjoy hearing about them, and my mind is blown by the level of detail, like spaceships taking core samples from the rock walls of the Barron Gorge of Kuranda, and the many reports of spaceships and coloured lights flashing across the Northern Territory, and across the Asia Pacific to places in Indonesia and New Zealand.

From what I have heard, the concept of an alien just seems like some kind of base level humans, who mainly only care about the land on this planet, as a resource for gain and technology. Yet, even more interesting to me is the governmental cover-ups and their disassociation with ex-government employees who have come out and made their sightings public. Why can't there be a public discussion or awareness of peoples first hand experiences with other beings?

Sovereign Apocalypse: Have you ever heard about the “returning” Boomerangs found in Tutankhamens tomb and claims that it is from us mob?

Do you believe international songlines exist?

Jenny Fraser:  I haven't heard about the boomerangs in Egypt, but I have heard stories the other way - examples of an Egyptian presence here in Australia. When I was younger, I remember there was a local story of a scarab beetles being found at Bundadjarruga / Walshs Pyramid, a mountain at Gordonvale here in Far North Queensland. Just this year, I was also made aware of a similar story in Aotearoa through a Maori screenmaker who explained that an anthropologist examined mummified remains found in a New Zealand cave in the 1930s and believed the skull was ancient Egyptian, at least 2000 years old. A gold scarab was found in the same area...

Flying by Walshs Pyramid : photo by Jenny Fraser

This kind of storytelling really sparks the imagination, but I think there is some truth to them, as I'm sure ancient contact happened in many ways. I also think that in ancient times gone by, the world was definitely a more magical place, with sacred sites like mountains, temples and bora rings being used for more direct and far reaching communications with the presence of significant planetary alignments, magnetic and other elemental forces. I am sure that the reasons why we don't communicate the same way as it was done historically, is not only because a lot of this kind of information and relating has been lost through cultural dominance and the restriction of free passage, but also because of the continental shift that happened, where we now see evidence of the old world underwater.

It appears that communicating and honouring those international connections or songlines, in that way are now broken, but maybe they can be repaired, or we can be satisfied with the new developments, in our societies or in outer space? As now we are aware of interstellar songlines – in 2014 a singing comet was recorded by instruments of the Rosetta mission that is run by the European Space Agency.

Sovereign Apocalypse:  Do you think our contact with “ancient civilisations” has been denied in the colonial narrative?

Can you tell us about the Australienation project?

What do you hope to provoke from the audience when it is revealed in 30 years time?

Jenny Fraser:  A gold record featuring video and audio artworks will soon be launched into outer space.  Inspired by and partly in response to the Voyager Golden Records, sent into space in 1977 by NASA as a record of culture and science at that time, the new international art/music group project titled Forever Now seeks to investigate our current historical moment. It re-imagines this curatorial act as experimental, politically charged and for the first time, places artists at the democratic centre of speaking on humanity’s behalf.

It was quite a challenging brief, to create a work that represents humanity now - and which will be immortalised forever - in just one minute. The video that I contributed, titled Australienation was shot on the Great Barrier Reef, which is currently under threat. In 30 years time, when the Forever Now record may be accessed, we will probably have seen the death of our World Wonder Reef, and, as scientists predict, our society will bear witness to the death of sea life in general, all over the world.

still image from Australienation by Jenny Fraser

Forever Now was launched on Sunday January 18 at the Odeon Theatre and broadcast into outer space via Cape Canaveral, as part of the Mona FOMA Faux Mo Festival in Hobart, and the artworks can also be viewed online at the website: forevernow.me

What I can hope for is that these new audiences will contemplate notions of some binary oppositions: Alien/Native, Security/Insecurity, Isolation/Belonging, Sympathy/Antipathy.

So I also offered this quote by Gilbert Keith Chesterton “We only know the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea, And a new people takes the land: and still it is not we.”

Sovereign Apocalypse:  Superhighway across the sky is awesome and we love that it is about connections i.e. “methods of communication are in some ways akin to the ancient notion of Songlines.” How did the collective conceive of this space and what is its purpose?

Jenny Fraser:  We could say the sky is the limit. I had been trying to get up a web-based art project and tour for a long time, and nine years later, I had finally managed to get some funding for it. However, lead up time to enter it into festivals was only short, and thankfully the artists were prepared to work fast on realising their ideas in tune with the themes resonant with Superhighway across the Sky. Christine Peacock brought the Brisbane Commonwealth Games Protest photos and speeches to light from her archives, Jason Davidson presented his documentation of chem trails around Australia and Michelle Blakeney matched archival photographs from Bombaderry Childrens Home near Nowra, with an audio track featuring testimonial speeches from the now aging previous residents at the Homes 100^th anniversary.

In realising the project I was reminded of the film Koyaanisqatsi, named after the Hopi Native American term meaning 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living'. In the finale of the film, Hopi prophecies are chanted, including this…. "Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky." This could be referencing the world wide web, chem trails, or satellite and plane passage, or all of the skyward traffic. Whatever it is, I'm sure we are already living in these times, in the Fifth World, and we need to be documenting and actively responding to our current experiences and expectations. With social networking sites, like facebook and instagram now more popular than ever, maybe we can consider the new and instant methods of communication akin to the ancient notion of Songlines, just the latest version.

Blackout Artists Jason Davidson, Jenny Fraser and Michelle Blakeney from Australia on tour, pictured with Native Canadian Dancer at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival Welcome in Toronto 2013 

Links:

Sovereign Apocalypse: http://sovereignapocalypse.com

Superhighway across the Sky: www.superhighwayacrossthesky.net

Australienation on Forever Now: http://forevernow.me/artists/artwork/australienation

Jenny Fraser: http://about.me/jennyfraser

Blackout Collective: http://www.blackout.net.au

cyberTribe http://cybertribe.culture2.org

Cultural Apartheid : ISEA Sydney

Aboriginal New Media Artists have been focused on building a movement for over 15 years, but were brought to a stand still in Australia, having been excluded from ISEA Sydney 2013. ISEA, which is an acronym for International Symposium of Electronic Arts, has been running since 1988 in the Netherlands, and it tours to different host countries every year or so. The last time it was hosted in Australia was 1992, 21 years ago in Sydney. ISEA Sydney 2013 was organised by an Australian-based committee with very little Aboriginal New Media Arts input, despite a face-to-face meeting between Indigenous artists, (the non-Aboriginal) ISEA hierarchy and others. The meeting, which was held two years previous at the Australia Council for the Arts, finalising a two stage Indigenous Media and Hybrid Arts Roundtable, and was part of an Inter-Arts Fund strategy to develop support for Indigenous experimental media and hybrid arts practices, promised Indigenous involvement in ISEA Sydney as an outcome.

Instead, the Sydney ISEA Curatorium blocked Aboriginal New Media Arts interests such as the Blackout Collective from participating. The Blackout Collective is a group of Aboriginal creators from all over Australia who communicate fluidly and contribute towards screen-based culture in new ways. Even if we didn’t have a name, such as Blackout, we would still be a collective, because we work in a minority artform, in the minority Aboriginal art scene and we all struggle to represent as new media artists, with very little support or inclusion in Australia. Ironically, the official slogan for ISEA Sydney 2013 was 'Resistance is Futile', and Aboriginal New Media Artists are certainly familiar with the notion.

While the Blackout collective may be small in number, and spread across the country, many Aboriginal artists have represented at international electronic arts events such as ISEA, SIGGRAPH, X Media Lab, Ars Electronica in Austria and the InteractivA Biennale in Mexico. Over the years, this has included Aroha Groves (NSW) in ISEA Istanbul in 2011, r e a (NSW) in SIGGRAPH San Diego 2007, Genevieve Grieves (NSW) and myself (QLD) in ISEA/Zero1 San Jose 2006, and Jason Davidson (NT) in ISEA Helsinki in 2004.

While some Aboriginal artists were promised thousands of dollars to create and present new work, that was reneged upon, and instead, the money was used to open ISEA Sydney with an Aboriginal Welcome to Country and performances for International and interstate guests at Carriageworks in Redfern on Friday June 9, 2013. In the media response to the Blackout Collective, the Australian ISEA Director, Jonathon Parsons, perpetuated the idea that the welcome performance was the be-all and end-all of an Aboriginal presence at ISEA Sydney, but really a welcome and performance are just a normal part of Aboriginal culture, which should occur at every significant gathering in our country. Aside from that, there was a small exhibition of painters works that have garnered a new life with animation, but the question is, where were the Aboriginal New Media Artists for ISEA in Sydney? Would an International Dance showcase being hosted in Australia, get away with only including one Indigenous person representing that entire artform? Even with a few back up painters sponsored by the mining company thrown in for good measure? Surely there would be an uproar. However that is what happened, the Australia Council for the Arts employed one of their own (inexperienced) staff, Merindah Donnelly (from the Marketing Department) to act as an Indigenous New Media Art curator and spend our funds on a Welcome event for ISEA visitors: instead of what they were originally allocated for - experienced New Media artists genuine engagement in an international technology showcase on country. This is a huge conflict of interest.

Not only did the Australian ISEA organisers exclude Aboriginal new media artists from exhibiting at an international electronic arts event in our own country, but they failed to manage the situation professionally. In good faith, Indigenous artists jumped through their hoops and proposed new projects a year before, and had been on the short list since December 2012, with significant budgets being offered, and continually working on creating new work, only to find out final rejection notification one day before ISEA started in Sydney. It was a huge waste of money upfront and good energy in trying to meet the deadline with very little useful communication from the organisers, or so called Indigenous Creative Producer engaged at short notice for ISEA Sydney, Merindah Donnelly, who also happens to work for the Australia Council arts funding body....

However, the International guests were interested in Aboriginal New Media Arts and invited some of us for an opportunity to speak at the ISEA conference as part of the Latin American forum panel titled ‘Re:imag(in)ing Indigenous Media Art Histories’ alongside Columbian practitioners. The discussion was framed around a focus on the respective histories of Indigenous Australian artists working with new media, and in particular the inroads and dialogues established in international networks. More broadly the session addressed issues of identity, representation and visuality in the so-called ‘Global South’.

The panel was organised in a partnership between the Latin American Forum and an ARC Linkage project undertaken at the National Institute of Experimental Arts in Australia. Acknowledging that international publications and online archives dedicated to the study of Media Art are often dominated by white European and North American exemplars, and to further the discussion by drawing attention to the multiple trajectories that have sprouted from outside of the usual centres and dominant paradigms.

Press releases about the exclusion from exhibiting, were sent to the media and to the ISEA Sydney main funder, the Australia Council for the Arts. The story was really only picked up by one mainstream publication, Artshub (in the UK and Australia). Interestingly, the names of Aboriginal New Media Artists who had previously represented at ISEA overseas had been omitted, and instead were replaced by a list of the dancers involved in the Welcome to Country for ISEA Sydney, along with an incorrect list of artists, only one of which works in Aboriginal New Media, and was actually involved in ISEA (and not the Vivid, Festival, which was happening at the same time).

In the Arts Hub article, Parsons states that “ISEA2013 also provided a number of bursaries to encourage the participation of Indigenous artists in the conference.”, but actually, the bursaries were provided by Arts Victoria, and specifically only for Victorian Indigenous artists to travel to Sydney for the conference. Aboriginal faces at ISEA Sydney were certainly very few and far between. No official reply was received from ISEA Sydney (until the matter moved into social media, of course...), no official reply came from the International ISEA body and no official reply was received from the Australia Council for the Arts. ...Usually it is a conflict of interest for the funding body of an event to slide a (rare) paying curatorial role to one of its own staff (Merindah Donnelly from Marketing), so maybe that is why? * with the usual decades of artform specific experience suddenly not necessary... 

The press release received interest internationally, and in the resulting conversations we learned that it wasn't the first time that ISEA had failed to deal with the “Indigenous Problem” adequately. Some Native American artists and journalists made contact to alert us to the fact that in the 2012 Albuquerque ISEA, exotically titled 'Machine Wilderness', they had also been excluded from participating in their own country. Ironically ISEA International promotes itself publicly on its website as 'an international non-profit organisation fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organisations and individuals'. However, American Indians also understand Cultural Apartheid and Culture Wars very well, and explained to me the notion of Co-option. Now I have a name for something that I have witnessed many times over the years, and which was particularly relevant in this instance as only one role had been created as the outcome of the advocacy of the Indigenous Roundtable, but that role had been filled to work against us, and spend Indigenous assigned funds without us New Media Artists and Curators.

Later in the year, the blackout collective presented a new online art project ‘Superhighway across the sky’ at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada. The artists selected to make new experimental work were Christine Peacock, Jason Davidson and Michelle Blakeney, and we all travelled to Toronto to speak on a roundtable with other International guests at the annual festival, and later travelled on to London to present at the inaugural Indigeneity.net conference in the UK. The arts hub article about the ISEA exclusion, described this as an “ambitious presentation”, however, it is much easier and much more gratifying to organise engagement overseas, than it is in our homeland, especially given the greater divide between the film and new media arts here, and the lack of major Indigenous arts institutions, staff and interest. Highlighted again upon returning home to find that the short lived New Media category has been canned from of the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, without any prior warning to the field of artists, nor consultation.

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is an international festival in Toronto that celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, and new media. Each year, the festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the globe. The festival's screenings, panel discussions, and cultural events attract and connect film makers, media artists, programmers, buyers, and industry professionals. The works accepted reflect the diversity of the world's Indigenous nations and illustrate the vitality and excellence of our art and culture in contemporary media.

‘Superhighway across the sky' will be launched in 2014 and featured with cyberTribe, an online gallery focused on nurturing digital art. cyberTribe has been at the forefront of exhibiting cutting edge and politically important artworks from Indigenous Artists internationally, both in its online gallery and other gallery spaces across the world. cyberTribe celebrates 15 years in 2014, and over the years, has brought together Indigenous artists from places across Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and elsewhere to participate in exhibitions of international standing. All without any annual funding, ever.

An important milestone for cyberTribe over the years includes winning the ABC Radio National Indigenous Cultural Centre/Keeping Place Award in 2009, for creating a unique place for Indigenous artists to create and exhibit new media work as well as more traditional forms. Museums Australia Director, Bernice Murphy, commented in the ABC RN announcement: “The award to cyberTribe reminds us all that Indigenous creativity needs to be supported in the most up-to-date forms – even in ‘regional cyberspace’ – as well as out back where communities are keeping fires of tradition and continuity burning strong.”

...So what's next? Now we wait 20 years or so, for the next ISEA to come to Australia and see what happens then? Meanwhile we observe a charmed circle of the mainstream Australian Art scene do what they do best – promote their own interests, and sickeningly get all self-congratulatory about it. Even though Parsons had started the ISEA Sydney role very late, and it was only for a few months anyway, it is interesting to note that he has already been appointed to a major New Media Arts role in one of the very few New Media specialised organisations – Experimenta. This is usually unheard of - for an inexperienced outsider of the medium to be anointed with free passage through the gate ...but not entirely surprising. Although the hypocrisy is astounding, its the Australian way.

Jenny Fraser

http://cybertribe.culture2.org/jennyfraser 

an edited version of this article has been featured in Artlink Magazine under the title 

Cultural Apartheid and the Superhighway across the Sky

links

blackout http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/blackout

cyberTribe http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org

cyberTribe on facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/cyberTribe-online-gallery-and-supporters/192081330862011

ISEA Latin American Forum #3 http://www.isea2013.org/events/latin-american-forum-presents-3

ISEA Sydney 2013 http://www.isea2013.org

ISEA http://www.isea-web.org

Past ISEA http://www.isea-web.org/symposia/past-isea-symposia

ISEA Sydney 2013 on facebook https://www.facebook.com/ISEA2013?fref=ts

Artshub http://www.artshub.co.uk/news-article/news/visual-arts/aboriginal-new-media-group-claims-exclusion-195756

artabase http://www.artabase.net/news/727-experimenta-welcomes-new-artistic-director

The Digital Dreamtime: A Shining Light in the Culture War

by Jenny Fraser

After presenting at the International symposium on Māori and Indigenous Screen Production, December 2010, this was written in 2011 and recently published in Te Kaharoa:


Te Kaharoa abstract here: http://tekaharoa.com/index.php/tekaharoa/article/view/105

Te Kaharoa pdf of article here: http://tekaharoa.com/index.php/tekaharoa/article/view/105/66

and here is the unedited version below:

Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.

                                                                                                        Louis Aragon 1

The realm of the arts is often viewed as the stronghold in the last line of defence against the enduring colonisation process of the minority Aboriginal populace. It is one of few avenues in Australian society where Aboriginal people can have a voice and fortunately this is partly driven by the influence of the outside international artworld. In more recent years the digital production areas have further enabled the space and recognition for self-determined, culturally specific and diverse sources of creativity, exchange and community building. This is all despite a culture war where mainstream institutions such as the galleries sector, the associated funding bodies, academia and the media are all being utilised and strengthened as non-military mechanisms of imperialism.  

The culture war, or history wars, have mostly been enacted in the mainstream society through the media and the academy. Also at issue is establishing whose definition of Australia will dominate? and on what basic historical precepts? That is, was Australia invaded or settled? Were there massacres or not? Were the children taken away or not? Which society is more immoral? Under John Howards prime minister-ship (1996 - 2007), those whose scholarship mentioned the words invasion, massacres and forced removal as truths of Australian history were labelled as Black Armband historians. Others mobilised to decry any negativity towards Australia and Australian history. Subsequently, views contrary to the neo- liberal version began to find themselves further marginalised. Including if those views were communicated through the arts and particularly if the artists were Aboriginal.

Works by Aboriginal artists are rarely, if ever, included in mainstream Australian New Media Arts exhibitions or events, and likewise, there are very few Aboriginal curators who include Aboriginal New Media Arts in their exhibitions, so by default there is a huge divergence. This is a curious position because the exclusion or separatism would barely be tolerated in exhibitions that represent a more popular artform, like painting for example. There would be a huge outcry because Aboriginal Art is quite prominent internationally, especially in contrast to Australian Art.It seems that Aboriginal people are expected to assimilate and give up general cultural and social practices, however, artistically the expectation is the reverse ~ keep those nice ancient artworks coming!

Over the past decade or so, part of the "New Media problem" was explained away with excuses relating to expense, lack of staff expertise and limited access to technology. Of course, over time the technical issues have changed, but not the attitudes in the industry. There is also the problem of cultural jealousy or entitlement issues from non-Indigenous artist colleagues that creates a kind of lateral violence, from artist to artist. A young Chinese Curator recently publicly admitted this by stating "Moreover, the success of the Indigenous art industry in the Northern Territory means non-Aboriginal artists often feel neglected" about the issues inherent in her exhibition of local artists who have resided in Darwin, titled 'Territory Time'.2  It really must be said that the resistance to inclusive attitudes towards Aboriginal artists can only be attributed as institutional racism. As Greg Tate has written "No area of intellectual life has been more resistant to recognising and authorizing people of color than the world of the "serious" visual arts. To this day it remains a bastion of white supremacy…"3

However, it isn't only Aboriginal culture that has been silenced by the actions of John Howards' government. When the Australia Councils' New Media Arts Board was disbanded for political reasons, it left a huge gap for mainstream, or non-Indigenous New Media Arts. Since then the board has been renamed "Inter-Arts", after the Canada Council namesake. Now only guest peer assessors are engaged, instead of having board members over a term of 1 – 3 years, so essentially the brains trust of the board has been lost and so has the relationship to some of the Aboriginal Artists that felt confident and persistent enough to apply. From where I sit as an artist who has had first hand experience with funding body boards, I find it unfortunate that no other Australia Council board has taken up the slack and bothered to really engage peers with New Media expertise, or effectively implemented initiatives with a New Media focus. Although, the other artform boards have gladly accepted the funding that was disseminated for New Media projects. The most recent paradox being that the Australia Councils 2011 roadshow propaganda imparted a lip service focus on the strategic priorities of "Artistic Innovation", "Arts Content in the Digital Era" and "Indigenous involvement".4

 



image: Aroha Groves, 'Whats a blakfella doing in a Virtual Realm', Machinima, Dimensions Variable

Trans Media, Inter-Art or Interdisciplinary Artwork specifically describes a process that engages more than one single art form, either between different art forms or collaborations involving cultural and artistic differences. ‘Burning Daylight’ is a recent example of a large-scale interdisciplinary new media production which is devised and performed by the Marrugeku Company, physical theatre practitioners from the Stalker Theatre Company and also featuring local talent in Broome, a remote coastal town in the far north-west Kimberley region.

Incorporating contemporary dance, film, live music and karaoke, the project combines the unique performance style of Western Australian Indigenous dancers and musicians with Malaysian martial arts, unique Japanese and Chinese influences, and the company’s visual and acrobatic performance language. A series of happening dance scenes unfold highlighting the friction, local humour and cultural collision in the streets at night in the part of Broome known as “The Bronx”.  The karaoke videos envelope the onstage performers with historic Broome characters... such as the pearl diver, geisha and the Aboriginal cowboy. Although on tour now, this kind of production is rarely seen in Australia, due to the lack of funding and support for such large-scale events, but is featured in many international festivals for large arts-friendly audiences.

 

 



image: Burning Daylight, Marrugeku Company 2009

A few of the artists that have invested a great deal of energy into crafting a practice and also in developing a movement of Aboriginal New Media Arts in Australia are r e a, Jason Davidson and myself and sometimes we present works under the name of the Blackout Collective. Because we also work in a variety of disciplines and come from diverse backgrounds we have achieved some groundbreaking works. Each of our works comment on our own Aboriginal experience while establishing a niche and maintaining our own unique style. Our works are also often more appreciated internationally than in Australia, yet none of us have received project funding from any Australia Council artform board since the disbanding of the New Media Arts Board in 2004.

Image: the blackout collective website circa 2003

r e a is a Gamilaraay/Wailwan artist, originally from Coonabarabran, a remote town in New South Wales, but is a long-time Sydney resident.  She has a background in electronics in her mainstream employment and went on to study photography at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney and other courses at post-graduate level including Digital Imaging and Design at New York University.  She has a “long” history in the New Media Arts scene and her current practice mainly involves video and digital imaging processes.
Her recent work ‘maang (messagestick)’ is a three channel video and sound installation featuring historical 16mm black and white film excerpts originally made by William Grayden during his expedition, with Pastor Doug Nichols. The ABC TV show Time Frame, described this footage as “remains today a powerful expose of the conditions suffered by some of the Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people who had been displaced by the 1956 Maralinga atomic bomb tests.” 5 The tests were ordered by the British and carried out by Australians, it lasted for ten years, The Pitjantjatjara people were forced from their native land, they had then been hit by serious drought. Seeking water, food and medical attention, they had struggled across hundreds of kilometres of outback terrain to reach the Warburton Mission.  There the camera documented the terrible results of sun exposure, thirst and starvation, trachoma and blindness. 
Maang (messagestick) was shown at Planet Indigenus in Toronto 2009, the 2007 Auckland Triennial and was also toured Asia in the International Digital Art Project 'Vernacular Terrain 2' exhibition which featured Australian Aboriginal artists for the first time in 2008.


image: r e a, detail from maang (messagestick) 2006-07, Three channel DVD & sound installation, Dimensions Variable

image: Jason Davidson, 'Falcon Wings for Hope' detail from ‘Street Machine’ , 2010.

Jason Davidson a Gurindji/Mara/Nalakarn artist, currently based in Canberra, has a background in music and design. He studied Visual Arts at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory. His practice involves producing works including elements of animation, video, music and his unique ‘X-Ray’ art style - hand drawn designs of animals and body organs. Jasons work, ‘Street Machine’  explores ideas about masculinity and health – the car as a body and incorporates his signature x-ray art/sci-fi style digital designs.

He said of the work “This project is about looking at ways to break the white mans magic spell. This is a small part of my story a message back for the community, a message about hope, its there, you cant see but maybe you can feel it and maybe sometimes hope has a way to find and call all those once were warriors who been reduced to dust.” 6 A project that is already seven years in the making, he produced the work coinciding with his research in Cross-Cultural Communication Breakdown as a part of his Masters of Health degree at the Tropical Health Institute.

Very recently he has brought these issues to light again with the launch of a new website Aboriginal Imagination. Featuring the arts, health and copyright, the website is also intended as a safe haven for family members and other artists to promote their artwork in an Aboriginal controlled environment free of other cultural gate-keepers.

Slide: Jenny Fraser, detail from ‘Indian Cowboys / Cowboy Indians’, Video Installation, 2009

 

With a background in education, my art practice to date has involved developing a screen-based practice, curating exhibitions and maintaining a long-term online gallery presence. I am a Murri and studied through the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, and am currently based between there and Darwin in the Northern Territory. 

Recent work ‘Indian Cowboys / Cowboy Indians’ is a communication to my old people. When pondering their image, I noticed that the photographs had been doctored to lighten them. This pains me. It seems that they were too black. They worked on cattle properties, far away from their homelands. I wish to try to let them know what their old stomping ground is like now… dressing-up in the photo booth is something that people do for fun on our home-lands. It’s not real, but it is the photography of the day in a theme park inspired playground. Pictured here is my art family, lenticular-style, a movement, a resistance… I am left to wonder how real the portrait sittings were for my old people? Did they find it fun? Given a choice, how would they dress now? Would they choose the Indian or the Cowboy or the Cowboy Indian? The work was initially shown at ICAN the Indonesian Contemporary Art Network in Jogjakarta.

  As Martin Luther King Junior has said “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." 7 Therefore my personal contribution to culture and sharing the love for over a decade has included founding and maintaining cyberTribe – an online art gallery that features the works of Indigenous Artists internationally. With a regular program of exhibitions both online and in other gallery spaces, it fills a much needed space, in order to appreciate the work of those labelled as “Urban Artists” producing conceptual / new media / contemporary artwork alongside those innovating in traditional or customary practices and to comment on individual and collective Aboriginal experiences.



image: cyberTribe logo circa 2010

Any Indigenous presence in the world of Indigenous Arts provides new perspectives for audiences and perhaps encourages more inclusion of Indigenous Art in the mainstream exhibitions and events, where this is often overlooked or subject to cultural gate-keeping. Many digital productions include participation by Indigenous people and contributes to individual and community empowerment.  These images and initiatives produced under the idea of self-representation can then talk back to the dominant images as a matter of conflict between alternative readings of society. Institutional acceptance of this requires true leadership and the challenge of genuine discourse.

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references / bibliography:

1. Aragon, L. (1926) Paris Peasant, "Preface to a Modern Mythology".
2. Zhou, S. (2011) Chan Contemporary Art Space Interview. Off The Leash, p 16, July
3. Tate, G. (1989) ‘Nobody Loves a Genius Child’, Village Voice (November 14)
4. Christie, L. (2011) 'Darwin Funding Forum Presentation', Australia Council website as at June 30:http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/102026/Darwin_Funding_Forum_presentation_for_attendees.pdf
5. Time Frame (1997) '1967...Citizens At Last?' ABC TV Show, Episode 5; Online Archive: http://www.abc.net.au/time/episodes/ep5.htm
6. Hall, S. (1980) 'Fetishism in film "Theory" and "Practice"', Australian Journal of Screen Theory, 5 and 6. pp.48-66.
7. Davidson, J. (2010) Email conversation, September 24, 2010

other related links:

Blackout Collective - http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/blackout
Marrugeku Company – 'Burning Daylight' - http://www.marrugeku.com.au/burningdaylight
Jason Davidson – 'Street Machine' - http://www.aboriginalimagination.com.au/projects.html
r e a - http://www.breenspace.com/artists/21/exhibitions/r-e-a
Jenny Fraser - http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org/jennyfraser
cyberTribe - http://www.cybertribe.culture2.org
Aroha Groves – video: a walkthrough of 'Connections2' - http://www.youtube.com/sistagrlro