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
an edited version of this article has been featured in Artlink Magazine under the title
Cultural Apartheid and the Superhighway across the Sky
links
cyberTribe
on facebook
https://www.facebook.com/pages/cyberTribe-online-gallery-and-supporters/192081330862011
ISEA Sydney 2013 on
facebook https://www.facebook.com/ISEA2013?fref=ts
artabase
http://www.artabase.net/news/727-experimenta-welcomes-new-artistic-director
