Understanding Australian ethnic minority artists' careers

This article examines the degree to which Australian ethnic minority artists possess or do not possess the career capitals necessary to develop their artistic journey. We listened to stories of career experiences that show how artists learn to negotiate their way by developing their career paths. The study found that ethnic minority artists possess more cultural capital than economic and social capitals, thus limiting their career to attain hierarchy and power in creative institutions. Ethnic minority artists can use strategies to manage career, boosting economic, social capitals and to a lesser extent cultural capital. This article adds to the current literature on the utility of Bourdieu’s forms of capital, contextualising voices of artists to account for their experiences in managing the process of advancement which both facilitates and limits their career-related opportunities.

Louise Lightfoot : in search of India

 Louise Lightfoot, a trained architect by profession and an ardent balletomane, is best known for moving away from pure Western classical Ballet to a fusion of classical technique and romantic emotion in Australia through her First Australian Ballet group and school. During late 1920s, she was impressed by the performances of Anna Pavlova and Uday Shankar and to bring more appropriateness and authenticity to her own Indian classical dance style that she was trying to experiment with, virtually unknown and unseen in Australia till then in its original form, Lightfoot took a few weeks stopover in India. This short holiday eventually stretched to months and then eight years as she travelled to Tamil Nadu and Kerala’s Kalamandalam, where she began her study of the complex traditions of Kathakali and Bharata Natyam dance. Here she also became a Stage Manager cum Artistic and Publicity director for local troupes and artistes in residence. She was so thrilled by the whole experience of learning Kathakali – involving poetry, song, acting and dance – that soon she started appealing to the British in India to not only appreciate the Indian dance but also to Indian parents to allow their sons and daughters to dance. Lightfoot, as Dance Director of Shivaram, Janaki Devi, Priyagopal Singh and Lakshman Singh, supported by an ensemble of Australian dancers including Ruth Bergner, Moya Beaver, Leona Welch, Pat Martin and Betty Russell, successfully toured and promoted a range of Indian classical dance forms, like Kathakali, Manipuri, Bharatanatyam, throughout Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. As an early image-maker, she also paved the way for many other noted Indian dancers and troupes. In spite of decades of hard work and dedication to Indian dancing and creating awareness about India in Australia her work and life is little known! Her journey is fascinating because of the workings of race relations not just in Australia but also India – existing prejudices against “Whites.” In this paper I try to chart out through Australian and Indian newspaper reports her search for India.

National dance forum report

 The National Dance Forum aims to foster the artistic development of dance in Australia by providing a platform for discussion and engagement across the dance sector. Through a series of panels, keynote speeches, open forums and networking events, the 2013 National Dance Forum sought to increase the profile of Australian dance and to celebrate diversity and innovation across the industry.

The 2013 National Dance Forum was held at the Footscray Community Arts Centre, having moved from its 2011 location, Arts House. As in 2011, the participants for 2013 National Dance Forum included choreographers, dancers, independent artists, artistic directors, educators, researchers, dance producers and students. 177 individuals attended the 2013 Forum, with many traveling from interstate/overseas to participate in the Forum and to attend Dance Massive events.
This evaluation for the 2013 National Dance Forum has been developed to evaluate the success of the event against its stated aims and to assist in targeting new opportunities and directions for future Forums.

This evaluation has undertaken an analysis of the relevancy and effectiveness of this forum for participants using evaluation questionnaires developed by the National Dance Forum and issued to all participants on the final day of the Forum. This evaluation collates and analyses the responses of 64 respondents in the areas of their own individual professional focus, their experiences as participants in the 2013 National Dance Forum including the strengths and weaknesses of the event, and the relevancy and effectiveness of the Forum for the Australian dance sector.

Who is he now? The unearthly David Bowie

The question that has led and organised this special edition on David Bowie draws provocative attention to the way his career has been narrated by the constant transformation and recasting of his star image. By asking who is he now? the edition recognises that Bowie is a chameleon figure, one who reinvents himself in and across the media and art platforms that he is found in. This process of renewal means that Bowie constantly kills himself, an artistic suicide that allows for dramatic event moments to populate his music, and for a rebirth to emerge at the same time or shortly after he expires. Bowie has killed Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack, Aladdin Sane, and the Thin White Duke to name but a few of his alter-egos. In this environment of death and resurrection, Bowie becomes a heightened, exaggerated enigma, a figure who constantly seems to be artificial or constructed and yet whose work asks us to look for his real self behind the mask – to ask the question, is this now the real Bowie that faces us? Of course, the answer is always no because Bowie is a contradictory constellation of images, stories and sounds whose star image rests on remaining an enigma, and like all stars in our midst, exists as a representation. Nonetheless, with Bowie - with this hyper- schizophrenic, confessional artist – the fan desire to get to know him, to immerse oneself in his worlds, fantasises, and projections - is particularly acute. With the unexpected release of The Next Day ((Iso/Columbia) on the 8th March 2013, the day of his 66th birthday, Bowie was resurrected again. The album and subsequent music videos drew explicitly on the question of who Bowie was and had been, creating a media frenzy around his past work, fan nostalgia for previous Bowie incarnations, and a pleasurable negotiation with his new output. In this special edition, edited by life-long Bowie fans, with contributions from die-hard Bowie aficionados, we seek to find him in the fragments and remains of what once was, and in the new enchantments of his latest work.

Under the forest and Ladyswamp ( a radio play and a sonic poem)

'Under the Forest'  and 'Ladyswamp' are audio recordings created in collaboration with musician/ sound artist Tom Kazas. As the first outputs of the ongoing Lyrebird project (fully documented at writingfix.com.au) both works reinvent history in artistic form. At the same time they consider the aftermath of inappropriate farming techniques, representing the sense of disconnection the settlers immediately have from any historical continuity or indigenous relationship to land. In focussing on a regional area in Victoria and the stories that emerge from here, this practice-led research has implications for all other regional areas in countries throughout a world in a time of climate change. The two pieces, linked by the flow of water from the upper catchment of the Tarwin River, to the river flats near the South Gippsland coast, embody the presence of location via poetic means; the flow is from erosion to silt: of land becoming water, becoming land. In the sound design the locations are also represented poetically without losing the actuality of their haunting geography.
The two audio works were first presented at the Double Dialogues Conference: 'The 21st century - The Event, The Subject, The Artwork', Fiji, 2012, and are published in In/Stead, Issue 4, 2013 alongside a discursive article, ‘Under the forest & Ladyswamp: a radio play & a sonic poem’. Extracts of the audio appear on Youtube. The process of ‘Ladyswamp’ appears on an educational video currently in production by Deakin University.

Not-I/Thou : the other subject of art and architecture

Not-I/Thou: The Other Subject of Art and Architecture is a series of essays delineating the gray areas and black zones in present-day cultural production. Part One is an implicit critique of neoliberal capitalism and its assault on the humanities through the pseudo-scientific and pseudo-empirical biases of academic and professional disciplines, while Part Two returns to apparent lost causes in the historical development of modernity and post-modernity, particularly the recourse to artistic production as both a form of mnemonics and periodic (and renascent) avant-garde agitation. In-between these twin systems of taking the measure of things, Art and Architecture, as forms of speculative intellectual capital, emerge from the shadow-lands of half-conscious and half-unconscious forces to become gestures toward a type of knowledge that has no utilitarian or generic agency. Defying the tendencies of such discourses to fall prey to instrumental orders that effectively neuter the inherent radical agenda of both, Art and Architecture are represented in this series of essays as noetic apparatuses, operating at the edge of authorized systems of knowledge, quietly and secretly validating and valorizing the shadowy and recondite, collective and personal operations of intellect in service to no particular end.

Unfolding projects: Afghan and Australian artist’s books collaborations

In August 2009 an email was circulated to a number of Australian women artists with an offer to participate in a project of dialogue with women in Afghanistan. The project grew as a response to the dire situation of many women in Afghanistan, particularly in relation to education; many women are illiterate because they were and often still are, forbidden, restricted, or discouraged from attending school. By April 2010, 53 artists’ books by 14 women artists from various parts of Australia were delivered to Afghanistan, thereby beginning a process of creative collaboration between women situated in different places, cultures, and languages, attempting a productive connection through image and text. Each artist had created a small series of concertinas of imagery consistent with her current studio practice, which were then delivered to Afghanistan and distributed amongst women participating in literacy education. The women were asked to relate to the images by writing their own words directly within. The general intent was for the concertinas to be sent back to Australia, then bound and exhibited to raise public awareness, and possibly sold to raise funds. The artistic intent, however, was not the fundraising aspect as much as to take part in a process of support and dialogue with women in Afghanistan. It was a manoeuvre that said 'you are not alone'. The aim was to mobilise a conversation of sorts through the visuality and materiality of the artist’s book, despite the limitations of cultural, experiential, and physical distance. Just over six months from their delivery to Afghanistan, 36 of the 53 books returned to Australia, each marked with handwritten stories and poems in Dari and Pashto. This paper discusses the processes and considerations involved in the project, and the partnership formed with SAWA-Australia (Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan).

Community music-making in regional Australia: creating, improvising and performing at a festival

Community arts in Australia, as in many other countries, continue to permeate society, illuminating the past and shaping the future. This article situates itself as an aspect of community music through creative music-making within a larger research project that started at Deakin University (DU) (Melbourne, Australia) in 2011 called ‘Flows and Catchments’. Through the lens of creative arts and music-making, I argue that community partnerships between local communities and tertiary institutions are a fertile ground to celebrate arts practice where the cultural and artistic life of the community is promoted, fostering respect and understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. In 2012, I presented a music workshop at the 8th Annual Lake Bolac Eel Festival (LBEF) in Western Victoria. Using the African term Masakhane, which means ‘let us build together’, I provide a snapshot of my experience through journaling and anecdotal feedback as I reflect in and on the teaching and learning episode of the volcanic composition. The community partnership between DU (academics in an urban space) and the LBEF (local community in a regional place) provided an opportunity for people of all ages to engage, explore and experience music-making collectively in a social context. As a tertiary music educator, I propose more pathways being established with regional communities in order to deepen the knowledge and understanding of them; schools, communities, artists, academics and tertiary students can form cultural synergies in place-based settings like those of festivals.

The Art of Wool

An edited volume that examines the place of wool in the artistic imagination of Australia and considers visual relationships between art and fashion.Part of a wider curatorial project that brings together garments from the International Woolmark Prize archive with works from the Howard Hinton and Chandler Coventry Collections at New England Regional Art Museum. Editor's Introduction:Tanya Zoe Robinson'Introduction: stories of wool'Essay authors:Margaret Maynard, Honorary Research Consultant, Queensland University'Wool fashions: comfort, tactility, innovation'Adam Geczy, Senior Lecturer, Sydney College of the Arts'The art-fashion crossover'Christine France OAM'Wool in the artistic imagination of Australia'

Summer is a good time for informal education

Students look forward to summer because usually it means a break from formal and non-formal education. Formal education refers to education in formal educational institutions, such as pre-schools, primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions and other registered training organisations. Non-formal education refers to organised educational activity outside the established formal system, that is intended to deliver a defined set of learning objectives to an identifiable group of learners (Chemistry in Australia, October 2014, page 33). Informal education refers to all learning outside the formal non-formal educational system; informal education is often associated with life-long learning as it can include reading non-fiction books and scholarly articles, viewing documentaries and other informal professional development. Informal education can also include travel to other countries and climates. Social constructivist theory maintains that learning occurs in social settings; conversely, most learners are limited by their cultural experiences. For example, Australian students have little first-hand experience of sublimation, but this is commonly observed in very cold climates when frost, ice or snow apparently “disappears” as it sublimes to water vapour, without passing through the liquid state. A favourite summertime activity is to go to the movies, especially in air-conditioned cinemas on a hot day or night. Watching movies are a form of virtual travel, and many educators make use of movies to illustrate chemistry concepts. Some movie producers want a sense of authenticity and work hard to get the details right, even though those details might be incidental to the main plot. For example, in Centurion, Roman soldiers fail in their rescue attempt, and are taunted by the Picts for stupidity -- they would have succeeded if they had only realised that metal become brittle in the cold. Another favourite example comes from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when Bilbo, Samwise and Gollum are crossing the Dead Marshes and see lights that appear to float over the Marshes. These wills-o-the-wisp have been known for centuries, and was the subject of a debate between George Washington and his officers. Washington and Thomas Paine, “the Father of the American Revolution”, believed that the lights were due to a flammable gas released from the marsh, while Washington’s officers believed that the lights were due to a flammable liquid on the surface of the marsh. On Guy Fawkes Night, 5 November, 1783, the Washington-Paine experiment showed that when mud at the bottom of a river was disturbed, bubbles of flammable gas rose to the surface of the water. (Unknown to Washington and Paine, Alessandro Volta had performed a similar experiment in 1776.) A problem with informal education is that it is often unguided. Students may find it difficult to discern the difference between scientific reality and an artistic distortion of reality in novels and movies. Educators have an important role here. If we only teach facts and concepts, learners will be dependent on a teacher. If however, we foster students’ curiosity and ability to exercise judgement, they will be able to learn for themselves, not just during the summer, but also in every season of every year.

All around

All Around is a collaborative video art piece created by Twin Peetz, Bob Brass and Renata Lemos Morais. Renata's spoken word performance was recorded and mixed to the music of Bob Brass, which was synthezised by Twin Peetz as the soundtrack to one of his Glitch Art videos. A series of GIFs was also created as a rection to the concepts.This work was developed online and simultaneously in Melbourne, New Paltz and Berlin by the three artists. The video piece, All Around, is their combined artistic interpretation of the conceptual challenges presented by Renata in her forthcoming article Sky High, Skin Deep: dark technologies of mediation, to be published by CTheory.net.

Haptically-enabled dance visualisation framework for deafblind-folded audience and artists

In this paper we propose a framework for communicating performance art to deaf, blind and deafblind audiences and artists haptically through the sense of touch. This research opens doors for novel artistic trends relying mainly on the sense of touch. The paper investigates the design considerations dictated by solo and group dances as well as stage setup. Implementation scenarios for deafblind audiences and performers are also discussed.

Harold Pinter, cinema e literatura : os limites da realidade

Partindo de duas questões teóricas preliminares, uma, da representação (literária e cinematográfica)do real e do imaginário, tanto no ângulo da produção como no da sua recepção e, a outra, da articulação entre formas de expressão artísticas distintas, ou seja, da interdisciplinaridade, este trabalho examina a presença do tema relativo aos limites entre realidade e fantasia no teatro, no cinema e na literatura, centrando sua atenção na obra de Harold Pinter. Consta de duas partes, cada uma com três capítulos. Na primeira, "Os pressupostos," discute-se as questões que fornecem seu substrato teórico. A segunda é dedicada ao corpus, identificando em seu título o tema investigado: "Os limites da realidade." Quanto à questão da representação, procura-se refutar "a afirmação de que a arte seja uma imitação da realidade. Uma releitura da Poética, de Aristóteles, reforçada pela opinião de diversos estudiosos da mesma, permite afirmar que a mÍmese corresponde, isto sim, a uma representação que envolve uma construção em que elementos da realidade são organizados segundo uma verdade criada pela própria obra, de acordo com critérios inerentes a ela. Além disso, através de uma leitura de Kathryn Hume, procura-se afirmar a interação sinestésica quase que permanente dos impulsos realista e da fantasiana literatura, identificando os tipos com que a fantasia se manifesta e as técnicas usadas para sua criação. A primeira parte encerra-se com um exame do relacionamento da literatura com as artes visuais e dramáticas, relações inter-disciplinares que situam este trabalho na literatura comparada.Dentre vários autores cujas obras contribuem para tal fim, destaca-se Martin Esslin, que estabelece os limitesde cada uma das artes dramáticas, identifica contatos delas com a literatura e permite, através de uma leitura de seu estudo sobre o teatro do absurdo, seja estabelecida a evolução que liga Aristóteles a Pinter. O corpus centra-se na obra de Pinterpara o teatro e para o cinema, sem limitar-se a ela,pois são também analisadas obras de outros escritores e cineastas, estabelendo-se aproximações ou contrastes entre elas. No quarto capítulo estão agrupadas obras nas quais desponta a imposição de verdades pela força fisica ou verbal. A luta pelo poder, a expulsão de elementos estranhos, dúvidas sobre a identidade e a inter-penetrablidade arte-vida caracterizam o capítulo seguinte. A ênfase temática do sexto capítulo recai sobre as limitações impostas pela condição humana. Praticamente todas as obras expressam a impossibilidade da existência de certezas absolutas e de uma perfeita distinção dos limites da realidade. Com isso, é possível afirmar não ser o objetivo da arte reproduzir a realidade. Mesmo que o fosse, tal tentativa resultaria infrutífera devido às limitações humanas.

Dança: forma, técnica e poesia do movimento : na perspectiva de construção de sentidos coreográficos

A presente dissertação se construiu sobre o pressuposto de que forma, técnica e poesia são premissas que embasam uma determinada visão de dança enquanto manifestação artística do corpo humano em movimento. Norteia também este estudo a perspectiva de que as relações que se estabelecem no momento de execução de uma dança instauram processos de significação. Desse modo, este trabalho teve como principais objetivos: - entender a dança enquanto uma atividade artística que se constrói no(s) corpo(s) em movimento; - refletir sobre a elaboração de possíveis significados quando da criação e execução de uma dança; - descrever a dança como uma ação criadora que se faz no corpo humano em movimento. Para atingir os objetivos propostos utilizou-se a fenomenologia como método de investigação, optando-se, assim, por realizar uma descrição da dança que já é, ao mesmo tempo, uma maneira de compreendê-la. Como conseqüência deste procedimento buscou-se demontrar que: - a dança dever ser entendida enquanto arte porque ela resulta de um processo de transformação de uma matéria-prima - o movimento humano - através do uso de procedimentos técnicos e formativos, que resultam em obras coreográficas que se dão a reconhecer através de seu intrínseco caráter de forma; - o movimento é o que toma visível os possíveis sentidos/significados de uma dança: a realização de sentidos coreográficos se dá no contexto de uma coreografia e só se efetua plenamente quando os sentidos são retomados e revividos pelos espectadores; - os processos de criação coreográfica baseados em ações formativas proporcionam o desenvolvimento de uma disponibilidade corporal para a dança. Tal disponibilidade corporal está alicerçada, principalmente, numa inteligência e numa memória corporais, que dispõem o dançarino a exercer suas potencialidades criadoras através da dança. A concepção da dança como forma, técnica e poesia do movimento aponta para uma possibilidade de recuperação, através da dança, de saberes relativos ao corpo, ao movimento e à sensibilidade.

A arte do fazer: o artista Ruy Meira e as artes plásticas no Pará dos anos 1940 a 1980

Este trabalho busca estudar o panorama das artes plásticas no Estado do Pará entre as décadas de 1940 e 1980 a partir da figura de Ruy Meira (1921-1995), pintor e ceramista paraense. Meira, membro de uma destacada família de homens públicos e intelectuais nortistas, desempenhou papel central no amadurecimento das artes no Pará, seja por ter sido fundamental para o estabelecimento de importantes redes de sociabilidade artístico-intelectuais, seja por ter, em sua trajetória artística, sintetizado a história da absorção das principais vertentes da arte moderna no Pará. Para estudar a personalidade artístico-social de Meira, buscamos apoio no arquivo pessoal do artista, que contém importante material, em boa parte inédito, constituído de correspondência ativa e passiva, fotografias e catálogos de exposição.