29.04.2013
Activists, advocates and journalists were not permitted to visit with refugees over the three day National Refugee Rights Convergence at Yongah Hill Detention Centre 90km from Perth.
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A contingent of 18 people – dancers, journalists, technicians and curators, made the journey to the centre, interviewing refugees, advocates, activists, and mental health professionals working inside detention.
Visual dispatches from the major protest yesterday, Saturday 27 April. We saw massive over-policing. The refugees were denied visits due to ‘operational reasons’, and the convergence was denied access even to the carpark. However, we heard chanting from inside the detention centre despite the distance and via a phone call to an organiser we heard messages of thanks from the refugees of Yongah Hill.
- a group dance action facilitated by Hydra Poesis. The project features dancers and journalists based in Perth, Western Australia, supported by an international media network drawn for the dance and art world.
Dance Journalism responds to ongoing developments in citizen media, the broadening definitions of journalism*, and the growing tactics and vocabulary of social and political movements.
Hydra’s short film Liberty In The Dark just took out Best Experimental at the Big Mini Media Festival in Brooklyn NY. It’s very nice to get a little encouragement and the title Best Experimental looks pretty good in laurels. Congrats to the team! Once we’ve let the film do some more festivals we will release it onto the internet for your pleasure.
The Theatre Board folks at the Australia Council for the Arts have supported our desire to research and begin work on an ‘interdisciplinary libretto’ for Wikileaks the Ballet. We will be working with artists living in regions particular to Wikileaks cables. More info on collaborators to follow. But needless to say the team will be aiming to defy all expectations that the title elicits and bring a militant inquiry (action orientated, personal, political, multifaceted local-global) to the phenomenon.
This interview with Hadi was conducted at the camp of the National Refugee Rights Convergence. The choreography and dance accompanying is by Isabella Stone.
If Wikileaks helped revitalise narratives by revealing behind-the-scenes dialogues of power, has it – as a phenomena and an organisation, now (or over the course of the last two years) slipped back into the known, dominant narrative structure as the drama of its principle and figurehead eclipses the stories WL exists to distribute?
Journalist and war correspondent Marie Colvin died this February in Syria, refusing to leave the rebel city of Homs in the face of a major offensive by Bashar Assad’s forces. Here we light a metaphorical candle to Marie, acknowledging that much art and politics is dependent on people like her.
It has been suggested by a French colleague who left Homs days before Marie’s death, that the attack on the media centre was expected and deliberate.* Considering Marie had lost an eye many years before in Sri Lanka where she believed she was explicitly targeted as a journalist, this couldn’t have seemed unlikely to her.
Martin is an Australian dancer/artist/choreographer based in Berlin. In 2010 Martin worked intensively with Hydra to create Personal Political Physical Challenge with choreographic collaborators Rachel Arianne Ogle and Sam Fox. It was bitter that he couldn’t bring the work back to his home town of Melbourne with us this year because he was performing in Tino Sehgal’s performance that takes place almost entirely in darkness… (video) at Documenta XIII. And though we have been working since to get him back to us since 2010, it hasn’t yet worked out, but it will happen!
More work on IMAGO STATE these last two weeks ‘tween Paul Selwyn Norton and Sam Fox. The duo have been trying to capture the fear inducing character of gross change in movement for starters and other media to follow. Though some writing was done and it was pretty good.
video stills featuring sam fox.
For our last weekend in Melbourne with Personal Political Physical Challenge we are going to have an open conversation facilitated by Malthouse Theatre’s resident dramaturge Van Badham with Sam Fox (Hydra director), members of the cast, and anyone who wants to join, ask difficult questions or listen in.
We will talk about some of the motivations and characteristics of PPPC, particularly looking at hybrid work, the need for difference in our cultural context and the importance of breaking down or carefully mistreating form in contemporary performance.
The epic journey of creating a large-scale performance work with 5 onstage performers and 5 online synched through pretty elaborate technical infrastructure, and exploring some very big thematics that converge in the shitstorm of mediation is nearing its final chapter. Here is an image featuring Brendan Ewing, Jule Japhet Chiari, Deborah Robertson, Sete Tele, Marcela Fuentes, Dickie Beau, Michelle Robin Anderson, Murray Dowsett and Allison Wyper.
With the dark spaces haunted by our wonderful technical, design and writing team who we will feature in their own special post soon… backstage photo collage of those who are rarely seen!
