Today we finally met properly with the other artists at Bundanon. There are the five in our group, and in addition to that there are two German writers, a Swiss visual artist/jeweller, an Indigenous photographer and an English visual artist.
The Swiss artist is coming to the end of her four week residency and she put on an impromptu exhibition so that we could see what she had been working on over that time. She had fallen in love with the Australian bush and many of her works brought together the bush and aspects of colonialism/settlement.
One of the works she had created she had earlier set up in the Singleman’s Hut. This hut is a simple, one room hut made out of rough hewn planks. She had placed doilies on the walls and on the table had placed beautiful Australian nuts/seed pods which she had crocheted into flowers. The table was set up to include the crotched objects, a long, steel crochet needle and a pair of small, surgical looking scissors.
I discussed the work with the artist in the morning and commented on the scissors and how the surgical nature of the scissors had reminded me of the precision and skill with which women create their handicrafts. She explained to me that the scissors were the only ones she had and she wasn’t sure about the surgical connotations this had invoked in the work. That evening, when we discussed the work again, she admitted that after our discussion she was reconsidering whether or not the scissors should be excluded from the artwork. Afterwards, she photographed it with and then without the scissors and she told me that night that she would later consider the photos in detail before deciding which she wished to use. The conversation we had was a fun sharing of ideas and of interpretations.
All of the artists in residence attended the ‘exhibition’. I had a chance to meet the writers, who I had not yet spoken to, and to have longer conversations with the other artists. What initially was intended to be just an ‘exhibition’ extended to dinner and over five hours of conversation and sharing of ideas.
I was particularly excited to have the opportunity to discuss screenplays and radioplays with one of the German writers, as I am writing my first radioplay. He had written a number of radioplays and gave me some good tips. I wish, however, that I could speak German as it seems that there is still a strong radioplay culture there (though he did admit that younger people are less interested in the form). There are 15 or 17 publicly funded broadcasters and it is these, rather than the commercial stations, that are producing radioplays. The radioplays are produced with detailed sound effects, sound, music, movement, etc. This differs from the ‘book reading’ approach more common over here where the play is read through and a small amount of music added in a few places. The way it was described to me was that it was like making a film without having the screen (the pictures).
I really enjoyed the chance to share ideas and to find out about how people created their art and how they balanced that with finding a way to make money (which was only occasionally achieved through their favoured artform).
The day was also an excellent one because the previous night our group had decided on the nature of our group project. We agreed to work on a song cycle with images (ie photos that would be projected while the work was sung). It will be for one singer and probably computer backing. We looked at a thematic link of “the last moments of death”.
Rhi, Dan and Julian had watched Memento and discussed ideas of form and structure (Memento, of course, being a film where the story moves backwards in time and thus being an example of an unusual structure). During their discussions they were drawn to the idea of working with 25 songs, being grouped into 5 large groups (ie 5 x 5 = 25).
Rhi, Ben and I spent the morning working on lyrics for the song cycle and then I spent the afternoon composing some songs based on those lyrics. Rhi is also keen to start composing. Julian spent his time coming up with ideas on the piano and blogging. Dan spent most of the day in the studio and also discussing ideas. Our studio is now covered with items from Bundanon: bark, seed pods, dried leaves and strange spindly objects. The southern wall is covered with ideas for the song cycle and some of the lyrics which Ben wrote in the morning. I really like the idea for the song cycle and I’m looking forward to hearing people’s works and seeing different interpretations on the same subject.
Serena.
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