South 1, The Gathering: Melbourne (2004)

Image Credit: © Christian Capurro 2004

Keynote 9:30am

Mbulelo Mzamane (South Africa)

writer and essayist

Dr Mbulelo Mzamane has at times been categorized as an author and activist. These titles understate the achievements of a man who former South African President, Nelson Mandela, described as a ‘visionary leader, [and] one of South Africa's greatest intellectuals.'

Dr Mzamane obtained an MA in English from the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Sheffield (England). He held a number of academic appointments (including UBLS, Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, Yale University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Vermont) and returned to his country of birth in 1993, after 30 years in exile, to become the first post-Apartheid Vice Chancellor at the University of Fort Hare. Dr Mzamane's appointment as Vice Chancellor was an apt homecoming, returning him to an institution which since World War One had provided a breeding ground for young political radicals who were to become the future leaders of post-colonial Africa.

Dr Mzamane's scholarly work has focussed on issues confronting the populations of Africa in the post-colonial era. His publications include Images of the Voiceless: Essays on Popular Culture and the Media, 1984; Multicultural Education in Colleges and Universities: A Transdisciplinary Approach , 1998; and The Mbeki Turn: South Africa after Mandela, 2004. Dr Mzamane is also widely known as a writer of fiction and poetry. Much of his fiction work was written whilst in exile and subsequently banned in apartheid South Africa. Of note are the collections of short stories; Mzala: The Short Stories of Mbulelo Mzamane, 1980, My Cousin Comes to Jo'burg and other Short Stories, 1981; The Children of Soweto: A Trilogy , 1982 and Children of the Diaspora and Other Stories of Exile, 1996.

Dr Mzamane has chaired and served on numerous boards, including: the African Arts Fund (affiliated to the U.N. Centre against Apartheid), the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (affiliated to the University of the Witwatersrand ), the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and the Heraldry Council of South Africa.

Since leaving the University of Fort Hare, Dr Mzamane has taken up fellowships at the Australian National University’s Humanities Research Centre and the University of South Australia’s Hawke Institute and the Aboriginal Research Institute. He has also held visiting appointments at the University of California in San Diego, Saint Michael‘s College in Vermont, Brandeis University, and the University of Venda for Science and Technology. He has been a vocal contributor to international debate on issues confronting African populations on the continent and in the Diaspora of the Americas.
Of Minks and Men (full paper)

Fri 10 am   THE STRUGGLE TO GET HERE

Megan Evans (Australia)

artist, activist and project officer for ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation)

Megan Evans is an artist, writer and curator of Welsh/Scotish/Irish descent, whose work involves installation, video, and public art, originating in the practice of painting. Her work has often involved a struggle, from building a 150ft free standing wall to paint a political mural on, to the technical difficulties of anamorphic projection on 10 wheat silos. Megan’s participation in the struggle for rights, recognition and respect for Indigenous peoples began in 1984 with the Northcote Koori Mural, a large political mural in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, and continued through her marriage to Aboriginal artist and activist the late Les Griggs. She was privileged to be included through a large family network into that community and much of her artwork over the past 20 years has continued to attempt to bridge the gap in understanding that exists between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. Megan completed a Masters in Fine Art at the VCA in 1992 and has just completed her PHD at Victoria University.

Megan now works for Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation, a non-Aboriginal organisation dedicated to working with Indigenous peoples to build a base of understanding and respect for Indigenous people, their history and their culture. She is working collaboratively with Indigenous artists and writers, developing projects aimed at creating a vision of Australia post reconciliation.

Gordon Hookey (Australia)

artist of the Waanyi people, Queensland whose works were recently collected by the National Gallery of Victoria and exhibited at the Biennale of Sydney 2004.

Australian indigenous artist Gordon Hookey’s artistic reputation extends far beyond the traditional confines of the art gallery walls. In recent years, Hookey has enjoyed the often disparaging attention of the Australian media largely due to the politically confrontational nature of his art work. Hookey states that his ‘art making is located at the interface where Aboriginal and non Aboriginal cultures converge’.  Whether opinion originates from the main stream media, the art gallery or the political arena, Gordon Hookey’s work challenges the status quo of Australian opinion on contemporary art.

Gordon Hookey, of the Waanyi people, was born in Cloncurry, north- west Queensland. His formal art training began at the University of New South Wales where he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts in 1994. Since his graduation, Hookey has exhibited extensively both in Australia and abroad, including Places that Name Us RAKA Award: contemporary Indigenous visual arts #3, the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne (2003); Cont-sent-trick-sir-kills, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne (2003); Uncommon world, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2001); and Beyond the Pale; contemporary indigenous art; 2000 Adelaide biennial of Australian art, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2000). His work is represented in the collections of the National Art Gallery and the Queensland Art Gallery.

Paranoia/Anoia & Extinct/Instinct/Stink

Gordon Hookey’s contribution to the South 1 Gathering will continue the theme of conflict which is central to his practice. He will be contribute a paper on the legacy of conflict which has come to characterise the south in the session, ‘The struggle to the get here’.

He will focus on two of his recent works. Firstly, Paranoia/Anoia exhibit at the Sydney Biennale 2004.  “This work talks about the shift from Australia being a sacred land to its traditional owners to now being a transplant of USA and UK within Asia”.  The second painting is Extinct/Instinct/Stink, which part of the National Gallery of Victoria collection, currently on display.  This work, also titled Sacred Nation/Scared Nation/Indoctrination, again refers to the shift from being a sacred nation to now being turned into a scared nation because of Indoctrination.

Marcelo Brodsky (Argentina)

photographer and human rights activist

Marcelo Brodsky is an artist and human rights activist now based in Buenos Aires after many years in exile in Barcelona. The political situation in Argentina has long defined his art practice which focuses on the integration of photography, and multimedia with text.  Political concerns are explored by using personal memories and experiences which have been preserved on film, such is the case with Brodsky’s recent project Buena Memoria, which has been the focus of solo exhibitions throughout Europe, North America and South America. The work is based on a 1967 graduation photograph from his high school.  From there Brodsky traces the lives of those depicted, revealing the reality of State violence through the number of faces officially missing since the days of the regime, included in that number is his own brother, Fernando Ruben Brodsky.

Marcelo Brodsky’s work is represented in collections both in Argentina and overseas. He is a member of the Commission for the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism, Buenos Aires, and on the Board of Directors of Buena Memoria, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to work for human rights in Argentina. Marcelo Brodsky also lectures and contributes regularly to publications around the world.

Talk

I come from the South of America to a meeting of the South of the world, which Joaquin Torres Garcia, Uruguayan painter, has put on the superior part of the globe in his emblematic drawing. Our South is defined as opposed to the North, supposedly rich and certainly full of power. But there is an overlapping of cardinal points, because our South-North contradiction coexists with another one, between East and West. When my friend Shahidul Alam from Dacca, in Bangladesh, shouts against the "West", I feel confused. Since in fact we are part of the western culture, the west northerners colonized us a few centuries ago, and the local southern cultures were exterminated or assimilated.

Yet, whilst I can not say that we are from the East, my grandparents fled Eastern Europe less than a century ago to settle in the remote southern border of the West: South America, then a land full of promises. A line that crosses over a town in Britain, of course, arbitrarily divides East and West. Following that division, North and South America are part of the West. Which does not make us responsible for the Western actions Alam shouts against in Bangla Desh!.

The Equator divides North and South geographically. Latin America would therefore be split between North and South. Mexico is in North America and it belongs to the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association). In spite of that arbitrary line, we could consider all of Latin America, including Mexico, as part of the South, just for being South of the border with the “big brother”.

The fact that Power is concentrated in the North, does not mean that we do not have any. In fact, the South American Republics are trying to get together around common political and economical projects to dispute some power to the North and to defend their own interests. What is more important, though, is not only that we are getting together, but that we are doing so through strategic alliances voted by democratically elected governments.

Democracy now reigns in Latin America but it has not always been like this. In the seventies and early eighties in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and into the nineties in Chile, we suffered authoritarian regimes and dictatorships that exterminated thousands of civilians through State Terrorism, described in August 1984 by Maria Cristina Caiati and Daniel Frontalini of the Cels as “ the criminal exercise of the supreme power of the state, without being submitted to any control, by means of an organized system and encouraged from its structures to achieve its ends, is what has been called State Terrorism. This kind of terrorism is by no means comparable to the terrorism exercised by people or groups. The reason for the difference is quite simple: if my rights, liberty or prosperity are violated by another individual or group, I can always appeal to the authorities that my state provides for my defense. On the contrary, if the aggression stems from the authorities themselves, I am utterly defenseless, or there is no appeal to a high power within the same state to protect me. This is why the degree of criminality this terrorism implies is far greater that the terrorism any other group could exercise”.

The Disappearances were a systematic plan created by the military juntas to generate terror in the society in order to avoid all resistance. Torture, death squads, concentration camps, executions were held by the military to control the populations and impose their economic agenda. Many of us left to Exile, some here, to Australia and many more to Europe or Mexico, while others remained in a sort of “internal exile”. There was fear to talk, fear to create, fear to interact and while fear comes quickly into the minds and the bodies, it takes long time to leave them. It took us many years to deal openly with the consequences of state terrorism in contemporary art. With a few exceptions, the issue was not in debate in Argentinean art of the eighties and nineties. 

My work is an attempt to deal with the disappearances and the holes they left in our societies, and to transmit their essence to the new generations of Latin Americans. It is also an impossible portrait: the portrait of a missing person.

I started my photo essay Buena Memoria with a series of portraits of my schoolmates of our high school, the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, a very politicized and active educational center with a long humanistic tradition. When the 20 years of the coup were remembered, many educational centers and working spaces organized small memorials to recall the people that had disappeared in them. One of them was my school. The essay evolved to analyze what had happened in my class after the disappearance of Claudio and Martin, two of my classmates, and the effect such disappearance had in our class, and by extension, in other classes and in our generation. Later on, these pictures were shown to the current students of the school as part of the memorial event. The dialogue portrayed in pictures with the new generation of students is an essential part of the work, as it represents the instants of transmission of experience from one generation to another.

Later on, I extended the essay with a series of images and videos about my missing brother Fernando, who was murdered in the School of Mechanics of the Navy, the major concentration camp of the Argentinean dictatorship. It is based in family pictures and super 8 films, which constitute an attempt of a portrait. The image of the brown waters of the Rio de La Plata, where many disappeared were thrown is the conclusion of the essay. This work had an extraordinary reception in Argentina, and it started a long itinerancy with over 75 exhibitions in Museums and cultural spaces all over the world.

Nexo is another piece of work that was shown in Argentina for the first time in November 2001, short before the popular insurrection of December 19th and 20th. It deals with other consequences of the dictatorship, like exile, the evanescence of memory, the files containing information, the burial of our own books.  This body of work continues to grow, while I am also working on other more personal projects.

From this point on, I would speak while I project the slides, saying some comments about them. If there were time, I would also show a couple of videos.

Ema Tuki Ika (Easter Island/Chile)

advocate for rejuvenation and preservation of Rapa Nui culture, Director of Easter Island Office of CONADI (National Cooperation of Indigenous Development) a government funded initative

What is Identity?

I read somewhere that Identity not only is a type of ‘immutable’ heritage received. And with that, I am in complete agreement. And here I find myself transmitting or attempting to transmit exactly that which I have inherited. I feel deeply proud of this and of belonging to one of the minute, yet very important culture fro humanity: the culture of the Rapa Nui.  Through her, I will present three stages of our history that have profoundly marked me.

First stage, being born a Rapa Nui and from Rapa Nui parents. This commits me to my history, my descendants, it marks me for life through my ancestry. How did we survive such a tainted history?  From the survival of the clans that inhabited this land since the arrival of ‘Hiva’, from the arrival of the Europeans in the XVIII Century with its merciless and relentless colonization, the beginning of ‘aculturalisation’ and illness and in later years, being transport as Peruvian slaves in the mines in the North of Chile, which reduced our population to a minimum. 

In 1888, once again we are tainted by the annex to Chile. We are confronted by Williamson and Balford, which take our land, enclosing us in Hanga Roa, where we completely loose the demarcation of the clans and why? Because for the English it was more important to care for some sheep, than our people. Soon followed the Chilean Armada, and again we were punished and isolated. We were accused of being carriers of leprosy and needed salvation by ‘evangelization’, by those who speak in the Name of God.  I am certain all God told them was to free us from slavery and illness, but to take away our land and our traditions. It is with this challenge that I move on to the second stage.

The second stage is of being a woman and a Rapa Nui woman, which commits to her land and to her culture. That is which places me in this world, positions me and marks me.  It challenges my life and the life of today: globalisation, this globalisation without identity.  Of this, I only wish to learn, with the conviction of understanding knowledge. The knowledge of being born into this land that saw me grow and in which I will die. Because it is to her that the most profound feeling links me to the third and final stage: motherhood.

To be a mother, the most privileged position of life. From and with which I can care and protect, teach, guide, understand and also forgive. To make that knowledge of life, is to sustain you and the inheritance you leave for your children and the whole world and the conviction of my Island, that is the most fragile place in the world. But it is the place I wish to be and I travel the world speaking of this place, its legacy and it distinctiveness. A culture that gave me my identity, the identity that I fight for, the one that I identify with, the culture of the Rapa Nui people.

Of this I come to speak.

Fri 12 pm   ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD

Ian Wedde (New Zealand)

Wellington-based novelist and poet

Ian Wedde was born in New Zealand. He is an independent writer, curator, and researcher, the author of poetry, novels, essays, anthologies, and exhibition catalogues. From 1994 to 2004 he was head of humanities and of art and visual culture at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. He is a Research Associate of Victoria University in Wellington, an Honorary Research Fellow at Auckland University, a member of the Advisory Boards of the Centre for Cultural Inquiry (CCI) at Auckland University and of the Creative Industries Media Arts Research Centre, WINTEC, Hamilton, and chairman of the board of the Moving Image Centre, Auckland. He lives in Wellington with his partner Donna Malane, a television writer and producer.

Domenico de Clario (Australia/Italy)

Performance artist and head of school of contemporary arts at edith cowan university, Perth

DipArt (PIT, Melbourne) MA PhD (VUT,Melbourne)

Head, School of Contemporary Arts, Edith Cowan University, Perth

Born in Trieste, Italy, in 1947 and migrated to Australia in 1956.

Studied Architecture at Melbourne University 1966-1967-1969, Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan in 1967-8, and Printmaking at Accademia di Urbino in 1968-9.

Variously taught Painting, Drawing, Sculpture, Performance and Installation at RMIT in Melbourne (previously PIT), from 1973 until 1996.

Published three volumes of poems and 4 CDs, and since 1966 has held more than 120 solo exhibitions and presented solo  and collaborative performances site-specifically and in museums and galleries world-wide.

Has been awarded numerous residencies and grants by the Australia Council and international institutions including the Australia Council Fellowship in 1996-98, Asialink, Silpakorn University, Bangkok,the Govett-Brewster Gallery in NZ, Projeto AXE in Salvador, Brazil,and Threadwaxing Space, New York. He is represented in major public and private national and international collections.

Talk

Where do i start?  Midland that’s where. Mark drops me off opposite the railway workshops where Biagio had walked to carrying a suitcase after exiting the trench last Sunday and then I just start walking. Trying to carry the suitcase unobtrusively  but everyone that passes by looks at me fixedly. Did they look at Biagio like that?   Hard to know isn’t it? I’m trying to walk as though I’m just going down the next street to deliver something or I’m going to stay with friends around the corner. No one  knows I’m walking to Kellerberrin and even if they knew  it would be impossible to explain why. Yet on second thoughts, I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve been doing that more and more lately - finding it easier to talk about Biagio and his journey and my compulsion to walk for him.

Brij Lal (Australia/Fiji)

Professor and Head of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, and author of books including 'Mr Tulsi's Store: A Fijian Journey'

Brij V. Lal is Professor and Head of the Division of Pacific and Asian History in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at The Australian National University. Fiji-born, he has taught History at the Universities of the South Pacific in Fiji, Hawaii at Manoa and Papua New Guinea and The Australian National University. He has published widely on Fijian and Pacific history and on the history of the Indian indentured diaspora. Among his many books is 'Chalo Jahaji: On a journey through indenture in Fiji (2000), 'Mr Tulsi's Store: A Fijian Journey (2001) and 'BitterSweet: The Indo-Fijian Experience (2004). He is currently an Editor of the 'Journal of Pacific History' and Founding Editor of the literary journal 'Conversations.' Professor Lal writes History to make a living, and 'faction' on the side for enjoyment.

Talk

This paper is a reflection on the making of the Indian indentured diaspora. It explores the origins of indentured migration and settlement and discusses the nature and meaning of that experience from the viewpoint of the people involved in the process themsselves. Was indenture slavery as the popular perception holds? In what ways did the people meet the demands made on them, the ways they resisted and adapted and re-constituted a culture from the fragments of a rememvered past? How did people, descendans of the labourers relate to the homeland of their forbears? The paper compares the experiences of indentured populations in different parts of the world to highlight the commonalities and specifities. It does so by focusing on the experience of the Indo-Fijians.

Elena Govor (Australia/Russia)

Russian-born writer and fellow at the Division of Pacific and Asian History, RSPAS; author of Australia in the Russian Mirror: Changing Perceptions, 1770-1919 and My Dark Brother: The Story of the Illins, a Russian-Aboriginal Family

PhD (ANU, 1996), postdoctoral fellow at the Division of Pacific and Asian History, RSPAS, The Australian National University.

I was born in Minsk (Byelorussia) and graduated from the Minsk Institute of Culture in 1978. Later I lived in Moscow specialising in bibliography of Russian writings on Australia (published in 1985) and Oceania, as well as in the history of the early Russian-Australian and Russian-Oceanic contacts. In 1990 I emigrated to Australia. I was awarded scholarship to write a PhD ‘Russian Perceptions of Australia, 1788-1919’ at the ANU. I have published books Russian Sailors and Travellers in Australia (Moscow, 1994, in co-authorship with A. Massov), Australia in the Russian Mirror: Changing Perceptions, 1770-1919 (MUP, 1997), My Dark Brother: The Story of the Illins, a Russian-Aboriginal Family (UNSW, 2000), and completed the book Russian Anzacs in Australian History. Since 2002 I have participated in a collaborative project ‘Tatau/Tattoo: Embodied Art and Cultural Exchange’ and work on a book about the visit of a Russian expedition at Nuku Hiva (Marquesas Islands) in 1804.

Talk

I will discuss a few aspects of Russian engagement with the South, and particularly Australia and the South Pacific, throughout two centuries, beginning from the first Russian visit to Nuku Hiva (Marquesas Islands) in 1804. These lands have always occupied an important spiritual space in the Russian heart and mind. Fascination of early contacts with the South was followed by an attempt of the Russian knight-anthropologist Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay to create a Utopian colony in New Guinea which would protect islanders from the invasion of Western colonialism in the 1880s. These plans provoked a wide response among different strata of the Russian society. The echo of these sentiments still sounds in the Northern Queensland where now live two hundred Aborigines - descendants of the Russian writer Nicholas Illin. His son Leandro married Ngadjon-ji woman putting into practice the Russian idealist attitudes to the ‘dark brother’. Then came the Soviet era when we dreamt to defend the oppressed Indians and Aborigines… But have these attitudes been Russian specific or it was just an attempt to escape their own problems?

Marie Strauss (New Zealand/South Africa)

South African-born ceramicist and painter currenty living in Dunedin

Born in Vereniging, South Africa, in 1955.Studied Drama and Theatre at Pretoria University 1973-76. Painting at UNISA  1979-82, Painting at the University of the  Witwatersrand  1984-1986 and Ceramics at the Otago Polytecnic School of Arts, Dunedin in 1995. I have taught Painting, Drawing , Design and currently Ceramics at various Universities and polytecnics in South Africa and New Zealand. Since 1986 I have had 32 solo exhibitions as well as participated in selected group shows,  nationally and internationally.Currently I am working towards a painting exhibition, "Subscription to Longing" and on collabarative work, "Dwell" and "Collectors Edition" incorporating ceramics with photography.

Talk

I will be speaking briefly about migrating from the South, further South.

My presentation will cover the loss of identity, reconstituting my identity through work, first in isolation, and more recently with other artists.

The issue of being Afrikaans speaking where it is not spoken.

Fri 2 pm      RESURFACING

John Harding (Australia/Torres Strait)

Torres Straits-born performance artist

Dominique Jhumun (Mauritius)

Melbourne-based textile artist

Since I was a little girl I was always attracted to fibres.  After college, I did a course in pattern making and sewing, then a Diploma in Education and Visual Arts.  During the seven years that I was involved in teaching, I was not so focused on my artistic practice but more so I was caught up in the amazement of inculcating knowledge, bringing to surface creativity and spontaneous expression from my students.

I came to Australia for a purpose: to obtain my degree with a priority to major in Tapestry.  I gave myself the opportunities to nurture a passion that of communicating with a language of symbols which I am particularly sensitive to.

My textile works are inspired from my personal experience with, in relation to my environment.  The tapestries are small and intricate where I maintain a sense of spontaneity as I weave.  The small scale demands an intimacy on the part of the viewer.

I prefer to use silk/cotton threads when I weave, because they are smooth.  It is to me a tremendous satisfaction to allow the mediums to speak for themselves.

Talk

Mauritius is nestled up alongside eastern Africa.  It is actually more influenced by its British and French ties and massive Indian work force than by the African mainland.  An island of 725 sq miles with a population of 1..2 million, seven languages are spoken there, and English ,French and Creole are known by everyone. 

The role of the Alliance Francaise in Mauritius is to promote the culture through exhibitions, talks, classes, competitions, and many other activities. The Alliance also initiated Mauritius participation to the Seychelles Biennale.

I will talk about my won practice as an artist from Mauritius and also reference the work of Nathalie Pêrichon and her participation at the Seychelles Biennale.

Jim Everett (Plangermairreener)

playwright and cultural teacher based in Cape Barren island, of the Clan Plangermairreenner of the Ben Lomond people, Cape Portland nation, north-east Tasmania

Pura-lia Meenamatta (Jim Everett) was born at Flinders Island, Tasmania in 1942.  He is from the Clan Plangermairreenner of the Ben Lomond people, a Clan of the Cape Portland nation in North-east Tasmania.  Jim left primary school at 14 years to start work.  His forty-eight years of working life includes 13 years at sea and 30 years formal involvement in the Aboriginal Struggle.  Jim has a long history in the public service Aboriginal Affairs, and has traveled Australia visiting many remote Aboriginal communities.  Jim began writing poetry at an early age.  He wrote his first play, We Are Survivors, in 1984 after seeing Jack Davis’ play “The Dreamers”.  His written works now include plays, political papers and short stories, and he has been published in 8 major anthologies.  Jim’s other work includes television documentary, educational video and theatre production.  Jim lives on Cape Barren Island writing, and operating his consultancy business.

Talk

The Australian referendum in 1967 gave the Commonwealth Government powers to legislate for Aborigines, and to count Aborigines in the Census.  This outcome has been considered an acknowledgement of Australian Aborigines as citizens, but never formally or officially acknowledged as such.  In 1987 Michael Mansell went to Libya, causing an uproar in the Hawke Labour Government.  In 1988 Mansell headed a group of 9 Aborigines and 2 Maoris going to Libya to seek recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and nationhood.  The Libyans formally acknowledged the Aboriginal group by stamping their Aboriginal Passports.  This caused the Australian Government to change its propaganda language from referring to Australian Aborigines to being Aboriginal Australians, thus conferring citizenship to counter political activities by Aborigines seeking a treaty.  During the period from 1990 to 2004, the Hawke Government’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) failed to take the opportunity to align itself with the Australian Aboriginal community, and progress its activities towards the treaty objective.  What are we to do now?

Jose Tote Tepano (Easter Island/Chile)

Indigenous Rapa Nui artist and musician

Indigenous Rapa Nui artist and musician.  He has collaborated in the on-island fieldwork of researchers in the fields of music, ecology, archaeology and veterinary science, and has dedicated his efforts and expertise to various environmental and social concerns affecting Rapa Nui and the Rapa Nui community. He has dedicated himself to the preservation of Rapanui language and music over the course of the last twenty years by making and preserving audio and video recordings.  Recently, he has undertaken to contribute this collection to the creation of a permanent audio archive on Rapa Nui with the assistance of Macquarie University, PARADISEC, the William Mulloy library and the Padre Sebastian Englert museum.

Talk

This paper illustrates the value of audio recordings as a cultural resource whilst retracing Tote Tepano’s experiences in his attempts to record Rapa Nui music over the course of the past two decades.  Mr. Tepano’s discussion highlights the motivations, successes and difficulties that he has experienced as an indigenous, independent and voluntary collector of Rapa Nui music, revealing many of the attitudes and opinions towards the preservation of music that prevail in the indigenous Rapa Nui community. 

This paper ends with a discussion of the cultural role that the Rapa Nui music archive seeks to fulfil, as well as indicating the variegated contributions of institutions and individuals to the archiving process.  It is hoped that the collaborations between Mr. Tepano, Macquarie University, PARADISEC, Museo Padre Sebastian Englert, and the wider Rapa Nui community serve as an example of how marginalised cultures and communities can be actively supported and reinforced by both local and foreign institutions and individuals

Daniell Bendrups (Australia)

Ethnomusicologist and PhD candidate in the Department of Contemporary Music Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Ethnomusicologist and PhD candidate in the Department of Contemporary Music Studies at Macquarie University, Sydney. 

His past music research has focussed on performances by Latin American migrants in Australia, and his PhD research concerns change and continuity in the Rapa Nui music culture.  Daniell Bendrups has contributed to the creation of a Rapa Nui music archive through the provision of field recordings and by securing the collaboration of archivists in Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Chile, as well as seeking support from musicians and cultural authorities on Rapa Nui.  He is currently coordinating and supervising a cultural exchange whereby Mr. Jose Tepano is receiving advanced training in audio production for archive purposes at Macquarie University.

Patrice Kaikilekofe (New Caledonia)

multi-discipline artist (musician, visual & performance) from New Caledonia of polynesian descent from the islands of Uvea & Futuna

Runs art projects (exhibitions, concerts, performances) throughout the island mainly with local indigenous & pacific youths. Leads the Siapo association that gathers supports for Kanak and oceanic artists in their work and approaches in contemporary artistic expression. Based in Dumbea, a little township just outside of Noumea, at the Maison du temps libre. Assisted by contemporary Samoan jeweller Ela To'omaga.

Fri 4 pm      RESISTANCE BY THE BOOK

Barry Hill (Australia)

poet and historian, whose books include Broken Song

Taiarahia Black (Maori-New Zealander)

Professor of Maori language, culture and traditions, Mäori Studies Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand

Resistance by the Book

Present Position

Professor School of Mäori Studies, Massey University, Palmerston North.

Qualifications

B Soc Sci, M.Phil, Dip SLT, Ph.D

Ph.D Title:  Te Hua o te Wänanga -A source of Knowledge

(thesis: a critical Mäori theory approach to identifying traditional waiata (songs) as a source of knowledge to validate tribal scholarship)

Work in Progress \Research\Teaching\Professional Speciality

•Developing Mäori research methodologies that recognise the tribe as being the primary proprietors of their language, history and traditions.

•Developing language teaching methods using audio, visual and written resources to provide excellence in Mäori language.

•Innovative methods to sustain and transmit traditional tribal songs.

•Advance tribal land development and environmental policy development.

•Analysis of traditional tribal waiata with regards, land claim issues.

•Create anthology of Mäori Poetry;. compiled 200 poroporoaki (farewell literature) with annotation

•Creating audio-visual and written records that will capture the idiomatic expressions created by storytellers in the Mäori language.

Talk

'Kei tua ko te papa e arohatia nei'  ' Where it shadows from my view the land that I love'

This presentation is concerned with the transmission, revitalisation, and progressing an anthology of three traditional songs belonging to the Tühoe tribe of the Urewera Country located on the Eastern part of the North Island in Aotearoa New Zealand.  This presentation maintains that waiata is a form of living narratives for on going learning, conserving through time precious knowledge of the past.  The presentation recognises these timeless values which brings together the traditions of wänanga (knowledge) and academic scholarship.  The pursuit of knowledge of the past is central to this presentation as is the commitment to protect, preserve and transmit knowledge across generations.

Genevieve Grieves (Australia)

Coordinator, Oral History Unit, Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

Genevieve is a descendant of the Worimi Nation, an Indigenous clan of the mid north coast of New South Wales. She has worked since 2000 at the Koorie Heritage Trust Inc., a non-profit Indigenous organisation with a commitment to protect, preserve and promote Victorian Koorie culture. The Oral History Unit at the Trust, of which Genevieve is the Coordinator, records Indigenous oral histories; works to reconnect members of the Stolen Generations with family, culture and identity; facilitates greater access to cultural heritage for Koorie people in custody; and, creates digital projects to increase access to Koorie culture by Koorie people and to share Koorie history with Australian and international communities.  Creatively, Genevieve works in video and sound, having gained a Bachelor of Arts in Communication, University of Technology, Sydney.

Talk

This paper is concerned with missions and reserves in southeastern Australia, spaces created not long after the colonisation of the state of Victoria to ‘contain’, ‘christianise’ and ‘civilize’ Indigenous people.  This process occurred over much of Australia and has had a massive impact on Indigenous people in this country that continues today.  Many Indigenous people regard missions and reserves as “concentration camps” but they also became home for many communities.  This paper will explore these contradictions through a website project completed by the Koorie Heritage Trust, Mission Voices, that includes the oral histories of Koorie Elders.

Michael Mbata (South Africa)

Zulu artist from Mkhambethini in KwaZulu-Natal and follower of the Shembe faith, awarded the Maker in Residence 2004 at ArtPlay, Melbourne (The South Project)

Presentation of Shembe Religion

Shembe came to Natal on a train from Harrismith (Kan Nontandabethakathi). He walked onto the mountain at Nhlangakezi (outside Durban) where God promised him that he will meet him. Shembe spent two weeks without food or water. Then he heard a murmuring sound from the trees and from the air, and saw a man coming from the east side of the mountain, with a crossing of lightning ahead of him. He was wearing white long cloth and carrying a tray. When he reached Shembe, he opened a tray and gave him something to eat. The trees and air applauded Shembe, and God demonstrated how to make an ark of covenant and religious ceremonies.

Simone Reis (Australia/Brazil)

performance artist with special interest in translation of Candomblé into Western Theatre and Literature

Simone Reis was born in Brazil in 1967 in a small city in the state of Minas Gerais called Uberaba, an indigenous name that means crystalline water. She studied ballet and modern dance during her childhood and attended services and family spiritual meetings in a kind of religion that believes in communication with spirits, possession and reincarnation. The body and spirituality have long been a point of encounter and exploration in her creative path. In 1984 she went to Brasilia to undertake studies in anthropology at the University of Brasilia. Soon however, her creative impulses impelled her to transfer to the Arts Institute where she graduated in visual arts at the University of Brasilia.

While today her focus is on solo performance she has directed and devised many improvisatory works in collaboration with other actors, directors, dancers, musicians and visual artists. She has received numerous grants from the Brazilian Government to realise projects including collaborations with visual artists such as Sonia Paiva and Nelson Maravalhas and with the English director Leo Syks with whom she created Hamuleto, a Candomble version of Hamlet's Shakespeare in 2002. She has worked with the butoh performer Maura Baiocchi, the performance artists Jose Eduardo Garcia de Morais and Felicia Johanson and the dancer Eliana Carneiro in Brasilia where together they created the "National Company of Atypical Dances". In Sao Paulo Simone she collaborated with the tropicalist/antropofagico artist Jose Celso Martinez Correa, the Uzina Uzona director who blends theatre with Candomble and Umbanda, both ritualistic Afro-Brazilian religions where there is no division between body and spirit.

Reis has worked as a lecturer at the University of Brasilia since 1996 where she teaches acting, directing and movement. She received a Masters Degree at the University of Bahia in Salvador in 2002 where she investigated Orixas (characters from Candomble) and other emblematic figures of western theatre such as Shakespeare’s Ophelia, Hamlet and Gertrude. In 2003 she was awarded a 4-year PhD scholarship from the Brazilian Ministry of Education and was granted study-leave from the University of Brasilia to come to Australia. In Melbourne at Dance House in 2003, she participated in the Beyond Butoh festival curated by Tony Yap and Yumi. Her academic work at VUT involves practice-based research in performance. This work is centred on the love stories of Candomble and the mysterious texts of Ukrainian-Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector

Talk

Candomble is an Afro-Brazilian religion that embodies a whole way of life. It is the reinvention of the various views of the world and the ethos from many different African ethic groups that were brought to Brazil in the XVI Century. This religious expression does not accept the duality of the body and the soul, and relates the body of the person directly to a deity. Candomble connects the practitioner's awareness to the world via the energy of their deities called Orixas - Gods and Goddesses that govern the natural environment. Everything in nature is sacred. The relationship between the Gods and people is co-dependent. The people need the Gods and Goddesses to guide, protect and give energy and the Orixas need people to remember, worship and bring their energies to life on the worldly plane. The word Candomble means adoration or prayer in Banto (an African language).

In my work as a performer I have been mainly inspired by stories of three Goddesses - Oxum, Yansa and Eua. Oxum is the Goddess of Love, fertility, gold and sweet / spring water. Her abode is the lakes, rivers, streams and waterfalls. Yansa is the Goddess of fire, wind and storms. She can deliver the dead to their place and travel back again safely. Eua is the most mysterious Goddess. She governs magic and is represented by death and spring water. She is the gravy yard keen and is considered one of the most beautiful and unique female figures in Candomble. Based on these elements from Candomble I have been developing the Performance called "Little World" that I'm going to show in the South Project. The character is a misterious woman who has a strong relationship with a toy: a spinning top. She is "a very busy person"  and concerned about taking care of this "little world". It is also inspired by the Brazilian/Ukranian writer Clarice Lispector's texts.

Colours are fundamental to the representation of the Orixas and they posses different energies and properties. Eua colors are orange/yellow /red. Iansa colors are red/white/ pink. Oxum colors are yellow/golden/blue.  This is a simplified explanation of a multi-faceted, complex religion that is highly ritualistic and formalized in its practice. In some aspects Candomble can be considered to be theatrical in nature. It has influenced many performers in their practice.

Music and dance are central to the rituals. The Eres or the children's entities are the great dancers who teach the novices the enormous variety of movements of Orixas's dances. Movements tell stories and can express the specific qualities of the nature elements that are governed by orixas. During the process of initiation the initiates shave their heads and spend a period of time in complete isolation and silence. After the state of full trance the initiate enters a state called Pana.Pana is an intermediate position between possession and normal awareness. During the Pana state the initiates head which has previously been governed by the Orixa now changes to a lighter trance state. The initiates become recognizable figures in everyday life. In this state they are 'mothers', 'fathers', 'animals', 'flowers', 'stones' and 'children' who talk and respond as these characters. It is a 'theatrical moment' where the novice is moving between many roles. At this time the 'espirito de brincadera' (the spirit of fun and joking) is strong. The initiates laugh, tell jokes, parody the Orixas, eat lollies and drink soft drinks as their voices return and their heads become once more their own.