Stations of the Southern Cross, Applespiel, Underbelly 2013 photo Rafaela Pandolfini |
Stations of the Southern Cross’ hysterical conclusion saw the arrest of Applespiel’s members by History Police for crimes against truth, the idea being that the mainstream story of Australian history is itself a giant fallacy with less to do with reality than continuing colonial mythology.
Despite, or rather because of, a dedicated lo-tech anti-aesthetic, the show was punctuated by a series of seemingly disparate but extremely beautiful images that remain sharply inscribed in my memory: the choppy waters of Sydney Harbour rendered as ruffled blue cellophane in a home-movie-style shadow projection; Ned Kelly singing Cold Chisel at a pub karaoke, under a disco ball looming from the tunnel’s recesses, his infamous helmet re-fashioned from VB tins; and tiny white origami ships, floating in pink- and blue-lit silvery steel buckets, symbolising the first fleets of boat people that came through the heads over 200 years ago.
Braided narratives that tie plot-knots around themselves are now standard in theatre and cinema. The worst of these self-referential projects invariably emit an annoyingly smug, post-postmodern vibe of all-knowingness. Applespiel do indeed turn their narratives inside out, but their childlike humour, sincerity and perceptiveness endear rather than alienate them from their audiences, whom they clearly regard with the utmost intelligence. Applespiel seem to really know what they’re doing. This latest smart, self-assured, formally inventive work cements the troupe as true cultural innovators, although I assume, a little sadly, that the site-specific nature of the project will most likely preclude its presentation elsewhere.
The real genius of Stations of the Southern Cross was the way it worked with and not against its setting in the chilly Dog Leg Tunnel. The site of Cockatoo Island was key to the experience of Underbelly Arts—traipsing around this place gives audiences the sense that their city is expanding internally and into the harbour rather than away from the CBD. But many artists are still most accustomed to working in black boxes or white cubes, and the projects that tried to simulate the self-contained conditions of a traditional gallery or theatre were the least successful. Art events on Cockatoo Island must almost program against the location by curating works that can hold up against the imposing industrial ruins.
Filibust, Nick Keys, Underbelly 2013 photo Rafaela Pandolfini |
The second half of Keys’ performance was a 75-minute filibuster-style talk on the art of rhetoric, using clips from the unlikely foursome of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Kanye West and Jay-Z. Weirdly, it worked as a kind of “intergenerational double date” on the inheritance of the civil rights debate, and not just because it excavated the almost infinite connections between the language of these four, but because Keys was one of the few artists who questioned the politics of using Cockatoo Island as a rehabilitated destination for cultural tourists.
I Met You In A City That Isn't On The Map, we do not unhappen, Underbelly 2013 photo Rafaela Pandolfini |
Underbelly Arts Festival 2013, Cockatoo Island Sydney, Aug 3-4
Freelance writer Lauren Carroll Harris is a UNSW PhD candidate focusing on alternative, digital film distribution and Australian cinema. She interned as an Online Content Coordinator for Underbelly Arts Festival in 2013. Her Platform Papers essay, Not Coming to a Cinema Near You: Australia's Film Distribution Problem, will be published by Currency House in November.
RealTime issue #116 Aug-Sept 2013 pg. web
© Lauren Carroll Harris; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]