Eve Christine Peacock Thesis (PDF 624Kb)

A Novella of Ideas

How interactive new media art can effectively communicate an Indigenous philosophical concept

Eve Christine Peacock

A Novella of Ideas How interactive new media art can effectively communicate an Indigenous philosophical concept

Student: Eve Christine Peacock Student Number: 5477069 Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries Faculty Drama

Submitted for Master of Arts (Research)

Supervisor: Dr. Christine Comans, Discipline Leader, Drama.

Associate Supervisor: Dr.Leah King-Smith, Sessional Academic, Art and Design.

July, 2009

KEYWORDS

The following is a list of keywords that appear within this exegesis or are associated with the exegesis topic. These keywords have been listed for cataloguing purposes.

Philosophy; place theory; cultural theory; new media art; Indigenous arts practice; Indigenous practice-led research methodology.

ABSTRACT

HOW INTERACTIVE NEW MEDIA ART CAN EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE AN INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT.

The sophistication and complexity of the philosophical concept concerning relationships between land and people and between people, intrinsic to the laws and customs of Australian Indigenous society, has begun to be communicated and accessed beyond the realm of anthropological and ethnological domains of Western scholarship. The exciting scope and rapid development of new media arts presents an innovative means of creating an interactive relationship with the general Australian public, addressing the urgent need for an understanding of Indigenous Australian concepts of relationship to land, and to each other, absent from Western narratives.

The study is framed by an Indigenous concept of place, and relationships between land and people and between people; and explores how this concept can be clearly communicated through interactive new media arts. It involves: a creative project, the development of an interactive new media art project, a website work-in-progress titled site\sight\cite; and an exegesis, a Novella of Ideas, on the origins, influences, objectives, and potential of creative practices and processes engaged in the creative project.

Research undertaken for the creative project and exegesis extended my creative practice into the use of interdisciplinary arts, expressly for the expression of philosophical concepts, consolidating 23 years experience in Indigenous community arts development. The creative project and exegesis contributes to an existing body of Indigenous work in a range of areas - including education, the arts and humanities - which bridges old and new society in Australia. In this study, old and new society is defined by the time of the initial production of art and foundations of knowledge, in the country of its origins, in Indigenous Australia dating back at least 40,000 years.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

KEYWORDS ...... 1 ABSTRACT ...... 2 SCOPE ...... 5 DEFINITIONS ...... 6 STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP ...... 9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 10

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 13 1.1 Defining Practice ...... 14 1.2 Qualifying the Use of the term Indigenous ...... 14 1.3 Introducing Myself ...... 16 1.3.1 Teaching and Learning ...... 18 1.3.2 What I have come to know ...... 18 1.4 Orientation ...... 19 1.5 Intention of the Study ...... 20

2. CONTEXTUAL REVIEW: PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS ...... 23 2.1 Ontological Viewpoints ...... 23 2.2 The Ontology and Epistemology of Praxis ...... 27 2.3 Methodology ...... 31 2.3.1 Ethics Clearance ...... 33

3. KNOWING BEING AND DOING: THE CREATIVE PROJECT ...... 35 3.1 Context of Praxis ...... 35 3.1.1 Background ...... 35 3.2 Narrativising Creative Practice (3.2.1; 3.2.2 Appendix 6.VI) ...... 36 3.3 Narrativising the Creative Project: The Third Revolution ...... 38 3.3.1 Dialogue as central to praxis ...... 40 3.3.2 Reconstructing Place ...... 41 3.4 site\sight\cite ...... 44 3.4.1 Stage I ...... 45 3.4.2 Stage II ...... 46

4. ANALYSIS ...... 49 4.1 Relationship to place and community, alongside peers ...... 49 4.2 Critical Interpretation of Creative Project ...... 51 4.3 Outcomes of Study ...... 58 4.4 How outcomes are applied to, and impact upon, ...... 60 current creative project.

5. REFERENCES ...... 64

6. LIST OF APPENDICES ...... 70 6.I M. Graham in Aboriginal Affairs ...... 72 6.II Accessing site_sight_site ...... 76 6.III Uniikup Optical Media Collection ...... 78 6.IV Ethics Clearance Documents ...... 107 6.V Creative Team DetailsType chapter title (level 2) ...... 112 6.VI 3.2.1 1ST Revolution; and 3.22 2nd Revolution ...... 114 6.VI(i) Boxing Art ...... 124 6.VI(ii) Place Building Building Place ...... 137 6.VII Place Relatedness ...... 140 6.VIII A Unique Australian Screen Culture ...... 142 6.IX Project Information Kit ...... 150 6.X sscIT Proposed Production Schedule ...... 155

SCOPE

1. Creative Project - site\ sight\cite An interactive new media project, site\sight\cite is a collaborative work-in- progress of a creative team of nine artists. Each artist takes both an individual and collaborative approach to the creation of the project to communicate the meaning, values and principals of Indigenous philosophy concerning the relationships between both land and people and between people. My role as concept initiator and developer, artist and project co-ordinator, is detailed at 3.4 and 4.1.

A city walk through country, site\sight\cite is a tour-site containing nine contemporary places significant to the population of the Brisbane metropolis. This project has two stages. Stage I is the creative project of this study: a presentation of the concept development of the site\sight\cite project, housed at a preliminary website, site_sight_cite, located at www.colourise.com.au. (Appendix 6.II) Photoshop treated images, accompanied by artist statements, provide a perspective on, and an impression of the treatment of each place. Stage I conveys the proposed framework of www.sscIT.com, to be constructed at Stage II.

Links to prospective sponsors/funding sources (for which the preliminary website is support material), and further research links are posted in the Links tab on site_sight_cite. The time, place and context for the proposed production of www.sscIT.com at Stage II is detailed in Appendix 6.X.

2. Novella of Ideas (Exegesis): A practice-led study, the exegesis examines the philosophical concept in relation to the development of the creative project. The conclusion is an analysis and interpretation of the creative project, including other relevant new media and internet work. The conclusion also presents outcomes of the study and how they are applied to, and impact upon, current praxis. The Novella of Ideas is also made accessible as a pdf attachment on the About page of the site_sight_cite website housing the creative project concept development.

DEFINITIONS country: the place of one’s ancestral heritage. Dr. Karen Martin’s quote in 2.1 Ontological Viewpoints, p.24 of this study, is used as a definitive Indigenous experience of country. creactive/creactivity: a word invented to both differentiate the Indigenous experience of creativity and emphasise the act of the creative process. The word “creativity” derives from Latin “creare”, to make or produce. As Raymond Williams (1983, p. 82-84) points out, it means: original and innovating in the general sense, and productive in the special sense. Creativity is an integral part of the Christian (and other) belief system - the devine Creation of the world – creation, creature.

The Christian Saint, Augustine, and Phillip Sydney state (in Williams, 1983, p. 82-84): “The creature who has been created cannot create himself.” (Augustine); “God, having made nature, but having also made man in his own likeness, gives him the capacity ‘with the force of a divine breath’ to imagine and make things beyond Nature.” (Philip Sydney, 1554 -95)

Indigenous creative practice is a fundamentally different experience to the Western-Christian concept. It is not an activity that occurs in isolation. Like culture it is deeply embedded in land which creates perspective, knowledge, culture, law, spirituality, all of which are related parts of practice simultaneously, and no separation or rigid definition has been necessary. An example of this is in the Turrbal language where “Gahrr”, breath or spirit, is the closest meaning to creativity (Bell, 2005). Creactivity also takes into account the importance of the “act”, defined by Mikhail Bakhtin (1993) in Toward a Philosophy of the Act, and explained by Gardiner in his critique of that publication (2000, p.1-2.) as: …the "eventness” of the everyday social world” and “the phenomenological nature of the "act" as the essential "value-centre" for human existence. This in turn, involves an understanding of the alterity between self and other, insofar as we can only construct a unified image of self and engage in morally and aesthetically productive tasks through our reciprocal relation to each other.

dialogic composition: the intention of using extensive quotations in the exegesis is to produce a fluid discourse of argument, information and ideas concerning the research topic, rather than a singular, didactic position or conclusion. It creates a dialogue between exegesis writer and referenced writers and consequently with readers. land: this study uses Aboriginal philosopher, Mary Graham’s (1999, p. 105) definition of land: … a sacred entity, not property or real estate; it is the great mother of all humanity. … The land and how we treat it is what determines our humanness. Because land is sacred and must be looked after, the relationship between people and land becomes the template for society and social relations. Therefore all meaning comes from land.

In addition, the value and power of the spiritual and physical nature of land, unlike God, makes land non-interpretative; but as a complex living entity, land can be understood through reciprocal relationship. live art: this study uses the following definition: Disrupting borders, breaking rules, defying traditions, resisting definitions, asking questions and activating audiences, Live Art offers different approaches to the nature and the experience of art and has revealed itself as one of the most potent and provocative sites in contemporary culture. Live Art is a research engine where the limits of art and ideas are tested and new possibilities imagined. (Keidan & Brine, 2008, p. 1)

new media arts: the use of a range of digital technologies to produce moving and still imagery with sound.

Novella of Ideas: Julia Kristeva, in an interview about her first novel The Samurai, (Guberman ed., 1996, p. 2) refers to the theoretical project as being a “novel of ideas”. The temporal nature of an idea, in the notion of a “novella of ideas”, supports my perspective on praxis; that is: praxis creates ideas that are part of an ever-evolving thread of thought within a matrix of knowledge, as outlined in 1. Introduction.

philosophy: a system of motivating values, concepts or principals of an individual group or culture (Lotus Smartsuit Software. Organiser Dictionary, © 1994, 1999). place: this study uses Mary Graham’s (2006, p. 7) definition of place: ... place is epistemologically and ontologically central to notions and discussions regarding action or intent. Not only history but meaning arises out of place, whether place is geographically located or an event in time. The saying "the past is another country" is, from Aboriginal logic, pertinent to multi-dimensional time, that is, all events that have occurred and are occurring within any of the range of senses of time occupy a place (in time).

tour-site: a website where visitors tour contemporary sites of significance to Indigenous people, across the Queensland metropolis, Brisbane. preliminary website: an on-line site, housing Stage I, the concept development of the site\sight\cite project. It presents elements of the proposed website www.sscIT.com, constructed at Stage II. It is also an effective communication tool for the project creative team, and negotiations with prospective funding sources.

STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signature:

Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This practice-led study is a prerequisite to establishing negotiations for the proposed development of the creative project site\sight\cite; serving to initiate formal relations between the traditional custodians of the Brisbane area and all artists of the project Creative Team.

The Indigenous philosophical concepts in the published and unpublished papers and public oral discourse of Kombumerri, Waka Waka Philosopher Mary Graham, in particular, inform this study. (5. References.) The way the complexity and sophistication of Aboriginal philosophy is deciphered in a concise and communicable way, and research methodology contextualised, suits the orientation of this study. Moreover, Mary Graham’s philosophical concepts derive from a deeply responsive and reflective engagement with why and how Aboriginal people are Indigenous to this country/ies, enhanced by her depth of knowledge, experience and perception developed over 30 years in various roles in Aboriginal affairs. (Appendix 6.I.)

The work of Dr. Karen Martin plays a significant role in its affirmation of Indigenous approaches to ways of knowing, being, and doing. Karen Martin’s work, in adhering to the laws and customs of Indigenous society, serves as a cultural threshold for Indigenous scholars seeking the means to unify their resistance to terms of reference that devalue and misconstrue non-Western ontology, epistemology and methodology.

Many others, both past and present, are acknowledged for their intellectual capacity, cultural knowledge and practices which influence this study, including: my Mother, Eva Peacock, and Father, Jack Peacock; Aunty May Thorburn, Aunty Florence Kennedy, Uncle Thomas Salam, Aunty Heather Tilberoo, Uncle Tolliver Fisher, Aunty Estelle Fisher, Carl Fisher, Cathy and John Brady, Patsy Lockington; the many Elders in Indigenous communities; Bill Beatty, Bill Thaiday, Lester Bostock, John Newfong, Adrian Atkins, Ross Watson, Thaiday Ruben, Kamual Kiwat, Sandra Phillips, Uncle Bob Anderson, Jeanie Bell, Joan Collins, Debra Bennett, Guadalupe Rosalles-Martinez, 10

Margaret and Father Peter Strong, Zane Trow, Judith McLean; project creative team members – in particular, Keith Armstrong, Andrew Hill, Jenny Fraser, Tamara Whyte, Richelle Spence; QUT Principal Supervisor Dr. Christine Comans, and Associate Supervisor Dr. Leah King-Smith; and External Supervisors Brian Arley and Mary Graham. A special acknowledgement honours Aunty Maureen Watson (1931-2009) who gave many women of my generation a most valuable lesson: the legitimacy of our intellect and humanity of caring. The evolving musical skills of Archie Roach, both simple and sophisticated with lyrics firmly and tenderly grounded in the reality of existence of Indigenous people, uplifted my spirit and inspiration throughout the study period. Last but not least I acknowledge the tenacity of my sister Janice Peacock who, like many other Indigenous scholars, had gone there before me (into this educational quagmire); and my teenagers Ike and Ani-Eva Fisher, who ground me in contemporary Aboriginal society.

The resolute intellectual, cultural and political prowess of Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson and Kelly Roberts at the QUT Indigenous Studies Research Network sustained the completion of this study. The QUT Research Centre support framework, my access to which was accommodated by the Drama Discipline within the Creative Industries faculty, made it possible to further my education in a way that is appropriate to my circumstances. I am also indebted to the Creative Industries Faculty and Equity Section for special awards toward the costs of undertaking this Masters degree.

As a descendant of the village of Isem, on the island of Erub (Darnley) in what is now known as the Torres Strait Islands, I am deeply indebted to the traditional custodians of the place of my birth and countries lived in on the mainland. I am privileged to be a member of the Indigenous community of Brisbane, on the land of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples. I unequivocally declare that not having lived in my country of origin, I am not highly educated in the specifics of my cultural traditions, but I have been taught to respect, learn, understand and observe the customs, laws and codes of behaviour of the peoples and countries wherever I am resident. My creative practice and this study is conducted accordingly.

How interactive new media art can effectively

communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts.

1. INTRODUCTION

The white man drew a circle in the sand and told the red man: ‘This is what the Indian knows.' Continuing, the white man draws a big circle around the smaller one, and says: ‘This is what the white man knows.’ Sweeping an immense circle around both rings in the sand the Indian said: ‘This is where the white and the red man know nothing.’ (Sandburg, in Wright & Goldberg eds, 1971, p. 30)

Section one, Introduction, outlines the understanding upon which the creative project and exegesis is based, as well as the origins and intentions of the inquiry. In section two, Contextual Review: Philosophical Underpinnings, the premise of the underpinning philosophy and methodology of the study and creative project is both defined and supported. The third section, Knowing,

Being and Doing: The Creative Project focuses upon praxis. The final section, Analysis, examines the creative project outcome and ascertains the impact of the study upon current praxis. Each part is presented as a dialogic composition of viewpoints to both impart the vitality of philosophies and concepts relative to the study and complement the creative project.

The concepts developed by Kombumerri-Waka Waka Elder and Philosopher Mary Graham, regarding relationships or relatedness to land and to each other, are the catalyst for the creative project and exegesis. These concepts are central to what has sustained land, life and culture in countries of this nation for over 40,000 years; and reflect the ontology, epistemology and culture that defines who does, and how to, belong to this country/ies. Indigenous ontological, epistemological and methodological principles are not without support located in other places and cultures. Apart from the comprehensive work of Noonuccal - Bidjara scholar Karen Martin on the power and practice of Indigenous relatedness, the works of English-Australian

scholar Paul Carter and Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin are used to elaborate and support the study topic.

The weighting of the study in terms of percentage is 40% creative project (preliminary website) and 60% exegesis (Novella of Ideas).

1.1 Defining Praxis The understanding upon which this study is based is derived from Indigenous culture which “comprises a society’s philosophy about the nature of reality, the values that flow from this philosophy and the social customs that embody these values” (Little Bear, 2002, p. 77). Culture is learned throughout childhood within the family and provides the strength and foundations required to realise, develop and sustain arts praxis. This education was formalised, in my case, in performance, community video and new media production, and artistic direction of Indigenous community cultural events, all of which constitutes my praxis.

Over the past 23 years my praxis has been based in Indigenous media arts organisation Uniikup Productions Ltd., trading as Murriimage Community Video and Film Service, primarily located in Turrbal-Jagera and Gubbi Gubbi countries, south east Queensland. Whilst praxis develops, the way knowledge and skill is attained fundamentally remains the same: local, place-based resources are primary sources for cultural information and direction, and praxis reciprocates the development needs and aspirations peculiar to both people and place. (Appendix 6.III) Work is collaborative and has been also influenced by the perspectives and practices of people from many different countries within Indigenous Australia, as well as Indigenous peoples of Canada and South America.

1.2 Qualifying use of the term “Indigenous” Indigenous, as a term of identification - like Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander - came with the introduction of a colonial vocabulary to signify “other”. In this study it is utilised in defiance of the separation of all peoples of the land created by invasion and colonialism, and racial and social stratification

portrayed by Darwinism. Avoiding the compartmentalisation and hierarchal structuring of knowledge in the Western education system, the exegesis and creative project derive from principle practice in Indigenous society, that of sharing and acceptance of multiple, varying, and at times conflicting or even contradictory ideas, to arrive at a rich and rewarding contemplation of what was, is and can be.

Life specific to our lands and our shared origins, in what is now called the “Dreaming”, continues to locate, connect and affirm our cultures and identities and define our differences, despite the many and varied interventions created by colonialism. In the case of what is now known as the Torres Strait Islands cultural intervention includes the infusion of customs from the South Pacific, as well as influences from Asia and Africa. Although this cultural diffusion now seems component, I maintain it masks the veneration for origin of place and the ancient history of local traditions which arise from physical connection and spiritual and economic relations with lands and people to the south and north; a legacy that dates back to before the rise of the sea less than 10,000 years ago. (Monash University Arts http://arts.monash.edu.au/ges/ugrad/hons- topics.php.) This perspective is contrary to the historic accounts, maps and naming created by explorers, historians, anthropologists and researchers in the region in more recent times, which cause dislocation that leads to friction, and “contradictions in assumptions and analyses” (Graham, 2006, p. 6).

Mary Graham, in conversation, often repeats the observation that in our exchange of knowledge we are always and only sharing ideas, referring to a statement she attributes to Einstein that “all perspectives are valid and reasonable” (2006 p. 8). The idea of “Indigenous” being different but the same, conflicts dramatically with both government policy and the view held by perhaps the majority of Australian Indigenous people in regard to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and identity but one which is within the practice of sharing, and reinforces contemplation of what was, is and can be. The use of the word “idea” throughout the study underscores my perception that knowledge ultimately lives in the realm of phenomena and it is only in

sharing, in its oral form, that agreement about truth and meaning is negotiated and acted upon.

1.3 Introducing myself I precede this study by introducing myself in accordance with protocol

(Moreton-Robinson in Martin, 2001, p.1). In consequence of my being the origin and primary site of intellect for this practice-led study (Graham, 2006, p. 6) I do this by communicating the personal ontological and epistemological position from where the creative project and exegesis is drawn, and which forms the basis of my praxis. Mary Graham (2006, p. 2) points out the relevance of place in this position, stating that there is an - ... Aboriginal understanding of the qualitative, and subjective aspects of place, of meaning (Being), and of the nature of how knowledge and understanding of change is constructed, especially about human agency, in patterns of family relationships, community organisation and relationship to land and the custodial ethic.

The ontological principal, relationship to place and people, within the context of the complexity of relevant time, events and history, determines the orientation and unfolding of my identity or being, as follows: Isem-Erub-Darnley Is: the ancestral place of my mother, Eva Salam. Coolamon-Wiradjuri: birthplace of my father Jack Peacock, 3rd generation Australian whose ancestry is in England and Ireland. Mareeba-Muluridji: my birthplace in 1951 and early childhood to 1954; Cooya Beach-Kuku-Yalanji: early childhood with relatives who came to live there. Redcliffe-Ninghi: where my Mother and Father took up residence; childhood (seven siblings); primary and secondary school to 1966. Brisbane-Turrbal-Jagera: commercial business, office employment, 1967-68. Sydney-Eora: arts praxis development; community theatre performer 1969- 71. Britain (U.K.): theatre – performance, acting, directing and producing, 1972- 80. Cairns-Irukandji and Mossman-Kuku-Yalanji: reconnecting family, 1981-82. Sydney-Eora: film and television production training at ABC TV, 1983-85. Thursday Is.-Waiben- and Murray Is.-Mer: (where my experiences first began to transform to knowledge) community radio management, 1985. Brisbane-Turrbal-Jagera: community film and video production development, 1985-2003 (where my praxis became definitive). Gympie-Gubbi Gubbi (my children’s father’s father’s country) and Redcliffe- Ninghi: home, birth and growth of children, media arts praxis business, 1992- 2004. Brisbane-Turrbal/Jagara: Indigenous community media arts business development and tertiary study, 2004-09. 16

Mary Graham (2006, p. 8) elaborates on the meaning of place, positioning the ontological principle within Aboriginal Law as it arises from the notion of the Dreaming:

Law of Place Aboriginal Australia's perspective on the nature of existence is that the Sacred Dreaming is the system of creation that brings the whole of existence into being and ensures its continuance. The Dreaming, with the Ancestral Beings as intermediaries, brings into being Place, and, along with the emergence of Place, comes the Law for that Place. Law and Place come into the world at the same time. Identity, obligation, kinship and marriage rules, or the Law of Relationships (10) 1 now comes into being, as has been said.

What also comes into being is the notion of Place as a determinant of Being in the world, that is, Place as the informative quality or essence of the Mode of Being in the world - what could be called the Law of Place.

Fig. 1 Spirit and Human Agency

Land Critical & Community Place Variable Origin Networks Beginning/End

Individual, Family, Clan, Group

Graham (2006, p. 2) also relates this position to a specific Indigenous method of research, stating: Because Indigenous research methods stress the moral nature of physicality (especially land) and the need for relationality and interconnectedness with all life forces, the theoretical model that emerges or is identified from those methods will also have that ethical quality.

1 (10) Mowaljarlai, David, Malnic, Jutta, “Yorro Yorro” Publisher Inner Traditions. Broome 1993. p 143.

1.3.1 Teaching and Learning I maintain that both a distinct pattern of knowing, and system of teaching and learning, is derived from such cultural orientation (Bayles and McMullen, 2008), the basic principles including: People are also countries. Through my Mother and Father, subconscious (genetic) patterns of knowledge were created at birth, inherited from countless generations of ancestors. It is my ancestral countries and people who have given me primary knowledge; this knowledge materialising and growing through engagement with other people and countries. I acknowledge that relations with the entities – ancestors and creators, land, waterways, climate, plants, animals, skies and people (Martin, 2008, p. 66) - of all these countries are indelibly impressed upon my being, and that within these places is located my life stories. The relationships with both people and country/ies in the present, consolidates knowledge creating social and cultural consciousness and expanding my world view; a continuing process throughout my life.

Indigenous learning and teaching systems based in the land have engendered observational skills and practices and spiritual relationships and experiences, which create multiple dimensions of consciousness and knowledge. I believe it is only by experience that consciousness transforms to knowledge. I assimilate Western education and culture into my knowledge, or it remains alien until relevant (Peacock, 2005, p. 1). Whilst this perspective lends itself to the science of phenomenology, the physical presence of entities, relatedness to land and place, and between people, as defined by Kombumerri - Waka Waka philosopher Mary Graham and Noonuccal - Bidjara scholar Karen Martin, are factors of a distinct Indigenous Australian philosophical concept.

1.3.2 What I have come to know I extricate from these observations that philosophies and laws Indigenous to Australia, exist alongside those brought by colonisation. It is through country,

the philosophies, laws and culture which are created from our countries, that we maintain durable relationships with land and with each other. 2

1.4 Orientation The study evolves from my heritage - a relationship with land and each other - out of which my life and arts praxis has grown. The creative project and exegesis stem from frustration experienced with the criteria of Australian arts (including media) funding agencies and sources which generally favour support for work which is obsequious or market oriented, appealing to the status quo, the common understanding of the coloniser society. The status quo in colonised countries bears the consequences of social perspectives impressed by historians writing about colonisation. As Mac Chapin (2008, p. 1) observes in his article “The Meaning of Columbus Day”, historians have created characterisations from colonisation that have consequences for thinking about the events themselves, the peoples who took part in them, and their successors, including all who currently live in this part of the world today. The dialogue challenging this situation is often masked, censored or sanitised as Indigenous arts practitioners are not in charge of decision making. Many are groomed by institutions to become successful individuals, rather than as part of conscious recognition of, and consequently investment in, the political, social and cultural values and practices of the potentially phenomenal universal contribution to knowledge and art, inherent in venerable societies.

Grant H. Kester, in The Alternative Arts Sector and the Imaginary Public (1998, p. 106) comments, that the origins of arts funding are founded “not on a definition of art as a public good in and of itself, but on its potential usefulness within the matrix of state policy and ideology.” This view, applied to Australian Aboriginal art and artists, presents a multitude of functions that arts funding criteria performs in terms of political domination, relationships between Indigenous people, the state, the public and the world at large. State and philanthropic funding therefore evokes and invokes considerable ideological significance in the arts.

2 This is part of a relational ontology, as described by Dr. Karen Martin (quoted in 2.1 Ontological Viewpoints). 19

Also impacting upon the position of Indigenous Art within Australia today is what T’hohahoken Michael Doxtater, Canadian Mohawk elder and academic (2004, p. 624) argues is a filtering process, through a congruence paradigm, maintaining that: Europeans take retrospective authority to define ancient Indigenous knowledge within the congruence paradigm …. Consequently, Europeans assume authority to authenticate contemporary Indigenous culture and determine which traditions are invented, while deducing life from the paradigm based on soft criteria approved through Western knowledge.

However, in relation to this position, Doxtater (2004, p. 629) subscribes to a resistance stance, which has been the framework and context for my work with others in the past 36 years and continues in this study. Doxtater articulates this stance which he asserts should not be interpreted as either reactive or emotive: The coeval movement to recover Indigenous knowledge resides within the time and space of worldwide decolonization. In this way I pose that we have passed through the colonial and postcolonial eras. Decolonizing knowledge, the beginning stage of the decolonial era, commences the process for reengaging Indigenous knowledge with a practiced culture rather than merely a performative culture. From here on we emancipate Indigenous knowledge of governance, sovereignty, agriculture, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, communications, medicine, and healing. Thus, the intellectual diligence of Indigenous scholars marks the beginning of what we could now call "the decolonial era".

Being neither reactive or emotive but insistent (Watson R., 2008), keeps development focused on local, place-based resources as primary sources for cultural information and direction, ensuring praxis remains responsive to the needs and aspirations peculiar to both people and place. This stance strengthens the framework and context of my work with others and, with the advancements in digital technology, led to my film and video production practice expanding to media arts.

1.6 Intention of the study The exegesis is a construction of knowledge representing the complexity and multiplicity of ideas peculiar to the creative project, time and place – a Novella of Ideas. It intends to challenge the normally required actions and reactions 20

circumscribed by academic scholarship, what Marcuse describes as “a positivism which, in its denial of the transcending elements of Reason, forms the academic counterpart of the socially required behavior” (Marcuse, 1964, p. 13).

It is acknowledged that, in accordance with Western research, there is an expectation that the objective of the research is to identify and fill a knowledge gap; and that the host academic institution, QUT, is set up to facilitate this. However, it is my understanding, from participative engagement in and belonging to an ancient Indigenous society and culture, that knowledge knows no gaps, as knowing is enacted as a constant state of becoming conscious, as part of acts performed with our whole lives (Bakhtin, 1993, pp. 2-3); each person occupying a peculiar, particular and valued place within that knowing.

The objective of the study is therefore differentiated as follows: A. Western Knowledge: The exegesis and creative project contribute to the increasing inclusion and recognition, within the Australian/European education and arts spectrum, of Indigenous perspectives on and approaches to knowledge and praxis as described at 1.1 to 1.4. The terms of this inclusion and recognition require evidence that the academy sanctions “multiple domains and types of knowledge, with differing logics and epistemologies” (Agrawal, 1995, in Martin, 2008, p. 55). B. Indigenous Knowing: The Novella/exegesis represents a cell within an existing matrix of knowledge. Through the creative project, knowledge (not exclusive to Indigenous knowledge) that is applicable to this study is located and identified within the matrix. I accomplish this by being located in the context of continuous participative engagement in and belonging to Australian Indigenous society across Turrbal-Jagera countries. Central to the intention of the creative project and exegesis is “the rebuilding of old alliances and kinships across borders and the discovery of like-minded peoples in other parts of the world” (Daes, in Martin, 2008 p. 54).

The choice of the main references, the works of Graham, Martin, Carter and Bakhtin, assists to fulfill both objectives: Graham’s philosophy and

methodology articulates the significance of land and place within Indigenous knowledge; Martin’s comprehensive framework of Indigenist methodology liberates Indigenous knowledge from the domination of Western research paradigms; Carter provides a reflective and sophisticated comparative view of Australian colonial/settler perspectives on place and on arts practice methodology; and Bakhtin’s work is a complementary research methodology – dialogism, and philosophy - the philosophy of the act, used to embrace, embark upon, exchange, share and relate Indigenous approaches to knowledge. The dialogism aspect accords with what I identify as the oral nature of Indigenous knowledge, whereby it is fluid, exchangeable, connective and existential. This practice-led study accords with specific viewpoints, rather than cites them as authoritative support.

So it is of this peculiar place that this practice-led study emerges in the form of a creative project and exegesis. It carries the underlying intention of impressing upon those new to Australian Indigenous laws, social codes and culture, innate in relationships with land and between people, the urgent need firstly, to accept that life here is and was meant to be very different to that transported from Europe; and secondly, to arrest the forced transposition of otherness upon Indigenous being, knowing and doing peculiar to each country across the nation.

How interactive new media art can effectively

communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts.

2. CONTEXTUAL REVIEW:

PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERPINNINGS

“One of the purposes of philosophy is to question our accepted beliefs.” (Lamberton, 2007.)

2.1 Ontological Viewpoints Constant and complex, Indigenous creative development in Australia is located in the parallel cultural and aesthetic dimensions of diametrically opposed ontological perspectives, most obvious in the different relationships with land and between people. The ontological perspective Indigenous to this continent in the Asia Pacific, occupies a small but significant place in the consciousness of Australian society, due to a population that remains nostalgic about a settler version of history, delinquent in its perversion of those rights pertaining to the status inherent in unrelinquished Aboriginal sovereignty, and consequently largely resistant to the influence of an Indigenous world view or knowledge. Palestinian historian and intellectual Edward Said (1992, p.75) provides a concise summary of what underwrites this social condition; variations of this observation also found in the writings of many Indigenous scholars. A civilised man, it was believed, could cultivate the land because it meant something to him; on it accordingly, he bred useful arts and crafts, he created, he accomplished, he built. For an uncivilised people, land was either farmed badly (i.e. inefficiently by Western standards) or it was left to rot. From this string of ideas by which whole native societies, who lived on American, African, and Asian territories for centuries, were suddenly denied their right to live on land, came the great dispossessing movement of modern European colonialism and with them all the schemes for redeeming the land, resettling the natives, civilising them, taming their savage customs and turning them into useful beings under European rule … land was there for European exploitation, because Europe understood the value of land in a way impossible for the natives.

Moreover, the relational ontology authored by Dr. Karen Martin (2001, p. 3) of the Noonuccal people, Minjerripah, Quandamooka, in South East Queensland, demonstrates the significant difference in what constitutes each society: The Quandamooka worldview has been, and will continue to be expressed and preserved by its people, in many forms such as literature, film, dance and art. It is particularly preserved in the stories we tell or listen to, and it is through these that we confirm and reaffirm ourselves as ‘Yulubirrbi’ - people of the sand and salt water. As such, the strength of our country can be seen in the continual motion of tides, winds. This movement of air, sand and salt water is cleansing and healing. It’s important to us, as we believe that the country makes the people as much as the people make the country. We believe that country is not only the people, but is also the elements of skies, waterways, animals, plants, weather and spirits. Within this, one element should not be raised above another element. Therefore, every inch of our country is special, but there are sites that are of particular significance to particular members, for particular reasons and this is to be respected. These include women’s sites, men’s sites, or family/clan areas. ... Other Aboriginal groups have similar ways of expressing and sharing salient elements of their worldview too.

Out of these parallel dimensions and opposite ontological perspectives, bi- cultural practices have been developed by an ancient oral culture with specific processes, praxis and philosophies used to determine, examine, and reflect upon the world, representing a continuum of over at least 40,000 years

(Mithen, 1999, pp. 156-157). Indeed it is in the underlying ethics, logics and metaphysics developed by the two societies that vast differences become most obvious.

In recent times - adapting to Western intellectual pursuits of conceptualisation and theoretical exposition and the conveyance of ideologies and ideas through notation systems, literacy and paper - this heritage is explained as the Dreaming: Aboriginal philosophy that depicts creation in this part of the world and rationalises the unfolding acts of a living culture. The view of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, is that those acts are a unification of all human faculties, their content and being brought into communion to fuse and permeate culture and life. Life itself is a single complex act or deed that is performed, i.e. acts are performed with our whole life “and every particular act and lived experience is a constituent moment of life – of the continuous performing of acts” (1993, pp. 2-3).

Moreover it can be simply argued that in the dreaming, meaning and conceptualisation of land and relationships are not fixed, unlike in other parts of the world where the investment in literacy, notation systems of communication and production of paper (amongst other utilitarian inventions through exploitation of the environment), perhaps, though not necessarily consequentially, led to abuses of power in the form of manipulative control of land, relationship to land and relations between people. If it can be said unprecedented material development of societies occurred with these inventions however, it can also be said that in Indigenous Australian society there was an uninterrupted level of importance channelled specifically to performance of auditory, visual and physical acts of communication and expression, systems of abstract symbols, memory and observation; and this form of communication underscored by hypothesizing and reasoning brought about development of social, intellectual and dialogical skills to levels of unparalleled sophistication. Mary Graham in her paper “Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal World Views”, fields the idea that elements of Indigenous philosophy “maintain humanness is a skill, not developed in order to become a better human being, but to become more and more human” (Graham, 1999, p. 1). Adapting a system of communication underpinned with this philosophy, to the one forged here by the Western world, produces extraordinary consequences, both positive and negative, which are still unfolding and extend into every facet of Indigenous life today; a condition that remains largely unacknowledged.

The creative project and exegesis also evolves from time - a common process in creative practice but also the manner in which the Dreaming continues to exist in contemporary life. It is important to comprehend the complexity of this dimension in Indigenous creative practice, as it affects the methodology, objective and outcome of a project: … as the fourth dimension of space, time is dimensional with the forces of the past, present and future all contained and implicit in the now. … Time can and does create memories; it also destroys them. Therefore time, because of its finite quality, possesses both a creative and a destructive function. … Each action thought or skill mastered and rendered operative will become the founding cause of what will be, subsequent to the action of lineal time, an effect. (King-Boyes, 1977, pp. 42, 43, 44.) 25

It is generally understood that the Dreaming is known by Indigenous groups in different ways and subsequently its meaning is manifest in customs peculiar to a country or place or being and expressed in multiple forms and languages

(Martin, 2001, p.3). This explanation of existence (the Dreaming) evolves with time, encompassing historical events, eras, and change. Mary Graham’s view is that Australian Indigenous relationships to land are explained through the Dreaming: Aboriginal people have a kinship system which extends into land; this system was and still is organised into clans. One’s first loyalty is to one’s own clan group. It does not matter how Western and urbanised Aboriginal people have become, this kinship system never changes. (It has been damaged by, for example, cultural genocide/stolen children/Westernisation etc. but has not been altered substantially.) Every clan group has its own Dreaming or explanation of existence. We believe that a person finds their individuality within the group. To behave as if you are a discrete entity or a conscious isolate is to limit yourself to being an observer in an observed world. (1999, p. 106.)

In comparison, the Western existentialist notion, for example, “consciousness is nothingness striving to become being, or to fulfil itself in order to be something” (Stewart and Mickunas, 1990, p.73), is a concept which, in Aboriginal terms of reference, isolates and diminishes being - i.e. being as located in the Dreaming and realised as unfolding acts of relatedness in maintaining and sustaining place and culture, an integral part of collective life, the antecedent to law (including ethics and morality), and its expression the creative act or pr-act-ice. Arguably, the existentialist notion, as an underpinning philosophy and underlying psychology of the coloniser population, gives rise to the dichotomy of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships to land and consequently to each other. As artist, theorist and academic Paul Carter reflects (2007, pp. 6, 8): Coming from somewhere else is perhaps the defining human experience as a result of the systemic disruption of pre-industrial societies due successively to the human transformations wrought by the rise of capitalism, the normalisation of imperialism, the technological triumph of quantification, and the annihilation of distance that these separately and in combination facilitate. The well adjusted product of these processes is self-reliant, mobile and rootless.

Carter further notes: Internalising the notion that attachments of any kind represent a form of weakness or vulnerability, and that the ideal unit of production is one 26

emancipated from all traditional obligations, heirs to modernity’s dispensation seek to conceal their origins. The important thing is not to come from somewhere but to have successfully left it behind.

However, Carter reveals a commonality which may create a basis for a resolution of the dichotomy, in that: Australia’s white settlers did, once upon a time, occupy named places of ancestral potency. Before the Enclosure Acts of the late 17th to mid 19th century alienated the great part of England’s common land, ordinary folk in England held the land where they lived in common. … it is the same capitalistically-fuelled alienation of common land that excluded the English peasantry that provided the ideological raison d’etre of Australian colonisation and rationalised the ruthless driving of Aboriginal people from their lands. Clinging to country, Indigenous people remind us of a fight for land rights we gave up generations ago.

2.2 The Ontology and Epistemology of Praxis The continuity of Indigenous creative practice is demonstrated in many discrete ways, and as part of “the total pattern of existence, these art forms cannot be sectionalised but must be considered as an integral part of the whole” (King-Boyes, 1977, p. 88). At Yuendumu in Central Australia, for example, where Walpiri people engage in electronic media, producing community videos, they “demonstrate their own invisibility in order to assert the work’s authority and continuity with tradition. They do not draw attention to themselves or to their creativity” (Michaels, 1987, p. 34).

Similarly, when video and film production development commenced in the Brisbane Indigenous community in 1985, the production company name, Murriimage, was used, and not individual credits; but this was eventually changed as funding criteria required that filmmaker credits were publicly acknowledged and used as a form of guarantee of the practitioner’s ability. Murriimage production – seamless processes, practices and outcomes – arise from the social fabric of the community. The contribution to the social health and well being of society, and the ability to relate and communicate in an Aboriginal way, to inform, educate and entertain is as important a skill component as aesthetic success and technological ability. However as the move toward market orientated product and a national Indigenous broadcasting television station was realised, production support waned, pressing organisations like Murriimage/ Uniikup, to seek other ways and 27

means to continue to create community/self-determined media arts product. (Appendix 6.III)

In another context, Ravi de Costa, in Identity, Authority, and the Moral Worlds of Indigenous Petitions, identifies in the Yirrkala petition (presented in 1963 to the Australian parliament, on bark painted with Yolngu designs) “the introduction of imaginative political resources found within traditional cultures, that are drawn on in ways to give coherence and power to claims being made, and do so in ways that influence much broader communities including non- Indigenous people” (De Costa, 2006, p. 689).

Revealing the complexity of the social fabric of Indigenous community from which creative practices and processes arise, action research/learning meetings with focus and community groups facilitated in Brisbane by Mary Graham (Graham, 2006, pp. 3-4), identified the following Aboriginal terms of reference as underpinning “the Aboriginal social praxis and ontological and epistemological basis of existence. Primacy of place Spiritual integrity Land as a moral entity Consensus decision making Non-competitiveness Positive group dynamics Age and gender recognition and respect Maintenance of harmonious relations Non-hierarchical structures Sharp observational abilities Aboriginal system of logic and time and space (different to Western systems).”

In the absence of a power laden, linear hierarchy and sense of individual acquisition, ideas, work, responsibilities, and outcomes are negotiated and shared, forming the core of the collaborative process. Adding to Mary Graham’s view on individuality within the group (page 26), Indigenous collaborative arts practice, without hierarchy, designates that each individual, is observer and observed (of/by both self and others), speaker and listener in an observed world (the creative sphere of the project). Within this essentially dialogic process, a microcosm of Indigenous social organisation and custom,

relationships are formed and regulated and culture is maintained. Robert Barsky (1998, p. 105) in Chomsky’s Challenge: the Pertinence of Bakhtin’s Theories, corroborates the importance of maintaining such traditional practices: “Societies need to be open and diverse – when they close down upon themselves there is little hope for injecting new ideas. Methods of speaking, diverse perspectives and so on, encourage tolerance …”

There is schematic speculation on being, belonging and relatedness as essential elements of place in more recent philosophies such as ‘phenomenology as applied to the relationship between human beings and the world’ (Stephanovic, 2000), a ‘topology of being’ (Malpas, 1999), and in ‘place’ or ‘place making’ theory. However, to understand the Indigenous perspective, it must be recognised that placement and embodiment (people in definitive locations) related to ways of knowing, being and doing (Martin, 2008, p. 72-80) sets apart Indigenous place philosophy (and methodology). Indigenous relationship to land - ancestors, as beings and spirits, and related entities (Martin 2008 p. 66) - is an explicit feature of being human and of human origins. Indigenous people are specifically located, and related to and through particular places or countries in the land as deciphered by the Dreaming, an ancient orientation in creation underpinning the Aboriginal world view.

Mary Graham (1999, p. 108) expands upon this position with the notion of an Aboriginal custodial ethic “achieved through repetitive action, such that gradually, over time, the ethic has become the norm” or innate. This is: “an ethic of stewardship, of looking after, to be a custodian, curator, keeper or guardian, in particular of land, community and/or family.” This ethic she maintains is not controlling nor seeks to impose by force of will or argument a particular course of action (Western) (Graham, 2006, p. 3). Mary further explains: “For Aboriginal people, the land is the great teacher; it not only teaches us how to relate to it, but to each other; it suggests a notion of caring for something outside ourselves, something that is in, and of, nature, and that will exist for all time” (Graham, 1999, p. 108). This notion extends into Indigenous creative practice, where there is a “cross disciplinary acquisition of the sort of knowledge available to a community which acknowledges the

environment to be a vital component of the total expression of culture” (King- Boyes, 1977, p. 88).

Science and universalism inherent in the methods of Western thought would reduce the Aboriginal world view to a cultural construct or religion due mainly to the spiritual nature of its premise. However as Aileen Moreton Robinson points out in Talkin up to the White Woman, “… the reality of spirituality is a physical fact because it is experienced as part of one’s life” (Moreton- Robinson in Martin, 2008, p.67).

Poetically illustrating relationship to land arising from colonial origins, Carter muses: No one appears to worry about what was cleared away when the streets were laid out according to a two-dimensional plan, when the natural topography was neutralised and in its place artificial vistas were carefully mortgaged. At no point in the process of arrival, survey, settlement and residence does the ground make any claim upon our attention. We may say, ‘But we walk on the ground’, yet we should beware of an ambiguity. For we walk on the ground as we drive on the road; that is, we move over and above the ground. Many layers come between us and the granular earth – an earth which in any case has already been displaced. Our relationship to the ground is, culturally speaking, paradoxical: for we appreciate it only in so far as it bows down to our will. Let the ground rise up to resist us, let it prove porous, spongy, rough, irregular – let it assert its native title, its right to maintain its traditional surfaces – and instantly our engineering instinct is to wipe it out; to lay our foundations on rationally-apprehensible level ground. (Carter, 1996, pp. 1-2)

Social engineering policies to integrate Indigenous people into what Marcuse sees as “operationalism and behavourism” of the dominant society, to be “redefined by the rationality of the given system and of its quantitative extension” (Marcuse, 1964, p. 12) arose from the colonial presence as described by Carter.

Ultimately, relating to land and to each other, is a lived belief system, and as such, eludes objectification inherent in cultural theory and philosophy. Indeed the Western term sovereignty, whilst useful for qualifying blatantly denied Aboriginal international status, does not convey the spiritual centrality of Indigenous relationship to land. In Toward a Philosophy of the Act, Bakhtin

provides analysis which can be used to consider how Indigenous ontology and epistemology is filtered through, and if it is held hostage in, the framework of Western humanities’ disciplines:

… the world as object of theoretical cognition seeks to pass itself off as the whole world, that is, not only as abstractly unitary Being but also as concretely unique being in its possible totality. …. In that world, we would find ourselves to be determined, predetermined, by-gone and finished, that is, essentially not living. Any kind of practical orientation of my life within the theoretical world is impossible; it is impossible to live in it, impossible to perform answerable deeds. In that world I am unnecessary; I am essentially and fundamentally non-existent in it. The theoretical world is obtained through an essential and fundamental abstraction from the fact of my unique being and from the moral sense of that fact, as if I didn’t exist. (Bakhtin, 1993, pp. 8-9)

It is therefore in the collaborative act of Indigenous artists producing an interactive creative project that the whole concept of relationship with land/place and relationships between people can materialise. Carter attributes to such work the “symbolic representation of the phenomenal, a picture of the way the world is constructed that participates in its complexity rather than eliminates it” (Carter, 1996, p. xii).

2.3 Methodology The study conforms to Indigenist research principles “resistance and political integrity” and “privileges Indigenous voices” as observed by Narungga- Kaurna-Ngarrindjeri scholar Lester Rigney. It also agrees with “appropriate research epistemologies and methodology” for “… a transmission of ideas to promote further debate” (Rigney, 1997, pp. 110, 118). Throughout the study there is also a correlation with the eight sub-paradigms of Japanangka Teaching and Research Paradigm prescribed by Walpiri scholar Errol West, with cultural, spiritual, secular, intellectual, political, practical, personal and public dimensions (West, in Martin, 2008 pp. 59-60) being elementary aspects of the study.

However, this study does not subscribe to a conventional Western research model where academic achievement using heuristic techniques makes compatible, Indigenous social and cultural methods of learning and knowledge systems. In this study theory is regarded as the method or structure of 31

research, and research underpins Western knowledge. It has evolved directly from a Eurocentric ontology and epistemology, and is central to the Western educational paradigm. Research, as an act of investigation or close study, cannot avoid imposition or isolating a problem or information from a context that has multiple realities. To the Aboriginal mindset phenomena are received and if there is an observation it is to “behold” or “regardez”. The Law is both creator, informer and guide – the world reveals itself to us and to itself – we don’t “discover” anything.

The same mindset perceives the Western method of Inquiry to lead to and, to be inextricably attached to discovery and therefore to ownership. That is why to Indigenous people in many places, there is often a sense of something predatory about this process (Inquiry). (Graham, 2006, p. 9)

This perspective concurs with Doxtater’s depiction (p.20 above) of a practiced culture, and also with the concern of Dr. Yusef Progler’s that “one of the fundamental sites of socialisation and enculturation is in the meaning, role, and purpose of education itself”. Progler also raises the point that “modern methodologies will probably be the most difficult to overcome, since many people who are talking about decolonisation are doing so from within former colonial institutions”; and in addition says “the structure of colonised knowledge is just as important to recognise and remove as the content of colonised knowledge” (2004, pp. 2, 3, 6).

Therefore to understand and communicate my practice and its developments, research or inquiry is disordered in multiple acts to intuit, wonder, dream, dialogue, recount, recover, revitalise, review, critique, promote, emancipate, pollinate, corroborate, collaborate, respond etc. There is no selected research method followed in the conventional sense; culture and creactivity ensures that the skills and abilities of all are equally valued; there is a malleable time- frame to develop the creative project by remaining responsive to the needs and aspirations peculiar to both people and place; and available resources equate to and reflect the prevailing political, social and spiritual circumstances in which the study takes place.

2.3.1 Ethics Clearance The creative project is the collaborative work of a Creative Team as outlined in 3.2 Narrativising Creative Practice. The Ethics Clearance documents in relation to this collaboration are provided as Appendix 6.IV.

How interactive new media art can effectively

communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts.

3. KNOWING, BEING AND DOING:

THE CREATIVE PROJECT

Place is a reference point to guide to and from. Place is a physical point in the landscape, but also a point in time, an event, an imagining or even a landscape itself. … Place = Dreaming – Multiple Places = Multiple Dreamings = Multiple Laws = Multiple Logics = Multiple Truths ... the transformative dynamic of growth. (Graham, 2006, pp 6-7)

3.1 Context of Praxis

Karen Martin maintains that dynamic and complex forms of relatedness are at the core of Aboriginal culture, spirituality and social systems in countries across the nation; and to know the Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing relevant to your country is essential for self-reflection and thus self- regulation (Martin 2008, p. 97, 98,138). This notion embodied in praxis, materialises in the work-in-progress creative project and exegesis as ‘a single complex act that is performed with my whole life’ (Bakhtin, 1993, pp. 2-3).

3.1.1 Background The project is a continuation of, and further develops over 23 years of praxis in Brisbane community-based media arts organisation Uniikup Productions Ltd. t/a Murriimage Community Video and Film Service. The organisation was established in 1985 to address the audio visual media needs of the Brisbane Indigenous community, the term media arts adopted in the new millennium with the advancement of digital technology. Uniikup expanded its audio visual production activities with Colourise, an innovative creative consultancy service, staging Colourise and Colourise Festival events, developing and promoting Indigenous community media arts. (Appendix 6.III.) Through Uniikup, praxis has developed located specifically in place and time, evidenced in a collaborative body of work which engages naturalistic inquiry,

for real situations (Gray & Malins, 2004. p. 72). However in this work, inquiry has not preceded place, as is the approach in Western methodologies, where knowledge acquisition defines and supersedes place. The work arises from place, which influences and gives it meaning and impact by way of context, interaction and social construction (Graham, 2006, p. 3); and where, over the course of 23 years, relationships have developed with many people across the community and with those working in performance, visual arts and media production locally, nationally and internationally. As relationship to country is only established through blood, Uniikup/Murriimage has a mandatory policy of exchange and involvement with both Turrbal and Jagera traditional custodians, establishing respectful and diplomatic working relations. These relations are never assumed, therefore new negotiations commence with each project. (Uniikup Productions Ltd. website http://www.colourise.com.au, accessed 1/10/2005, 13/08/2008).

3.2 Narrativising Creative Practice Local intelligence is gathered by way of place, people, form, planning, thought, time, organisation, dreams. The core of the practice is determined by place: a relationship with Turrbal and Jagera countries that honours the custodial ethic (including local laws, codes of conduct), where culture is sustained and maintained through contribution to an Indigenous creative industry, within a dialogic network of peers. All activity includes observation and adherence to family and community obligations; and as practiced in Uniikup, production of the media arts project is developed collaboratively. Time and space are in us. If time, in at least one of its forms, is like an arrow, then Place is like the calibrating mechanism or device of that trajectory.

For human experience Place looms large, providing, sometimes dominating the backdrop and sometimes the foreground as well. The backdrop of place informs and influences judgement and imagination.

People flee from and flee to Place both physically and psychologically. Place is a reference point to guide to and from. Place is a physical point in landscape but also a point in time, an event, an imagining or even a landscape itself. This is demonstrated in the modern sayings ‘The past is another country’, ‘We won’t go there’. (Graham, 2006, p. 8) 36

People: Over the course of an era relationships have developed with many people who work in performance, visual arts, media production. Passing in and out of each other’s lives, this mature, experience-rich network of peers connects at various junctions and relates in multiple ways. Each artist is engaged in particular ways, and at various levels, in media art. Having knowledge of each others work, viewpoints and propensity for collaboration, from which we draw in a creative process, the idea of a new media project was canvassed. Interest in participating in the creative team came from: Mary Graham, Indigenous Philosopher and Cultural Consultant John Graham, Indigenous writer and poet Carl Fisher, Camera, Sound recording and Editing, Murriimage/Uniikup Dr. Keith Armstrong, Hybrid, Multimedia Artist, Embodied Media Andrew Hill, Indigenous Co-Interactive Media Artist, Uniikup Rebecca Pitt, Indigenous Animation Artist Lawrence English, Sound Artist, Room 40 Dr. Leah King-Smith, Indigenous Photo-media Artist Duncan King-Smith, Sound Artist Jenny Fraser, Indigenous New Media Artist, CyberTribe Archie Moore, Indigenous Visual and New Media Artist Dr. Janice Peacock, Indigenous Visual Artist – installation Tamara Whyte, Indigenous Writer, Performer and Photographer David Peacock, Indigenous Landscape Photographer Richelle Spence, New Media Artist and Live Art Performer. Karen Batten, Visual and New media Artist

All the Indigenous artists have contributed (some significantly) in their particular fields, to media arts developments. They are known within various areas of the local Indigenous community and are more than familiar with Indigenous philosophical concepts. Principal artists, Keith Armstrong, Leah King-Smith and Jenny Fraser, also mentor some artists, to share new media skills. Janice Peacock holds workshops for new artists on creating installation art. Andrew Hill is the project web site Administrator assisted by Christine Peacock (creative team details at Appendix 6.V).

Initially, the creative process took the form of a spiral of collaborative creactivity revolving in a sphere of politic intent, within which three distinct revolutions occurred. The first and second revolution led to a third which is the creative project of the study, a work-in-progress titled site\sight\cite. Details of the creative project development in the first and second revolutions, 3.2.1 and 3.2.2, (Appendix 6.VI) relate vital elements of the praxis and 37

process. The exegesis now focuses upon the outcome, the creative project - the third revolution.

3.3 Narrativising the Creative Project - The Third Revolution Dreams appearing at junctures in technicolour shrouded with mystery, sneak in at night to script the subconscious into the reality that is evading consciousness.

Celebrated Aboriginal musician Archie Roach, on the track Liyarn Ngarn (in the Yawuru language of the West Kimberly region around Broome in Australia's far North West, means "Coming Together of the Spirit" (http://www.antar.org.au/liyarn_ngarn) from the album Journey, sings of a time for gathering. This could easily have been the sound track of the dream: where the forest meets the plains, the desert meets the rain, where the river meets the sea, and you and me, you and me. Liyarn Ngarn, we’ve got to make a start, cause we’ve been too long apart, and mend all these broken hearts. The time has come to be one. Liyarn Ngarn, we have to make a start, to begin to celebrate life and all that it means and we must not be afraid to live our dreams. Come together everyone where the moon meets the sun. Liyarn Ngarn, we’ve got to make a start, cause we’ve been too far apart. Liyarn Ngarn, Liyan Ngarn, mend all these broken hearts. Liyarn Ngarn.

Liyarn Ngarn, written by Archie Roach (Mushroom Music Publishing), reprinted with kind permission.

In the dream a ceremony is taking place. On the horizon is the silhouette of a huge, wide native fig tree veiled with an aura of purple mist that streams out from its leaves and boughs into the ground, suffuse like evening and subdued like morning light. Fires are lit in steel drums and children, young with older, play in a large clearing, moving in and out of the smoke. Families are moving together, casually criss-crossing the clearing to where they are accommodated in small buildings, as elders sit comfortably in big lounge chairs on the veranda of a large, wooden building, overlooking the land; quiet sounds of the atmosphere melding with human voices. Various business is

being dealt with in both women’s and men’s circles, creating the circumstances for self-reflection, to induce change. People are gathering to take part in the ceremony, introducing themselves or refreshing their relationship to land and each other, through that place; lining up inside the big old building in a large open room adjoined to the veranda as others sit and watch or move about. The people are from various countries within and without this continent. Introductions and greetings are simple and sincere, a citizenship ceremony without pomp or formality.

The dream affirmed conclusively that it is indeed place, embraced by a custodian ethic, which creates the dialogue and interaction/events within it, transforming human consciousness and using art/aesthetics, as an element, a symbol, a tool within this process.

Consequently, site\sight\cite emerges as the Masters by Research Creative Project, through creactivity culminating from dialogue, interactions/events, existing works of artists within the Indigenous community of Brisbane, taking place over an era, and formed more recently, over three years. The team of collaborative artists participating in the project understand and uphold a custodian ethic in relation to the work they produce and this place. The work is both symbolic of the continuous transformation of human consciousness in and about this place, and a manifestation of the “transformative dynamics of growth”. 3

Site\sight\cite is a work-in-progress, the Masters creative project and its exegesis initiated to assist formal development of relations between the traditional custodians of the Brisbane area and all artists of the creative team. It is a prerequisite to establishing negotiations for the proposed development of a website sscIT.com and an interactive, new media installation work.

3 Willis, Bob, 1990. “A Tale of Three Logics”, Unpublished Paper, quoted in Graham, 2006, p. 7)

3.3.1 Dialogue as central to praxis Throughout the project, focus groups around particular themes are used to explore and share knowledge and information from which we draw in a creative process. Themes include: “Rules of Engagement” (between people from an Indigenous perspective) and “Conflict Management”, a seminar given by Indigenous elder Mary Graham 2006; “Place and Relationship to Place” in the book Story About Feeling, by Bill Neidjie 1989; “Aboriginal Sovereignty” in the book Sovereign Subjects, edited by Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 2007; “New Media and Philosophical Content” in the paper, Negotiating Meaning: The Dialogic Imagination in Electronic Art, by Eduardo Kac; “Significance of Place” in A Discourse on a Proposed Aboriginal Research Methodology, by Mary Graham; “Indigenous Philosophical Concepts” in Some thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal World Views, by Mary Graham; “Methodology” in “Ways of Knowing, Ways of Being and Ways of Doing: developing a theoretical framework and methods of Indigenous re-search and Indigenist research”, a paper, and Please knock before you enter, a publication, by Karen Martin; “Dialogical Practice” A Critical Framework for Dialogical Practice in the book Conversation Pieces, by Grant H.Kester.

Walking country ceremonies are also conducted (video recorded for future use) to honour the traditional custodians, share respect for and relatedness with place, and learn, exchange knowledge, information and ideas. (Appendix 6.VII) This activity is essential to processes of Indigenous knowing, being and doing.

In his publication Material Thinking, Carter says of the creative process: Material thinking occurs in the making of works of art. It happens when the artist dares to ask the simple but far-reaching questions What matters? What is the material of thought? To ask these questions is to embark on an intellectual adventure peculiar to the making process. (2004, p. XI )

These questions take precedence and receive multiple answers. What matters for Creative Team artists, whose access to audiences is limited due to the preferential treatment given to market driven selection processes at arts

funding agencies and at exhibition venues, is that the work received an audience and was accessible for a period long enough to impact upon local, national and international populations; making far away, close at hand. What matters, in terms of the outcome of the project, is that the moment is seized to express as lucidly and inspirationally as possible, Indigenous philosophies that contribute to recognition of sovereignty through modernisation of Australian culture in regard to land, law, governance, relationships between populations, economy; and a contribution toward the overall improved axiology of Australian society.

Creative Team member, Photographer, Performer and Writer Tamara Whyte, considered the project needed to be designed to accommodate change, reflecting the “transformative dynamics of growth”. The way to materialise this thought and to address what mattered was suggested by Creative Team member, New Media Artist and Curator Jenny Fraser - the prospect of producing a website.

The walking country ceremonies reveal there is a lot that can be done to take us beyond the obvious commentary on the Indigenous social and political position, providing the creative team with agency to make an historical, present and future perspective on the country. Walking the country gives both a sense of power and belonging as well as the desire to be creative in a deeper, more positive way. Despite all the concrete and bitumen, Turrbal - Jagera are still strong and that presence can be felt when walking country. That awareness also produces a strong sense of, and desire for, creactivity; i.e. representing/reflecting the contemporary Indigenous situation with thinking and looking back, around and forward together.

3.3.2 Reconstructing Place

The site\sight\cite project is an on-line guided tour, a virtual city walk to places in the metropolis of Brisbane on Turrbal - Jagera country that are contemporary significant sites to Indigenous people. Complete with Global Positioning System (GPS) directory of places, the tour travels between and to: Anzac Square, City Hall, Parliament House, Magistrate’s Court and Police 41

Headquarters in the city, and onto Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, St. Mary’s Church, passing through an interactive new media installation physically located in a Marquee at Musgrave Park South Brisbane. The tour ends on-line at a virtual cross road.

The traveller, guided through the city landscape by Indigenous eyes, experiences history, custodial ethics and contemporary culture in an ancient land. Place = Dreaming - Multiple Places = Multiple Dreamings = Multiple Laws = Multiple Logics = Multiple Truths ... the transformative dynamics of growth - materialising from the sphere of interaction initiated by the collaborative team of artists. Site\sight\cite creates the past, present and future at familiar local sites through imagination, memory and image, cerebrally liberating land and people from the constraints of the social and cultural grid imposed by colonial occupation. Indigenous art, artists and culture is seriously devalued under this constraint, as articulated by Carter: In a culture dominated by the lust to neutralise the unpredictable difference of what is local, creative and true to its material circumstance, and to serve it up in the homogenous format of information for consumers, they find that their social and cultural function dangerously dematerialises. (Carter, 2004 p. XI)

Touring on-line the Brisbane metropolitan landscape, skipping from past to present and back to the future in an Indigenous created virtual environment is an act which is realised by thought. Bakhtin (1993, p. 3) asserts that, Every thought along with its content is an act or deed that I perform – my own individually answerable act or deed. My whole life is a single complex act or deed that I perform; I act, i.e. perform acts, with my whole life and every particular act and lived experience is a constituent moment of my life – of the continuous performing of acts.

In Bakhtin’s (1993, pp. 1-2) concept of “being as event”, he maintains that, “The act is truly real (it participates in once-occurrent being as event) only in its entirety. It is an actual living participant in the on-going event of being”. Also, in relation to the concept of being as event, Bakhtin (1993, p. 15) considers that, “Empathising actualises something that did not exist either in the object of empathising or in myself, prior to the act of empathising and

through this actualised something, Being as Event is enriched (that is it does not remain equal to itself).” Site\sight\cite utilises this concept as a method, by means of a previous work of each artist which initiates dialogue with each place, between each other, between each place and the public, and amongst the public. The project commences with the artists’ works/images, symbolising a contemporary relationship with each place on the tour-site, projected onto the buildings currently located there. These relatively recently constructed places are Australian social and cultural icons; institutions symbolic of colonialism which impact immensely upon the daily lives of Indigenous people and lands. These places, representing the pivot of Western ontology and epistemology embodied in the Australian social and political system, constantly tear at the fabric of Aboriginal sovereignty.

Through an empathy with its cultural icons, the public is induced to review its relationship with these places as the creactivity of the artists, drawing upon historic Indigenous relationships to place and contemporary socio-political perspectives, conveys unconscious social, moral and ethical contradictions to the observer. In this way a particular dialogue occurs between the place reconstructed by the artists and the public, where the meaning cannot be separated from the actual contexts in which these icons have emerged. Indeed, interaction and relationship with these sites is dialogic, embedded in social life, and therefore cannot be viewed or examined independently (Lahteenmaki, 1998, p. 77).

In site\sight\cite the political, spiritual and intellectual interaction occurring is lucidly part of the whole context of social exchange between coloniser and Aboriginal society. Bakhtin (1993, p. 15) relates the act of empathy to objectifying, saying that they interpenetrate each other, and explains that, “It is not the object that unexpectedly takes possession of me as the passive one. It is I who empathise actively into the object; empathising is my act, and only that constitutes its productiveness and newness”.

Engaging age old, tried and tested Indigenous philosophies to seek solutions, the site\sight\cite project can persuade thought and dialogue about the politics of climate change problems, boundary and resource wars, economic disasters and the social welfare poverty of modernity. The project also presents for dialogue what Peter Yu, Chair of the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance describes as, a dysfunctional relationship existing between Indigenous people and governments, a continuation of a history of colonial exploitation that leaves genuine efforts in sustainable nation building in limbo. Peter Yu, (2007, p. 1) in a paper “Growing the Alliance”, addressed to the Caring For Country, Second National Indigenous Land and Sea Management Conference, also states: I believe quite profoundly that this current epoch is a watershed period for the Australian nation of which the position of the “first peoples” of this country has a defining place both symbolically and in practical economic, social, political and cultural terms. Never in our shared history have we seen such enormous opportunities so sharply contrasted with such fearful apocalyptic threats. We, as a nation, will soon be forced to make decisions on how full or how empty the glass is going to be for our children and their children. How to manage lands, natural resources and our fragile eco systems in the face of inevitable climate change, demographic change and increasing integration into the global economy.

Site\sight\cite picks up where the earlier creative project proposal, “place building; building place”, left off (Appendix 6.VI(ii).) - “each action thought or skill mastered and rendered operative becoming the founding cause of what will be, subsequent to the action of lineal time and effect” (King-Boyes, 1977, p. 44).

3.4 site\sight\cite The project entails two stages: Stage I involves only the Masters by Research Creative Project which is therefore a work-in-progress. Stage I is when the potential of the project is explored and concept development incubated. Principal artists are listed for each place at Stage I with other artists also engaged at Stage II. Stage II activates specific research on each place by each principal artist, master script and technical plans and flow charts for the construction of www.sscIT.com and production of artists’ works for each place on the web site. 44

My role as co-ordinator of the site\sight\cite project and the principal artist for two places, dEVOLUTION (City Hall) and GOvERN (parliament house) involves collaboration with the Creative Team, in particular Site Administrator Andrew Hill, and visual/new media artists, Karen Batten and (at Stage II) Rebekka Pitt (both QUT graduates). The project is as collaborative as each artist chooses. Mary Graham is the principal cultural consultant for the entire project.

I worked closely with Andrew Hill at Stage I, on construction of the preliminary website where the project concept and ideas for each place on the tour-site are housed for access by Masters examiners (Appendix 6.II) and later by funding agencies. Importantly, the preliminary website communicates the concept and artists ideas for negotiation with, and input of local native title claimants as part of the collaborative process. (Basic protocols for the Creative Team are set out in Appendix 6.VII.) I also collaborate in particular with Keith Armstrong and Jenny Fraser with regard to identifying and applying for funds to produce the project; and Jenny Fraser has the experience and skills to take a curatorial role at Stage II.

3.4.1 Stage I The Creative Project is housed in the Uniikup Productions Ltd. website domain www.colourise.com.au in a tag titled SITE_SIGHT_CITE with the link site_sight_cite. Site\sight\cite is a preliminary website developed specifically for the purpose of concept development of the creative project. The concept of each place on the proposed tour-site stems from previous works (and other images) of the creative team. These works formed the basis of the relationship to the site/theme/philosophical concept in each place, which is outlined on the preliminary website.

The preliminary website provides the framework for the creative project site\sight\cite with artist statements and images conveying an impression of the intention and treatment of each place. Artists use personal equipment and access is provided to technological resources available through both QUT and

Indigenous community not-for-profit media arts organisation Uniikup Productions Ltd. All aspects of the Creative Project are detailed on the preliminary website, viewed in conjunction with the exegesis. 3.4.2 Stage II Construction of the website www.sscIT.com.au and production of places by the artists commences after full and successful negotiations with traditional custodians. Stage II involves detailed research on and full development of each place by the creative team. Recruitment of Indigenous trainees from the Jagera and Turrbal families to learn communication media and design skills and consider further education in this area is a feature of negotiations with traditional custodians.

Principal artists are engaged at this stage and other artists also join the creative team at Stage II, including Inkahoots Design for the construction of the website. During work with Uniikup Productions a long relationship developed with Brisbane company Inkahoots Design. Inkahoots produced the organisation’s logos, publicity for media productions and events, and website. The design and sophistication of the Inkahoots website, http://www.inkahoots.com.au/, is testimony to the suitability of its engagement with this project.

Sukhdev Sandhu’s www.nighthaunts.org.uk/, commissioned by Artangel U.K., where site visitors take a nocturnal journey “chronicling the way black and Asian writers have re-imagined the city since 1970, in Sandhu’s book London Calling (2003), is a model upon which the construction of the sscIT website is styled: The Night Haunts website is described by designer Ian Budden as “a virtual landscape that reflects the physicality of Sandhu’s experiences. The site involves a method of programming which we call “techtonic animation”, using a greatly enlarged version of the pixel, the fundamental building block of internet technology”. The visual and sonic textures are in constant flux, randomly triggered so that each experience of the site is unique. (Tags, “About the Nighthaunts” and “Sukhdev Sandhu” www.nighthaunts.org.uk/.)

Sites that include philosophical concepts within the work of the new media artists are http://www.ndnnrkey.net/ supporting an on-line program of Native Canadian new media artists and http://www.horizonzero.ca/ (2002 – 04): a multimedia Web magazine about digital art and culture in Canada - a bilingual virtual space devoted to creativity and critical ideas in the new media canon.

The work archived and currently supported at these sites contains remarkable examples of the ways that Indigenous people are embracing new media to communicate ways of knowing, being and doing and will be included in the research of production methodologies at Stage II for the construction of www.sscIT.com.

The website www.sscIT.com.au is launched as part of Uniikup Productions Ltd. Colourise Festival 2011 - collaborators. Colourise Festival (www.colourise.com.au) will stage live art event Live First (like avatars inhabiting the advanced, interactive internet virtual world of SL (Second Life, http://secondlife.com/) performing a guided tour where tourists walk through Turrbal country visiting the places on the website and ending at Contested Space in Musgrave Park, South Brisbane. The performers, titled Gahrr (breath or spirit, the nearest meaning to creativity in Turrbal language) - utilising visual art, music, voice, craft, technology - create interactive scenarios at each place drawn, in collaboration, from the artists’ content on the website. The live art event reinforces the intention of the site\sight\cite project, publicises the website and draws the audience to the Contested Space interactive new media installation. Live First is also captured, by wireless broadcasting technology, on the website where guided tour times and places can be publicised. The opportunity to project images at the places as a backdrop to performances is also explored. The http://www.eskyiu.com/ChinatownWORK2006/film.html provides an example of work in this field.

Site\sight\cite is a holistic project creating an Indigenous corroboree ceremony on the Brisbane cultural and virtual landscape. It revitalises, re-educates, introduces Indigenous perspectives, traditions, history, culture, knowledge, arts, social relationships, spirituality and politics engaging many people, skills 47

and aesthetics in a contemporary context in present time. It activates Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing arising from a contemporary urban environment, and demonstrates the transformative dynamics of growth.

How interactive new media art can effectively

communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts.

4. ANALYSIS

To the Aboriginal mindset phenomena are received and if there is an observation it is to "behold" or "regardez". The Law is creator, informer and guide – the world reveals itself to us and to itself - we don't "discover" anything (Graham, 2006, p 8).

The notion of Place as a method of research, or as a possible theory, is a way of seeing and a form of knowing that employs historical knowledge, reflexive reasoning, and dialectic awareness to give people some tools to realise new potentials for the emancipation and understanding of dislocated individuals and collectives today. By refining people's thinking abilities and moral sensibilities, Place method hopes to equip individuals with a new consciousness of how to approach both a dilemma and/or a method of inquiry; to see what must be done about it and how to do it. But it could also help to restore the value and position of Place to the Indigenous mindset and ethical consideration. This consciousness might help them determine what their best interests should be and lessen the victimisation that people impose on themselves from within or that is forced upon them from outside. (Graham, 2006, p 9 and Sohng, 1995, in Graham 2006, p 9)

4.1 Relationship to place and community, alongside peers. The work of Uniikup/Murriimage commenced in Brisbane in 1985 as part of an objective to address self-determination through local community social and economic development programs which include media, legal, health, education, childcare, stolen generation, youth and cultural, heritage and political advocacy services. The site\sight\cite project expands upon this objective addressing: lawful observation and support for reinstatement of traditional custodian rights, relations and cultural heritage; business development and partnerships, and sovereign rights under international law. Through the collaboration of the creative team, as a peer group of artists living in the same place and community at the same time, the site\sight\cite project continues and diversifies praxis developed in Uniikup/Murriimage over 23 years. (Appendix 6.VIII.)

The process of creactivity, specifically in the collaborative work of the sight\site\cite creative team, addresses the points raised in the opening quote; and projects undertaken in my praxis are also framed to “overcome the biases of “universalism” in Western methods of Inquiry, and in the action of Inquiry itself, to promote multiple knowledge systems” (Graham, 2006, p. 2). Knowledge in Western society appears to be regarded as a quest. Place methodology locates the study in understanding i.e. knowledge that comes from under the feet where one stands, rather than from speculation that constructs universal or mega narratives.

The role I play is firstly that of a catalyst and in the process of my arts praxis, a co-ordinator (in western film and television production terms, a director). This role contributes my particular talents as an observer of people and place, and the intermediary between the collaborative creative team and the project concept. This role comes to fruition again in the creative project, but in a different manner due to the change from audio visual production to multiple new media technologies. In this Masters by Practice-Led Research study I originally sought to further develop aspects of my skills in audio visual production or festival artistic direction, however I resisted the temptation to stay within my comfort zone, deciding to upgrade and begin to apply the expertise I had to new mediums in this digital era, with the advantage of increasing communication of Indigenous philosophy and expanding our ways of knowing, being, doing.

I consequently contacted artists with whom I had worked during the past 23 years, knowing that the basis for those relationships would form the foundation for a project which could utilise new media to our great advantage. The collaboration of this creative team grounds the project in place and connects a network allowing optimum community involvement and engagement as well as national and international interaction. A Project Information Kit distributed to Creative team members, providing background and contextual information on the site\sight\cite project, assisted communication and progression. (Appendix 6.IX)

The fresh experience of working with new media has also expanded the spectrum of people with whom I collaborate, in particular by generation. Young Indigenous people are embracing communication through new technologies with optimism and excitement. Working on the creative project preliminary website with Andrew Hill, a young, self taught information technologies and new media artist, and with Tamara Whyte a young Indigenous photographer and performer, affirms my belief in the ways in which Indigenous people learn from each other, sharing knowledge and our lives in an environment which is uncompetitive, supporting commitment to maintaining and revival of social values and practices. It is a privilege to be working in collaboration with Leah King Smith, Jenny Fraser, Archie Moore and Janice Peacock whose works are the exemplars of excellence and dynamic and dimensional communication reached by Indigenous artists. Working with young Australian artists, Richelle Spence and Karen Batten and with the internationally renowned Keith Armstrong adds to both the creative experience but more importantly, in accord with the objectives of the project, creates a unique and progressive social, political and cultural interchange. Moreover, plural generational inclusiveness and respect is a factor of Indigenous social organisation, adding a dimension to the creative process which is valuable to the well being of social and political relations, productivity and cultural longevity.

Whilst collaboration and creactivity within the Brisbane community between Indigenous peers is a continuation of my arts praxis, within the scope of a new media project applied specifically to Indigenous philosophical concepts developed by Mary Graham and research methodologies prescribed by Karen Martin, it is an immensely enriched and rewarding intellectual, cultural and spiritual challenge.

4.2 Critical Interpretation of Creative Project The creative project, site\sight\cite is in two stages. This critical interpretation is of Stage I, the concept development as detailed in the preliminary website site_sight_cite, housed in the www.colourise.com.au website. The production

of the on-line work, www.sscIT.com at Stage II, creates concrete human activity in an interactive and participative manner amongst the creative team.

Binary consideration is activated when visiting the proposed website, positing and reviewing the concept of relationship to land and between people, at sites which constitute places where the duality and duelist reality of Indigenous and coloniser society are at play. In an era of environmental and economic crisis consideration of such duality can contribute to the growing acknowledgement of the social need for a moral and critical philosophy in Australia that sheds light on “the current mechanisms of domination, and projects the possibility of a society which is better suited to satisfy the legitimate needs and desires of human beings” (Gardiner, 2000).

An Indigenous perspective on this contribution to society comes from Poka Laenui, a Hawaiian scholar who regards “re-evaluation of the political, social and economic, and judicial structures themselves and the development, if appropriate, of new structures that can hold and house the values and aspirations of the colonised people” as one of the phases of decolonisation. These phases Laenui identifies as rediscovery and recovery, mourning, dreaming, commitment and action and “contain the choices of the people and not of external sources such as government or non-government agencies” (Laenui, in Martin, 2008, p. 54).

The site\sight\cite project creates a structure to hold and house a dialogue between Indigenous artists communicating perspectives from within the context of Indigenous society, and the observer who stands within the context and perspectives of the dominant society. It is a dialogue meant to create a sense of answerability on the part of the observer, stimulating debate about the content of the work and accustoming non-Indigenous people to the underpinning philosophy of Indigenous culture and society. The proposed interactive installation segment, Contested Space, where form and content fuse with the enactment of a ceremonial boxing tournament offering a physical meeting place for conflicting world views, serves as a catalyst for social discourse. Forums facilitated, with concrete rules of engagement at a

Ch@place on the website, also take the discourse and dialogue into an interactive sphere.

The creative project is liberated from the restraints of Western creative industry’s ideals, whereby the worth of a product is gauged by both its ability to seduce the observer, and its perceived monetary value as a consumable object or experience. Rather, the site\sight\cite creative project does not unexpectedly take possession of the observer as the passive one, but the observer actively empathies with each place, as suggested by Bakhtin in The Philosophy of the Act (1995 p.15), through the interactivity and installation elements of the work, an act which constitutes its dialogic productiveness and contribution to knowledge.

Importantly the answerability element of the creative project prevents the observer losing their uniqueness and sense of being through this empathy, and is enriched by its complexity, inducing processes of aesthetic contemplation and objectification of the work. The shared relationship to each place, albeit within different historic and social contexts, produces a reciprocal relationship between the content of the work and contemplation by the observer at each place on the site. (Bakhtin, 1993.) The philosopher Edward S. Casey, cited by Marcia Langton in “Sacred Geography” (2005 p.134) offers the view that “place far from being something singular, is something general, perhaps even universal’ and that human beings “are ineluctably place-bound” and “never without emplaced experiences.” “A given place” he says “takes on the qualities of its occupants, reflecting those qualities in its own constitution and description and expressing them in occurrence as an event.” The site\sight\cite project creates a site where comparative views come into play, as place boundaries are made visible within the context of dual concepts at the interface of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian social relations.

Further to both Mary Graham’s and Edward S. Casey’s views about relationship to place, I recently had the need to turn to homeopathy to cure a condition caused by an overload of stress, created by various events over the period of my entire life (being). It was an exceptional revelation to perceive

my body as a site, a place, where data is stored that impacts upon my physical, mental and spiritual well-being resulting in a medically unexplainable malady; and retrospectively contemplating the stress caused by those events, to effectively treat the conflict/disease/condition. Applying the same homeopathic approach which revealed the nature of and cure for my malady, the site\sight\cite project creates a form of collective healing, in that the events afflicting place, like those afflicting the body, create social, psychological and spiritual disease, which are addressed by a process of concrete human creactivity in an interactive and participative manner. Social stress accumulated over a period of more than 220 years in this country, is revealed at specific sites through the electronic manipulation of sight and the citation of Indigenous perspectives on the social, psychological and spiritual disease stored there, afflicting not only Indigenous people but the whole of society.

Marcia Langton (2005 p. 135) takes this concept further when she states in “Sacred Geography”: “The meanings of social responsibility – the bonds of being related to one another – are expressed through the rituals and ideas of the sacred landscape, through symbols of the past and present (the living and the dead) embodied in particular places. These places are themselves part of the fabric of relatedness … “ The significance and sacredness of place remains a factor of relationship to land in the contemporary lives of Indigenous people, making the site\sight\cite project an event which through place, expresses Indigenous philosophy and is a contributing catalyst in the evolution of Australian society.

Acquiescing the position that there exists a dual social, political, cultural, spiritual context between Indigenous and colonial Australia, a national search of the internet for web sites demonstrates a one dimensional approach to Indigenous society’s knowledge, culture and values. Web sites deal specifically with Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or Indigenous social status relative to government policy and official accounts of history, locate us primarily in the categories of cultural tourism, art, welfare and social problem, and treat Indigenous knowledge, beliefs and practices as a type of anthropological curiosity. Indigenous controlled sites tend also to sit within

these categories, a sign of economic and social domination. Sites supporting the work of contemporary, individual Indigenous artists offer a challenge to the status quo, with comments on all aspects of life and conditions under a colonial regime, expressed by various forms of social realism.

The site\sight\cite project, in communicating the philosophical concept relationship to land and between people by focusing on place, reveals the context and extent of Indigenous and Australian social duality; and extends both the Indigenous presence in current new media and internet work and contemporary Indigenous art and cultural practices. The multiplicity of arts practices embodied in the creative team – new media art including photo-shop and flash animation, photo-media, photography, performance, poetry, visual, installation art, craft, live art, video and sound/music production - creates a contemporary form of collaborative practice traditionally assigned to Indigenous ceremonies and events. While academic publications, with the restrictions presented by notation systems, limit the type, scope and degree of communication, applying the scope of new media to discourse and dialogue unfolds potentialities which can unleash development, expanding growth and opportunity to create vast public spheres of interaction. Continuing a tradition of Indigenous collaborative practices and pursuing a commitment to new media development addresses Aboriginal curator Djon Mundine’s tongue in cheek question, “If a group of Aboriginal artists meet in a forest and no white Western academic is present, did it still happen and does it have relevance?” (Mundine, 2006, p. 61). The answer is yes brother, come and join us, it’s the place to be!

Interactive web sites are primarily artist based works found mainly by visiting on-line arts centres like Rhizome, Turbulence and ARS Electronica which support an on-line program of new media artists’ works that highlight science and technology, and offer new media critical discourse and competitions to assist artists with development of their ideas and skills. These sites also keep artists networked and up to date on production, use of new technologies and other related issues. Artists work on themes, but there is no specific collaboration of artists to interactively communicate a philosophic concept

within a political, social, cultural, historical context and locate it in specific places. Exceptions to these sites are included in part 3, at page 46, in the discussion on the creation of sscIT in Stage II of the creative project.

Karen Martin refers to “Stories of relatedness because one of the main ways we have kept our knowledge is through sharing Stories.” Karen identifies some as “very very old coming from the Ancestors and related to story places and sacred sites … where they have left their power”, warning that “only a few People really know about these Stories, how to look after them and how to pass them on”; then some Stories “that happen only once, or a few times like cyclones or fires or other things” which “get built into what is now so that we don’t forget”; and others which “happen all the time, but Bama have ways to keep the Stories amongst us and to know how to fit them into this relatedness” (Martin, 2008, pp. 108, 114). The site\sight\cite project is a place on the internet to meet, exchange, enjoy, discuss and dispute new ideas within narratives specifically related to land and place; with the duality of cultures and societies located in those places extending interest beyond local and national boundaries. The use of internet sites addresses what Daes (2002, p. 7, in Martin, 2008, p. 54) describes as Indigenous people “rebuilding old alliances and kinships across borders, and the discovery of like-minded peoples in other parts of the world.” The project research at Stage II includes not only communication of the issues and context addressed at each place, but appropriate new media technologies and software to support expression and effective access to the site; and interpreter software to cross language barriers.

In their Artworks publication, Place, Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar provide a brief history on “a subject that has engaged a great many people for centuries”. Reference is made to Aristotle, Book IV, The Physics, who asks the question “What is place?” and concludes “we have inherited nothing from previous thinkers, whether in the way of a statement of difficulties or of a solution” (Dean and Millar, 2005, p. 12).

Dean and Millar go on to examine how in the Dark and Middle Ages land transformed to landscape through inhabitation or enclosure, clearance or cultivation; and the human concept of land was transfigured by maps, paintings or written accounts. An Indigenous perspective on this social development, at the heart of concepts of civilisation, is that Western society has projected itself onto the landscape as a means of belonging and ownership, further detaching human relationship with land through the introduction of terms as impersonal as infinite “space”, or “sites” subdividing land into specific utilitarian locations for real estate speculators. Also, place as associated with God, in Hebrew (Makom) and Christian beliefs, i.e. encompassing all things but not encompassed by anything, is attributed value within a hierarchal social order. The exchange on the subject of place between Europe’s artists and philosophers alike, Blake, Kant, Descartes, Newton, Constable, Heidegger (Dean and Millar, 2005, pp. 13, 15, 16), continues today as though land as place is there to be interminably dissected, cannibalised, analysed, utilised and reinvented.

The present exchange on the subject of place reveals a dividing principle between Indigenous and western perspectives, made apparent in Australia. Whilst the dominant society projects an identity and reality onto land to create place - the political machinations and modernist dreams of colonisers who came to exploit its resources (Okome, 2002, p. 318) - the other, by honouring the primal origins of human blood in place, seeks to protect and manage land as a sacred part of being, and observe natural law - recounted as the Dreamtime or Dreaming - to engender the full potential for a harmonious and provident social system.

There is nowhere this is more apparent than in the art forms and works created by Indigenous artists in Australia. Indeed, the work of some Indigenous visual artists would seem to accord with an observation by Julia Kristiva commenting on creative endeavour in France: “… the genius of the French people is rooted in the links they make between popular passions and the dynamics of intellectual tensions” (Kristiva, 1996). The genius here is rooted in Aboriginal people’s impassioned and profound philosophy of

relationship to land, and its dynamic representation. Depicted by Aboriginal artists, it is “the birds eye view and the abbreviated cartographic representation of landscapes whose places and species are familiar and familial” (Langton, 2005, p. 131). It is this genius which draws the attraction of the global art market.

Whatever the truth, reality/fact or spirit of these matters in relation to the creative project, however, experience and maturity tells me we can no more master its observation than we can cease to be part of the world by knowing, being and by what we do.

Revolutionaries, artists, and seers are content to be objective, merely objective: they know that desire clasps life in its powerfully productive embrace, and reproduces it in a way that is all the more intense because it has few needs. And never mind those who believe that this is very easy to say, or that it is the sort of idea to be found in books. Deleuze G. & Guattari F. (http://mythosandlogos.com/Deleuze.html accessed 12/3/09)

4.3 Outcomes of the Study. The research question “How interactive new media art can effectively communicate an Indigenous philosophical concept” is answered by concept development of the creative project in relation to the study of the Indigenous philosophical concept. The success or otherwise of this communication, “does interactive new media art etc.” is addressed at Stage II of the creative project, when the website sscIT is produced.

Dividing the site\sight\cite project into two distinct stages is a response to the relational methodologies of place and the process of knowing, being, and doing as proffered by Indigenous scholars Mary Graham and Karen Martin. These methodologies inform the process of the study, whereby understanding and deciphering the creative project arise from a context; and responsible and reciprocal decisions can be made with regard to its development.

The concept development in Stage I reveals the calibre of artists willing to engage with such a project; commitment to the protocols embedded in the

philosophy and focus of the project - relationship to land and relationship between people; allows time to be gauged for the depth of research and organisation required to create the sscIT website; aligns the realities of contemporary, every day Indigenous social, political and spiritual life with the creative project; and contributes to opportunities of advancing the technological skills base, capacity and economic development of the Brisbane Indigenous community. As a concept development the project is presented in Stage I in its raw state so that it can be shaped and developed by the evolving dialogue of collaboration in Stage II. Design and structure are therefore absent, substituted by framework and suggestion. This rawness is a process of Indigenous cultural practice at play. Most importantly, the preliminary website supports clear lines of communication and networking in negotiations with traditional custodians/owners, the community at large, potential funding resources, and other interested parties. It is also a creative and effective tool for communication between the creative team and for others who join the team at a later date.

The project acts as another catalyst in the modernisation of colonial attitudes toward all people of the Asia Pacific region. Prior to the geopolitical borders invented by colonialism in a bid by Great Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and Spain to carve up countries in the Indian and Pacfic oceans to expand their empires (Shnukal, 2004, p. 36), the sea was “a means of communication and not a prohibitive defense barrier” and the exchange of knowledge and ideas, involving relevant ceremony and diplomacy, was part of a vast and intricate trading system (Battersby, 2004, p. 15). The project seeks to contribute to the long term restoration of the status of Australian Indigenous people within this region, with a national identity no less recognised than the peoples of Nu Guinea or Indonesia, despite population sizes and the absence of a distinct nation-state. Indeed this restoration could have a positive impact upon the diplomatic relations between Asian and Pacific neighbouring nations, given the latent longevity of relations in the region prior to colonisation and existing cultural similarities.

The matter of arts funding available to progress and complete the project is the topic of a creative team workshop prior to the commencement of Stage II, 59

and likely sources are listed in the Links tag of the Masters creative project, the preliminary website site_sight_cite. The preliminary website is designed to be presented to build the case for sufficient funding to engage artists in research and production, and for hardware and software, that will ensure the success of the site\sight\cite project.

4.4 How Outcomes are applied to, and impact upon, current creative practice. Before the British arrived in Australia in 1788, Aboriginal art was created and curated by ourselves, for ourselves. It was personal, collaborative along set protocols, and event- and site-oriented. It was the coming together of a number of art practitioners curated by one or a small set of their number to reaffirm their relationship to each other, to their society, to the natural world and to history. Over the last 200 years we have lost control and are only now possibly regaining our own statements and history. (Mundine, 2006, p. 57)

The regaining of our own statements and history is part of “new forms of social imagining derived from the interactions between the local and the global” (Okome, 2002, p. 319). Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew (2005), Métis from northern Alberta Canada, preceded his residency as New Media Curator at Urban Sharman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery (to pursue the theme “Storm Spirits: The Cultural Ecology of Aboriginal New Media Art”), with a statement that elucidates a situation peculiar to Aboriginal new media producers and characterises my own experience: While the production apparatus required to create Aboriginal media art often demands close connections with the non-Aboriginal media arts community and dominant technological and media driven culture, Aboriginal history and contemporary society shapes the most significant aspects of the unique story of Aboriginal media art producers. … Aboriginal new media did not emerge as a singular and isolated practice. The history of Aboriginal art presents many instances of disconnection and renegotiation where Aboriginal artists were subjected to the inadequacy of, and lack of understanding within dominant modes of contemporary art in relation to Aboriginal expression. The overall production of Aboriginal artists demonstrates a vision that has not been constrained by divisions of pre-existing and predetermining individual arts disciplines, but one that honours story and strives to make the best match with production methodology – whatever that may require. New media was taken up for expression, when appropriate, by artists working in various other disciplines, but primarily the already interdisciplinary media arts.

Having veered away from video and film production due to the restrictions of television broadcasting programming, new media and the internet presented a place to transfer and further develop Indigenous cultural traditions and contemporary arts praxis. This transformation also occurred when I went from performance to video production, to avoid the restrictions placed upon expression and development by conservative western models of theatre and performance. There is also the added advantage whereby the increasing use of new technologies, in particular the internet, creates new audiences of variable demographics, an important aspect when the project aims to accustom populations to new ways of knowing, being and doing.

The concept development, Stage I, engaged many aspects of my existing creative practice but the creative team, and collaboration differed from video production. There is greater freedom and expansion of the scope and degree of communication and expression that arises from the change to new media production; and a broadening of networks of people that comes with increased involvement with the internet and associated new media programs and software. There is also a basic creactivity equation (or assumption) at work whereby with “unfiltered contributions there is greater participatory input and innovative output” (reference unknown).

In his essay “Interactive Art on the Internet” for the publication Mythos Information; Welcome to the Wired World, Eduardo Kac describes at length the great change that has come with new media and the internet: Internet hybrids expose at once the decrepitude of unidirectional and highly centralized forms of distribution of information, such as television, and contribute to expand communicative possibilities that are absolutely unique to this immaterial, unstable, telematic form of artistic action. Hybrids also allow artists to go beyond the creation of on-line pieces that conform to the emerging design and conceptual standards of the Internet, therefore evading what very often could seem repetitive solutions to design exercises. Away from the art market, a new international generation of media artists, often working in collaboration, exhibits the same utopian fury and radical innovation that once characterized the modern "avant-garde" groups. (http://www.ekac.org/articles.html, accessed 26th october 2008)

Kac goes on to say, “The role of the Internet as a provider of voice and memory resonates against its opposite, censorship”, and that “This kind of 61

work is deeply rooted in the idea that art has a social responsibility, and that new media create new forms of social relations.”

The availability and opportunity to employ Ecommerce facilities on the site – e.g. downloading of animations and place artworks; poetry; papers, photography and installations for ipod and other platforms – addresses another critical area of arts praxis, that of marketing and distribution. In this way the internet allows the creative team to become their own business manager in a more immediate way, as opposed to the complications of gaining commissions and exhibition opportunities to have work exposed and to raise funds to produce more projects. It is speculated that business management can also become more creative when incorporated into the production of the work itself, rather than as a separate element, self-regulating the control of commissioning agents or arts funding bodies.

A final comment from Kac in Interactive Art on the Internet, takes us to the place where Stage II of the creative project begins: It foregrounds the immaterial and underscores cultural propositions, placing the aesthetic debate at the core of social transformations. Unique to the postmodernity, it also offers a practical model of decentralized knowledge and power structures, challenging contemporary paradigms of behavior and discourse. The wonderful cultural elements it brings will continue to change our lives, beyond the unidirectional structures that currently give shape to the mediascape. However, as participants in a new phase of social change, facing international conflicts and domestic disputes, we must not lose sight of the dual stand of the Internet. If dominated by corporate agendas, it could become another form of delivery of information parallel to television and radio, forcing "netizens" (i.e., the world, virtually) to conform to rigid patterns of interaction. (http://www.ekac.org/articles.html, accessed 26th october 2008)

Working with new media in my latter years refreshes arts practice and consolidates it more with my life. I am learning new skills, ways of knowing, being and doing creating a philosophy for creactivity whereby: every configuration which presents itself after deliberation, creates the path to the solution to a problem – a mix of logic and intuition. (Reference unknown.)

How interactive new media art can effectively

communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts.

5. REFERENCES ARS Electronica http://www.aec.at/index_de.php accessed 12/12/09. http://www.antar.org.au/liyarn_ngar coming together of the spirit, Liyarn Ngarn, accessed 12/12/09. Bakhtin, M.M. (1993). Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 1st Edition, Slavic Series No.10, Translation and Notes by Vadim Liapunov, Austin: University of Texas Press pp. 1, 2-3, 7, 8-9, 15. Barsky, R. (1998). Chomsky’s Challenge: The Pertinence of Bakhtin’s Theories, Dialogism 1 (1998), p. 105. Battersby, P. (2006). Navigating Boundaries The Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait, Ch 1, Mapping Australia, Eds. Shnukal A., Ramsey G., Nagata Y., Pandanas Books, ANU, Canberra ACT., p 15. Bayles, T. and McMullen, J. (24/10/2008). “Let’s Talk”, Radio 4AAA, 98.9FM Brisbane, talk back radio programme. Bell, J. (2005). Aboriginal Linguist, named QUT Creative Industries, Indigenous Creative Industries Unit KKB704 “Gahrr” from the Turrbal language. Brisbane City Council, Urban Renewal Plan website, accessed 24/10/08, http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE:1074955920:pc=PC_2460# Brisbane City Hall, history, accessed 9/02/2009, http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/projects/heritage/index.cgi?place=600065 “Brisbane City Council demands $200m or City Hall will close”, Brisbane Courier Mail article from AAP, accessed 9/2/09. http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24589768-3102,00.html Carter, P. (1996). The Lie of the Land, Faber and Faber, London, pp xii, 1-2, 17. Carter, P. (2004). Preliminary Matters and Speaking Pantomimes, in Material Thinking, Melbourne University Press, pp. XI, 159.

Carter, P. (2007). Care at a Distance, paper presented as a Plenary at "Landscapes and Learning: a place pedagogies symposium' at Monash University, Gippsland Campus,14/8/07, pp. 6, 8. Chapin, M. (2008). The Meaning of Columbus Day, World Watch, November –December, p 1. http://www.worldwatch.org, accessed 15/10/08. De Costa, R. (2006). Identity, Authority, and the Moral Worlds of Indigenous Petitions, Society for Comparative Study of Society and History. Institute on Globalisation and the Human Condition. McMaster University, p. 689. www.colourise.com.au Uniikup Productions Ltd. website. site_sight_cite tab on colourise website, access point for creative project preliminary site (log-on only). Deuteronomy 7 (New International Version) Deuteronomy 7 Driving Out the Nations, accessed 16/1/09. (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=deuteronomy%207) Dean, T. and Millar, J. (2005). Artworks PLACE, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, pp 12, 13, 15, 16). Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (http://mythosandlogos.com/Deleuze.html accessed 12/3/09) Doxtater, M.G. (2004). Indigenous Knowledge in the Decolonial Era The American Indian Quarterly, 28.3&4, pp. 624, 629. http://www.eskyiu.com/ChinatownWORK2006/film.html, example of screen installation work in public places accessed 13/9/06. Gardiner, M. (2000). Of Woodsheds, Politics and Cultural Theory, Memorial University of Newfoundland, pp. 1-2. http://www.ualberta.ca/~di/csh/csh10/Bakhtin.html, accessed 23/10/2007. Graham, M. (1989-2008). unpublished papers for Aboriginal World View Workshops participants: Underpinnings of Aboriginal Philosophy; Metaphysics - The Dreaming and the Land; Comparative Philosophy - Logic, Sense of Time and Space; Society - Ethics, Social Structures and Social Relations; Law and Governance - Political Structures Protocols - Communication, Decision making and Conflict Management; Culture and Society - the Event and the Imagined Event; History, Politics and Colonialism. Graham, M. (1999). Some Thoughts about the Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal World Views. World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion, 3 (2):

pp 105, 106, 108, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/wov , accessed 10/10/08 (digital copy made for QUT on 01-MAR-06 for Unit KKB004).

Graham, M. (2006). Introduction to Kummara Conceptual Framework, A Discourse on a Proposed Aboriginal Research Methodology, pp 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Brisbane: Kummara Assoc. Inc., Community Research Program, unpublished paper. Graham, M. (2006 (i)). Notes for Discussion: Part 1. Introduction to Reframing Aboriginal Law for Urban Indigenous People, p. 2 [Public Meeting: Jirun Series #1, December 1 2006]) Gray, C. and Malins, J. (2004). Visualising Research: a guide to the research process in art and design. Ashgate Publishing, Hants, England p. 72. Guberman, R.M. ed. (1996). Julia Kristeva Interviews, New York: Columbia University Press, p1. http://www.msu.edu/user/chrenkal/980/SAMURAI.HTM accessed 10/05/07. www.inkahoots.com.au example site of web construction artists for Stage II of Site\Sight\Cite project. http://www.horizonzero.ca/ sample internet site relative to creative project, accessed 13/3/2009. Kac, E. (1995). Interactive Art on the Internet, in Mythos Information; Welcome to the Wired World, Karl Gerbel and Peter Weibel, Editors, Vienna, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 170-179 (http://www.ekac.org/articles.html, accessed 26th october 2008) Keidan, L. & Brine, D. (2008). Fluid Landscapes. Live Culture at Tate Modern. Live Art Development Agency, p.1. http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/projects/live_culture/lada.html, accessed June 3, 2008. Kester, G.H. (1998). Art Activism and Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage. The Alternative Arts Sector and the Imaginary Public, Duke University Press, Durham and London, p. 106. Kester, G.H. (2004). Conversation Pieces, Community + Conversation in Modern Art, A Critical Framework for Dialogical Practice, University of California press, London, pp. 131-137. King-Boyes, M. (1977). Patterns of Aboriginal culture: Then and Now. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, pp 42, 43, 44, 88.

Kristiva, J. (1996). In Julia Kristiva Interviews, Guberman R.M. ed. (1996), New York: Columbia University Press. http://www.msu.edu/user/chrenkal/980/SAMURAI.HTM accessed 10/05/07. Lahteenmaki, M. (1998). On Meaning and Understanding – A Dialogical Approach. Dialogism 1, pp 77, 87, 90. Lamberton, D. (2007). Professor Don Lamberton AO, Information Economics Lecture Series, QUT Creative Industries Faculty, Brisbane, 18 May 2007. Langton, M. (2005). “Sacred Geography” in Aboriginal Religions in Australia, ed. Charlesworth M., Dussart F., Morphy H., Hants: Ashgate, pp. 131, 134, 135. Little Bear, L. (2002). “Jaggered Worldviews Colliding” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, Ed. Battiste, M., UBC Press, Vancouver, p. 77. Liyarn Ngarn, http://www.antar.org.au/liyarn_ngarn, accessed 24/2/09 Lotus Smartsuit Software. Organiser Dictionary. (© 1994, 1999). Lotus Development Corporation, Cambridge, MA, United States of America. Malpas, J.E. (1999). Place and Experience: A philosophical topography. Cambridge University Press. Marcuse, H. (1964). One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul plc. ARK Edition, 1986, pp. 12, 13, Martin, Karen L. (2001). “Ways of Knowing, Ways of Being, Ways of Doing: developing a theoretical framework and methods for Indigenous re-search and Indigenist research”, paper presented at Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies conference, Power of Knowledge and Resonance of Tradition, Canberra, pp. 1, 3. Martin, Karen L. (2008). Please Knock Before You Enter Aboriginal regulation of Outsiders and the implications for researchers. Teneriffe, Queensland: Post Pressed pp. 54, 55, 59, 60, 66, 67, 72-80, 97, 98, 138. Michaels, E. (1987). For a Cultural Future: Francis Jupurrurla Makes TV at Yuendumu. Art and Criticism: Monograph Series. Melbourne, p. 34. Maskegon-Iskwew, A. (2005). Storm Spirits: The Cultural Ecology of Aboriginal New Media Art, http://www.stormspirits.ca/English/curatorial.html, accessed June 2007.

Mithen, S. (1999). The Prehistory of the Mind, the Cognitive Origins of Art and Science, Thames and Hudson, New York; London, pp. 156-157. Monash University Arts, Geography and Environmental Science Honours Program Topics, David B. and Brady L.: archaeology; Haberle S. and Rowe C.: palaeo-biogeography, http://arts.monash.edu.au/ges/ugrad/hons- topics.php) accessed 24/3/09. Mundine, D. (2006). Aboriginal Art is a White Thing, in The Art of Politics The Politics of Art, Fiona Foley Ed. Keeaira Press, Southport, Queensland, pp. 61, 57) http://www.ndnnrkey.net/ sample internet site relative to creative project, accessed 13/3/2009. Okome, O. (2002). Writing the Anxious City: Images of Lagos in Nigerian Home Video Films, in Under Siege: four African Cities, Documenta11_Platform 4, Hatje Cantz Publishers, Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany, pp. 318-19. Peacock, C. (2005). Indigenous Arts Practice, September 16 Guest Lecture, in Forming Knowledge Unit. Performance Studies Dept., Creative Industries Faculty, QUT. Brisbane, p. 1. Peacock, C. (2006). Developing a Unique Australian Screen Culture, QUT Creative Industries, Culture and Creativity Unit, Guest Lecture, Indigenous Perspectives, Week 4, 20/3/2006, 3.00pm – 4.00pm. Progler, Y. (2004). Decolonising Contemporary Education, pp. 2, 3, 6) http://www.islamonline.net/English/family/2004/11/article01.shtml, accessed August 31 2005. Rigney, L. (1997). Internationalisation of an Indigenous Anti-Colonial Cultural Critique of Research Methodologies: A Guide to Indigenous Research Methodology and its Principles. The Journal for Native America Studies, WICAZO sa Review, University of Minnesota Press 14(2):pp110&118). http://rhizome.org/ accessed 12/12/08. Said, E.W. (1992). The Question of Palestine, London: Vintage Edition, p.75. http://secondlife.com/ example of “Avatars” advanced technology employed for interactive internet websites, accessed 12/12/08.

Sohng, S. S. L. (1995). Ph.D. “Participatory Research and Community Organising” A working paper presented at The New Social Movement and Community Organizing Conference, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. November 1-3. Sukhdev, S. and Budden, I. www.nighthaunts.org.uk/, accessed 22/04/08. Serres, M. (2004). Offcuts of Infinity: Artistic Collaboration and Material Thinking in Material Thinking, Ed. P. Carter, Melbourne University Press, p. 181. South Seas Voyaging Accounts http://southseas.nla.gov.au/index_voyaging.html, accessed Feb. 12, 2007. Shnukal, A. and Ramsay, G. (2006). Navigating Boundaries The Asian Diaspora in Torres Strait. Ch 2, Tidal Flows, Eds. Shnukal A., Ramsey G. and Nagata Y., Pandanas Books, ANU, Canberra ACT., p 36. Stephanovic, I.L. (2000). Safeguarding Our Common Future, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Stewart, D. and Mickunas, A. (1990). Jean Paul Satre, Exploring Phenomenology: a guide to the field and its literature, Ohio University Press, p. 73. http://turbulence.org/, sample new media work, accessed 12/12/08 Watson, R. (2008). PhD Creative Writing Candidate, QUT, telephone conversation regarding research paradigms in Western education, 25/10/2008. West , E. (2000). The Japanangka teaching and research paradigm: an Aboriginal pedagogical framework. Paper presented at the Indigenous Research and Postgraduate Forum, Adelaide: Aboriginal Research Institute, University of South Australia. Wright, G. & Goldberg, G. (1971). I Am a Sensation, Toronto: McLelland and Stewart Limited. p. 30. Williams, R. (1983). Keywords, A vocabulary of culture and society, London: Fontana Paperbacks, pp. 82-84. Yu, P. (2007). “Growing the Alliance”, paper presented at Caring For Country, Second National Indigenous Land and Sea Management Conference, p. 1.

How interactive new media art can effectively

communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts.

6. LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix 6.I M Graham in Aboriginal Affairs Appendix 6.II Accessing site_sight_site Appendix 6.III Uniikup Optical Media Collection Appendix 6.IV Ethics Clearance documents X 2 Appendix 6.V Creative Team Details Appendix 6.VI 3.2.1 1st Revolution; and 3.2.2 2nd Revolution Appendix 6.VI(i) Boxing Art Appendix 6.VI(ii) Place Building Building Place Appendix 6.VII Place Relatedness Appendix 6.VIII A Unique Australian Screen Culture Appendix 6.IX Project Information Kit Appendix 6.X sscIT Production schedule

APPENDIX 6.I

MARY GRAHAM - CONSULTANCIES CLIENT Kombumerri Association Sep 1989 Task Assist to prepare and present a land claim, in consultation with legal representatives.

CLIENT Aboriginal & Islander Corporation for Women Aug-Dec 1990 Task Research into the feasibility of establishing a halfway house for Aboriginal & Islander women prisoners, and preparation of a submission to Queensland Corrective Services Commission.

CLIENT Department of Employment, Vocational EducationTraining Sep 1991 and Industrial Relations (DEVETIR) Task Cross cultural awareness courses for middle management in Brisbane (2), Cairns, Townsville and Rockhampton.

CLIENT Barambah Child Care Agency Feb-May 1991 Task Preparation of training and research programme.

CLIENT Murriimage Mar-Jun 1991 Task Consultancy on script development for the preparation of a video on Aboriginal health.

CLIENT Thoorgine Education and Cultural Centre Jun-Jul 1991 Task Advise on organisation, goal-setting, empowerment of women, and strategic cultural/social/economic growth.

CLIENT Creche & Kindergarten Association of Qld. May-Nov 1991 Task On-going training of Creche & Kindergarten Staff members in the formation and operation of local C & K committees.

CLIENT Aboriginal & Islander Corporation for Men Jul-Sept 1991 Task Prepare incorporation documents, and prepare submission to government funding agencies.

CLIENT Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission May-Dec 1991 Task Advise on Human Rights awareness education campaign among Aboriginal communities.

CLIENT Aboriginal & Islander Child Care Agency, Brisbane Sept 1991 Task Organise and facilitate a two-day workshop on staff training, policy-making and evaluation.

CLIENT Department of Housing and Local Government Dec 1991 Task Provide advice on Aboriginal housing to community-based housing resource service and community rent scheme workers. CLIENT Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) Jan-Feb 1992 Brisbane Regional Council Task Organise and facilitate community workshops to discuss the recommendations of the Deaths in Custody inquiry, and compile a report of the community's response.

CLIENT Brisbane Indigenous Media Association Dec 1992 Task Preparation of funding submission.

CLIENT Queensland Police Service Jun 1992 – May Task Survey of Aboriginal & Islander communities state-wide, and 1993 preparation of training material for police who work on Aboriginal & Islander communities. The material consists of a three-part manual and a video.

CLIENT Commonwealth Public Service Commission June 1993 Task Write and present an Indigenous position paper a seminar on Human Resource Development in Canberra.

CLIENT Australian National Training Authority April 1993 Task Preparation of a series of training modules for use in the Adult and Community Education sector.

CLIENT Office of Rural Communities June - July 1994 Task Develop Strategies to Market Queensland Government Programs

CLIENT Milperra Special School Nov 1994 Task Plan and coordinate cross-cultural exchange between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander high school students and ethnic students

CLIENT Southbank Institute of TAFE Feb 1995 Task Cross Cultural Awareness training and Mediation Workshops Brisbane Queensland.

CLIENT Local Government Association (QLD) March 1995 Task Production and Delivery of a Cultural Awareness Training Manual for Local Government employees throughout Queensland.

CLIENT Dept. Family Services and Aboriginal Affairs April 1995 Task Delivery of Cultural Workshop Training for Youth Program Worker Induction.

CLIENT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit UQ Aug 1995 Task Delivery of Cultural Awareness Session on comparing Aboriginal and Western approaches to law for District Court judges and Family Court judges.

CLIENT Local Government Association (QLD) Sep 1995 Task Production and Delivery of a Cultural Awareness Training Workshop for Local Government Councillors at a LGA Queensland Conference at Bundaberg.

CLIENT Qld. Working Women’s Service Oct 1995 Task Organisation and distribution of information to Indigenous women about the Service.

CLIENT TAFE Queensland June 1996 Task Delivery of specific departmental Delivery Policy for Adult Indigenous education for TAFE Queensland. Report to Minister September 1996.

CLIENT Film Queensland April 1996 (National Indigenous Media of Australia NIMAA) Task Write and produce a report on the inaugural Indigenous filmmakers Forum held in Cairns.

CLIENT Brotherhood of St Laurence VIC Aug 1996 Task (Christian social policy research org) Produce and deliver an Indigenous position paper for the Brotherhood's "Future of Work" Conference in Sydney

CLIENT Dept of Family Services and Aboriginal Affairs Oct 1996 Task Consultation with Brisbane Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Assoc Ltd (welfare and community development), and drafting of more effective Constitution.

CLIENT Qld Community Arts Network - Brisbane June 1997 Task For delivery of a cross cultural course “An Aboriginal World”, covering such issues as history, metaphysics, politics, social structures and communication.

CLIENT Qld Trachoma and Eye Health Program Inc Mater Hospital Aug 1997 Task Development and additions to Review study (First Draft) of the paper entitled “Review of Eye Health in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities”, and consultation with QTEHP Committee.

CLIENT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service July 1998 Task For delivery of a Cultural Awareness Training Program for the staff of ATSILS, covering such issues as comparative worldviews, racism, workplace culture and communication.

CLIENT Link-Up - Queensland Aug 1998 Task Policy Development Workshop - Understanding policy, policy analysis, reviewing government policy.

CLIENT Heart Foundation - Health Promotion (Qld) Nov 1998 Task Cultural Awareness Training Program for the staff of the Heart Foundation, covering such issues as impact of colonisation, importance of land, Native Title, Stolen Generation, diversity across Indigenous populations and communities and other key social and political issues.

CLIENT Queensland Art Gallery Nov 1998 Task For delivery of cross cultural courses “An Aboriginal World” To all staff, covering such issues as history, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and communication.

CLIENT Brisbane City Council - Brisbane Administration Centre Feb 2000 Task For delivery of a brief talk on Aboriginal perspectives on metaphysics, ethics, and communication for Leadership Workshop.

CLIENT The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Corporation Mar 2000 for Health Education and Training (South East Qld) Task Aboriginal perspectives on Ethics in Research.

CLIENT Yelangi Pre-School and Kindergarten Feb 2001 Task Yelangi Strategic Plan 2001 – 2006

CLIENT Keriba Warngun A & T S I Corp for Women May 2002 Task Establish a Partnership Agreement between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Organisations on Brisbane Northside.

CLIENT Goori Community Country Council (GCC) May 2003 Task Brisbane Northside 5 Year Regional Strategic Plan

CLIENT Keriba Warngun A & T SI Corp for Women March 2004 Task Keriba Warngun Strategic Plan 2004 – 2009

CLIENT Clayton Utz Law Firm November 2005 Task Delivery workshops (continuing) for executive professionaldevelopment on Native Title negotiations and agreements with Aboriginal Traditional Owners.

CLIENT Kummara Association Inc October 2005 Task Delivery of Capacity Building activities – Action Research training, Statistical documentation and community mapping.

CLIENT Origin Energy June 2006 Task Delivery of Negotiating and Agreements Training Program for Officers Brisbane, Roma and Adelaide (Continuing).

CLIENT Brisbane Noonga Reconciliation Grouprotocols, June 2006 Task Conflict management and decision making.

CLIENT Queensland Dept Child Safety April 2007 Task Delivery of Training Program on Capacity Building for Indigenous Child Care Organisations in Brisbane, Gold Coast, Beenleigh and Stradbroke Island.

CLIENT Australian Film & Television & Radio Service (AFTRS) October 2007 Task Delivery of Cultural Awareness, Praxis and Interpretation on Story and Drama Sydney

CLIENT National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) October 2007 Task Delivery of Negotiating and Agreements Training Program for Officers Brisbane and Cairns.

CLIENT Link-Up June 2008 Task Delivery of workshop on colonial impact on Aboriginal cultural values and social Structures.

CLIENT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community April 2008 Independent School Task Delivery of Workshop on Policy on education values for Staff and Board Brisbane

APPENDIX 6.II

ACCESSING site_sight_cite

Following are directions for accessing the creative project:

1> go to www.colourise.com.au – the site is built for use with Mozilla Firefox as Internet Explorer is not as compatible with the Joomla website management system.

2> click on the SITE_SIGHT_CITE tab.

3> click on the site_sight_cite link inside the tab to reach the log-in page: a. in user name: type in … b. in password: type in … c. hit return

4> Open and read the tags in the left index.

5> Attachments and links open up in separate tabs/windows; be sure to close them after reading to return to the page you are on.

6> Open and read the tags in the top bar consecutively.

NB allow Tour-Site video clip and slide shows in each place to load completely, for correct viewing.

7> In the CREATIVE TEAM tag (left index) artist biographies are accessed by clicking on their names, and open up in separate windows. Be sure to close them after reading. 8> You MUST log out when you leave the site.

NOTE: Site_sight_cite is a preliminary site housing only Stage I, the concept development, of the creative project. It is not available for public viewing.

It is proposed that the site\sight\site project website will be constructed at Stage II, subject to negotiation with local custodians.

Stage II also involves extensive consultation with community members in relation to content of each place on the website.

No specific design features have been considered for site_sight_cite as this element will be part of Stage II only and involve website design specialists. Design elements are part of the continued project research and consultation process.

APPENDIX 6.III UNIIKUP PRODUCTIONS LTD. trading as Murriimage Community Video and Film Service

P.O. BOX 3230 SOUTH BRISBANE QUEENSLAND 4101 AUSTRALIA FACILITY: 888 KIN KIN ROAD

WOLVI VIA GYMPIE 4570 TEL.: MOB: 04 07 379822 EMAIL: [email protected] WEBSITE: www.colourise.com.au

Optical Media Collection 1985 - CURRENT

April - May 1985 1 VHS x 4 Boisterous Oysters Dance program with Murri children for the opening of the Queensland Cultural Centre.

28 May 1985 2 (copy only) VHS Woorabinda Warriors –v- Curtain raiser match Stage of Origin Lang Brisbane Natives Park Rugby League Stadium

31 May 1985 3 (copy only) VHS Country & Western Night Various Murri Musicians at Wests Old Boys Club.

June 1985 4 VHS Murri Women Talk Opinions, views, information of community Murri women (on going project)

June 1985 5 VHS Koobara Kindergarten Murri Children and Murri culture.

July 1985 6 (on Tape VHS Fund Raising Day for A&TSI Held in Musgrave Park 10) Community School Highgate Hill

August 1985 7 VHS (Quality National Language Aboriginal Languages Assoc. held at deteriorated) Conference Nudgee College Banyo. Commissioned by Jeanie Bell.

7 September 1985 8 VHS Murri Women’s Seminar Discussions for Women’s Shelter and Group at Wandarah, Inala.

July 1985 9 VHS Community Race Relations A&I Child Care Agency initiated meeting with local businesses to discuss cooperative approach to Murri Street kids, held at Blind Hall Woolloongabba.

13 September 1985 10 (includes VHS (Quality NAIDOC 1985 Coverage of celebrations - various artists programs 6 deteriorated) and displays in Queens St Mall. & 23)

21 September 1985 11 VHS Kamarga Aboriginal Arts Black Market Day, Musgrave Park South Brisbane

18th October 1985 12 VHS Kamarga Aboriginal Arts Murri Photographic Exhibition – collection of historic photographs, Edward St. (Metro Arts) Community Centre. Curator Vanessa Fisher.

26 October 1985 13 VHS Kamarga Aboriginal Arts MurriCooee Youth Band. Document of rehearsals and performance at Musgrave Pk Family Cultural Day. Commissioned by Vanessa Fisher

8 November 1985 14 VHS Kamarga Aboriginal Arts Mornington Is Dancers performance and workshop at Brisbane Stage High School

9 November 1985 15 VHS FIESTA 1985 Multi-cultural day Musgrave Park. Aboriginal art exhibition.

15 November 1985 16 VHS Murri Women & Health Meeting of participants of Health Camp Stradbroke Is, at AICHS Sth Brisbane

23 November 1985 17 VHS Murri Youth Concert Various local , state and national Aboriginal musicians at Purtell Park

17A VHS . Dr. Bones Edit of performance at Murri Youth Concert (Quality deteriorated)

30 November 1985 18 VHS Waka Waka Women’s Group Meeting at Wandarah Inala on Education with guest speakers.

14 December 1985 19 VHS Stradbroke Island Reunion Goori families of Quandamooka held a reunion on Minjerribah.

17 December 1985 20 VHS Musgrave Park Mass A&I Catholic Council celebrated ordination of Father Frank Brennan held in Musgrave Park. Commissioned by Deidre Daylight.

15 January 1986 21 VHS Anuaka Documenting Aboriginal self-supporting arts and craft business in Cairns. Joe & Betty Morgan family.

16 January 1986 22 VHS Townsville Aboriginal & Documenting staff and operations. Islander Media Assoc

26/27 January 1986 23 (also VHS Invasion Day 1986 Musgrave Park to King George Square; program 29, Protest March Brisbane Interview with Lord Mayor S. Aitkenson & 56, 57) footage of New Farm Park Australian Day celebrations

31 January 1986 24 VHS Combined Services Meeting Documentation of community meeting. 2x2.1/2hr tapes

12/13/14 February 1986 25 VHS Orientation Week at Documentation of information for new University of Queensland Aboriginal and Islander students. Commissioned by Barbara Davis.

8 March 1986 26 (with 34) VHS International Women’s Day Coverage of march and fair at Albert Park Brisbane for Murri women.

10/111/12 March 1986 27 VHS Land is Life Forum Documentation of FAIRA land rights legislation state forum held at Canberra Hotel Ann Street Brisbane.

15 March 1986 28 VHS Johnson & Johnson Video coverage of wedding for Bev Wedding Johnson family, in Ipswich.

27 March 1986 29 (on Tape VHS (Quality A&TSI Community School, Video coverage of school concert. 23) deteriorated) Highgate Hill Commissioned by Vanessa Fisher.

9/10/17/18 April 1986 30 (2 tapes A VHS Aboriginal & Islander Youth Dance rehearsals, West End Mural and & B) Scheme West End Street Arts Night.

18 April 1986 31 VHS Geerburra Concert Youth Scheme organised family 1Hr30min entertainment night at Opal Hall, Ann St Brisbane

April 1986 32 VHS Demolition on Heritage buildings issue, commissioned by George Street John Stafford.

21/22 April 1986 33 (tapes VHS Aboriginal & Islander In service counselling workshop and with AICHS) Community Health Service housing survey meeting.

1 April 1986 34 VHS Someone Different Afro-American poet Wanda Coleman poetry reading for Women’s Group held at Legal Service on Stanley St. Sth Brisbane

May 86 35 (Includes VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Bobby Sykes – “Power Relationships”. program 71) 2 hr Series, University of Commissioned by Jeanie Bell at A&TSI Queensland Studies Unit.

23 May 1986 36 VHS A&TSI Community School, Dawn Daylight interviews of staff and Highgate Hill students. (Armidale CAE assessment)

26/27/28 May 1986 37 VHS Coalition of National Hosted by FAIRA, meeting on Land Rights Aboriginal Organisations legislation, held at Roselee Waters, Dayboro

29 May 1986 38 VHS A & I Women’s Group Meeting with Yvonne Aigus from DAA Women’s Unit held Legal Service Stanley St. Sth Brisbane. Commissioned by Isabell Tarago.

4 June 1986 39 VHS (Quality Aboriginal Public Lecture John Newfong “Corruption in Govt. and its deteriorated) Series, University of Implication for Aboriginal Affairs”. Queensland Commissioned by Jeanie Bell A&TSI Studies Unit.

12 June 1986 40 VHS Kangaroo Point TAFE Murri Coverage of Brisbane Bullets star visit to Unit students

13 June 1986 41 VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture John Newfong, “Image Building in the Mass Series University of Media”. Commissioned by Jeanie Bell Queensland A&TSI Studies Unit.

13 June 1986 42 VHS A &TSI Community School, Coverage of June break concert. Students Highgate Hill performed traditional dances. Commissioned by Vanessa Fisher.

20 June 1986 43 VHS (sound on Coloured Stone in Concert Concert at Easts Leagues Club, Coorparoo. Naigra) Master Edit 59min

28/29 June 1986 44 (refer also VHS (tapes A&I Child Care Agency Documentation of confidential workshop – 51and 70) with AICHS Communication Workshop held at AICHS South Brisbane. Series

1 July 1986 45 (includes VHS Moree Boomerangs –v- SW Curtain raiser match, State of Origin Lang Tape K) Qld All Blacks Park Rugby League Stadium. (Tape K Peacock family celebration 7/9/86)

2&5 July 1986 46 VHS Te Kohanga Reo Group, Greeting ceremony with Maori community: A&TSI Community School performance of traditional dances and and Youth Scheme greetings. Commissioned by Kathy Fisher.

4/6 July 1986 47 VHS Conference on Black Black Australian literature and issues in Literature, University of black Australian literature. Organised by Queensland Cliff Watego, commissioned by Jeanie Bell, A&TSI Studies Unit.

5 July 1986 48 (includes VHS (Poor Black Theatre at the Cement Maureen and Michael Watson with Sharon Tape L) quality low Box, University of Carpenter in performance. Commissioned light) Queensland by Jeanie Bell UQ. (Tape L Brady family celebration.)

11 July 1986 49 VHS (Quality Kamarga Arts presents A Night of family entertainment at Highgate deteriorated) Night of Tradition at A&TSI Hill. Featuring Maroochy Barambah and 1hr 49mn Community School address by Te Kohanga Reo. Commissioned by Vanessa Fisher.

18 July 1986 50 (2 tapes) VHS Land Rights- Where to from Community meeting on Expo participation; here? community centre building progress; political parties in Qld and other business.

25/26 July 1986 51 (tapes VHS A&I Child Care Agency Held at Broadbeach, Gold Coast. with AICHS Communication Workshop refer 44) Series

30 July 1986 52 VHS Murri-time Radio Documentation of presentation of Murri- Brisbane Indigenous Media time Radio on Radio4ZZZ. (Now (98.9FM Assoc. Murri Country on Radio 4AAA.)

20 August 1986 53 VHS (Quality Aboriginal Public Lecture John Newfong “Aborigines and the deteriorated) Series University of Commonwealth”. Commissioned by Jeanie Queensland Bell, A&TSI Studies Unit.

31 August 1986 54 VHS FIESTA 1986 Multi-cultural event Musgrave Park Sth Brisbane. MurriCooee Dancers & Band; interviews Ross Watson Murri Radio and Jackie and Rita Huggins.

3 September 1986 55 VHS Bwung-Gul Aboriginal Yirrikala NT community dancers at A&TSI Cultural Group Community School Highgate Hill (includes short interviews). Commissioned by Vanessa Fisher

9 September 1986 56 (On Tape VHS A&TSI Community School Coverage of Open Day, NAIDOC 23) Highgate Hill Celebrations event.

10 September 1986 57 (On Tape VHS NAIDOC 1986 - National Celebrations in the Queen St. Mall: Mop & 23) Aboriginal & Islander Day the Dropouts; Murri models; displays and Observance Committee interviews.

12 September 1986 58 VHS NAIDOC day march Coverage of march form Anzac Park to Musgrave Park and gathering in the park.

14 September 1986 59 VHS Natives –v- Bulldogs Coverage of match and trophy presentation Grand Final to Natives at Gibson Park.

17 September 1986 60 VHS Murriimage looks at ABC Beatbox program on urban Blacks aired TV’s Beatbox 10/10/86. Covered crew organising and shooting Brisbane segment and interviewed them.

24 September 1986 61 (includes VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Charles Perkins: “Department of Aboriginal program 63) Series University of Affairs”. Commissioned by Jeanie Bell Queensland A&TSI Studies Unit.

27 September 1986 62 VHS Natives –v- Hornets Coverage of memorial match, Gibson Park.

29 September 1986 63 VHS (on Tape 9 :27 Coverage of Community Meeting at Legal 61) Service Sth Brisbane. Violent Police raid on post football match celebration 27/9/86 at Rosalie; includes press conf. and interviews of some witnesses.

3 October 1986 64 VHS Community Meeting Coverage of meeting in Musgrave park concerning Rosalie raid incident 27/9/86.

3 October 1986 65 VHS Tombstone Opening- Adrian Coverage of TSI ceremony and celebration Saylor (Snr) at Mt Gravatt Cemetery and Jane St Hall West End.

8 October 1986 66 VHS Picket- Rosalie Raid Incident George Street picket of Govt offices concerning police brutality at Rosalie Raid incident.

10 October 1986 67 VHS Community Meeting Coverage of meeting concerning Rosalie Raid incident.

15 October 1986 68 (Includes VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Eric Wilmot: “Aborigines and Tertiary Program 69) Series University of Education”. Commissioned by Jeanie Bell, Queensland A&TSI Studies Unit.

15 October 1986 69 (on Tape VHS Aboriginal & Islanders Day Cultural presentation by students at 68) Brisbane College of Advanced Education, Kelvin Grove.

30 October 1986 70 (Tapes VHS A&I Child Care Agency Held at Bribie Island. with AICHS Communication Workshop refer 44) Series

13 November 1986 71 (On tape VHS Burragah Pre-School Boomerang Day at Albert Park with Michael 35) Williams.

13 December 1986 72 VHS Jau Pau 21st Celebration Pau Family celebration Woodridge.

5 January 1987 73 (Tapes VHS Aboriginal and Islander Coverage of meeting at Nudgee Boys with AICC) Catholic Council 14th Annual College Meeting

18 January 1987 74 VHS Murriimage Development Documentary on development of 24min Information - documentary Murriimage Community Video and Film Service.

21 January – 19 75 (Tapes VHS Island Craft Workshop Documentation of weaving and rope February 1987 with IINA) Series splicing workshop for IINA TSI Corporation

12 February 1987 76 (Tapes VHS Year of Shelter for the Coverage of meeting of Black Housing at with Black Homeless Legal Service Sth Brisbane Housing)

March April May 1987 77 VHS Kirinari Student Hostel Coverage of Film Australia crew on Sylvania Waters Sydney documentary production for Education Department.

May 1987 78 VHS Meenmye (the lilly) Documentation of Gail Garvey’s graduation day (Physical Education) at Newcastle College of Advanced Education. Extension of Film Australia project.

24 May 1987 79 (original VHS Redfern All Blacks –v- La Coverage of local football match. with All Perouse Blacks)

June 1987 80 VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Kevin Gilbert: Treaty for Sovereignty. Series University of Commissioned by Jeanie Bell A&I Studies Queensland Unit.

80A (Tapes ¾ Lowband Treaty for Sovereignty Kevin Gilbert program produced from with Ellie material provided by Kevin Gilbert and Gilbert) interviews with him in A.C.T.

July 1987 81 VHS Golden Oldies 1987 Documentation of golden oldies celebration at Ukrainian Hall Cordelia Street. (Commissioned by Michael Mace)

July 1987 82 VHS Brisbane Blacks Mop and the Dropouts performance at Opal House for SBS window program. Aired Sept. 87

1 August 1987 83 (recording VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Oodgeroo Noonuckle: “Aboriginal problems) Series University of Literature,Culture and Environment”. Queensland Commissioned by Jeanie Bell A&I Studies Unit

1 August 1987 84 (sound VHS 2 tapes Community Concert Bupu Mumas, Dr Bones, Mop and the Drop problems) outs and community speakers. Broadcast live on radio 4ZZZ.

24 August 1987 85 VHS (Includes Aboriginal Public Lecture Rose Wangadine: “Committee to Defend program 101) Series University of Black Deaths in Custody. Commissioned Queensland by Jeanie Bell A&I Studies Unit.

25 August 1987 86 VHS Community Protest Violent Police raid on Murri 21st celebration ant Annerley. March from Kin George Sq to Police Headquarters. Speakers and interviews.

September 1987 to 1995 87 Super 8 & Makin Tracks – Production of local, national and 16mm film documentary international documentary on media, SP Betacam politics and identity. DEET Overseas Study 58min Award – Brazil, Cuba, Canada, UK, Australia. (Also report publication of tour.) AAB and AFC Funds. 27 September 1987 88 (recording VHS (includes Aboriginal Public Lecture Maureen Watson: Story Telling as a problems) program 99) Series University of Teaching Aid”. Commissioned by Jeanie Queensland Bell, A&I Studies Unit.

February March April 89 VHS Cultural Survival Festival Interviews, coverage of meetings, protests 1988 (for use in Project No.96).

19-22 February 1988 90 VHS 2 tapes Community Meeting Foundations for the Future – discussions on proposed ATSI Commission with Min. Gerry Hand and Charles Perkins, held at Murri Mura Cordelia St. Sth Brisbane

27/28 February 1988 91 (Tapes VHS Megani Malu Kes TSI conference held in Mackay, with IINA) Queensland commissioned by IINA TSI Corporation.

5 March 1988 92 VHS Saylor & Galheinne Wedding Coverage of Saylor family wedding ceremony and feast.

26 March 1988 93 VHS Liz Mitchelle 50th Birthday Coverage of celebration at Souths’ Leagues Club

19 April 1988 94 VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Colin Johnson: “Aboriginal Literature”. Series University of Commissioned by Jeanie Bell A&I Studies Queensland Unit.

23 April 1988 95 VHS Perga Opening Ceremony Coverage of ceremony at old Perga Mission site, now community land, at Boonah Road Ipswich. Interviews with elders who were mission residents.

April 1988 - 1990 96 BVU Same Place My Home - We are in this society but not of it. They 28min documentary are in this country but not of it. (Mary Graham) Funded by AFC Aboriginal Initiative Program

27 April 1988 97 VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Panel: L Watson, L Munro, C Buchanan, S Series University of O’Neil: Aboriginal and Islander Sovereignty. Queensland Commissioned by Jeanie Bell, A&I Studies Unit.

25 May 1988 98 VHS Aboriginal Public Lecture Coral Edwards & Bev Johnson: “Link-up Series University of Program”. Stolen Generation history, Queensland effects and solutions.

28 May 1988 99 VHS (on Tape Anderson Family Reunion Coverage of gathering at Redbank Plains 88) (family’s traditional land).

8 June 1988 100 VHS Aboriginal Print and Poster Opened by Vanessa Fisher, commissioned Exhibition University of by Jeanie Bell A&I Studies Unit Queensland

16 June 1988 101 VHS (on Tape Beaudesert Land Hand back Coverage of Quakers handing back land to 85) Ceremony the Queensland Indigenous People’s Trust, at IINA premises Sth Brisbane,

1 Julu 1988 102 VHS Coming of the Light Coverage of event at Brisbane River under Ceremony and Celebrations Story Bridge.

July 1988 103 VHS (Includes Musgrave Park and Jagera On-going coverage of events. Program 109) Arts Centre

15 July 1988 104 VHS Belau Women’s Tour Tour of Australia to inform about American domination of their South Pacific country for the purposes of Nuclear bases and tests. Hosted by FAIRA, held at Murri Mura.

3 September 1988 105 VHS Kambu Touch Football Coverage of matches at Bulimba Oval. Assoc.

30 September 1988 106 VHS 2 tapes Community Meeting Discussions concerning Treaty, held at Murri Mura.

November 1988 107 VHS Fingal Story Coverage of Pooningbah community defending their land from Ocean Blue development.

1 December 1988 108 VHS A&TSI Community School Coverage of Xmas Break party

7th March 1989 109 VHS Seven Sisters – Ban Ban Meeting of women regarding destruction of Springs Women’s site and area by gold mining. On-going women’s project commissioned by V Fisher & L. Johnson.

17 March 1989 110 VHS A&TSI Community School Coverage of school play.

14 April 1989 111 VHS Murri Music Club (Includes Gathering of Murri musicians to entertain at 1988 training tape & copy of Jagera Centre Sth Brisbane. Waka Waka prod: Murri Music)

8 May 1989 112 VHS 3 tapes Wandarah Neighbourhood Video workshop training tapes and 30’ Centre Inala production of Waka Waka dancers.

24/25 May 1989 113 VHS 3 tapes Salam Family Reunion Coverage of gathering in Mossman Nth Edit 2hrs Qld. Renewing family ties. 51min

14 July 1989 114 SVHS Community Meeting Black Deaths in Custody discussions with Commissioner Wyvile at Jagera Arts Centre Sth Brisbane. (Training tape.)

July 89 115 Betacam Hepatitis B - documentary Production of information video for Edit 16 min Aboriginal and Islander Community Health Service, Brisbane.

August 1989 116 VHS Kamarga Aboriginal Arts Compilation of Kamarga work for promo. (On going project.)

2 September 1989 117 SVHS Peacock Gibbons Wedding Coverage of ceremony and feast at Edit 60min Redcliffe.

4-10 September 1989 118 SVHS NAIDOC 1989 Coverage of highlights of 1989 events in Brisbane. (Training tape.)

10 September 1989 119 SVHS 3 tapes Natives –v- Bulldogs Coverage of A Grade grand final match at Gibson Park; and Inala –v- Redland, Under 16s; Natives –v- Kilcoy Reserves

2-5 October 1989 120 SVHS 4 tapes PBF – National Aboriginal Coverage of conference at Kangaroo Point. and Islander Broadcasting Commissioned by Brisbane Indigenous Conference Media Association.

11 October 1989 121 SVHS A&TSI Community School Coverage of open day.

7 November 1989 122 BVU Ian Brown – darts player Interview with young Murri member of Australian Darts Team representing Australia overseas.

20 January 1990 123 SVHS Walker Hinckley Wedding Coverage of wedding and celebrations at Edit 60 min Redbank.

10 February 1990 124 SVHS Eddie Saylor 21st Birthday Coverage of celebrations at OPAL House Edit 45mn Celebration Brisbane.

8 May 1990 125 SVHS University of Queensland Lionel Fogarty and Cheryl Buchannan: Lecture “Black Publishing”. Commissioned by Cliff Watego for Dept Literature.

April - 126 BVU HIV/AIDS Awareness - Information video program produced for June 1990 Edit 12min documentary Aboriginal and Islander Community Health Service

29 May 1990 127 SVHS University of Queensland Bobby Sykes: “Black Literature”. Lecture Commissioned by Cliff Watego for Dept Literature.

16 June 1990 128 SVHS University of Queensland Coverage of “Hijacked” by Eric Wilmot and Theatre Event Richard Guthrie (Part 1 only).Commissioned by Cliff Watego for Literature Dept.

16 June 1990 129 SVHS Aunty Maudie Bell 80th Coverage of family gathering celebration at Birthday Jagera Arts Centre, Sth Brisbane.

August 1990 130 SVHS Aboriginal and Torres Strait Edit of all Miurriimage dance coverage fr Islander Dance community and educational use. (Training project.)

November 1990 131 SVHS Okello Family Reunion Coverage of celebration of Ugandan family settling into a new life in Australia.

6 December 1990 132 SVHS A&TSI Community School Coverage of end of year celebration, open day.

June July 1991 133 SVHS Goolwar Arts Talent Quest Community event, and fund raiser. Commissioned by Julie Gosam.

15-17 January 1992 134 SVHS Black Deaths in Custody Coverage of community consultation meetings at Inala, on findings and recommendations of report.

13-16 April 1992 135 SVHS (Tapes 2ND National Torres Strait Coverage of conference for INNA TSI with INNA – Islander Conference Corporation at Rockhampton recording problems)

10 October 1992 136 (Tape SVHS Murri Eyes Coverage of Street Arts play. with Street Arts)

10 December 1992 137 SVHS A&TSI Community School Coverage of Speech Night.

13 November 1992 138 SVHS Jarragil Cultural Resource Cultural day at Inala High School. Centre Commissioned by Lesley van Moolenbrook.

2 June 1993 139 SVHS Ali Conlon sings .Music video clip – “Crazy” and “Summertime” shot at Wolvi.

13 July 1993 140 SVHS ATSIC Regional Plan Coverage of ceremony at Logan City Butter Launch Factory

27-29 September 1993 141 SVHS National A&TSI Women Coverage of event at Lutwyche, Brisbane Writers’ Conference

24-25/ September 1993 142 SVHS Dunwich Housing Co-op Training workshop for Island clans held at Video Workshop Minjerribah.

25 November 1993 143 SVHS & SP Ariba Enuba – belonging to Compilation of video recordings of Betacam you, belonging to me. A&TSI incidents, artists and cultural Documentary events as per following list. (Funded by CCDU Australia Council.)

17/11/93 143 SP Betacam Protest March – Daniel Yok March from Roma St Forum to Musgrave death in custody Park; and artists in park.

26 January 1994 “ SP Betacam Australia Day 1994 Protest Coverage of march and artists in Musgrave March & Gathering Park.

18 March 1994 “ SVHS Murri Men’s Group Brisbane Steven McCarthy play reading at Jagera Arts Centre Musgrave Park.

14 June 1994 “ SVHS Aim 4 More Interview and music of local Capella band recorded Jagera Arts Centre, Musgrave Park.

3 June 1994 “ SVHS Heritage Trail Nashville Recording of progress of construction of walkway , bush track and wooden sculptures with Mervyn Rielly. BCC project.

1 July 1994 “ SP Betacam Coming of the Light 1994 Recording of dramatised TSI historical (sound (not included in Ariba Enuba) Christian event and gathering at Wacol by problems) Brisbane River. SVHS Edit Master 5 July 1994 “ SP Betacam NAIDOC 1994 Woorabinda Coverage of celebration events.

8 July 1994 143 SP Betacam NAIDOC 1994 Brisbane Coverage of Musgrave park event.

31 July 1994 “ SP Betacam FIESTA 1994 Coverage of annual multi-cultural event in Musgrave park.

15 October 1994 “ SP Betacam Golden Oldies 1994 Coverage of annual gathering of Elders, at Cherbourg Community Hall.

19 November 1994 “ SP Betacam Jimbelunga Nursing Home Coverage of opening ceremony at Eagleby, Brisbane. (Commissioned by AICHS.)

15 December 1994 “ SP Betacam Maureen Watson, aSimon Coverage of schools cultural event, (Refer also Leedie, Wakka Wakka Aboriginal story telling, crafts and dances at programs Dancers Schools Tour Gympie Civic Centre. (Maureen Watson 148 159 161) talk to camera, anchor for Ariba Enuba.

15-17 March 1994 144 SVHS First National Conference on Coverage of event at Tambourine Mountain Violence Against Indigenous for A&TSI Health Policy Unit. Women

16 July 1994 145 VHS NAIDOC 1994 Coverage of event at Morayfield. Daliapi Caboolture Commissioned by Georgina Kadel.

8-9 April 1994 146 SVHS Kombumerri Aboriginal Video edit workshop with Christine Morris Corporation of coverage of culture and language program.

28 April 1994 147 SVHS Go for the Best - Coverage and edit of careers market RNA documentary Showground Brisbane for National Aboriginal Education Program (NAEP).

30 June 1994 148 SVHS Two Tongues – Birri Gubba clan language salvage program (Refer also documentary at Maleny and Mackay. programs 154 and 148A) 13 April 1996 148A SVHS Bowman Johnson Family Coverage of family celebrations included in Gathering Two tongues documentary.

30 June 1994 149 S16mm Good Relations – Recorded for broadcast during NAIDOC 30 secs SP community announcement 1996 on Ch. 9, 7, 10 Brisbane. Funded by Betacam for TV broadcast Gaming Machine Community Benefit Fund.

13-15 September 1994 150 SVHS One Family Many Histories Coverage of Stolen Generation Conference Brisbane. Commissioned by Dept Family Services& A&TSI Affairs Community & Family Histories

25 July 1994 151 SVHS Inside the Walls - Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre documentary Bogga Road. Commissioned and distributed by Sisters Inside.

19 March 1995 152 SVHS Purga Rodeo Coverage of event for Murri Country Radio 4AAA (Brisbane Indigenous Media Association).

25 November 1994 153 SVHS Aboriginal & Islander Coverage of official opening of new building Community Health Service in Hubert St Woolloongabba. Commissioned by AICHS Board.

18-21 April 1995 154 SVHS Birri Gubba Aboriginal Coverage of Council of Elders and Corporation Governing Committee meeting in Mackay.

7 July 1995 155 SVHS Indigenous Music Workshop Coverage of conference and concert for NAIDOC 1995 in Musgrave Park 14/7. Commissioned by Hedley Johnson.

29 November – 12 156 VHS Minjeribah Story and Produced with students at Video Artist in December 1995 Quandamooka Residence Workshops at Alexander Hills RedlandsStory - High School, for SBS Schools Torque documentaries Program.

1 December 1995 157 SP Betacam & Hey Tida Breast Cancer is Information video produced for, and SVHS Serious Business - distributed by, BreastScreen Queensland documentary Women’s Cancer Prevention Program.

30 April – 2nd May 1996 158 SVHS Inaugral Queensland Coverage of Forum at Cairns North Indigenous Filmmakers Queensland. Commissioned by National Forum Indigenous Media Association. See also Ye-ama Report. Funded by Film Qld.

8 June 1996 159 (Refer SP Betacam Frank Fisher Bridge Coverage of official opening. Included in program Cherbourg Ariba Enuba documentary. 143)

29 June 1996 160 SVHS Coming of the Light 1996 Coverage of event and celebrations at Jagera Arts Centre Musgrave Park South Brisbane.

8, 12 July, 2, 23 August 161 (Refer SP Betacam NAIDOC and Gympie Muster Coverage of events King George Square, 1996 Program 1996 Musgrave Park, West End, and at Gympie 143) Muster 23 August. (Includes interview with Murrando Yanner; 4AAA launch CD and Promo Kiosk.)

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13 July 1996 162 SVHS Brisbane Blacks Compilation tape for NAIDOC screenings. 1985- 1996 - documentary

9 August 1996 163 SVHS/VHS Video Time – short Short documentary produced by inmates at (Edit Master documentary Video communications skills workshop at with prison.) Bogga Road Women’s Correctional Centre. Funded by Social Justice Program grant.

1 September 1996 164 Indigenous Eyes Inaugral Brisbane City Council Local Festivals Indigenous Film Festival Grant and Gaming Machine Community Benefit Fund, equipment grant. Refer report.

NAIDOC July 1997 Toured Indigenous Eyes Festival to Inala, Kingston, Zillmere, Jagera Arts Centre, Musgrave Park, Wynnum.

1 September 1997 165 SVHS Binda Waminda Festival Coverage of event. Commissioned by (Masters with Woorabinda Council. community to edit.)

July 1997 166 SVHS/SP Through My Eyes - Mental Health Awareness information video Betacam documentary produced for and distributed by Master Queensland Health.

3 February 1998 167 SVHS/SP The Dreaming Within - Information video on the history of the Betacam documentary stolen generation and promo for Link-up Master Queensland Aboriginal Corporation. Commissioned and distributed by Link-up.

26 June 1997 – 30 June 168 Publication History Life and Times of Documented history publication funded by 2001 1st Ed; 2nd Ed 9/02; Robert Anderson, Community and Personal History, launched 16/4/02. Gheebelum Ngugi DATSIPD; Arts Qld and Investing in Culture Mulgumpin Loan Program.

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11 September and 28 169 SVHS Koobara Cultural Day Coverage of event at Koobara Family November 1998 Centre Zillmere; and coverage of official opening new Kindergarten building. Commissioned by Aunty Ruth Hegarty.

28 November 1998 170 SVHS Experience the Challenge - Coverage of Indigenous high school AITAP students’ excellence competition at Nudgee College. Commissioned by Lisa Hall.

30 July 1998 171 SVHS/ SP Please Explain - drama Information video on indirect discrimination Betacam produced for Human Resources Dept Master Griffith University. Commissioned by Glenys Coolwell.

17 June 1998 172 SVHS A&TSI Community School Coverage of official opening of new school at Acacia Ridge

18 June – 31 August 173 Mini DV Young Tidas Business Information video produced by youth at 1999 (tapes with Indigenous Youth & Indigenous Youth AICHS) Health workshops on cervical health. AICHS

4 August 1999 174 SVHS A&TSI Community School Children’s Day coverage. Commissioned by DATSIPD.

30 June 2000 175 SP Betacam Up the Garden Path - A video and brochure guide for Indigenous documentary people to deal with the real estate industry. Commissioned and distributed by Office of Fair Trading. (Includes 2001 new act amendment.) 22 June 2000 176 SVHS Koobara Cultural Day Coverage of events commissioned by Koobara board.

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6 February 2001 177 CD Rom Eulogy – a tribute to Kev QPIX Artists in Residence project Digital Carmody

October – December 178 Mini DV Ani’s Lesson – short drama Student production at Wolvi Primary School 2001 10mins Video Production Course. Funded by IEISP.

12 July 2002 179 NAIDOC 2002 Indigenous Musgrave Park NAIDOC day screening Eyes Screen Festival funded by NAIDOC Program

25-29 November 2002 180 Mini DV l The old School Days Produced by students at the Wolvi School Documentary Video Production Course with local elders. An outcome of project 178. Funded by ASSPA and IESIP funds

February – June 2003 181 Mini DV Digital The Wonderful World of Produced with Wolvi School and Gympie 43 mins Wolvi Community - High School students and local community, documentary documenting contemporary life in Wolvi, Gubbi Gubbi country. Funded by Arts Qld, CCDU Aust Council, ASSPA and in-kind funds. March 2003 182 Scarborough State School Students, parents and staff operate new Video Workshop video equipment. Commissioned by Georgina Kadel, ASSPA funds

July 2003 183 in 2003 NAIDOC 2003 Colourised Exhibition of Indigenous films Held at Film Festival – Screen Southbank piazza and QPAC funded by Change DATSIP, PFTC, BCC, in partnership with Southbank Corp.

25 – 29 November 2002 184 Mini DV digital Women’s International Conference coverage and interviews with Masters on League for Peace & Indigenous women of South Pacific (Mouri, SVHS Freedom Conf. Auckland NZ Tahiti, Bougainville, West Papua, Australia and also El Salvador. Funded by WILPF.

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11 October 2003 185 Mirror Mirror - Film Forum Impact of images on Aboriginal people and society; screening of John Newfong “Aboriginal Affairs”. Panel of speakers at Stage Library Qld Theatrette.

24 April – 8 May 2004 186 Mini DV digital Woomera Aboriginal Coverage of event at Cooroy Butter Corporation Event Factory.

5 July 2004 187 Mini DV digital Indigenous Music Forum Q Music supported event held at Judith Wright Centre Fortitude Valley. Commissioned by Debra Bennett

8 – 9 July 2004 183 in 2004 Colourised Film Festival Festival research and development event at 2004 - Rediscovery new Creative Industries Precinct QUT Brisbane. Funded by DATSIP.

31 October – 13-14 188 Mini DV digital Queensland Indigenous Coverage at QUT Creative Industries November 2004 Screen Culture Workshop Faculty; to structure PFTC funding for Indigenous filmmaking initiative. Funded by QUT Creative Industries and PFTC.

February – November 189 Mini DV Wolvi Butterfly House & Student documentation of projects at Wolvi 2004 Frog Pond Project School.

1 November 2004 190 New media Boxing Art – contested Australia Council New Media Arts Board – Installation space project feasibility study

July – October 2005 191 Mini DV digital Women and Men of High Documentation; Toliver Fisher; Cherbourg Degree Project (ongoing) Team of the Century Awards;

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28 June – 9 July 2005 183 NAIDOC 2005 Colourised Cross city event: QUT Art Museum, Qut in 2005 Festival 2005 – corridors Gardens Foyer; Cafes; Qld Museum; Metro (Refer Arts; Jagera Arts Centre; Southbank www.colourisedfestival.com.au Piazza. Tribute to John Newfong. Funded for all festival details) by BCC QIAMEA AFC PFTC DATSIP QUT. Jan – July 2005 192 DVD 5 min a. Murri Girl – animation Work of Ross Watson, Shane Togo John DVD 4 min b. Boy & Moth- animation Graham, Rebecca Pitt , Archie Moore, c. : E – new media Eddie Nona and Karen Batten d. Theatre Installation commissioned for Colourised Festival 2005

7 July 2006 183 NAIDOC 2006 Colourise Screening in Musgrave; tribute to Uncle In 2006 Festival 2006 – origins Tolliver Fisher. Funded by BCC.

18-19 October 2006 193 (Tapes Mini DV digital Jiran Women’s Meeting Video coverage of meeting at New Farm. with Commissed by Kumarra Association. Kumarra)

10 March 2007 194 (Tapes Mini DV digital International Women’s Day Coverage of event at Jagera Arts Centre with MPCC) 2007 Musgrave Park for Musgrave Park Cultural Centre

18 June – 13 July 2007 183 NAIDOC 2007 Colourise Cross City event: cafes; Jagera Arts in 2007 Festival 2007 – you are here Centre; Musgrave Park; Secondary Schools; Tribute to Cathy & Johnny Brady. Funded by PFTC & QUT

August 2007 195 Coverage of ColouriseBIFF – focus on Partnership with Brisbane International Film In 2007 Forum on mini community filmmaking Festival to present Indigenous community DV digital produced work. Festival International Guest Sergio Novelo Barco, Mayan Mexico. Forum and Screenings. Funded by BCC. July 2008 183 Colourise Festival 2008 - Cross city event partnering with local In 2008 generations NAIDOC celebrations and tour to secondary schools. Funded by BCC, PFTC and AFTRS.

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August 2008 195 Coverage of ColouriseBIFF 2008 - Screening of international program of In 2008 Seminar on generations Indigenous films; Seminar and Welcome mini DV digital Ceremony at GoMA. International Guest, Native American, Methow community spiritual leader, Spencer Martin - documentary Two Rivers Pow Wow. Funded by BCC 2004 – 2009 196 Website Site\Sight\Cite project Refer www.colourise.com.au for details. Construction, concept development Collaborative work-in-progress presenting new media and philosophical concepts and social interactive reconstruction in local places of installation contemporary significance to Indigenous people. July 2009 183 Colourise Festival 2009 - Cross city event partnering with local in 2009 beTween NAIDOC celebrations and tour to educational institutions. Funded by BCC and PFTC.

August 2009 195 ColouriseBIFF 2009 - Screening of international program of In 2009 beTween Indigenous films; Seminar and Welcome Ceremony at GoMA. Funded by BCC.

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APPENDIX 6.IV

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY HUMAN RESEARCH ETHICS REQUIREMENT

MASTERS BY RESEARCH CANDIDATE: Eve Christine Peacock NO. N5477069 TOPIC: HOW INTERACTIVE INEW MEDIA ART CAN EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE AN INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT

FORMAL CREATIVE TEAM – ARTIST’S AGREEMENT

As a member of the creative team working collaboratively on the creative project aspect of this practice led Masters by Research study, I formally agree to the following terms: a) I agree to being a participant, collaborating in the creative team of artists working on the concept development of the new media project Site\Sight\Cite. I acknowledge that there is no compulsion to participate, and that I seek to be part of a creative team of people who actively seek opportunities to work with like-minded people on projects like this, to achieve our artistic, cultural and social goals. b) I acknowledge that the original concept of the work was created by Eve Christine Peacock, and that I was invited to participate in the development of the concept to production stage. I agree that the copyright of the completed Site\Sight\Site concept will be the property of the creative team collectively, and that I will have no rights to develop this concept, or part thereof, without the formal agreement of the full creative team engaged in this project. (Refer attached list.) c) I acknowledge the Indigenous cultural value and integrity of being a participant collaborating in a creative team of equal partners, which is an integral part of this creative project. I agree that it is this value and integrity which I am party to as a member of the creative team collaborating on the development this project. d) I have been assured that full recognition of my knowledge, expertise, time and the value of my artistic and intellectual contribution to the project will be given in any publication, publicity or information about the project, and agree to receiving such recognition. e) I reserve the right to withdraw as a participant collaborating in the Site\Sight\Cite creative team at any time in the development of the project. It is agreed that such decision to withdraw will not be to the detriment of my personal, artistic or professional relationship/s with the creative team. f) In the interests of the completion of the research project, I agree that a majority of the creative team will carry the right to veto any individual attempt to prevent the completion of this stage of the project. I therefore agree that any consideration of termination of the project will occur after completion of the Masters by Research/concept development stage. g) I acknowledge that the objective of this formal agreement, is to protect the development of the project, and ensure it is carried out under Indigenous Australian cultural and research protocols.

SIGNATURE:

DATE 107

PARTICIPANT INFORMATION for QUT RESEARCH PROJECT

HOW INTERACTIVE NEW MEDIA ART CAN EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE AN INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT.

Research Team Contacts Eve Christine Peacock, Dr. Christine Comans, MA Candidate/ researcher Research Supervisor 04 07 379 822 3138 3243 [email protected] [email protected]

Description This project is being undertaken as part of practice led Masters by Research for Eve Christine Peacock. The project is funded by Q.U.T. and, in part, by the Australia Council for the Arts. The funding body will have access to the data obtained during the project.

The purpose of this project is to explore communication of the philosophical concept concerning relationships between land and people and between people, within the laws and customs of Australian Indigenous society. A creative team of 9 artists (7 Indigenous and 2 non -Indigenous), engages in particular ways, and at various levels, in the exciting scope and rapid development of new media interactive installation art, to communicate this concept. The study consists of:

A. 10,000 word THESIS/ EXEGESIS combining a theoretical exploration of both the philosophical concept, and the practice led approach taken to create a new media work to communicate the concept.

B. CREATIVE PROJECT a new media creative project proposal, titled Site\Sight\Cite, in collaboration with eight other artists. The creative project will be presented on a blog site in the form of a portfolio. The portfolio will consist of Photoshop produced images by nine artists, of nine contemporary, mtropolitan sites of significance. (Refer Attachment 3). The images will be accompanied by artist statements with further images, to give the impression of how each site will be treated in production, to communicate the philosophical concept. Each artist takes both an individual and collaborative approach to the project, through the theme of the philosophical concept.

The research team requests your assistance because the quality of your work in the field of new media arts would make a considerable contribution to the success of the proposal to produce the Site\Sight\Cite project.

Participation Your participation in this project is voluntary. If you do agree to participate, you can withdraw from participation at any time during the project without comment or penalty. Your decision to participate will in no way impact upon your current or future relationship with QUT or the Creative Team in the project (for example your grades). Your participation will involve a focus group, and preliminary work on particular aspects of the creative project. (Refer Attachments A1.2(i) and 3.) The project will be conducted at QUT and where you normally access computer equipment. It is estimated that the time spent on the project will be 35 hours over the period October, November and December of 2008. Specific times, dates and locations will be arranged to your convenience.

Expected benefits It is expected that this project will benefit you through the ability to work collaboratively with other artists in the field, in a way that allows you to develop and share philosophical ideas, knowledge, skills and networks in the creation of art that seeks to bridge the knowledge gap in 108

Australia between old and new society. You will also benefit from the opportunity to do preliminary work, in a creative and supportive environment, towards a major new media art project. Risks There are no risks beyond normal day-to-day living associated with your participation in this project. Confidentiality Any comments or contribution you may make during one to one dialogue or focus groups will be verified before use in the MA exegesis or blog site for the creative project; and you will be fully acknowledged unless you direct otherwise. There will be some video recording of dialogue and focus groups which will be kept for future reference in the production of the project. The recordings may also be edited for use on the blog site of the creative project Site\Sight\Cite. You will be consulted before any use is made of any recordings. You can request your exemption from any video recorded sessions. Consent to Participate We ask that you sign the attached consent form to confirm your agreement to participate. Questions / further information about the project Please contact the researcher team members named above to have any questions answered or if you require further information about the project. Concerns / complaints regarding the conduct of the project QUT is committed to researcher integrity and the ethical conduct of research projects. However, if you do have any concerns or complaints about the ethical conduct of the project you may contact the QUT Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or [email protected]. The Research Ethics Officer is not connected with the research project and can facilitate a resolution to your concern in an impartial manner.

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CONSENT FORM for QUT RESEARCH PROJECT

HOW INTERACTIVE NEW MEDIA ART CAN EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE AN INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPT.

Statement of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you: • have read and understood the information document regarding this project • have had any questions answered to your satisfaction • understand that if you have any additional questions you can contact the research team • understand that you are free to withdraw at any time, without comment or penalty • understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or [email protected] if you have concerns about the ethical conduct of the project • agree to participate in the project • understand that the project will include audio and/or video recording

Name

Signature

Date / /

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APPENDIX 6.V

SITE\SIGHT\CITE PROJECT CREATIVE TEAM

Keith Armstrong Andrew Hill Interactive New Media Artist New Media Arts and IT EMAIL: [email protected] EMAIL: [email protected] MOB: 0412 749 729 MOB: 0424 233 637: www.embodiedmedia.com http://www.geocities.com/dot_ayu/curator.ht m www.colourise.com.au

Karen Batten Leah King-Smith New Media Artist; Arts Workshop Photo Media Artist Facilitator. EMAIL: [email protected] EMAIL: [email protected] MOB: 0421 576 978 MOB: 0401 077 910 http://rt.airstrip.com.au/article/issue67/7905 www.colourise.com.au http://www.artmuseum.qut.com/archive/new s-event.jsp?news-event-id=6614

Lawrence English Duncan King-Smith electronics, improvisation, experimental- Sound Recordist and Musician pop and sound-art; EMAIL: events, festivals and exhibitions MOB: EMAIL: lawrence[at]room40.org http://home.pacific.net.au/~lcarroli/art_art/li MOB: 0412 957 795 brary.htm http://www.room40.org/events.shtml

Carl Fisher Archie Moore Indigenous consultation Visual Artist EMAIL: [email protected] EMAIL: [email protected] MOB: 0447 762 645 MOB: 0424235373 www.colourise.com.au http://www.unisa.edu.au/samstag/scholars/sc holars01/moore.asp http://www.redbubble.com/search/archie?&p age=3

Jenny Fraser Christine Peacock New Media Artist and Curator Project conception & Co-ordination; EMAIL: [email protected] filmmaker, Festival Director. MOB: 0409 255 487 EMAIL: [email protected] http://www.geocities.com/dot_ayu/curator.htm MOB: 0407 379 822 www.colourise.com.au

John Graham Darby Peacock Poet and Illustrator Landscape Photographer EMAIL: [email protected] EMAIL: [email protected] MOB: 0438 812 492 MOB: 0403 849 303 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb5270/is www.colourise.com.au _3_73/ai_n28749658

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Mary Graham Janice Peacock Aboriginal Philosophy and Cultural Visual Artist – installation Consultation EMAIL: [email protected] EMAIL: [email protected] www.netsvictoria.org/placesthatnameus/pea MOB: 0438 812 492 cock.html STUDY DOCUMENTS: www4.gu.edu.au:8080/adt- http://www.colourise.com.au/docs/PHIL%20U root/uploads/approved/adt- nderpinnings.pdf QGU20070327.140720/public/01Front.pdf http://www.colourise.com.au/docs/Place.doc

Richelle Spence Tamara Whyte Live-Art Performer, New Media Artist, Performer, Writer, Photographer Event Manager. EMAIL: [email protected] EMAIL: [email protected] MOB: 0401 161 272 MOB: 0417 797 849 http://www.mwk16.com/memories/index.ht http://www.artistcitizen.com/richelle_spence.h m[url][/url][url][/url] tml

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APPENDIX 6.VI

How interactive new media art can effectively

communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts. 3.2.1 The First Revolution In dialogic terms, “observation of the world takes place from a certain spatio- temporal position, that is, from a certain point of view or perspective”

(Lahteenmaki, 1998, p. 87). Reaching a common understanding of the meaning within this simple code, but complex philosophical concept - relationship to land and relationship to each other - is established by a dialogic methodology. The process continues when others engage in a relationship with the work; and simultaneously with place and each other. Concurring with Bakhtin’s theories of dialogism, actual meaning emerges “through process or action rather than seen as a product or thing” (Lahteenmaki, 1998, p. 90). Meaning occurs as a series of emerging signs that “require interpretation, and the task of reading what they cryptically indicate takes time: time is lost in the long and difficult process of finding out what they mean, but when that meaning is found, time is regained” (Serres, 2004, p. 181).

Suitable time for engagement with the work is established within the project to create contemplation of law as land, a basic tenet of existence in Indigenous countries which has eluded the regard of the vast majority of people occupying this nation. Carter attributes the cause to renderings of a singular colonialist historical perspective, remarking (Carter, 1996, p. 17): But perhaps the impatience of a linear exposition is part of the problem; if our opening to the future depends in part on renovating our modes of historical narrative, then an attention to the processes of getting from one location to the next may not be self-indulgent but critical in establishing the value of the knowledge garnered.”

The artistic team, adopts an “inter-subjective process” to examine evidence “where the speaker and the listener do their best in order to approach each other from their unique perspectives and arrive at a compromise regarding interpretation” (Lahteenmaki, 1998, p. 90). By way of a video recorded meeting of some of the Creative Team, Mary Graham elaborates on the distinct ethical, logical and metaphysical aspects of an Aboriginal world view

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relevant to the focus of the new media project. Each artist starts with acknowledgement of each other’s relationship to place, an interaction which produces an ontogenetic factor that creates a specifically Indigenous approach to the work. An on-line reflective journal and forum - Uniikup Productions Ltd. Projects http://www.colourisedfestival.com.au/uniikup%20projects/index.php. - is used by some of the creative team to share and reflect upon ideas stimulated by the dialogue. As the project is realised a website is created to represent the creative project, storing the content of a production portfolio (originally a blogsite on Embodied Media 2006: http://www.embodiedmedia.com/projects/BoxArt/ and later uploaded to http://www.colourisedfestival.com.au/uniikup%20projects/index.php).

Form: The creative work begins to take the form of a sequence of seven interactive new media installation scenarios, within which visitors partake in live art performances. Travelling through the work these participants connect with principal components of the philosophical concept through the experiences created in each scenario: i) & ii) an exposition of colonialism, exposing ontological difference; iii) historical omissions; iv) land as law; v) & vi) maintaining and managing traditional and contemporary forms of justice; vii) contested space.

The creative team collaborates on specific scenarios aligned to the aspect of work in which they specialise, the entire installation taking shape and reshaping according to what each brings to the sequence. The inclusion of live art performance is to foster and reinforce interaction between participants as both observer and observed (of themselves and of others’ responses during the event). A fusion of electronic gadgets and digital systems are assembled to create an interactive interrogation of the theme, induced by a fascination with what new media technology can engineer.

Place: An artificial construct, a huge circus size marquee, arts venue or theatre, is required to exhibit a work of this size. Located in a very large 115

interior, a variety of narratives engender intellectual engagement, while the tactile elements of participation, through performance and interaction in each sequence, stimulate sensibilities. Imagination and interpretation are assisted by attractive new media gadgets.

Plan: Following is a walk through the development of the scenarios outlined above, which are part of a synergistic method at work in the creative process and project, described by King-Boyes (1997, p. 44) as: “Each action, thought, or skill mastered and rendered operative will become the founding cause of what will be, subsequent to the action of lineal time, an effect.”

Beginning at the entrance to the installation space, in Scenario (i), participants are enveloped in a huge, wind blown British flag, as they assume the role of forebears who embarked upon a journey across thousands of miles of sea, aboard tall wooden ships, not knowing whether they would see their home or families again. Moving along in a line, a rope to guide them through a darkened space, a world map illuminates behind them on the surface below, referencing the trail blazing of imperialism.

They travel onward to the hollow sound of wind and gushing water as the image of a lonely ship ploughing through the dark, deep blue sea, fades up onto a central screen before them. A telescope, dimly lit on the deck of the ship, captures their attention, while surround sound encompasses the travellers with accounts from the journals of James Cook, Joseph Banks, Sydney Parkinson and the official record of the voyage of the Endeavour published by John Hawksworth in 1773, that revisit the sightings of land and contact with Indigenous people in this new territory, marked for conquest and exploitation (South Seas Voyaging Accounts http://southseas.nla.gov.au/index_voyaging.html (accessed Feb. 12, 2007). Thus begins the exposition of colonialism, contrasting the perspectives of those who occupy the land with the seafarers on board the tall ship. Their gaze through the telescope (like that at a tourist site) triggers photo-media and animated images that explode onto the central screen, depicting how the

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seafarers apprehend this totally unfamiliar place, its flora, fauna and people, and speculate on life in this landscape.

The stories we grew up with, popularised accounts of history, would have us believe there was no substantial dialogue or acts of diplomacy that passed between Aborigines and coloniser in 1788. Scenario II challenges that concept, when the travellers disembark upon the wet shore at Eora (Port Jackson) to discover, down projected into receptacles on the sandy beach, events omitted from history, (presented as dramatised digital stories) exploring the context and manner of encounters between the two. Jakelin Troy (in Carter, 2004, p. 159), one of very few scholars to recognise the social and political significance of (William) Dawes linguistic interests, considers that the (his) notebooks document an initiative that offered a brief opportunity to ground race relations at Sydney Cove differently: Embedded in the conversations and vocabulary that Dawes recorded is ample evidence that he enjoyed companionable social interactions with the Aboriginal people. His notes contain a broad range of everyday expressions from terms of endearment to those of admonishment. Dawes seems to have conversed at all levels from the esoteric to the pragmatic and was able to record many kinds of human contact (Carter, 2004, p. 159).

The digital dramatised re-enactments of such documented encounters, from the Indigenous perspective, are designed as a catalyst, to generate interaction with and between participants and to capacitate a conscious regard for ways of being, doing and seeing the world, that are intrinsically part of place, relationships to land and to each other. The encounters also beg questions as to the purpose of omitting from historical accounts, those documented events which indicated the extent to which a very different relationship could have been forged, had the travellers not come with the distinct and violent intention to invade and usurp. Reflection leads to moral and ethical questions; text projected onto the sand resembling blood, spilling across weathered artefacts, and left like fragments of memory in this sandy beach: rights law incursion transgression denial sovereignty challenge. The subdued sound of laughter, fire, song, fills the atmosphere. The sequence ends with imagery and sound fading up on the central screen, of the

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pristine bush, drawing the participants away from the shore and onto the next sequence.

In Scenario III the participants gather at the outer ring of a volcanic crater where the ancient laws of Indigenous land are expressed through down projected photo media imagery - moving and animated - oration, music and atmospheric sound, aesthetically and conversantly conveying such concepts as: Aboriginal Law is a set of rules or procedures recognised by a community as binding by authority. There is a contractual basis in all

law everywhere in the world, including Aboriginal Law, this is why clan and group partnerships and alliances were/are so important.

The Aboriginal Dreaming/Law emerged out of the land, via the dramatic activities of Ancestral Beings. These Beings both male and female shaped the Land as they travelled, bringing the Law into existence as they went.

Land/Dreaming

Law (Custodial Ethic)

Womens Law Mens Law

All localities/places have their own unique voice. Individual, family, clan and group have their own unique Place/voice. All perspectives are valid and reasonable.

This is further demonstrated in the equation:

Individual, family, All perspectives are All localities/places

clan, and group valid and have their own have their own reasonable unique voice unique Place/voice

(Graham, 2006 (i), p. 2) Designed as a talking circle, this scenario evokes dialogue with and between the participants about land as law. The presence of live art performers throughout the sequence assists to support participants to share perspectives, personal information and anecdotes within the context of the scenario.

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The sequence continues, with similar treatments of Scenarios v) & vi) - maintaining and managing traditional and contemporary forms of justice and vii) - land as contested space. Sequence seven is developed to demonstrate the scope of this interactive new media creative project. The project script, production and technical requirements ascertained, the project is now ready for scrutiny. (Appendix IV(i) Master Script Boxing Art/ Savage Trajectory.)

Thought (reflection and critical analysis): The project plan is speeding along in theory, conjuring a contrived place from a labour intensive process - an immensely complex technological installation environment to monitor and sustain, let alone tour. Creativity is transformed to a production line, stripped by industry of enjoyment, and eventually purpose and intent, with immense potential for technical problems to occur. The budget required does not equal the credibility of the outcomes of the project; and the installation will be exhibited then vanish into the memories of a few, and the archives of a bureaucratic underworld.

Bakhtin expressed concern that theory is a detached cognitive act that comes to be governed by its own immanent laws, according to which, it then develops as if it had a will of its own. He relates this condition to the world of technology stating: it knows its own immanent law and it submits to that law in its impetuous and unrestrained development, in spite of the fact that it has long evaded the task of understanding the cultural purpose of that development, and may serve evil rather than good. Instruments are perfected according to their own inner law. … All that is technical when divorced from the once occurrent unity of life and surrendered to the will of the law immanent to its development, is frightening (Bakhtin, 1993, p. 7).

Whilst the plan would satisfy the intent of the creative project, it was not in accord with the principal elements of the established core methodology - place, dialogue and collaboration.

Mary Graham (2006, pp 5, 7, 8), in the research project Kummara Conceptual Framework, A Discourse on a Proposed Aboriginal Research Methodology, outlines this methodology observing that:

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What (also) comes into being is the notion of Place as a determinant of Being in the world, that is, Place as the informative quality of essence of the Mode of Being in the world – what could be called the Law of Place. The notion of Place as a method of research, or as a possible theory, is a way of seeing and a form of knowing that employs historical knowledge, reflexive reasoning, and dialectic awareness to give people some tools to realise new potentials for the emancipation and understanding of dislocated individuals and collectives today.

Mary goes on to explain: By refining people’s thinking abilities and moral sensibilities, Place method hopes to equip individuals with a new consciousness of how to approach both a dilemma and/or a method of inquiry; to see what must be done about it and how to do it. But it could also help to restore the value and position of Place to the Indigenous mindset and ethical consideration. This consciousness might help them determine what their best interests should be and lessen the victimisation that people impose on themselves from within, or that is forced upon them from outside. And: If change is the fundamental nature of reality or existence, as described by Heraclitus, (7) then Place is the fundamental existential quantifier, that is to say, Place is a measuring device that informs us of 'where' we are at any time, therefore, at the same time, it's also informing us 'who' we are. 4

This articulate insight resonates with existing Indigenous arts practice and processes, and affirms it in a profound way. It makes sense of what is taken for granted, by placing a common cultural practice to many of us, into a framework of integrity and recognition. This perspective is what distinguishes Indigenous cultural and aesthetic meaning and purpose. An analysis of community arts practices by Kester in Conversation Pieces, 2004, provides an interesting contrast. Kester asserts that in the 1960s and 1970s “artists began to draw from the cultural practice of creating works from networks and interactions which are already fundamentally related, or have created relations with sites.” These works however, he notes, were aimed at transforming the condition of individuals and groups who are presumed to be in need. Art education, an important part of welfare program curriculum, brought about a universality of discourse employed by community artists and welfare workers for this process: empowerment, enfranchisement, social

4 (7) Llewelyn, John, “The Hypocritical Imagination: Between Kant and Levinas”, Routledge. London. 2000, p. 115.)

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capital and various types of training. Aesthetics, he holds, has come to play the same role as science and religion, with programs of reformation or transformation, through intervention (Kester, 2004, p. 131-137). The imposition of these practices onto Indigenous communities inhibits a distinct cultural and aesthetic expression through creative development and art.

The creative project, representing the continuation and further development of the media arts practice in Brisbane based Uniikup Productions Ltd./ Murriimage, were not synchronised. Could the creative project need to be located in a real place, one that could offer more permanency and generate real benefit to the community?

Time: Exercising both its creative and destructive functions, time carried creactivity onto and into a second revolution.

3.2.2 The Second Revolution An unexpected opportunity emerged through a community organisation, Murri Mura Aboriginal Corporation, which owned a small building, with two floors, on Cordelia Street, opposite Musgrave Park, in a developers’ paradise, located within the Brisbane City Council, South Brisbane Riverside, Urban Renewal plan (http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE:1074955920:pc=PC_2460#).

The property was to undergo refurbishment to accommodate Murri Mura Aboriginal Corporation administration and projects on the ground floor of the building. The organisation aspired to develop two on-line projects - an international Indigenous bookshop and a comprehensive information service (including statistics) as well as a Women’s Council to recognise and reinvigorate the essential role that women play in Indigenous society The space would provide access to, and community consultation with, Elders and with capacity building teaching and learning (training) workshops, based on identified needs of the community; and community social and political events. A media room, which would be operated by media arts organisation Uniikup Productions Ltd., would serve multiple purposes, from digital recordings of community histories and general business, computer networking and data 121

collection, to a control base for new media installations throughout the building.

Form 2: Addressing the economic sustainability of the organisation, partial perpetual income was assured from leasing the first floor of the premises to a tenant whose business concerned the welfare of Indigenous families, and related areas. The space on both floors would be designed for interactive participation rather than simply housing another agency which generated passive welfare oriented programs.

Plan 2: The creative project artistic team working with the Board, staff and tenant would develop a plan for the refurbishment of the building. The environment would support community to see, access and interact with the projects of the organisation, utilising interactive new media technologies installed in the building. The building design would evoke the presence of a significant Indigenous site which employs the tenets of self-determination, reflects the aspirations of the community, and beckons a principled dialogue with the public at large. The outcome would be a production portfolio on dvd, presenting the way in which the building would be developed and refurbished to house the organisation’s administration and projects. The dvd would serve as a tool for publicity and to raise finances for the planned refurbishment of the building. The proposal fulfilled the intentions of the research and project, by engaging all the processes of practice, and developed more community skills and knowledge; a presumption that worked wonderfully, in theory.

Organisation: The proposal was given the working title Place Building/ Building Place (refer Appendix IV(ii) Place Building, Building Place). An architect was consulted to provide guidance and to work with the collaborative team participating in the creative project. A town planner was contacted to provide advice on the requirements of the local council and how the project would best be developed in relation to the projected business environment of this area. A business consultant was already employed, to advise the Board of Management, on necessary company legal compliance, financial opportunities, development of the on-line projects and where other expertise

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could be accessed to achieve the objectives of the Murri Mura Aboriginal Corporation.

A key component of creative practice, organisation, is essential; and outcome a long way off without it. The essential elements of business operations relating to the management of the MMAC were in a very preliminary stage and time soon became absorbed by tending to those elements. All elements equal the sum total of the project and therefore all must be given thorough consideration, rather than just the creative intent. Organisation and creativity ran parallel in all Uniikup/ Colourise projects, so it was never an issue; but clearly this time, that key element had been taken for granted. This proposal was meant for another time, and the creative team and project were now suspended in motion, without relationship to place or each other. Other Uniikup Productions Ltd. projects, the sixth annual Colourise Festival 2008 – generations, staged in the NAIDOC gathering season, and the second ColouriseBIFF (Brisbane International Film Festival) event now took priority and became the catalyst to reconnect to the vitality of established practices and processes, and a way to proceed became clear.

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APPENDIX 6.VI(i)

BOXING ART (working title) 26/09/06 SAVAGE/ SAVAGE TRAJECTORY

The creative team: Christine Peacock, Indigenous Concept Development and Artistic Director. Mary Graham, Indigenous Conceptual and Cultural Consultant. Dr. Keith Armstrong, Hybrid, Multimedia Artist. Andrew Hill, Indigenous Co-Interactive Media Artist. Rebecca Pitt, Indigenous Animation Artist; Lawrence English Sound Artist, Room 40; Leah King-Smith, Indigenous Photomedia Artist; Duncan Smith, Sound Design and archive Jenny Fraser, Indigenous New Media Artist, Archie Moore, Indigenous Visual Artist – installation; Janice Peacock, Indigenous Visual Artist – installation; John Graham, Indigenous story teller/, poet/ writer, visual artist David Peacock, Indigenous Photographer, poet, visual artist. Holly Smith, Producer and Event Management. Amanda Dewsnap, Digital Media Producer and Editor.

EXT. DARKENED ROOM:

People gather in a foyer space to participate in the experience of an interactive media installation.

A congenial setting, artwork on walls, maybe books on sale (partnership with a book seller) juice water nuts dried fruit available to munch. Comfortable seats for relaxation, meeting and interaction.

At the entrance to the room can be seen a very large British Flag blowing in the breeze at the doorway.

Participants (min of three) can remove their shoes in preparation for entering the space to participate in the experience of an interactive media installation. Six people are participants while others may view the performative participation before becoming participants themselves.

At the centre of the darkened space a screen displaying (low light) video footage of rough seas in a dark, deep ocean, and a stormy horizon can be detected.

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SEQUENCE 1: SEA TREK Dur: ATMOSTPHERE: DARK AND FOREBODING

1.i) Entering the space:

Participants: manoeuvre past the large Union Jack flag blowing in a breeze. It threatens to envelop them as they pass.

ARTIFACT – Archie - design; fabric? production? COST: LARGE BRITISH FLAG

ARTIFACT - FLAG Archie - design; material? construction? COST: POLE

FAN FOR BREEZE Keith and Andrew COST:

Duration:

1.ii) Inside the space:

Audio: Sensors trigger: • sound of the swelling sea washing loudly against the side of a sailing ship • gulls • a strong wind whistles and • a lone bell tolls.

Participants: proceed further into the room toward the central screen, with the aid of a rope connecting the British Flag to a telescope stationed in front of the screen.

ARTIFACT - ROPE Archie - design; material? production? COST:

ARTIFACT - Keith and Andrew - design; construction? COST: TELESCOPE

CENTRAL DUAL Keith and Andrew - design; construction? COST: SCREEN

Duration: ______

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1.iii) Trail Blazing (floor):

Participants: proceed along the rope.

Artifact and Program: the outline of a map representing a journey across “Commonwealth” countries lights up like a blazoned trail behind them.

MAP Commonwealth Archie - research and design COST: countries

LUMINOUS CABLE Keith and Andrew - design and produce. COST:

Duration: ______

1.iv) Central Screen – Animated Pristine Landscape and Voice Over:

Visual Media: animation fades up onto the central screen. An (over the shoulder shot) of a view of pristine landscape from the offing (from the sea to the shore) of a sailing ship.

Audio Media: sound of sea continued (see ii) above) with voice over - There is a vast amount of wealth to be made in this country (a quote from a passenger on the Endeavour as they surveyed Aboriginal land).

ANIMATED MEDIA pristine Rebekah and Archie COST: landscape (o.t.s.) from the bow of a sailing ship.

AUDIO MEDIA – voice over Lawrence?; voice? COST:

Duration:

1.v) Central Screen – Silhouettes:

Participants: create silhouetted images on central screen (in the style of Eric Schuldenfrei and Marisa Yiu, http://www.eskyiu.com/ChinatownWORK2006/film.html.

Program: Silhouetting

SILOUHETTE PROGRAM Keith and Andrew - design and produce COST:

Duration: ______

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1.vi) Central Screen – Animated images of colonialism

Visual and Audio Media: animated and/or cartoon drawings of popularised Western images of colonialism appear within the silhouettes with related audio. The style of the animated drawings mimics the superficial and opportunist way in which colonists witness the land (not unlike how a child creates simplified images of the world through drawing):

• development (towns, cities); • wealth (well dressed people with servants), • comfort (flowers, food, wine, housing).

ANIMATED/CARTOON DRAWINGS Rebekah and Archie COST:

AUDIO (RELATED SOUND FXS) Lawrence (?) COST:

Duration:

______

SEQUENCE 2: THROUGH THE TELESCOPE Dur: ATMOSTPHERE: GAME SHOW CHAOS. IMAGES and SOUNDS FROM PAST, PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.

2.i) Central Screen: Collage of Images (see v) and vi) above)

Participants: move to the telescope stationed away from the front of the screen

2.ii) Central Screen: Telescope and Signposts

Program: telescope trains on signposts (opening up cartoons/photos and sounds that reveal the antithesis of colonialism (eg: http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html)

Audio Visual Media: signposts with the following text (examples only – use common, contemporary language) appear on the imagery, now on the central screen, with related sound.

• Defence provides images of war; • Government – Aboriginal map, dissolves to terra nullus map, dissolves to Australia map; • Law - police brutality (including native police); • Technological Advancement – environmental degradation; • Settlement – invasion; 127

• Development – underdevelopment; • Opportunity – corruption; • Economic Growth – exploitation; • Benevolence – Christian missions; • Culture – Consumerism, McDonalds, KFC; • Civilisation - impoverishment.

One signpost remains on the screen.

• Australia - gross and distorted images of flora, fauna and humanity appear (representing accounts of the 1788 colonial view of this new terrain).

Audio Media: sound related to imagery reaches a crescendo.

2.iii) Visual FX: Black Out

The last image is followed by a complete black out.

Participants: left in the dark for up to 30 seconds.

Sound FX fade up in the dark:

footsteps in the sand, seagulls, buzz of insects, call/ cry of other birds waves lapping the shore, soft breeze in trees/palms,

TELESCOPE Keith and Andrew – design and produce COST: PROGRAM and blackout

VISUAL MEDIA & Keith and Archie – design and produce COST: TEXT Signpost imagery and words

AUDIO MEDIA Lawrence COST: Sign post sound

Duration: ______

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SEQUENCE 3: ON THE BEACH DUR: ATMOSTPHERE: UNCOMFORTABLY WARM, A SENSE OF COMPLETE ISOLATION AND SUSPENSION OF TIME. (Image: © Keith Armstrong)

3.i) Central Screen - view of the ocean from the shore

Slow fade up on central screen a view of the ocean from the shore changing from morning, to noon to night throughout this sequence. A sense of waiting for something to appear that doesn’t.

3.ii) Set Contruction – sand and sea water (fx) A sand pit - constructed to give the sense of landing on the seashore

Participants: drawn to sandpit by lighting.

3.iii) Down projection Three projectors down projecting into three artifacts.

3.iv) Artifacts: (Image © Janice Peacock) • large shell, • a coolamon and • a tin plate. • Giom head dress (by TSI Artists Janice Peacock) is suspended above, with shadow falling onto the floor.

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Participants: go to each artifact and by lifting them trigger a projected sequence of three digital stories.

3.v) Stories and Audio Visual Media: • 1) sharing a beached whale – two laws. • 2) an exchange between male and female – rules of engagement. • 3) the interception of a cruel punishment – two laws. concerning two laws, rules of engagement and codes of conduct. • 4) between the digital stories, photomedia images and sounds of Indigenous land and people, which symbolise the way consumers of the stories/participants are/were being observed by land and people.

The stories end as the light from the down projection dims and video images fade up on the central screen.

3.vi) Central Screen - Visual and Audio Media Transition: Sea scene dissolves to photomedia/video/still images and bush sounds appear on the central screen, an extension of those appearing between digital stories (refer 3.v) above).

Participants: move onto the next interactive sequence.

DOWN PROJECTION Keith and Andrew - COST: PROGRAM & DESIGN design and produce

PROJECTORS Keith and Andrew COST:

STORIES Mary, John - research and writing (Paul Carter info) COST:

AUDIO VISUAL MEDIA – stories Christine, Andrew, Jani, Amanda - shoot, edit COST: AUDIO VISUAL MEDIA - Leah and Duncan – design & produce COST: transitions and sequence scene and central screen imagery SET CONSTRUCTION - BEACH Archie and Janice – design; construction?COST:

ARTIFACTS Janice - design and produce COST: Giom headdress; shell; plate; coolamon

Duration:

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SEQUENCE 4: THE SACRED LAND DUR: ATMOSTPHERE: WARMTH OF INTIMACY AND REFLECTIVE ENGAGEMENT WITH THE SPIRIT OF THE BUSH; THE INTRICACY OF THE LANDSCAPE.

4.i) Central Screen – trees Images on the central screen dissolve slowly to a series of audio visual shots of land and trees – young, old different shapes and genesis, a sense of the presence of omnipotence - as light falls into ancient crater set and sound commences.

Participants: Are drawn firstly to the central screen, then onto the light falling on the crater.

4.i) Set construction – ancient crater The feeling of earth, stones, leaves, grass and twigs beneath the feet on the lead up to a circle of clay, rocks and stones.

4.ii) Down Projection A down projection into crater, of moving, animated and photomedia images, (including dance, community people and activity, bush, water, sea, food, animals), sound and music.

4.iii) Mythical Story A) Mythical story is produced (text, sound, narrative and image). The story is a symbolic celebration of the sacredness of land which creates the bonding spirit that interconnects people, land, animals and flora. (Reference: Story About Feeling. Bill Neidjie.) B) Story is constructed so as to allow participants to share their stories of the places they were born or lived and memories of that place, to each other as - C) final imagery of down projection is shots of community peoples’ faces, looking into the lens of the camera/ at the participants as they tell their stories.

Participants: Sit upon the bank of the crater, as mythical story is down projected into the ring At the end of the myth, they are asked to tell their own story (refer also point C of iii) above).

4.iv) Central Screen – fight imagery The sound of a fight breaks out. On the central screen video image of dust bare feet, legs and the sound of people shouting.

Participants: Rise as images in the centre of the crater/ ring (of community peoples’ faces, looking into the lens of the camera/ at the participants as they tell their stories), turn quickly to look in the direction of the fight (central screen).

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SET CONSTRUCTION rock stone clay Design Leah and Duncan; circle, and lead in earth, leaves, grass construction? COST: twigs, stones

DOWN PROJECTION Keith and Andrew - design COST:

PROJECTOR Keith and Andrew COST:

MYTHICAL STORY – sacred land Mary, John, Leah, Duncan - Script COST: AUDIO VISUAL – mythical story Leah, Duncan, Amanda - design, shoot, edit - (also Uniikup Collection and David Peacock photos) COST:

ANIMATED MEDIA Rebekah Pitt COST:

CENTRAL SCREEN AUDIO VISUAL – Mary, Jenny - fight – dust, legs moving fast, scuffle, Script, Produce Shoot Edit COST: shouting.

Duration: ______

SEQUENCE 5: SOCIETY & CODES OF BEHAVIOUR DUR: ATMOSTPHERE: A SPONTANEOUS HAPPENING IS OCCURRING, DISORIENTATING PARTICIPANTS WHO DO NOT KNOW HOW TO RESPOND.

AN EXPERIENCE OF: CONTAINMENT; OF BEING PART OF A COLLECTIVE SOCIETY, A GROUP; AN INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP MEMBER SIMULTANEOUSLY, WITH A ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES.

5.i) Right of Passage 1: Fight images on the central screen fade as participants approach sequence 5.

Participants: Pass through a curtain of fabric.

Fabric: Symbolising right of passage. Stimulates the senses of the skin like spiderweb, as the fabric brushes the participants intimately as they pass into the constructed screen set.

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5.ii) Screen Set Construction: A three sided screen structure (same material as central screen) designed to take back projected imagery. Within, a dividing wall which reflects images of participants. Creates a sense of being part of a scene, and an awareness of the order of things and the roles played in the settling of a dispute. (Refer drawing attached.)

Participants: Walk through the structure.

Screen A: images of prominent community people speaking at rallies, meetings, gatherings, with intermittent images of dirt, dust and feet and legs moving quickly.

Screen B: animated media of fight between older woman and younger woman.

Screen C: animated media of fight being monitored by other women.

V Shaped dividing wall: Creating entrance and exit. Polished surface reflects images of participants (metallic or similar material).

5.iii) Right of Passage 2:

Participants: Sound fades as imagery stills motivating participants to exit the structure, to walk through warriors.

Images of Warriors on Hanging Fabric: Life size images on hanging fabric, representing the stance of warriors from old cultures, giving the sense of grace and integrity. ARTIFACT – right of passage - Jenny - design and produce COST: fight Fabric?

SCREEN SET CONSTRUCTION Keith and Andrew - design; materials? construction? COST:

FIGHT STORY Mary COST:

ANIMATED MEDIA Screen B & Jenny and Rebekah COST: C

AUDIO VISUAL MEDIA Screen Mary and Jenny – script, shoot, edit. A (includes Uniikup collection) COST:

ARTIFACT - right of passage - Mary - research; Jenny design and produce warriors COST:

Duration: ______

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SEQUENCE 6: LAW and TERMS OF AGREEMENT DUR: ATMOSTPHERE: EXPERIENCE OF PERSONAL CONFRONTATION; OF BEING REQUIRED TO EXAMINE PERSONAL MOTIVE AND PERSPECTIVE; OF BEING JUST AND ANSWERABLE TO LAW.

6.i) Peppers Ghost Construction

Participants: Pass through the warriors to find a rectangular box one metre in length. They view a scene within the box.

Artifacts: Peppers Ghost box and artwork (graffiti) on exterior of box. Pavement floor in front of box.

Scene/ story within:

A) Young Aboriginal man and his family are involved in an altercation with police in their neighbourhood.

B) The altercation is shot so that participants assume the roles of Australians in the incident. The story is shot so that participants can verbally respond to/ interact with the altercation.

Participants: The altercation is resolved as audio of Spruiker is heard, beckoning participants to come to the central screen set.

PEPPERS GHOST Keith and Andrew – design; construction? COST: PROGRAM AND BOX Materials – glass, frame, box, television COST:

ARTIFACT Archie - artwork (graffiti) on exterior box and pavement under feet -

ALTERCATION STORY Andrew - story; Christine and Andrew – shoot script; Refer A) B) Andrew, Christine, Amanda - shoot and edit COST:

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SEQUENCE 7: THE CONTESTED SPACE DUR:

ATMOSTPHERE: : A DRAMATIC EXPERIENCE OF CONFUSION AND CHAOS, OF BEING DRAWN INTO A SPACE CONTROLLED BY MOB RULE. AT THE CENTRE, SYMBOLISED BY THE VIDEO FOOTAGE OF FOCUSED YOUNG MURRI MEN - SEEMINGLY VIEWING AND SPARING WITH THE CAMERA/ PARTICIPANTS. A SENSE OF THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT AND CODES OF BEHAVIOUR REMAINING STEADFAST IN COLLECTIVE HUMAN CONTAINMENT AND REFINEMENT, DESPITE POLITICAL MOCKERY THAT CIRCUMSCRIBES IT

7.i) Audio of Spruiker, drum roll and crowd atmostphere Spruiker: “roll up, roll up etc…” with drum beat and crowd atmos.

Participants: Invited by the sound of the Spruiker to spar with the young boxers.

7.ii) Boxing Set Construction The set consists of: • Central transparent double sided screen. • Boxing ball (with sensor beam). • Props - gloves, head gear, stool, bucket, towel and sponge - on each side of screen. • On the floor either side of the screen are sensor pad/s marked with symbols: a) configuration of Australian, Aboriginal and TSI flags, b) stylized drawing/map of interactive installation through which participants have just travelled. 7.iii) Central Screen – men sparing and floor symbols/ sensors Projected shots of young and old Murri boxers sparing with the camera – a sense of challenging and being challenged, in a formal, respectful and purposeful way. Between sparring, symbols (refer 7.ii) above) appear on the screen matching ones on the floor in front of both sides of screen.

Participants: View scene on central screen, then respond to Spruiker’s challenge by taking place either side of the screen, on the symbols/sensors.

7.iv) Central Screen – sensor images: Punching the boxing ball and foot work activates sensors, as the participants spar with the boxers, creates a dynamic collage of changing images: ¾ community land rights protests; ¾ land rights legislation dates and newspaper headlines; ¾ people’s emotional response when returning to their land; ¾ images of degradation of the land, development, mining; ¾ grabs of Indigenous boxer’s comments on confrontation; ¾ impoverishment; riots; consumer advertisements; news reports of war scenes. (Includes community images from Uniikup Optical Media Collection. ) 135

Images of symbols appear intermittently symbolizing a win (b - see 7.ii above) or a loss (a- 7.ii above). • Audio - drum beat rises to cacophony - the thrill and spectacle of the boxing ring and the frenzy of the media. Participants: Create screen imagery by punching the boxing ball and with footwork on sensor pads, until end of imagery and sound – there are no winners and losers.

Audio: Spruiker tells participants to collect their pennant/ prize.

AUDIO – SPRUIKER and ATMOS Lawrence – design and record COST?

BOXING SET CONSTRUCTION Archie and Janice – props design and produce -gloves, head gear, stool, bucket, towel and sponge; COST:

SENSOR PROGRAMS Keith and Andrew – design and produce Boxing ball and footpad/floor mat COST:

SYMBOLS ARTWORK Archie and Janice - artwork on floor sensors– used also on screen; material? COST: AUDIO VISUALS ON CENTRAL Mary, Christine, Keith – concept. Christine, SCREEN Archie, Amanda – design/ script/ produce/ shoot/ edit; COST:

AUDIO ATMOSTPHERE Lawrence COST:

8) FINALE`- PRIZE FIGHTERS:

Participants: On the exit from the interactive installation space, at the end of the final sequence, a device issues participants with a pennant - a ticket print out - with information about the installation, creative team and websites.

ARTIFACT - PENNANT Archie - design; material? COST:

TICKET ISSUE PROGRAM and Keith and Andrew COST: DEVICE

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APPENDIX 6.VI(ii)

COLOURISE MURRI MURA PROPOSAL

PLACE building BUILDING place

MURRI MURA ABORIGINAL CORPORATION CORDELIA STREET, SOUTH BRISBANE

Background:

Murri Mura Aboriginal Corporation was originally located in a building at 126 Cordelia Street South Brisbane, purchased by the organisation in (to be completed). The objectives of Murri Mura were (to be completed from constitution objectives).

In 2003 Murri Mura sold the building and purchased a smaller property at 36 Cordelia Street, South Brisbane. Due to the sale of the building and the move to its new premises, the organisation has reviewed its objectives. Following the Corporation AGM on Monday 10th December, Murri Mura is now in a process of reinvigoration and preparing the new place for business. Mary Graham, the President of Murri Mura, has created a program bank – Indigenous Women’s Council; Indigenous Training; Indigenous On-Line Bookshop; Indigenous Information, Statistics and Knowledge Systems. The building has two tenants - Nathan Lawyers who currently occupy the top floor and Kumara Association an Indigenous family welfare organisation who propose to share space with the Murri Muri Aboriginal Corporation on the ground floor.

Proposal Outline:

At a meeting on Friday 14th December, the new Board members, with business consultants, Julian Foley and Margaret Hughes of Community Ventures and Alliances, discussed a proposal put forward by Colourise. Murri Mura has a program bank which is a symbol of community aspirations for the reconstruction of its society through social, political and cultural development leading to economic independence. The Murri Mura premises could be one physical, symbolic presence of this aspiration and business, if its philosophy and objectives are creatively embodied in the refurbishment and enhancement of their building.

Christine Peacock who is a Director of Uniikup and works on the Colourise Festival and Colourise projects, is currently undertaking a Masters by Research at the Queensland University of Technology. The objective of the Masters is to create a commercial port-folio and thesis of a new media project which documents how interactive installation art can effectively communicate Indigenous philosophical concepts. This study can be applied to the above proposal for the refurbishment and enhancement of the Murri Mura building.

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Process:

As part of her studies Christine is using dialogism theory by Mikhail Bakhtin - which is what Murries have been doing forever – generating processes which begin with respecting each person’s knowledge and know how, to arrive at agreed positions on action to be taken, and secondly determine the implementation of the decisions. Importantly, she is also applying Mary Graham’s Place Theory, based on “community traditional knowledge processes, of the participation of community knowledge producers and of the social cultural and spiritual dimensions regarding the centrality of land within social and political issues.” (as outlined in Mary’s paper A Discourse on a Proposed Aboriginal Research Methodology).

It is proposed a suitable group of new media artists (one who has Engineering skills), and a prominent architect, employed by Colourise, would work with the Murri Mura stakeholders to arrive at a design for the building which materialises the philosophy and objectives of the organisation, meets both the needs of the utilisers of the space and the community (designed to be changed as required), and which is publicly recognised as a significant Indigenous site.

Time-Line; Costs:

Basic refurbishment of the ground floor (e.g. toilets, kitchen and air conditioning) would take place as soon as possible so that Murri Mura can conduct business. It is estimated that the Building Place Project planning will continue through to June 2008 to identify and secure funds for the design, refurbishment, built-in-art, and new media costs; and be completed and fully functional by the end of 2008.

Ideas:

It is envisaged, for example, that the new media costs will involve: • touch screen access points for the on-line bookshop and the information which could include some stats data; • projectors and projection space for the Women’s Council and meeting room space; • a media room to house a central computer which will have a system designed to deliver: • inputted images, information, news and entertainment to screens in the building – • one of which would be viewed from the street; Other Suggestions are: • the central meeting space could also be the Women’s Council space; • the exterior would be minimalist in design, perhaps merely the use of dark tinted glass which reflects Musgrave Park, passers by, and the activity now taking place in this country and this part of the city, inducing a pensive gaze; and a single image set in the tinted glass (eg Lilla Watson’s painting of an Aboriginal and shadow with spear). • seating and light refreshments could also be available at the street entrance to the building to create a friendly welcoming environment; 138

• the Aboriginal map of Australia could be inlaid on the ground floor, so that people symbolically identify their origins and validate their social networks, upon entering the building through Quandamooka, Turrbal and Jagera countries.

It is proposed the process will create a model which will form the basis of a commercial service provided by Colourise, and simultaneously provide a model for business development partnerships with Murri Mura, hopefully one of many more to come.

The BUILDING place PLACE building proposal is meant to inspire ideas that realise our aspirations of how we live in and with country and each other, and to stimulate dialogue and engage processes which will assist to see this fulfilled.

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APPENDIX 6.VII Site\Sight\Cite PLACE RELATEDNESS

Karen Martin maintains that: relatedness is a prerequisite to our ways of knowing, being and doing. It is what makes us reflective and self-regulating in our lives, of which our praxis is inseparable. Reflection and self-regulation are the basis for being able to respect country and each other.

In her thesis publication Please Knock Before You Enter Karen provides us with a framework for relating to Site\Sight\Cite places in Turrbal and Jagera countries: “… one of the main ways we have kept our knowledge is through sharing Stories. Now some Stories are very, very old and they come from the Ancestors and we know about these through the Story places and sacred sites. Only a few People really know about these Stories, how to look after them and how to pass them on. And then there’re some Stories that happen only once, or a few times like cyclones or fires or other things. And they get built into what is known so that we don’t forget. And then other Stories happen all the time … “

Another guide Karen provides for us is the way we interface with these places (I have reinterpreted this to fit our context):

One is in the personal context of the artist – who you are and where you come from in a physical, historical, political, societal, gender, professional, cultural, social, emotional, spiritual and intellectual sense. Another is with the institutional contexts of the site, the way we see (sight) the place and the institution and what it says (cite) to us. The next is the context of the creative project itself, what you say (cite) through it; how this figures with other sites and artists; and the intent of the project as a transformative act to restore Aboriginal agency, if not sovereignty.

The project is a continuation of protecting relatedness to country, as is part of our lives in our original countries; and as part of the Law, we carry with us when we are in other’s countries. The custodial ethic which Mary Graham has prescribed sees us using a great variety of actions or acts in this regard. In Karen Martin’s research at Burungu, Kuku-Yalanji country in Cape York she identified these acts (some of which I have reinterpreted for our context and which may materialise in the artistic treatment of each place): 140

Respect country and each other – especially Elders; Know country - territorial pre-eminence which helps to maintain country; Employ diplomacy; Regard for people as strangers, known, or friends to create a basis for developing successful relationships; Engage with others in relatedness; Extend relationship where possible to change strangers to friends; Use and strengthen observational skills to learn, create intelligence; Gather intelligence about whom and what we are dealing with; Share and give intelligence and information to others; Be aware of colonial attitudes/strategies like taking over Aboriginal culture and sites; disregarding Aboriginal knowledge and expertise; Monitor people on the country as to what they are doing on/in Aboriginal country or with Aboriginal culture; Use warning strategies to advise people not to encroach on Aboriginal rights; Resist and persist in the face of adversity; Wait and adapt as change will occur; Physical attack in response to physical attack (as happened at Palm Is.); Participate in reciprocal activities; Reduce colonial authority by inclusion of such people in Aboriginal society; Exercise preference (people, life style etc) Educate and advise about Aboriginal Law, customs, expectations; Take part in decision making to protect relatedness and assert ownership; Control what happens in country.

There are also three core conditions to be followed to regulate behaviour: Honesty Talking with honesty, being truthful and not being deceitful or manipulative; Keeping one’s word and carrying out in actions. Co-operation: Not drinking; Working hard; Help and be kind to others; Not being greedy; Respect what you already have. Enthusiasm and conviction; Responsive to each other’s needs; Achieve goals mutually. Talk and ideas are cheap. They do not mean anything unless acted upon. Showing Respect: Respect Land; Respect the wishes of the Elders; Don’t be stubborn, you have to listen to learn.

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APPENDIX 6.VIII CULTURE AND CREATIVITY – Indigenous Perspectives DEVELOPING A UNIQUE AUSTRALIAN FILM CULTURE

Presenter: Christine Peacock Week 4, 20/3/2006, 3.00pm – 4.00pm

I N T R 0 D U C T I 0 N

Introducing myself, I am Christine Peacock. I am descendant of the village of Isem on Erub in the eastern islands of the Torres Strait. I was born in Mareeba in Tjapukai/Mulurdji countries and have lived on the mainland all my life, having grown up in Ninghy country at Redcliffe. I have a home at Wolvi, east of Gympie, in Gubbi Gubbi country which is a country of origin of my children. We have lived there, since 1991, until this year, when I returned to the city for work. I have two children who were born in Ninghy country and that is where we currently reside. Like many Indigenous people, I have never lived in the country of my origins, with my countrymen, due to the many and varied circumstances created by the onslaught of colonisation. Nevertheless, we are the Indigenous/sovereign people of this area of the Asia Pacific region and, consequently, regard ourselves as sharing the responsibility of continuing sustainable development across countries.

I worked in community theatre in the 1970s, performing and directing, mostly in the U.K. When I returned I took up a Producer traineeship with A.B.C. Television in 1983. In April 1985 I graduated from the ABC Television Producer's Course and was invited by the Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency to co-ordinate the Black Women's Film Group in West End. The ABC supported this development until December 1985, after which we were independent.

Which brings me to describe our "DEVELOPMENT": to unfold; to reveal or be revealed; to bring, or to come, from a latent, to an active or visible state; to make or become known; to make or become fuller; to make more elaborate, systematic or bigger; to convert to new use so as to realise its potentialities. I think the opposite of development would be to imitate - to reproduce, to make a copy of and to settle for a counterfeit, in the context of cultural development, is to reach a stalemate.

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D E V E L 0 P M E N T E N V I R O N M E N T – MURRIIMAGE C 0 M M U N I T Y V I D E 0 & F I L M S E R V I C E

In 1985 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Care Agency had purchased VHS camera and recorder to support the development of Indigenous television and film media. The Black Women's Film Group was abandoned after eight months when it became apparent that we could not secure funds for permanent wages. Murriimage was created to carry on television and film development. Gradually, those who had permanent employment carried on in their jobs, others found paid employment and some went to work with Murri Radio. Carl Fisher, the father of my children, a descendant of Birri-Gubba and Gubbi-Gubbi/Kabi Kabi in North and South East Queensland, was coerced into camera and sound operations, at this stage, in between taxi driving.

We operated from home (wherever that may have been) and financed our activities from production fees and program sales. We weren't career motivated, but picked up skills on-the-job by providing a community video service, videoing concerts, meetings, exhibitions, protests, cultural events etc on VHS, and selling the programs (edited in the camera) where we could. When we were fortunate enough in 1987, to get a training attachment with Film Australia in Sydney we learned about production on 16mm film.

We then won an overseas study award, and toured around other Indigenous film and television developments in Brazil, Cuba, Canada and the UK, recording interviews, shot on Super 8 film. We continued to shoot developments around Australia in 1988. We completed the shoot on 16mm recording local Indigenous people, and edited all on 16mm film in our own facility. In this way we produced "Makin Tracks" the first film documentary on international Indigenous relations and politics, by Indigenous people, for Indigenous people in an Indigenous facility. It was funded over an eight year period, through D.E.E.T., the Aboriginal Arts Board and Cultural, Film Development and Marketing branches of the Australian Film Commission.

Makin Tracks, a 58 min, 16mm film documentary, represented a vital and steep learning curve in our development of Indigenous screen culture. It was first exhibited at an International Documentary Conference in Melbourne in November 1995 where it was best received by Japanese guest documentary producers. It has never been

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broadcast and is now used primarily for educational purposes by Indigenous teachers.

In 1988 we rented space in the Jagera Arts Centre South Brisbane with Kamaga Arts. We had managed to borrow some money for a bit more equipment and were loaned a TV set, with which we made slightly more refined programs. We also began to receive more support - one example, Jeanie Bell through the ATSI Unit here at UQ paid us to cover public lectures by prominent Murries. We have a lot of excellent community archival material dating back to 1985.

In 1989 and 1990 we had nine people in training and four others on the payroll due to training scheme funding availability. This was a very productive time but it was too much, too soon, too fast and after the training-funds-policy was changed, we were back to three people. A very expensive Feasibilty Study was funded, to prove our small business viability but the recommendations to fund that viability went under the carpet that was rolled out for ATSIC.

During that fervent period of activity, however, we had managed to attract capital funding from the Dept Aboriginal Affairs and Australian Film Commission, to equip a production facility with off-line editing and broadcast quality recording, so it was business as usual. Now we were able to take commissions and tender for producing corporate videos on health issues etc, as well as produce short documentaries and cover community events. We earned enough to keep up with rent, telephone and our travel costs.

At this time we incorporated the Indigenous Information Service Association Inc. as an umbrella, organisation with the intention of developing more media activities, so consolidating the community cultural development model created in the 1980s by Mary Graham at the Child Care Agency. It was intended that I.I.S. be a support base for community people, encouraging self-determination by sustainment and progression of project development.

As part of our development plan, Murriimage, in 1996, finished a three year funding period with the Australian Film Commission and Film Queensland, then under the direction of Richard Stewart, where those organisations provided subsidies for the operations costs of our community service. Operations subsidies from ATSIC through the Indigenous Information Service assisted operations costs for a

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community media consultation service and production funding paid wages and all other costs. In this way we continued to produce information videos and media information as part of the I.I.S. as well as focusing on other IIS development activities. (Richard Stewart is now an Executive Producer and a Director of our company, Uniikup Productions Ltd.)

T H E D E V E L 0 P M E N T C O N T E X T

I would now like to offer you, some words to conjure up images that, by association, reveal the context in which we continue to develop an Indigenous screen culture. CONQUISTADORS are/were to INCAS , what COWBOYS are/were to INDIANS, and, what SETTLERS are/were to ABORIGINALS.

The propaganda machine for Western ideology, mass/popular communications media - television, cinema, radio, print - manufactured history and legitimised it through popular modern legends told in an industrialised, dominating form of entertainment. Consequently, this communications environment, in itself, is inhibitive to any other stories being told (in any other way by people from any other cultures) and to reaching a wide audience. This has far reaching implications, described by Mpoya-Buata, writing about the works of film-makers Sembene Ousmane ("Ceddo") and Med Hondo ("West Indies") The problem posed is that of our origins. Now our origins have been dried up at their source, by which I mean that they have been denied. Put another way, we have been denied all possibility of history. This deception hid nothing less than the straightforward presumption of our lack of humanity. (Film and Politics in the Third World, edited by John D.H. Downing (a prominent member of the international organization Ourmedia.)

From the outset, developing an Indigenous Screen Culture, meant taking on a mammoth task, embarking on a complicated journey through a maze of production technology, techniques, values and methodologies; broadcaster networks and market and distribution monopolies. We are immediately placed in unfair competition with media organisations (both national and international) that have been established for many years, in the business of making profit. As Sembene Ousmane, a film-maker from Senegal in Africa comments: We are no longer in a period when industry was born. We are in a period of monopolies, trusts, multi-national corporations.

And from Indian film-maker Ketan Mehta:-

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Everyone was at the mercy of the speculative commercial distributor and it was in their interests not to let these films be distributed at all because they posed an alternative to the commercial product.

At the same time that the Hollywood machine expands its tentacles to appropriate new product, its commercial interests are protected by control of what is marketed and distributed for popular consumption. (Academy Award nominations to Australian actors - Academy Award winner Geoffry Rush of the Australian film "Shine" - demonstrate the colonisation of the Australian film and television industry and its locations.)

S U S T A I N I N G D E V E L 0 P M E N T

Back in 1985 there were several community development projects supported by the Aboriginal and Islander Child Care Agency. There was the Black Women's Film Group, Murri-Time radio began broadcasting on FM Radio 4ZZZ, the Link-up organisation was bringing families back together, the Murri Independent School started up in a couple of rooms on Highgate Hill and there was the Youth Scheme. It was an exciting time around Woolloongabba then, because of the significant, active presence of a lot of ATSI organisations along Stanley Street, which is the original Aboriginal pathway through that area of Jagera country. Now, Murri time radio is Radio Station 4AAA at Fairfield, Link-up Queensland is part of a national network, the Independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community School if fully functional at Acacia Ridge in its own buildings, and Youth Scheme has become First Contact which runs many successful cultural programs.

Out of the Black Women's Film Group came Murriimage, now a broadcast quality video and film production facility; Uniikup Productions Ltd., set up for the production of documentary, drama, CD-rom; the Indigenous Information Service was taken over by Cyberdreaming which specialises in ground breaking multi-media projects, assisting language and various cultural revival programs, as well as newspaper publishing. Most importantly, these developments, (and there are many to which other people have the histories) have had consistent input from their founders: people like Mary Graham, Ross Watson, Bev Johnson, Carl Fisher, the late John Newfong, Bob Anderson, Jeannie Bell, Andrew Dunstone, Glenyse Barney, Michael Mace, Di Vogan, Tiga Bayles, Brett Leavy.

It has been this consistency which has sustained development - unfolding potentialities. By creating these spheres of interaction, between Indigenous people

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we have unleashed the potential of development, expanding growth and opportunity. If in this way Aboriginal art has put Australia on the map, think what can happen with screen culture? Also important, the continuous growth of Indigenous culture impacts subconsciously on the attitudes of the wider population and the colonial society in general, in that its great longevity proves there exists and has always existed, a successful way for all to live in the Southern Hemisphere.

S0ME FEATURES 0F SUCCESSFUL DEVEL0PMENT

Firstly, sustaining the effort and the vision and to keep revealing it, elaborating on it and never losing sight of our potential. Secondly and more difficult, realising that the essence of development is founded on aspects peculiar to the place, the group and the activity, which take time and discretion to identify and practice, and that can't be replicated. Thirdly, by sustaining development, we give substance to the arguments for regionalised film and television production.

True development is often curtailed or damaged by the drive for outcome, measured and regulated by performance indicators and strategic type planning, enforced by Government funding agencies. Often their funding guidelines and conditions conflict with development because they come from very different agendas based on very different experiences and expectations. Moumen Smihi, a film-maker from Morocco puts it this way: Personally I am convinced that the ideology of capitalism, to be sure both private and of the state, is primarily interested in cultural linearity and monolithicity (novelistic or cinematic) to the extent that.it sees menace in diversity, in multiplicity, in haziness ... The third world, itself a world of explosion and the exploded, has to be interested in this problem.

In the experience of Murriimage two main approaches have emerged, that have created our tracks: One has been that our independence is maintained by taking responsibility for our own development - that is, determining what it should be, how it should be done, time frames, adapting what we get from the mainstream to the needs of our own unique development, and, consistently reappraising our progress and knowledge. The other approach is that unless we have the means to produce we are not able to control what we produce. This has meant that we have foregone the funds for consistent wages or short term production, in favour of securing capital grants to purchase equipment; creating an environment in which we facilitate production and generate wages. Purchases are researched to ensure that we equip according to our practical needs at that time, and we are not just chasing technology.

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Being driven by production, means we are furthering development of our own authentic styles, methods, critiques, networks, plans - culture. Mrinal Sen, a film-maker from India, advises:- What we have to do - and this is a prescription not just for us in India - is to make films at a very low cost. We have to show the monopolises, who claim that film-making is a capital intensive business, and their monopoly, that filmmaking is everybody's business and nobody's monopoly. We have to think in terms of economics getting the minority spectator who is interested in such films and then building a larger audience base.

T H E P R E S E N T S I T U A T I 0 N A N D T H E F U T U R E

It has been twenty long years since we joined that Aboriginal pathway on Stanley Street. Slow, discreet and focused cultural development means we now offer a community video service coverage of events where fees are negotiable (still often voluntary work); a production service - community, corporate and television broadcast programs; and produce documentaries and features for national and international cinema.

In 1995-96 Murriimage upgraded to broadcast quality non-linear video editing equipment, and in 2004 to digital, which allows production to take place entirely in- house. We continue to seek production financing for Indigenous producers and how and where to market and distribute Indigenous product for television broadcast and education outlets. As well, we are further developing financing skills, for higher budget production.

We developed a policy of training on-the-job (i.e. project based), participating in mainstream training to adapt it to our needs, and keeping up to date with industry business and changes. This way, we are constantly upgrading and increasing our skills to further production capability and quality. Consequently, we only take trainee attachments when we have production work and funds for wages. Experience has taught us, after the failure of so many training programs to increase the numbers of Indigenous people working in the industry, that, because employment is not regular, is highly skilled and carries a great deal of responsibility and a high level of creative motivation, successful recruitment and training is a slow process of trail, error and encouragement.

We now stage the screen culture based Colourised Festival event, in the NAIDOC gathering season in July each year, taking us into partnership with Queensland University of Technology and the cultural flagship institutions in South Brisbane.

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Colourised has a complex program to encourage, present and promote the production of video, film and new media art by Queensland Indigenous filmmakers and is inclusive of national and international Indigenous filmmakers and their work. Enhanced by the collaboration and work of various local Indigenous artists - musicians, visual artists, dancers, performers, writers, story tellers - philosophers and activists, Colourised imports the vital contribution of communities and the exciting potential of film making as a hybrid art form. (Program details available on www.colourisedfestival.com.au site.) Uniikup/Murriimage also offers consultancies and advice specifically on the development of Indigenous screen culture.

We are optimistic about the future direction and development of Indigenous screen culture and its valuable contribution to Australia as a reinforcement of the national identity. This is particularly relevent in this time when interaction with our Asian neighbours is foremost on the national agenda. We are focused on that development and on identifying those opportunities that await us all.

Lastly statements from film-makers Med Hondo, from Mauritania, in North West Africa and Moumen Smihi of Morocco. signaling that we are not alone in our attempts to develop Indigenous films and television that impact on screen culture: Let us keep our diversity; let us be suspicious of the concept of universalism, which is a dangerous thing. I think we do not have to copy one another, whether amongst Africans or by continent. Above all, let us avoid copying the European and American cinema. We all have our specificity. And: The cultural universality of American and Hollywood-style cinema results from a historical violence. Isn't it appropriate today, by way of rejecting this homogenising universality, to research specific modes of expression?

I am currently working part-time as Associate Lecturer, Indigenous Perspectives with the Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries faculty, delivering the Indigenous Creative Industries unit KKB004. I am also enrolled in a Masters by Research Degree doing a comparative study of screen cultures, with a focus on the factors that impede the development of a unique Indigenous screen culture in Queensland. I am the Director of Colourise, a Uniikup screen culture based creative consultancy service, for existing cultural and educational organisations, events and festivals. This service is a cultural catalyst acting to Colourise venues and events, with unique ideas and philosophy, processes, and practices that live within the oldest cultures on earth. CHRISTINE PEACOCK DIRECTOR UNIIKUP PRODUCTIONS LTD T/A Murriimage Community Video and Film Service ASSOCIATE LECTURER QUT CO-ORDINATOR, KKB004, INDIGENOUS CREATIVE INDUSTRIES 149

APPENDIX 6.IX

SITE\SIGHT\CITE A WEBSITE PROJECT PROPOSAL

PROJECT INFORMATION KIT FOR ARTISTS

QUT Creative Industries Faculty, Masters by Practice-Led Research candidate Christine Peacock, initiated this creative project in July 2005. The study duration is to June 2009 with a completion date scheduled for late 2008 or early 2009.

Background The study uses Mary Graham’s paper on Indigenous Philosophical Underpinnings of Aboriginal World Views, published in the journal World Views: Environment, Culture, Religion in 1999 (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/wov). Fundamental to understanding the project is also Mary Graham’s unpublished paper on place, “Introduction to Kummara Conceptual Framework, A Discourse on a Proposed Aboriginal Research Methodology” (2006). “Caring for Desert”, a study of Warlpiri people’s worldview – Ngurra-kurlu – by Steven Jampijinpa Patrick of Lajamanu, Miles Holmes of University of Queensland and Lance Box, is a valuable article that explains why traditional relationships to country are so important for contemporary life and livelihoods (2008). (These documents are accessible on-line at the Uniikup Projects Ltd. Projects Forum site in the Site\Sight\Cite section at http://www.colourisedfestival.com.au/uniikup%20projects/index.php. Each artist requires a username and password for access, available from Forum Administrator, and Creative Team member Andrew Hill, mob: 0424 233 637.) Each artist is also provided with a copy of publications “Story About Feeling” by Bill Neidjie and “Sovereign Subjects” edited by Aileen Moreton-Robinson as further reference to the concept of Indigenous relationship to land.

The methods for the study and the creative practice of the project are guided by: Karen Martin’s paper, “Ways of Knowing, Ways of Being and Ways of Doing: Developing a theoretical framework and methods for Indigenous re- 150

search and Indigenist research” (also accessible at the above Forum site); the writings of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin on his dialogic philosophy of language, and the concept of being-as-event in his publication “The Philosophy of the Act”5. These methodologies accord with Mary Graham’s perspective and the arts practice of the creative project. Also useful in this regard is the work (in particular “Material Thinking”6) of Artist, Theorist and Academic Paul Carter, who came to Australia in 1980 from his home country Britain. Further information on these references arises from discussion that is part of the working processes of the creative team.

PROJECT SITE\SIGHT\CITE is a tour-site at www.sscIT.com, offering a unique experience of, and in the passage between, contemporary significant sites across metropolitan Brisbane. Local visitors can alight from the tour-site at contested space, to engage in an interactive, new media installation housed in a marquee; and resume the tour on the website to finalise their journey at crossroads. (Example website at http://www.nighthaunts.org.uk/; also see http://www.mabonativetitle.com.au/) . Process The project is an extension of a collaboration formed between members of the Creative Team over the past few years. Members are allocated place/places on the tour-site on the basis of the theme of an original work from their practice, and, using the above references as stimulus, explore the Indigenous world-view of relationship to land and to each other. Each place allocated is a contemporary significant site in Turrbal - Jagera countries, where Creative Team artists locate relationships which are: historical; on going socio-political with the colonial regime; and spiritual in connection to the land as a life giving entity. Each place also presents the possibility of conceptualising reconstruction that offers a better future, based on the existence of relationship to that place.

5 Bakhtin, M.M. (1993), Toward a Philosophy of the Act, 1st Edition, Slavic Series No.10, Translation and Notes by Vadim Liapunov, Austin: University of Texas Press. 6 Carter, P. (2004), Speaking Pantomimes, in Material Thinking, Melbourne University Press.

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SITE\SIGHT\CITE is in two stages.

STAGE I Stage I is the Masters by Practice-Led Research Creative Project, due for completion late 2008 or early 2009. It is the concept development stage of the proposed www.sscIT.com tour-site project. Construction of a preliminary website, titled site_sight_cite takes place, located on the Uniikup Productions Ltd. website, www.colourise.com.au. The intention of the preliminary website is to convey the meaning and intention of the site, present a preliminary plan of its framework, information on the concept and ideas of the creative team, and exhibit treatments of the creative team’s allocated places. (Go to http://maps.google.com/maps to explore each place in the tour-site territory and the Uniikup Productions Ltd. Projects Forum at http://www.colourisedfestival.com.au/uniikup%20projects/index.php for information about the places.)

Production of the Stage I website is lead by Andrew Hill and Christine Peacock with in-put from Richelle Spence. (Example website at http://www.throwingstones.com.au and www.nighthaunts.org.uk/.) The site- sight-cite website also provides links to relevant documents; a list of links to prospective funding sources and a pdf of the Masters exegesis “Novella of Ideas”.

The Stage I site_sight_cite website provides the creative team with an effective means to appropriately consult with Turrbal and Jagera peoples about the project and for communication amongst ourselves. It also serves as support and promotion material for applications to prospective funding sources and others.

Requirements Artists are required to provide Photoshop image/s, of original work projected onto their allocated Brisbane metropolitan place (see lists referred to above), as well as other images, and sound where possible, which indicate the preliminary treatment of their place. The treatment of each place reflects:

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an historical relationship; the on-going socio-political relationship with the colonial regime; a spiritual relationship in connection to the land as a life giving entity, and based on the existence of relationship to that place, conceptualisation of reconstruction that would offer a better future. Each artist is required to also prepare a text Statement to accompany the images which summarises the treatment of their place. A short biography, prepared by each artist, with references to their work where possible, will also be posted with the images and Statement.

Consent and Artists Agreement forms, signed by each member of the creative team involved in Stage I of the project, are required in relation to the ethics governing the Masters by Research study. These forms are attached for perusal, completion and return to Christine Peacock.

STAGE II If negotiations with custodians about the project are successful, funds can be raised for construction of www.sscIT.com estimated to commence early in 2010 with a launch at the opening of the Indigenous gathering season, NAIDOC, in July 2011. Research on places is expected to start in July 2009, as part of further study involving the creative project. “Contested Space”, the physical, interactive new media installation part of the project, goes into production simultaneously. Designed to be toured extensively, the installation is housed in a custom designed and made marquee. Ways by which the website and the installation can be linked is part of both the construction of the website and the installation.

Complementing the launch of www.sscIT.com and the installation, is a physical walk through country tour across Turrbal and Jagera countries during July and August 2011, to each of the tour-site places in the Brisbane inner city. The tour is conducted by live art performers, with performances at each site. The use of live projection also occurs at some sites, and ways of linking the live art to www.sscIT.com, are part of the construction of the website and included in the performances. Subject to negotiations with custodians, a

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Second Project Information Kit will be issued at Stage II detailing requirements prior to and during the construction of www.sscIT.com.

Christine Peacock Masters by Practice-Led Research Candidate N5477069 31st October 2008

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APPENDIX 6.X STAGE II www.sscIT.com.au PROPOSED PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

The proposed framework of www.sscIT.com.au is conveyed in Stage I, the concept development housed in the site_sight_cite tab at www.colourise.com.au.

PERIOD ACTIVITY ARTISTS April 2009 Creative Team at State Library Qld Co-ordinated by attend knowmore, Embodied Media Christine Peacock installation; and discuss Stage II and Keith progress schedule. Armstrong April – May 2009 Contested Space installation set up Keith Armstrong test. Acquittal to Australia Council Andrew Hill of development funds. Christine Peacock July – August Subject to Masters marking, Christine Peacock, 2009 Creative Team discuss place Leah King-Smith, research and consultation - people Tamara Whyte, and process; funding prospects and Mary Graham. applications (refer links tag on site). Complete application for Cultural Organisation status for Uniikup Productions Ltd. September – Research on funding application Christine Peacock October 2009 guidelines and deadlines: arts; research; government programs; philanthropic and corporate (meeting with ABAF and Positive Solutions for advice). Prepare schedule of proposed applications. Contact project officers at “ prospective funding sources to ascertain project’s value in funding source chain (including construction and tour of new media installation). At finalisation of QUT marking meet “ with creative team discuss funding schedule and adjustments to site for inclusion with funding applications. November – Creative Team discuss hardware Christine Peacock December 2009 and software required for creation of to co-ordinate website and artist’s works.

Prepare schedule of research at Christine Peacock each place of project and software and hardware required.

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January 2010 Review of project in relation to “ custodians’ court proceedings outcome. Christine Peacock to contact custodians. February 2010 Organisation of Creative Team Christine Peacock presentation of project in full detail to co-ordinate. for negotiations with custodian/s. March 2010 Depending on outcome of “ negotiations, preparation of applications for financial support for Stage II of project. Identification of a project workplace for Creative Team access. Creative Team plan project work schedule. July 2010 Subject to negotiations and funding “ approvals, commencement of Stage II, sscIT.com.au website. Employ artists, casual bookkeeper and administration assistant. Begin international artist negotiation for XRoads. July – September Place Research; gathering of artist “ 2010 materials; hardware and software; engagement of other Artists and Trainees. October 2010 – Construction of sscIT website and “ May 2011 Contested Space new media installation. Planning of Live First event. July 2011 Launch of website and new media “ installation. September 2011 Tour of new media installation. Keith Armstrong and Christine Peacock to co- ordinate

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