EcoCentrix and Namatjira

This year's Origins Festival is refusing to go away.  Although the intense period of Festival activity ended on November 3rd, there was a further week of the EcoCentrix exhibition at Bargehouse, and from tonight to Friday, Namatjira plays at the Purcell Room.

EcoCentrix was a very exciting partnership for us: the chance to help present an exhibition curated by Helen Gilbert and her team on the Indigeneity Project, who have been researching indigenous performance and its place in the contemporary world for as long as we have been running the festival.  There were many overlaps in material, of course - work by Marrugeku, Fiona Foley, Rosanna Raymond and Victoria Hunt was in the exhibition as well as the Festival, and Rita Leistner's images from The Edward Curtis Project related to the themes she and Marie Clements had explored at the Origins workshop in 2011 (itself based on the play and images shown in Vancouver the year before…  journeys, journeys…).  But perhaps even more important than this was the way in which EcoCentrix was able to expand the range of what was on show - allowing audiences to look at indigenous performance in relation to its space, land and culture, and to think about the key issue of sustainability in new and surprising ways.

One of the many things which indigenous cultures are really good at, indeed one of the things which seems to me to define their particular place in the contemporary cultural ecology, is making new things out of old things.  That can be on a really basic level - a bit of packaging becomes a puppet, a discarded pot morphs into a ceremonial drum.  But it can also be on a much more complex level of high culture, where ancient ideas can be adapted and re-contextualised to operate in relation to modernity, losing none of their power in the process.  Indeed, what emerged most strongly in EcoCentrix was the way in which this process leads to a gain in power - the way an idea or image embedded in time and cultural continuity is renewed and regenerated by its being related to modernity.  It doesn't feel obsolete at all, but relevant and immediate.

Namatjira is also about this idea.  A great Aboriginal artist, Albert Namatjira was regarded as fit to sit alongside white Australians (and was the first indigenous person to become a citizen of his own country) because he painted in a style which could be recognised and understood by Europeans.  But that does not undermine the indigenous sensibility in what he did.  If you see his work at the Royal Academy, it leaps out from the European imagery around it, demonstrating a completely distinct approach to landscape, colour and the spiritual life and energy of country.  He stood in a continuum of ancient culture - but made it of the moment when he lived, intersecting with the wider world, utterly new and unique.  I suppose that's the essence of creativity.

Things and Thinking

A fascinating and wonderful day with Rosanna Raymond and the Indigeneity Project - this was the first Laboratory workshop for a while, and really served our aim of using the Laboratory to generate ideas for where our work might go.  Rosanna began the day by talking about the Polynesian concept of Va - a form of space which does not separate people and things, but which joins them together.  And the practical work of the day became an expression of that, as one by one we showed things we had brought with us, linked to ideas about identity and migration, and shared their stories.  Very soon we were seeing things not in the museum way of "the object", but in terms of their relationship to the human, their agency in relation to people and movement, their presence in the world.

This became especially exciting when some of us moved out into the streets, taking our things with us, to display what we started to call a 'Musée de l'extérieur'.  We tried different ways in which the things could be shown on the streets of London: beside a statue, held by people sitting on Boris bikes, on a row of bollards, held by people standing on a monument.  The versions with the people who knew the stories of the things was most effective, especially when they were positioned so that they were framed by an existing monument or piece of architecture.  And, of course, this sets up a dialogue with the monument itself - which, given that it's London, is almost always in some way to do with imperialism.  These interventions led to members of the public engaging with the things and their stories - asking us about them or photographing us as we held them.  

It's richly suggestive of something we can really develop for the Festival.  Watch this space! 

Kampnagel

I don't often fly to Europe for the day, but when a theatre like Hamburg's Kampnagel calls, you tend to go! Helen and Dani from the Indigeneity project and I went out there to talk about another indigenous festival, being planned there for next year. I first got wind of this when Rosanna Raymond introduced me to her friend Yuki back in September. Yuki is collaborating with the Kampnagel's Artistic Director, Amelie Deuflhard, to bring a range of New Zealand and Pacific work to Germany during 2013. Even better, the dates are close to the ones we have in mind - so it looks like we can share some artists, and really make the most of the intercontinental airfares.

The venue is stunning: no fewer than six theatre spaces in a converted crane factory, plus huge public areas. There's a deliberate roughness, with bare walls - it's functional and tough, without a hint of luxury. And yet you can really feel the possibility of celebration there. For Amelie, like myself, exchange between artists and between artists and communities is central to the idea of a festival. I wonder if we might be able to do even more than share artists - perhaps we can develop some of the work in collaboration???

Our Māori Heritage Project is entering its last stages; and on Tuesday night Joel, Gabrielle and I went along to Ngāti Rānana at New Zealand House to recruit likely interview subjects for the Oral History work. Gabrielle and Rosanna have been working with young people in schools on Māori culture, including visits to Hinemihi and the British Museum, and now they are ready to talk to some elders about the experience of migration and making a life in the UK while sustaining a Polynesian culture and identity.

This week we said goodbye to Aike Broens, our Dutch intern, who has been a great help to us in the office for the last five months. Her internship was part of her college work, so it was important to structure it towards learning outcomes - Carissa did that brilliantly, so we got the most out of one another! Here's part of Aike's report on her time with us, which includes a sneak preview of some future work....

"Since the development of the [mentoring] project alongside the new theatre production called Consumed started when I first came in I could be part of almost every stage of its development. I was given so much freedom and responsibility I actually experienced what it was like to set up a project from the beginning. The general idea for a mentoring project with both Chinese and English young people was already there but the rest still needed to be filled in. And so I designed and developed most of the content of the project alongside Carissa. I actually thought of the name ‘The Flip Flop Scenario’. It started with research into the Chinese community, research into other linked projects and research into funding possibilities. Then we set up the basic description, the aims and the budget.... Then we worked on the things that were still missing such as an education pack and a case for support. Carissa let me do the first thinking again and we discussed the content of each product and then I started working on it. I learned to be very independent and to follow my own instinct but also be able to get criticism and improve my work. When leaving the company I felt that Carissa and I really left a good project outline for the company to continue and I can actually see what my influence was and put a stamp on it in general."

Thanks Aike - we will miss you!

Paris - Reconciliation

Thanks to a grant from the EU's Grundtvig fund, I spent a great couple of days in Paris at a conference on Indigenous Festivals and their role in processes of Reconciliation, organised by the Indigeneity project at Royal Holloway. This is an amazing research project, run by Helen Gilbert, who we've been consulting with for years, and who has also helped us with many aspects of Origins, including some funding towards Marie's workshop this year. For the next Festival, Helen and I are discussing a plan to work together very closely, as it will coincide with the final exhibition at the end of her project. That's too good a chance to miss.

The conference was a great chance to meet some people I'd heard about but never actually encountered before, and to renew some old acquaintances. There were people there who had been at Origins, but who I'd never actually spoken to. Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal was there too - a very exciting Māori scholar and musician, who is working to recreate the performance forms that existed before contact with Europeans. He spoke very eloquently about the need to move indigeneity beyond the passive experience of suffering, and to see it as "a gift to the world". That prompted me to some thoughts in my own speech. There were also some really fascinating French contacts, whose involvement could broaden the remit of the whole festival. And they introduced me to New Caledonia.

I knew very little about this land, and its indigenous Kanak people, although we did have a poem by Kanak writer Paul Wamo in the last Origins programme book. There was a struggle for decolonisation as recently as the 1980s, led by Jean-Marie Tjibaou. After he had achieved an agreement with the French government, Tjibaou was assassinated by the more radical figure Djubelly Wéa, who felt he had compromised on the aim of absolute independence. Fifteen years on, through a ceremony of reconciliation which exists in Kanak culture, it became possible for the widows of these two men to embrace. The process through which the reconciliation was achieved, and the extraordinarily moving ceremony which it involved, was the subject of the film Tjibaou, le pardon, which was screened at the conference. And Marie-Claude Tjibaou herself was there to talk about it with us. It's a very special film indeed - and you can watch it here.