DotS SO FAR APART THEY’RE STARS.
This journal holds a collection of notes and scribbles, collected on Larrakia Country, during Next Wave’s Market Market artist lab. This lab brought together Darwin-based artists and artists from across the continent, to spend time in each other’s company, share ways of working in place, question experimental practice, and take time to think, reflect, and look towards the horizon.
Here I’ll share and annotate some pages, drawing faint lines between distant dots, to connect thoughts, old and new, about responding, caring, and creating. I’ll zoom in and out, from small details to the bigger picture, and back and forth, from old memories to new ideas.
We contrive to do it.
When I was invited to offer a response to Market Market, I was reminded of a response I received in 2010 from a dear friend and mentor, Roger Rynd. He was my director in Korea where I was performing in children’s theatre. Rog taught me a lot about sparking friendships across culture and language, through art-making, partying, and rooftop fireworks. After a day of rehearsals, where he observed artists from Australia and Korea working together, he emailed me his “scribblings” at 4:20am.
It is apparent that other creatures also dance and sing; and like us they do it for sex and territory. Perhaps migrating whales sing for deep companionship. But we contrive to do it. Imaginatively and logically; and we also do it for the transcendent spirit of the act itself. To express from deep within, our joy and sadness, our han and jong.
Ten years after his death, alone in a Covid locked-down Naarm / Melbourne apartment, I read Roger’s “scribblings” to a group of his family and friends who’d come together on Zoom to observe the anniversary, and remember him together.
In Darwin, a group of artists contrived to do things – to make and share things – from laksa to art experiments, from playful walks to questionable dance moves, from risograph prints to salty swims and sunset fish and chips.
The White-breasted Woodswallow and I.
I grew up barefoot in a eucalypt forest on Jinibara country, in the mountains not too far north of Meanjin / Brisbane.
Grandad was a fisherman. When I was young, we’d cruise around Moreton Bay, and walk across mudflats where the sharp, pointy mangrove shoots threatened to skewer my feet.
I’ve been moving around for almost twenty years. Often, I fly north for Mongolian or Korean winters. Mates are long-distance lovers, or one-night-stand-strangers, or gym buddies that I Sunday-swim-and-brunch with.
Along Gurambai / Rapid Creek, the white-breasted woodswallows roost, cuddling up together. I wondered if they were strangers. I wondered if this was home, or if they were just visiting too.
After my grand-aunt Daffney died, a finch got stuck in the house. It let me pick it up to set it free. As far as I know, I’m the only queer in my extended family. But Aunty Daff never married or had kids – and lived with a woman for most of her life. Fly now.
After my Dad died, a red king parrot came by, to spend time in the rafters of the carport.
The white-breasted woodswallow is found in eucalypt forests and woodlands, usually close to water, and in mangroves. They eat on the wing (while flying) and are nomadic; partially migratory in the south of their range, moving north during autumn and south during spring.
Care’s not all cuddles and community.
On a birdwatching walk, the Market Market artists admired and anthropomorphised the white-breasted woodswallow; especially the way they snuggled in groups. We drew parallels between their lives and ours – how we come together and separate, assemble and disband. What we didn’t see, was them MOBBING raptors to protect themselves.
Care’s not all cuddles and community… for the white-breasted woodswallow, care also involves aggressive action against dangerous threats.
At Next Wave, we talk a lot about care. The cuddly care and the clustering in communities as care are important. But we talk less about the raptor-mobbing care. It got me thinking about the ways we care that are less socially acceptable – the queer care – the non-normative care – the illegal care. This led me to discover David McGovern’s work HARDCARE which “makes visible people, acts and places of care that sit outside the norm.”
HARDCARE explores the fringes of care; that which is kept hidden from view or seen as deviant. It rejects care as soft and passive, and acknowledges the hardship involved in some acts of keeping well. HARDCARE proposes new language and aesthetics for care.
Amongst other artists in Darwin, through curated shared experiences, learning about each other, and witnessing artistic experiments, I felt care being sparked as trust began to form. With more time, we’d not only cluster, but we’d help with each other’s battles, and offer non-clinical and spreadsheet-free care. We’d learn about our raptors, and the safest places to flock and fuck.
The build-up.
Those living in the top end spoke of “the dry”, “the build-up”, and “the wet season”. They warned us about the build-up, when the heat and humidity is relentless, people are irritable, mangoes take over, and break-up levels peak.
I arrived before the humidity, while Darwin Festival was in full-flight. I was introduced to what it’s like to be an artist there at that particular time. It’s hectic. Everything’s on at once. Everyone’s working across multiple projects. Outside festival time, local artists spoke of a generally slower pace in Darwin, a DIY approach, and a supportive community and who’s worked on each other’s projects for a long time. Despite everyone’s busy schedules, we were met with energy and generosity.
From brown paper bags, QR codes led us to mini video and sound works – including one that took me back to those days among the mangroves. Projected on the side of the market building, the flesh of fruit met the flesh of the body, with us as witnesses of this intimate interchange. We ate Indonesian curries in a gallery alongside the Blak Power - 50 Years of First Nations Superheroes in Australian Art exhibition. We laughed with traditional owner, Nadia Lee, and attempted to distill why we make art. For me: To feel alive. To play. To connect. To move towards “the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality” (José Esteban Muñoz). We danced at a joyously welcoming Sangeet under the stars. Light was shaped by hand and spilt over bodies, over white walls, over Gurambai. Needing a moment of quiet, I found myself out the back recording the hum and buzz of an air conditioner. Stall owners’ favourite tunes spun as we ate pho and a waitress danced in the corridor outside. She told me she was remembering home and longing to move further south.
Extraordinary creatures.
These couple of pages offer a skewed snapshot of my time in Darwin, but capture some thoughts about responding, caring, and creating.
I visited temporarily, but the sugarcane continues to crackle through the press. The blood orange sun keeps sinking into the sea. Noisy blenders whipping up tropical fruits persist, interrupting the 90s bangers pumping from the juice stall. The white-breasted woodswallows sing, nest, raise their young, and care like their lives depend on it.
I always feel like a visitor, because I am constantly moving and because my ancestors are not from this continent – but also because in the grand scheme of things, my time here is brief. While I’m around, I want to cluster and cuddle, hardcare in the queerest ways, witness the worlds of artists and the seasons that shape their work, and make art on the wing.
I’ll leave you with another passage from Roger’s early morning scribblings:
…for now we make sounds that craft the air around us, sounds unique to this world, unique to us. None of this would be possible in a vacuum, every sound you utter is a celebration of this extraordinary planet, and of you as an extraordinary creature.