visit to project space at RMIT

I walk into a cold display room. There are various structures predominately made from wood, mostly from dressed Tassie Oak. An entrance ramp, steps into the main living area (with a closet to the rear – very disused looking – like storage that needs tidying up. Arrayed around the main living space are the bedroom boasting a four-poster bed chained to the wall – though all I have to cue my imagination of the artefact of cosy manchester is the remaining bed-head grill tethered into the plaster. A narrow shallow cupboard hangs strips of black rubber of split inner tube dimensions... the remaindered clothing of absent lives. A narrow over-long, flower window box with a discarded pestle balanced on the upper edges – empty of soil – as though the oak were form-work for a long abandoned concrete pour. A spear of wooden doweling leans against the wall – in the old days, the children wielded this like ancient samurai, or pulled either end in a splinter-filled tug-o-war; now it rests forgotten and prefabricated. A French-braced portal leading precisely to the plaster wall less than a metre behind leads me further to my sense of frustrating abandonment – where are the inhabitants of this hastily, carelessly constructed reminder of domesticity? Why did they leave me here to ponder the inadequacies, the broken hopes and bad mistakes. To deepen my malaise, the family stereo system plays not Bing Crosby's White Christmas; in fact so soft were the sounds reproduced that at first I had to press my ear against the speaker to check that it was working. It was. A feeble electronica feeding off the ambience – so I understand by the contact and omnidirectional microphones - they record and reproduce not only the air, the percussion of life all about, but the absence of activity within: so I listen to the suddenly strident, subversive nothingness sublimating my drab daily life to the terror held just beneath the skin of my being. These structures are not made to last, no tenon and mortise, no rebate or dovetailing, just one member pressed against another at a serviceable angle to hold the form erect – although like none were expected – if it were to receive a knock it would fall. I note that the odd assortment of screws used to house these sentinel molds have been countersunk; I can only guess this is some ironic jibe at the permanence of dovetailing... for what is the point of joinery that outlasts its users?- these slap-dash structures of impermanence are referencing a bygone era when a structure was built to last. In a jolt I realise that everyone outside has been looking at me through the wall of glass fronting onto Cardigan Street – the lone figure in the display room of modular domesticity. Thursday afternoon in the RMIT precinct; an adolescent impresses his female friend with slurpee, bitten cigarettes for toughness and solid shoulders – he doesn't realise he has the genes to gain weight yet. A courier admonishes me for waisting time with his stare then reasserts his employment with the inventory slip. I return to this desultory space, but can't stomach anymore, can't negotiate this uncompromising world... not even the entrance ramp looks sturdy enough to hold me so I must exit skirting about it. Nothing was real in there. Reacquire the comfort of closed skin... now, back to real life.

non-negotiable
Katie Lee
Dean Linguey
Bridie Lunny
Exhibition Friday 24 September to Thursday 14 October 2010

Learning Testimony by Graham Henderson for the Melbourne Fringe

"Testimony" by Graham Henderson, directed by Suzanne Chaundy and performed by me will premiere at the Melbourne Fringe September 2010. A fifty minute solo performance piece "late-show of demi-god dreams" runs the release.
I've tried a different process of learning text for Testimony. Ordinarily I think the thoughts and speak the lines out loud in my bedroom, or whisper them to myself on trams and avoid the stares of fellow passengers. This time I decided not to vocalise the text until I'd learnt it.The idea was that rather than to rely on the muscularity of producing words with the elecutionary muscles, I would just think the thoughts. In performance this might help to focus on the rationale of the whole piece. After all, the performance is about an hour of layered poetry that looks at the labyrinth of the self in the context of one who is ostracised from normal society; the myth of the minotaur becomes an analogy for the monster within the self at one in the same with the fear of the stranger in society. A subtle complex exploration that requires the performer to consider each point of reason as it transpires, so that the argument of the performance builds with logic. If the logical build is well-constructed then the emotional and dynamic journey will come for the ride. I'm now two-thirds of the way through learning, have started text analysis with Suzanne (the director), and I couldn't bare the torture any further. I had to speak the words. It interested me the stages of personal relation to the text that transpired. At first I found the text immensely difficult to learn. Without the confirmation of the act of speaking, the words didn't seem to stick. And occasionally I would catch myself mouthing words. But gradually I became accustomed and enjoyed the freedom of walking the streets of Collingwood/Fitzroy or riding on a tram with a page of script in my pocket stepping through the text in my mind. But last week, after a month of learning, I couldn't continue. I merely had to speak the lines. And wondered why I should torture myself in this way. I spoke. The release that I felt in doing so was cathartic. And the voice of the character was a music to me. Not that I feel it was misplaced to explore that non-vocal process, in fact now that I am talking out loud to myself in my bedroom committing the lines, I value the icy concentration that the original process has engendered – the development of rationale continues though the practice of cadence associated with meaning – weighting words as I've come to call it.