Under Today

As part of the Shifting Ground Festival in Alice Springs, 4th-18th May 2007 I collaborated with Alice Springs performance maker Dani Powell in a creative development and showing of Under Today.

The work was a site specific performance installation accessed by walking down one of the first Eastside lanes in Alice Springs, Goyder Lane. The lane was researched to reveal the ‘sediments’ and cultural accretion or layering of the site over time. The work included indigenous, settler, and migrant stories and memories of the laneway and surrounding areas.

Through audio, video, installation and performance the past and present of the site were brought into dialogue.

A short excerpt of the work is being presented at the  “Art at the Heart” Regional Arts Festival and conference, 3-5 October 2008, in Alice Springs.

The project has recently received development funding from Arts Northern Territory and the Myer Foundation.

The development of the work in 2009 will include research, generative rehearsals, media and sound production and performance composition. Drawing upon oral histories, memories, anthropological and historical records, geological data and surveys to generate audio recordings, video installation and live movement-based performance.

Community history, memory and experience – Indigenous and non-Indigenous, old and young - are drawn upon and valued in this project and transformed into a work which will offer the broader community an awareness and affirmation of local identity, history and culture.

Under Today is concerned with ‘storied sites’. While the site explored during Shifting Ground was the first laneway in the first subdivision on the Eastside of the Todd River, the development of the work will explore the street and hills on the boundary of the same grid. This site contains a number of historical narratives but is also visually compelling being the edge of the urban space.

Project Team

Dani Powell - animateur, director, producer

Alexandra Gillespie – media artist

Guy Webster –sound artist

Mariaa Randall – dancer and Bundjalung woman from the Far North Coast of NSW.

Miriam Bond – dancer

Frances Martin - performer

Sylvia Neale- performer, indigenous  researcher and consultant, senior Arrernte woman.

Mike Cawthorn – anthroplogist in the area of heritage protection with Ngaanyaytjarra Council (Aboriginal Corporation)

Jennah Rose – lighting designer