Imagining access to Other (2010)
Other 2010
Tracey Moffatt 1960 -
Gary Hillberg (Editor) 1982 -
Single-channel digital video, 7:00 min, edition 30/200
Collection of The University of Queensland
Absolute position
I’m not sure where I am, or what year it’s supposed to be, but I come to you live, hovering above a polished marble floor. I’ve heard that Indian marble is even better than Italian, duller and less veined or something, so maybe this is Indian marble below me, dark grey rectangles set into dull emerald. It doesn’t matter. What matters is I don’t recognise this place, and my eye is trying to make sense of the arched columns, the clustered lamps shining off the marble, and of course the dozens of important looking people dressed in crisp, colourful gowns and tunics made of fine fabrics. Even the people holding trays are dressed fancy.
It is unquestionably strange that I am floating above all of them, maybe three times higher than my eyes are used to being. But something stranger happens. I glide down into the room, and within a couple of seconds, I find my eyes at chest height. None of the dressed up people look at me because we are all staring at a large group of black and brown women. They’re draped in golden bits and pieces, and they’re all dancing in synch, and you can tell they do this a lot, because they are moving very much Together and they all look like aerobics instructors. I’m thinking, what’s the word for aerobics in their language? Or languages? Except they’re wearing all the gold, including these kind of gold chain underpants, and huge arrangements of lush brown feathers on their heads.
They twirl and jiggle and smile and swing and something tells me I should recognise that they are Natives. So exotic; although ironically, the thesaurus says exotic is ‘non-native’. What I am seeing is groupness … do we go so far as to say tribal here? — and I notice my cheeks flushing with sentiments about the beauty of their culture and the simple sophistication of their customs and craft and make-up artists. Nostalgia is a longing for a past that never existed, and yet I forget that only a moment ago, I was actually floating above this room; heck, I didn’t have a body!
I was floating above the marble floor, and there was action. There were performers and onlookers, and a room so noisy with the messages of its materials and their shapes and arrangements. I gave it to you as Vision without the encumberance of embodiment. I’ve heard it called a ‘God’s eye view’. I gave you my world! I gave you your world.
And — in Tracey Moffatt’s Other — it’s only 18 seconds that we’re here, then the Vision moves on and someone else’s eye plays God’s eye. But it’s this rush of Hollywood World Views that bestows or shapes the imaginary of our minds, connects ideas to images, triangulates sense. Other is knowing and not knowing amplified. As it swings from scene to scene, how does Moffatt produce a subtext of grief or absurdity? Who do you identify, or identify with, in this picture? Or that one? How about for Tracey Moffatt?
We can feel our closeness or distance to the montage and to the scenes within it. Do you recognise this scene? Do you remember the action, unseen here, that nourishes it with a world of meanings? Do you remember a public response, or cultural meaning of those scenes? But through the auteur’s supercut, we are also witnessing Moffatt’s relationship to the films, so I suppose we’re then also witnessing our relationship to Moffatt’s relationship to the films.
And: can access be legal? We ponder whether, in making media that coopts copyrighted media, we are risking a breach of copyright. Are we critiquing, reviewing, parodying or satirising with our descriptions, or researching or studying Moffatt’s? Is this fair dealing? Is this fair? What are the layers of permission?
What are the layers of permission?
(Fayen) Some imagined possibilities for access
Boom boom bang bang
Eyes widening, approaches, touches, intimacy bursts
unveiling
Exoticism, Orientalism, Fetishisation
Panting, trumpeting, rhythmic music, slowly building,
tension, pulsing, handclaps
a dance extravaganza,
intensity building
explosions literally, metaphorically, musically and visually
a crescendo, rapid fire
words fail at a certain point, the pace is overwhelming at a certain point
Could we have layers of voices?
The artist’s voice, the artist’s intent, a critique of the artist’s intent
And/or
The colonial gaze
And/or
The names of the films from which each encounter between others is sampled,
“Hurricane (1979): A desperate love affair between a young Samoan chief, played by Dayton Ka'ne, and an American painter, played by Mia Farrow, who defies the will of her father. Amid this man-made tension comes a hurricane so devastating, the lives of the lovers and the entire island are imperiled.”
And/or
A person experiencing the work for the first time.
But who could this be? Whose voices are welcome?
Can a child’s impressions provide a layer, or is that excluded, given the moments of horniness as the film climaxes?
Who decides whose descriptions are allowed?
What about incorporating a jumbled layer of intrusive thoughts?
Do we give the audience a primer to help prepare them for our different voices?
Would it be like a choose-your-own-adventure?
Would we disperse among the crowd, speak simultaneously, from the corners of the room?
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What simple, performative gestures might honour the spirit of the theatricality of the staged encounters?
Could we film something together? How could we honour the satire? How could we honour the overwhelm?
Rae tries Directing the Other …
[Video: Directing the Other]