2009 was a crazy, crazy year. Seriously. So much happened I’d happily retire right now with a lifetime full of memories. In an effort to process the year and, more importantly, share some of the amazing highlights, here are 12 moments from 2009 that stayed with me.
2009 began with 12 hour days, starting with the PAKT kids in the morning and the The King is Dead kids in the afternoon. A hot and busy start to the year.
A (confronting) highlight was Lily Shearer and Cassandra Gibbs taking the PAKT participants through an Indigenous education process. All the kids were asked to design and build a map of their country – its flora and fauna, their friends, spirits of the past and future, all gathered together in one place.
Find more videos like this on All Around You
They then proceeded to act out a potted history of Australia, starting from the Dreamtime until today. In the process, all the kids’ maps got torn apart, stamped upon, shredded. It was really full on. But as we got to more recent times, and there was more hope in the history, the kids were able to salvage parts of their maps and start putting them back together. An intense and unforgettable day.
Check out the film the PAKT kids made later in the year.
The King is Dead was a site-specific play in Burwood Park, in partnership with Burwood Council and Ashfield Youth Theatre. We helped kids in the inner-west develop and write their own play, through meeting online and in rehearsals.
During the season, my role was to ride the CuriousWorks tricycle around the park in a ridiculous outfit, blasting a loud horn. The goal was to embellish that night’s knowing audience with those who were just having their evening stroll in the park, unaware a performance was about to begin.
I had no idea how successful this would be – particularly with the kids. Anyone under 12 years old followed me like I was some kind of magician. They would have followed me anywhere. Never underestimate the power of a silly costume and a tricycle. I am still thinking about new ways to use this power in the future…
Of course, anyone over 12 just pointed at me and laughed. Then they saw how much fun we were all having and ran over to join in…
Silly Costume + Trike = Pied Piper
My mother’s company, Lingalayam Dance Company, partnered with CuriousWorks for their 2009 production, Rasa Unmasked (I have been working with Lingalayam since I was 10 years old). We designed their digital media strategy in the lead up to a season at the Sydney Opera House. The season not only sold out before its run, but could have doubled its length, such was the interest; so we must have done something right.
One of the first things I did was set up Lingalayam with a Flickr stream for the tour (the show toured South Asia after its Sydney premiere); and create a mailing list for Lingalayam of all of the professional contacts from across Australia and Asia my mother had worked with over the last 4 decades. One of the first Flickr sets was a selection of photos from my mother’s amazing childhood. It was a simple operation that took half a day, but the response was incredible. My mother’s colleagues suddenly had an insight into her art and her world that had only been suggested at in her performance.
I recommend watching this as a full-screen Flickr slideshow, with the “show info” option turned on.
Upon the completion of the Rasa Unmasked tour in India, I spent two weeks in Chennai, researching for the new CuriousWorks arts project – a performance about 4 generations of Sri Lankan-Australian families – that will premiere in 2011. During this time I visited a Sri Lankan refugee camp and worked with a local NGO there. I will never forget meeting men my own age, born streets away from where I was born, who had spent their whole lives in this camp, while I was lucky enough to migrate to a place like Australia, growing up free and with opportunity. An emotional day.
You can read about the work I did here and my reflection on the visit here.
Young tailor in Sri Lankan refugee camp in South India
Part of 2009 was about handing the management of our community program, All Around You, over to our Lead Educator, Elias Nohra. He bore this responsibility with style and together with Jeremy Cassar and Dan O’Reilly-Rowe led an excellent series of final workshops with the Refill kids at Miller Technology High, Western Sydney. The content produced in this time included a sketch comedy series, which, more than anything else we’ve helped young people produce, gives you an insight into the world of the next generation of Western Sydney. It was a double win: I was handing over control to the new batch of leaders at CuriousWorks; they were handing over control to the new batch of leaders in Western Sydney. All of these feelings were bottled up into the moment I clicked on to the web and watched the first sketch comedy.
Respectful, two-way education FTW.
Find more videos like this on All Around You
In June we had one of our semi-monthly events at CuriousWorks and my band, Asi, played. We had a complex set up involving many digital gadgets, a projector and many different tunings. So, in between each song we had to tell crappy jokes to fill in the time. The audience contributed a few too; much fun was had. On one of these occasions our usually quiet (on stage anyway) tabla player and beat maker, Iynkaran, popped up with this great explanation of konakol through story. He never told us he was thinking of doing this. The pure surprise of the moment makes it a highlight of last year; plus it belongs to a lovely night where the relationship between band and audience was super relaxed and connected.
Find more videos like this on All Around You
July was the first stage of our epic ongoing project in Newman. We spent three months there in 2009 – which you can check out in detail elsewhere on this site. But the moment for me in this stage was Peta Bell saying that in the two weeks of making media, one of the things she learned was that she CAN get along with her sister. Just a few moments (0:42 – 0:45, to be exact) but a big personal change in perception for her. Go Peta!
Find more videos like this on All Around You
For three lovely, re-energising weeks, I took part in the Splendid Arts Lab. We spent the lab developing cross-platform, cross-art form ideas suitable for music festivals, but the best part of it was simply meeting ten other Aussie artists previously unknown to me and out of my usual circle of collaborators. Every moment where I was forced to operate outside the unusual, but nevertheless comfortable structures I have set up back at CuriousWorks, was a highlight for me. I also developed what I think is my coolest idea yet, but unfortunately I can’t share it with the world for now – it isn’t ready!
Yes, we all look like dropkicks in the photo but it was actually a bunch of very sweet and lovely people.
We spent two years working with the Refill kids and the Generations conference, led by Community Development Network, was the first time we got to hear their reflections. They were hilarious.
Coming in a close second to this moment was the fun I had in doing a speech exactly 5 minutes long (ended by the buzzer on my iphone) and an impromptu dance to the mashup I made of the first two days of the conference, played on the third and final day.
Find more videos like this on All Around You
Our time in Newman ended with the town’s first ever film festival, full of local films by the local young people. It was covered by the ABC and the West Australian and was a great success – but the best moments for me involved watching the mining and Thai community watch the Martu film; the Martu, the Thai (and the adults generally) watch the mining kids’ work; and the Martu and mining community watch the Thai dancers. The layers of cultural exchanges occurring in this town in the middle of the desert rocked my boat.
Newman Film Festival photo op!
CuriousWorks started in 2005 with a little dream called The Migrant Project. Four years later, the project finally came to a close with a screening of This City is a Body: The Migrant Project Film. One of the things I love about this job is the ability to creatively wrap things up and present them to people as a way of saying goodbye. Seeing our little warehouse, with a full audience, take in the juiciest professional moments of the last four years – and saying goodbye to the first professional project I ever did – is not a night I’m likely to forget.
This City is a Body - The Migrant Project Film Screening
Most of December was spent picking up the thread dropped off in April, researching for the performance work about 4 generations of Sri Lankan-Australians. This is a picture of my great-grand father, C. Suntharalingam, a leader in the Tamil movement in Sri Lanka (far left).
He was someone everyone I worked with in the refugee camp in India had heard of and had stories about, and someone I knew basically nothing about. During my time in Tasmania, this changed.
As I did more and more research, I slowly began to feel that I was piecing things together. To understand my family and the country they tore themselves away from 27 years ago. It’s not a clear moment; more the kind that washes over you one quiet evening, the moment you’ve connected enough of the dots. I can’t wait to explore much more of this history in 2010…
My mother's engagement day, in Sri Lanka. My great-grandfather is far left.