Arterial Group: the
big charge
Keith Gallasch
The huge, wide walls of the Brisbane Powerhouse
Turbine Hall wrap around us, flooded with images moving slowly, vertically,
the effect is vertiginous. In the centre of the hall digital images
play on a large screen above a collection of bright metal sculptures
standing just above water. A projection on another wall picks up artists
and technicians as they move purposefully about the space. A choir
appears on various levels delivering text in song, chatter, chirp
and mutter. The recorded voice of an elderly one-time Powerhouse worker,
Max Ham, intones the fun of working life (including his workers’ skiffle
group, The 5 Kilowatts) and the horrors of a building then awash with
asbestos and machines that chopped off fingers and limbs. A long row
of artists and technicians sit at a bank of computers, lighting and
sound desks. Centre stage is the American Barry Schwartz (electro-mechanical
structures, RT#44) and, constellating about him, the Belgian Bastiaan
Maris (chemo-acoustic installations), the Brisbane artists Andrew
Kettle (sound) and Keith Armstrong (visual production) and others
in their coveralls.
Barry Schwartz & The Arterial
Group,
ELEKTROSONIC INTERFERENCE
The Arterial Group
As the installation-performance slowly
unfolds over the hour, sparks begin to fly, shooting out of the top
of a condensor accompanied by shards of sound. Schwartz activates the
sculptures. The stroking of a large metal disk yields eerily primal
metallic groans. The artist lowers what looks like a huge, smoking turntable
arm onto the same disk unleashing pure, massive cymbal-like tones. The
pace of the work accelerates, the tone growing more ominous, the choir
heralding something apocalyptic, Ham telling of death by electric shocks,
death by asbestosis. Schwartz dons long, protective, insulated yellow
sleeves and big gloves, dips them into water and turns to the big screen,
now streaming with water. He strikes, igniting the water with balls
of electricity that travel up and fade, as others climb higher and higher,
each stroke ringing out like chorded bells heralding the end of time.
Unlike the workers in the Powerhouse who were electrocuted and resuscitated
or died, Schwartz is safe, transforming danger into awesome, if grim
beauty.
In a key moment, a wiry tree sculpture
(realised exquisitely as well in a digital version onscreen) is picked
up, electrified and inverted by Schwartz—“The possibilities for radical
enchantment are signified by an inverted wattle tree—resembling the
Jewish inverted tree of life—which was part of the ceremonial initiation
of young [Indigenous] men and was called kakka, meaning ‘something
wonderful’” (program note).
To see a living installation on such
a scale and of such ambition as Elektrosonic Interference in
Australia is a very rare experience. Limited funds, short development
periods, inadequate venues and scarce technical resources usually gravitate
against the realisation of artistic visions of this kind. However, Brisbane’s
Arterial Group have managed to find the collaborators, the financial
support, goodwill and the venue with which to realise a major multimedia
creation.
It’s hard to do justice to the scale
of the work. There are other resonating layers. The site-specific response
to the Powerhouse (built in the 20s to power Brisbane’s tram fleet)
also includes the site’s environmental and Indigenous past, primarily
found in writer Douglas Leonard’s text, scored by composer Stephen Leek
and performed by The Australian Voices, and visually echoed in the projections
on the Powerhouse walls, spelling out ‘Terra Nullius’. In antithesis
to this oppressive notion, Leonard uses another local Indigenous word,
Kore, denoting wonder. The text and composition, Kore,
includes a litany of environmental riches:
eastern water dragon/saw-shelled
tortoise/swamp snake/broad-palmed rocket frog/clicking froglet/echidna/chocolate
bat/fawn-footed melomys/ferny azolla/spikerush grogbit/golden-lined
whiting/bull rout/pacific-eyed rainbow fish/freshwater catfish/azure
kingfisher/rainbow lorikeet/red-legged pademelon/rufous bettong sugar
glider
These are spoken against sung lines:
“They are coming back, the weeping bottle-brush, the broad-leafed apple,
giant ironwood, white bean, black ti-tree, native holly, axe-handle
wood...Kore, Kore, Kore, they are coming back,” and an invocation of
Nguril, the Creator of the river, plains and creeks of the region.
Leonard has also constructed the
sound text drawing on the oral histories of the multicultural Powerhouse
workers, revealed in their terse natural poetry, their detached accounts
of workplace accidents and management negligence, recollections of the
Powerhouse cat, a river overflowing with fish, and pride in The 5 Kilowatts.
The cinematic dimension to the work
is enveloping, entailing whole walls and screens, recorded and live
projections. It provides a rich theatre of simultaneity, of choosing
where to direct one’s gaze as the work unfolds.
For a creation of such ambition and
textural complexity it’s not surprising that it didn’t always work or
please everyone. Opening night appeared to be seriously under-rehearsed.
For 20 minutes it looked like it wasn’t working at all, although there
was a lot of flurried techy movement about the stage. The choir, even
when miked, were often hard to hear above the soundtrack and the talkative
audience—but when they were heard in their scored whispering, muttering,
coughing and singing, they excelled. Lighting ranged from spectacular
to inadequate—Schwartz was seriously underlit at crucial moments. A
show that sets up such huge theatrical expectations has to go some way
towards meeting them, even if it is an installation with its roots in
the anti-theatrics of performance art.
For many who found the first 40 minutes
sluggish and unfocused, all was forgiven in the last 20. For others
the work was always unwieldy—too many layers, too many collaborators.
Some had seen Schwartz perform overseas, describing his work as more
complete, more coherent when more or less on his own. One viewer described
him as a showman out of context in the preoccupations of his collaborators.
Of course, the line between showman and artist is often a thin one in
contemporary performance, and certainly Schwartz’s offering in Elektrosonic
Interference was not as spectacular as some had hoped. Its beauty
was rare and idiosyncratic and the meshing of water, electrical flow
and spark and sound was often remarkable. But for the audience the work
did require a special patience and attention under sometimes difficult
circumstances—awkward production values, tiny program notes, an hour
or more of standing, often crowded viewing. Apparently, subsequent performances
were more focused and more satisfying.
Elektrosonic Interference
needs to be rewarded for more than ambition. Australia can be a punishing
place to work, off-the-cuff dismissal is de rigeur, failure to recognise
achievement and potential is common, though a little less brutal than
it has been. Works on the scale of Arterial’s vision (involving more
than 70 artists, technicians, singers, volunteers) remain rare and are
usually the province of overseas artists in shows we hear about, but
rarely if ever see. The collaboration with Schwartz and Maris offered
an opportunity to embark on such a venture. It is to be hoped that the
Australian collaborators will carry this unique experience forward into
new, equally ambitious projects.
It has been wearying in recent decades
to see theatre company casts whittled down, performance ensembles disappear,
feature films strangled by small budgets. No wonder Theft of Sita
and Cloudstreet have been greeted so passionately—scale is integral
to their power. Brisbane’s ELISION ensemble is another company working
with installation as performance and across artforms. transmisi
was performed in the Tennyson Powerhouse in 1999 for the Asia Pacific
Triennial, Opening of the Mouth in the Midland Railway Workshop
for the 1997 Perth Festival. IHOS Opera too operate on a rarely seen
scale. Big is not always best, but unless Australian artists seek to
experiment with scale, and are empowered to do so, we’ll continue to
feel that something is missing.
Arterial
Group-Barry Schwartz Collaboration, Elektrosonic Interference, director/performance
artist Barry Schwartz; sculpture workshop/technical director Bastiaan
Maris; concept development Douglas Leonard, Barry Schwartz, Therese
Nolan-Brown; Turbine Hall, Brisbane
Powerhouse, Sept 6-8
*Copyright RealTime; www.rtimearts.net*