what rhymes with chaos?

BNE artist interviews #1: Erica Field

Today’s entry is part of a new monthly series where I will be interviewing artists from Brisbane. For the first installment I sit down with my good friend Erica Field as she talks about transforming herself into a boy, bleeding on stage and falling in love with the audience.

photo: Sean Young

JD: I’ve heard it said that you hate hypothetical questions. If you had to choose
 between answering a hypothetical question and getting repeatedly hit in the face with a pillow at 5am what would you do?

EF: I would prefer being hit in the head with a pillow. 

JD: You’ve worked with a number of creatives from around Australia and overseas. Do you have an organization or show that is on your wish list?

 EF: Top of my wish list would be doing Six Women again. We had offers from various places but because we couldn’t fund it, it just never happened. I think it should be seen all over the world. Seen AND felt.  I absolutely believe in that show.

Six Women Standing In Front Of A White Wall from Little Dove Theatre Art on Vimeo.

 JD: You’ve studied and performed in Edinburgh, Berlin and all over Australia. What makes you keep coming home to Brisbane?

 EF: I just think that Brisbane is really starting to get going. I feel like there’s a generation of artists that are starting to really develop a very strong creative and  artistic voice. And I’ll be here as long as I can be part of that!

photo: Fenlan Chuang

JD: What is the weirdest theatre piece you’ve ever seen?

EF: The most full on piece that I’ve seen was by a guy called Ron Athey. Does a lot of
  stuff where he cuts himself. In this one particular piece…maybe I won’t go into it. Do you want me to?

JD: Yeah!

EF: He had all these barbs in his head and he took them out one by one so that streams of blood were pouring down his face. He smeared blood all over the set.

 JD: I can just imagine the risk assessment form for that show…

EF: And then he covered himself in a kind of milky lubricating substance and fisted himself. And then he was rained on by rock salt.

JD: Why art?

EF: What else would I do? It just makes sense to me. I guess…I don’t know how else to understand the world. Or find beauty in the world.

photo: Morgan Roberts

JD: You’re well known for having a highly immersive research process for your performances. For Room 328 you dressed as a boy and during this time you started eating protein powder. What else did you do to prepare for this role?

EF: Yeah, it was different each time. The first time I didn’t quite know how to just be comfortable and for the qualities of that character to become really part of me. The first time round I just spent a lot of time wearing boy clothes and just trying to eliminate I guess all the…ah…it’s dangerous territory but ‘feminine’ things out of what I did. I spent a lot of time with Liesel Zink, who was our movement consultant, just watching the young punk kids that hang outside Rocking Horse.  Just looking at the way they behave and their movements.

   

photo: Mircha Mangiacotti

JD: Your performances such as six women and room 328 tend to be interactive and participatory pieces which involve everything from being slapped by audience members to dancing with them. Do you have a favourite moment of audience interaction?

EF: Yes. One of them was a guy during the season of Six Women in Edinburgh. This guy came up to touch me and I was crying and I had a bit of snot and he wiped away the tears, stroked my face and just very, very gently put his hand on my side and then we just stood there together really close. And in that moment I thought we could be lovers. He was amazing and then he left, and I fell in love with him just a little bit. It was a very tiny moment but just the quality of it was so beautiful.

  

photo: Adam Sebestian West

JD: Tell us about your upcoming show the Raven. Are you going to punch anybody?

EF: I’m not going to punch anybody. BUT it’s immersive. It’s going to be a really beautiful meditation on the kind of fear of letting go, particularly of someone you’ve loved and you now need to let go of and the kind of loss and sadness that is involved with that and being alone in the world.

THE RAVEN, inspired by the works of Edgar Allen Poe, runs from the 7th until the 31st of March at Metro Arts Theatre and you should definitely go becuase it will be amazing. 

 

Paper girl festival video interview

 

 

Writers aren't used to having our faces (or any other parts) on camera. Despite spending most of our lives desperately trying to communicate through the use of various combinations of 26 letters and a small selection of punctuation marks that the modern world is increasingly less interested in correctly utilising, we are a species that is frequently heard but never seen. 

Unless you're J.K. Rowling or Tara Moss, no one knows what the hell you look like. I've read maybe a half a dozen of Irvine Welsh's books and I couldn't even begin to guess at his physical appearance. For all I know he's a morbidly obese man with a prolific beard, terrible body odour, a nipple piercing and a unicorn tattoo prominently displayed on his right forearm.

For this reason it was something of a novelty for me to do this interview with the organisers of the Papergirl festival. It's a really great opportunity for artists and writers to literally shove their work in people's faces. I've submitted a few of my short stories, so if you see someone approach you on a bicycle holding out a rolled up bundle of papers on the 4th of February, take a peek inside...

You can see interviews with other artists participating below. There are still a few days left to submit work! Artists and writers: get amongst it. 

 

 

Diet Tips from the Vampire Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Who Played a Game of Thrones With Fire

Good Morrow to you, Sirs and Madams of the Big Six consortium of publishers! I trust you are well. Before I tell you about the EXCITING!!!! opportunity I am offering you today, I have to ask, are you ever concerned by the fact that your informal collective moniker sounds like some kind of crime syndicate? On the other hand, it is also reminiscent of the Bionic Six, which was one of my favourite cartoons as a kid. Do any of you have superpowers, (besides an almost impregnable stranglehold on the publishing industry that is)? 

 

I know that Oprah's retirement last year must have been a sad day for you, seeing as she directly influenced so many people to consume your books in drool inducing quantities. So I'm here with some news to cheer you up! I am offering YOU the EXCITING opportunity to publish my third novel. That's right! This is not a dream, so quit stabbing that fork into your leg! I, J.M. Donellan, renowned New York Limes Best Smelling author, am currently accepting proposals for contracts to publish the bizarrely titled Adonis Comma Coma.

Now, granted, this novel does not feature diet tips, games involving thrones, vampires, or girls with dragon tattoos who play with fire. I'm saving all of these for my forthcoming novel Diet Tips from the Vampire Girl With a Dragon Tattoo Who Played a Game of Thrones With Fire. That'll sell a billion and ten copies, no question, but in the meantime I offer you the opportunity to place Adonis Comma Coma under your metaphorical wings. Or literal wings if you have them, maybe that's one of your superpowers.

Adonis Comma Coma is a dark comedy about a synaesthetic nurse named Freya who is hired to look after the comatose Elijah, the golden child of the wealthy and eccentric Vincetti family. However, it soon becomes clear that Elijah may not have been the prodigious saint that everyone made him out to be. Meanwhile, someone is disposing of the Vincetti's corporate rivals in a series of imaginatively violent executions. Strange events are transpiring in the curiously over fortified room of the Vincetti mansion, and it may or not have something to do with a woman who claims to be Marilyn Monroe...

Applications should be made in the form of interpretative dance, magical cake, fireworks display or self-indulgent guitar solo. Winners will be chosen based on talent, enthusiasm and endurance. 

If you are interested in this EXCITING, LIFE CHANGING opportunity, then don't think JUST ACT NOW!III  I'm looking for someone to offer me a contract with 80-90% royalties, a jetpack, the complete set of Garbage Pail Kids cards, a performing monkey and a limo with accompanying driver named something like Ahmir or Vikram with whom I can share heartwarming exchanges about the differences between our cultures that can later be presented in a delightful montage set to this song:

 

I look forward to receiving your dance performance, fireworks display, magic cake or guitar solo.

Swarm Regards

J.M. Donellan

 

 

 

 

 

Literally the ugliest thing ever built in all of human history

My Dearest Brisbane City Council,

I hope that the first days of 2012 have treated you well and that you are recovering from your collective hangover, which I imagine a government body experiences as a sort of hive mind shared headache coupled with an inexplicable desire to eat copious quantities of Tim Tams.

Recently on Waterworks Rd, which I have lived near, next to and occasionally underneath for the last five years or so, a giant camera was installed. Now, I understand that speed cameras and the like are important, but the plethora of digital monitoring devices installed along this street over the last few years makes me concerned that I might be secretly filmed as part of a potently uninteresting reality TV show entitled 'Guy Who Gets Increasingly Irate About Vast Numbers of Cameras and Then Writes a Dumb Letter About it.'  

If you don't think this looks like a giant robot penis, then you clearly haven't seen enough robot penises.  

This new camera is particularly striking because, let's be honest, it looks like the penis of a giant robot. Now, I certainly don't want to give the impression that I'm the sort of backward individual that thinks transmogrifying our streetscape into some sort of digitally omniscient panopticon is a BAD idea. 

Nor would I ever make the outrageous accusation that waging a war on street art, ostensibly in the interest of maintaining the aesthetics of this fair city, is a violently incongruent campaign to run whilst simultaneously installing thirty foot steel pillars that resemble giant robot penises. That said, although I've never been one for hyperbole I think it would be no exaggeration to say that this is literally the ugliest human structure ever erected by any human anywhere in all of history. I have never in all my days seen anything more hideous, and I once saw a picture of Nicole Ritchie without makeup.

"OMFG Paris and I are SO not friends anymore!"

Now, I'm aware that you must receive countless letters from concerned citizens that are all complaints with no solutions. But today is your lucky day! In addition to my complaints, I am going to offer you some potential solutions to this problem and completely waive my usual consultation fee of $500 per hour and a very large piece of cheesecake.

 Clearly the camera would be costly and inefficient to take down, regardless of the number of complaints urging you to do so. But there is nothing to stop you dressing it up a little! Who knows, this monstrous symbol of constant citizen monitoring could be just like that girl with the ugly glasses in all those terrible teen movies that turns out to actually be a ridiculously hot girl who despite her remarkable intellect had never once thought to wear contacts and let her hair down. 

SUGGESTIONS

1 TURN IT INTO A GIANT MAYPOLE

"Oh what a gay old time we are having dancing in ridiculously impractical clothing around this giant robot penis!"

No one really knows the true origin of the maypole. Some say it was a stick that was originally intended for the burning of particularly colourful witches, others claim that maypole dancing was an activity invented by a antiquarian marketing company that wanted to increase sales of poles, ribbons and maypole related accessories. Though its origins are shrouded in mystery, one thing's clear: everybody loves a maypole!

2 TRANSFORM IT INTO A HUMUNGOUS YEAR ROUND XMAS TREE 

"Hey kids, you know what would make Christmas even better this year? A camera mounted at the top of the tree to constantly monitor our activity!"

Wasn't it sad when Christmas was over? After months of gleefully watching credit card debts expand, enjoying irate shoppers shoving each other out of the way and listening to weird uncle Frank's annual Christmas rant about how boat people and gay marriage are the leading cause of heart failure amongst middle aged conservatives we had to put all the decorations away and return to our dreary non-Christmassy lives. But what if we could make that magic last all YEAR LONG?! A giant xmas tree camera tower is the obvious answer.

3 MAKE IT INTO A MASSIVE TESLA COIL

               

The main thing that you need to know about the Tesla coil is that it is amazing. You think a giant camera is going to encourage safe driving? Just think about how great it would be if that camera could also SHOOT LIGHTNING. Plus Waterworks rd. would constantly resemble the set of a B grade science fiction movie, and who the hell wouldn't want that? IDIOTS, that's who! 

This concludes my complaint letter. I hope enjoy the rest of your day, and I look forward to seeing the completed maypole, Xmas tree or Tesla coil installed within the next 5-10 workdays. 

Yours Since Clearly,

J.M. Donellan