Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableTo sound the drum: A dialogue on value and change in relation to First Nations music and research in the academy(Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)A raft of complex and dynamic barriers to the participation and inclusion of First Peoples and Indigenous knowledges and practices in the academy exists. Not least of these barriers are assumptions about authority and ownership in relation to knowledge, that inform teaching and research. This chapter, co-authored by an Indigenous academic and multi-disciplinary artist and ethnomusicologist of settler/non-Indigenous ancestry, interrogates the contemporary academy and a vision that is inclusive of First Peoples and Indigenous knowledge systems through a reflective dialogue on individual and collaborative experiences of teaching and research related to Indigenous music. Through a reflection on axiological differences that come to bear in teaching and research related to Indigenous music, and on projects stemming from one author’s family practice of biganga (possum skin cloak) making, the authors consider the provocation: ‘what does it take to sound the drum?’, referring to the biganga (possum skin cloak) percussion instrument that has been used historically in much of south- eastern Australia and is undergoing a current process of reclamation. Through this dialogue and reflection, conventional notions of quality and value that are persistent in both teaching/learning and research in the contemporary university are addressed and expanded upon, and the question of what methodological and systemic change is required to centre Indigenous knowledges and people in the work of the university is considered.
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ItemMoving Songs: Repatriating Audiovisual Recordings of Aboriginal Australian Dance and Song (Kimberley Region, Northwestern Australia)(Oxford University Press, 2019)Repatriation has become almost ubiquitous in ethnomusicological research on Australian Indigenous song. This article provides insights into processes of a repatriation-centered song revitalization project in the Kimberley, northwest Australia. Authored by an ethnomusicologist and two members of the Ngarinyin cultural heritage community, the article provides firsthand accounts of the early phases of a long-term repatriation-centered project referred to locally as the Junba Project. The authors provide a sample of narratives and dialogues that deliver insight into experiences of the work of identifying recordings “in the archive” and cultural negotiation and use of recordings “on Country.” The entanglement of local epistemological frameworks with past and present collection, archival research, repatriation, and dissemination for intergenerational knowledge transmission between spirits, Country, and the living, is explored, showing how recordings move song knowledge from community to archive to community and from generation to generation, and move people in present-day communities. The chapter considers how these “moving songs” allow an interrogation of the fraught endeavor of intercultural collaboration in the pursuit of revitalizing Indigenous song traditions. It positions repatriation as a method that can support intergenerational knowledge transmission and as a method to consider past and present intercultural relationships within research projects and between cultural heritage communities and collecting institutions.
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ItemDon't Be Like the Jebarra: Reconsidering the Ethics of Ethnomusicological Practice in an Indigenous Australian Context(Routledge, 2022-11-30)An implicit goal of ethnomusicology is acquisition of knowledge about music—historically the music of a cultural world other than that held by the outsider ethnomusicologist prior to their study. Our methods are often sound recording and other forms of collection, and participation in musical practices. Complex issues arise when the assumptions and methods of ethnomusicology are valued differently by region, group, generation, individual, or otherwise. Likewise, complex issues arise when the ethical framework for holding knowledge in a particular cultural context is at odds with institutional and disciplinary expectations with regard to authority, publication, and ownership of knowledge, in the academy. Via two provocations–that sound recording and collection, and participation in musical practice such that the ethnomusicologist acquires knowledge that is then held in their bodies, might be compared to the actions of the Jebarra (and ancestral figure in Ngarinyin lifeworld who stole communal resources and broke the Law of sharing) – in this chapter the authors (one an outsider ethnomusicologist and one an insider researcher and cultural custodian) reconsider the ethics of outsider ethnomusicological practice. Through reflection on a 20-year history of collaboration, the chapter considers local frames for understanding the role of the work of repatriation and return, and other forms of collaboration. It finds that there are local strategies for sustaining people and place across generations despite massive periods of disruption, and that these are also deployed to manage the risks attendant with the interventions of outsiders, and makes a case for outsider and insider researchers and practitioners to consider the role of care and nurturing in research.
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ItemMusic Endangerment, Repatriation, and Intercultural Collaboration in an Australian Discomfort Zone(Oxford University Press, 2021-04-15)To the extent that intercultural ethnomusicology in the Australian settler state operates on a colonialist stage, research that perpetuates a procedure of discovery, recording, and offsite archiving, analysis, and interpretation risks repeating a form of musical colonialism with which ethnomusicology worldwide is inextricably tied. While these research methods continue to play an important role in contemporary intercultural ethnomusicological research, ethnomusicologists in Australia in recent years have become increasingly concerned to make their research available to cultural heritage communities. Cultural heritage communities are also leading discovery, identification, recording, and dissemination to support, revive, reinvent, and sustain their practices and knowledges. Repatriation is now almost ubiquitous in ethnomusicological approaches to Aboriginal music in Australia as researchers and collaborating communities seek to harness research to respond to the impact that colonialism has had on social and emotional well-being, education, the environment, and the health of performance traditions. However, the hand-to-hand transaction of research products and represented knowledge from performers to researcher and archive back to performers opens a new field of complexities and ambiguities for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants: just like earlier forms of ethnomusicology, the introduction, return, and repatriation of research materials operate in “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination” (Pratt 2007 [1992]). In this chapter, we recount the processes and outcomes of “The Junba Project” located in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. Framed by a participatory action research model, the project has emphasized responsiveness, iteration, and collaborative reflection, with an aim to identify strategies to sustain endangered Junba dance-song practices through recording, repatriation, and dissemination. We draw on Pratt’s notion of the “contact zone” as a “discomfort zone” (Somerville & Perkins 2003) and look upon an applied/advocacy ethnomusicological project as an opportunity for difference and dialogue in the repatriation process to support heterogeneous research agendas.
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ItemEarly Childhood and Music in Indigenous Contexts: Approaches to Teaching and Learning in an Indigenous Australian Community(Oxford University Press, 2023)Descriptions of children’s musical experiences and practices in Indigenous Australian contexts often reflect holistic approaches to identity, linked to ancestry, spirituality, and place. Simultaneously, the musical worlds of Indigenous children are interconnected with complex social, cultural, historical, spiritual, and political contexts that draw upon local, regional, and global musical styles. This collaborative chapter reviews selected literature that addresses cultural identity and expression in the context of babies and children in Indigenous Australian and Indigenous Canadian contexts. This literature is used as a foundation from which to present accounts of childhood musical cultural practices from the Mowanjum Aboriginal Community in the Kimberley region, northwest Australia. Focusing on musical teaching and learning, the chapter considers the musical landscape, cultural inheritances, and active roles that young children play through their musical activities, in cultural resurgence, in stimulating new music (and dance) practices, and in social wellbeing.
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ItemLiam Fleming: Bringing colour into being(The Guildhouse Fellowship, 2023)"Light and colour is curated by Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, and is accompanied by a printed exhibition catalogue featuring essay by David Sequeira."
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ItemFraming Technologies in the Dramaturgies of Performance(Centre 42, 2023)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableCreating Kaleidoscopic Characters: Working with Performance to Develop Character Stories Prior to Screen Story(Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)This chapter draws on practice that begins the filmmaking process with character performance before developing a script. Hence characterisation precedes the script and suggests a viable model of story development and film production. This chapter examines a development process of creating nuanced characters prior to the screenwriting practice through a comparative examination of the methods used by contemporary filmmakers working with actors and performance prior to story or script. The chapter investigates approaches to screen work and methods used by UK filmmaker Mike Leigh and Indie US filmmaker Miranda July and draws from Angie Black’s filmmaking practice in the development of the feature film, The Five Provocations (Black, 2018) as a case study. This chapter highlights the importance of character in story creation and how collaboration with cast at the initial stages of the screenwriting process can play a significant part in capturing compelling screen performances that lead to greater character verisimilitude and emotional integrity in the completed film.
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ItemPink Data: Tiamaterialism and the Female Gnosis of Desire(re.press, 2016)
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ItemDaily Demons and Fabulous Animals(World Crafts Council - Australia, 2018)Tessa Laird’s Quarterly Essay is a quest to find the maker of the marvellous alebrija that she bought last time in Mexico. These alebrijas are elaborately carved animals that reflect the Indigenous belief in the nahual, or animal spirit. Laird has just published a book on bats for the Reaction series. Her interest in the fluid relationship between humans and animals finds so much to share in the rich crafts and beliefs of southern Mexico.