School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
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ItemSecret lives of Asian Australian cinema: offshore labour in transnational film industries( 2008)This article examines some of the material dimensions of Asian Australian cinema through an analysis of selected regional production and post-production flows since 1980, and the debates surrounding them. It begins with a theoretical discussion of the role of labour within the global film industry, before moving on to consider controversies around the offshoring of film production to lower-cost destinations. Specific examples of production relays between Asia and Australia are analysed in the context of models of cultural labour offered by Toby Miller et al. and Ben Goldsmith. The author proposes a definition of Asian Australian cinema that seeks to attend to cross-border collaboration at a variety of levels and to render visible 'below-the-line' Asian Australian interfaces that do not necessarily register on screen.
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Item'Race portraits' and vernacular possibilities: heritage and culture(Cambridge University Press, 2001)'Heritage' is a term both broad and slippery. Beyond the literal meaning of property passed between generations, its contemporary evocations include 'inherited customs, beliefs and institutions held in common by a nation or community . . . [and] natural and "built" landscapes, buildings and environments held in trust for future generations' (Davison et. al. 1998, p. 308). Even this elemental definition strongly associates cultural institutions and heritage. Most cultural institutions articulate inherited customs and beliefs through a sense of heritage which, in turn, certifies their authenticity and legitimacy. Parliamentary conventions, halls of fame and honour boards, much judicial ritual, the use of uniforms, anniversary commemorations of all sorts and university degree conferring ceremonies are strong examples of such practices. At the same time the more material and codified notion of heritage as things held in trust explicitly organises the work of many cultural institutions.
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ItemChained to their signs: remembering breastplates(Pluto Press, 2001)At first glance, breastplates might seem to be just another device in the technology of colonial capture in Australia. Take the photograph of Bilin Bilin wearing a plate inscribed 'Jackey Jackey - King of the Logan and Pimpama'. The plate, the chain and the conventions of photography produce a Yugambeh elder as a shackled criminal on display - he is both a primitive in tableau and one of 'the usual suspects'. The image seems to both document captivity and evoke those 'frontier photographs' of Aboriginal prisoners in the desert bound together with heavy chains attached to manacles around their necks. This initial impression is right in that it recognizes some of the ways in which colonial captivity is not only about actual imprisonment but equally about how captivity is understood, represented, interpreted and made historical. Still, in this chapter I want to persuade you that breastplates and photographs of breastplates performed other roles: as cross-cultural objects and signs.
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ItemImperial legacy: the politics of display in Australia( 2004)Somewhere among the countless rows of objects currently on display in the British Museum’s Enlightenment exhibition there rests a flaking bark shield. This battered, utilitarian object stands somewhat apart from the splendidly exotic artefacts that surround it. Yet beneath its unprepossessing appearance there lies an extraordinary provenance. It was taken in 1770 from the Eastern Australian seaboard by Captain Cook’s landing party during its initial encounter with the first inhabitants of the land incorporating what is now known as Sydney. The shield has been placed in a display of non-Western artefacts acquired during the period of Enlightenment discovery “through gift, trade or purchase”. In truth, however, none of these words could be used to describe its acquisition. It was hardly given, since it came into the party’s possession as a result of their shooting at a group of Eora people who left the cover of trees, apparently shouting at them to leave. Neither was it traded, unless one views a bullet fired in anger as a fair offer of exchange. Nor could it be called a purchase, unless one counts as a purchase price the blood shed by its original owner as he was hit trying to flee the invaders.
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ItemIntercultural performance in the context of cultural pluralism(Circus Oz and Monash University, Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies, 2001)In this paper I will provisionally argue for the possibility of localised intercultural relationships in the live performing arts as an effective and pluralist site of resistance to totalising forces associated with globalisation. There will be four themes to my argument and I apologise in advance that I will only briefly touch on each of them. They are: i.Defining globalisation ii.Cultural pluralism iii.Australia and Japan (the two sites of performance culture that I have expertise in and have been asked to address) iv.Live performing arts: the Gekidan Kaitaisha-NYID project.
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ItemWhite-out: theatre as an agent of border patrol( 2003)In Australia in 2001, there was a marked escalation of debates about nation, national identity and national borders in tandem with a right-wing turn in national politics. Within the cultural context of debate about national identity, popular theatre became an unwitting ally of neo-conservative forces. Within popular theatre culture, the neo-conservative trend is naturalized as the view of the Anglo-Celtic-European mainstream or core culture that also embraces and depoliticizes feminist debates about home and family. Elizabeth Coleman’s 2001 play This Way Up assists in the production of an inward-looking turn in the national imaginary and a renewed emphasis on home and family. The performance dramatizes aspects of what we are to understand as ordinary Australian life which might be interpreted as that which Prime Minister John Howard defends in the name of the National Interest. The cultural imaginary that shapes the production of the popular play is that of the conservative white national imaginary.
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ItemComing home to the land( 2006)A version of this essay appeared as Leslie, D. (2006). Coming home to the land. Eureka Street, March-April, 30-31.This essay is a tribute to artist Lin Onus. It explores and assesses his artistic legacy as a journey into a healing land; a place of refuge and Aboriginal tradition which encourages empathy. Onus’s painting is contemplated for the inspiration it presents, not only in regard to increased understanding of Aboriginal and cross-cultural Australian histories, but to the medium of painting as a way of bridging the cultural gap and transcending the limitations of history.
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ItemThe Irish conceit: Ireland and the new Australian nationalism(Crossing Press, 2000)Michael’s narrative provides an example of the deployment of Ireland in the new narratives of nation generated by Australia’s new nationalist movements, especially as characterised in the One Nation Party of Pauline Hanson. In the various versions of this narrative I have recorded, we find similar structural elements. Firstly, a claim is made on Irish ancestry. Secondly, a story is told of a lost farm and the attempt to retrieve this farm through a land claim made on the Irish government. Thirdly, the narrative arrives at its denouement by condensing the Aboriginal history of dispossession and subsequent attempts to reclaim land within the greater history of Irish suffering, dispossession and the tragic impossibility of any form of redress for the Australian victims of the Irish diaspora. The mythologised history of Ireland, heavy with emotive and dramatic character, but deprived of any real historical actuality, is drawn into analogy with a compressed narrative of Aboriginal dispossession, colonisation and genocide drained of both historical and emotional content and registering only as a sub-plot, an ancillary tale of lesser suffering. The Irish narrative subsumes that of the ‘lesser’ story of Aboriginal dispossession, reforging a new narrative in which Irish dispossession assumes many of the features of Aboriginal dispossession. The Irish subjects of this narrative suffer the aggression of a British colonisation coloured by landmark features of Aboriginal dispossession. Real historical elements such as the taking of Aboriginal children from their families by the white Australian state, for example, enter the story as the experience of Irish Australians. Irish children, not Aboriginal children, are stolen and institutionalised by the British ‘so that they can lose their Irish accent’. The two narratives are condensed and reframed in order to resituate the Irish Australian as the victim of colonisation. In this process, a series of inversions occur. In the Irish-Australian narrative suffering is brought into the present. Massacres happen in living memory, and are witnessed by and perpetrated on the narrator’s immediate family. In the Aboriginal narrative a disembodied suffering occurs at the limit of Australian history, outside human memory and human experience. In the Irish-Australian narrative suffering is perpetrated on the innocent victims of British aggression; in the Aboriginal narrative such acts are the result of the indigence, violence and barbarity of the Aborigines. Michael’s narrative is actually very unusual in that he names both his father and his father’s mates as responsible for the taking of children, but this act floats out of real time in its ‘all the time’ location.
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ItemKilling competition: restricting access to political communication in Australia( 2003)Access to communication channels is a key factor influencing election outcomes. Policy changes and other factors have contributed toward the increasing use of expensive forms of mass-communication. What are the implications for the competitive landscape of Australian politics?
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ItemArt War ‘44: documentary theatre from an Australian culture war( 2005)On page four of the Sydney Morning Herald, 24th October 1944, two seemingly unrelated news items were reported. The first, CHALLENGED ART PRIZE – Court Hearing Begins, reported the commencement on the previous day of the legal challenge to William Dobell’s victory the year before in the Archibald competition for portrait painting. In what is now a well-known case, Dobell had entered a ‘portrait’ of fellow portrait painter and friend, Joshua Smith. Lower down the page, and to the left, was another important headline: LIBERAL PARTY APPROVED. Some days earlier, the same paper had reported that, if all relevant parties agreed, the title United Australia Party would disappear and all non-Labour opposition parties (except for the Country Party) would unite under a new name, The Australian Liberal Party. Here, on the same page, was notice of two events that proved to be more than incidentally linked, and which served as the basis of a theatrical production called Art War ’44, performed in the Open Stage, University of Melbourne in October 1999. I devised, directed, and co-created the work with third and fourth year undergraduate students in Theatre Studies from the School of Creative Arts, University of Melbourne, who also performed the piece. This work preceded by several years a similar theatrical treatment of the Dobell trial, entitled Art on Trial, written by Robert Smith and performed early in 2002. There is an intriguing confluence of events, themes, forces and people that swirl around – before, during and after - the Dobell trial, and others that resonated in a particular way in Art War '44. The human agents in this confluence (as I interpreted and 'reconstructed' it) include Sir Robert Menzies, Sir Garfield Barwick, Sir John Kerr, and John Howard, as well as William Dobell and Joshua Smith. Other significant facets include the birth of the Australian Liberal Party and of the Australian Academy of Art, and the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ art movements in Australia. Australia’s Constitutional Monarchy, the sacking of the Whitlam Labour Government in 1975, and the Republic Referendum in 1999 (one week after the performance season of the show) all make an appearance. Of course, not all of these figures and events were involved directly. But there are a number of fascinating connections between them that provided excellent material for a work of ‘documentary theatre’ (especially one created and performed in the spirit and exaggerated style of Dobell’s painting of Joshua Smith).In this paper, I briefly examine some of the trial’s more ‘theatrical’ elements (a detailed account of the trial can be found, for example, in Adams, 1983: 92-224 and Gleeson, 1964: 115-144) and aspects of its wider social, political and cultural contexts. I will also call to witness those later events involving both the people and the themes of the trial mentioned above, and detail how all these factors were structured into our work of ‘documentary theatre.’ This paper, then, is an analysis of aspects of the ‘dramaturgy’ of a work of documentary theatre. The term ‘dramaturgy’ is slippery, but here is taken to mean ‘the relation between the means of expression (the narrative material, stage space and time, formal organisation) and the vision of the world to be expressed’ (Helbo, 1991: 2). Dramaturgy, by combining ideological and aesthetic structures, involves active choices about what is included in the work, when, in what way, and the interpretive frameworks that are set up by these choices for a particular set of audiences.