Among the small quota of free events in Melbourne's seemingly unrenowned Next Wave Festival, were two "Keynote" lectures being held at the NGV. So I went early, expecting crowds, but finding, instead, that the 'crowd' was only sufficient to bespeckle the plush, dim interior of the auditorium. I went expecting formal, moderately intellectually stimulating lectures. What I and the modest crowd recieved were highly personal, intimate introductions to artists that many of us probably knew nothing or little about. In one way or another - some awkward, surprising or funny - we were asked to engage; to leave at the door our audience passivity, and "hold the space" as they say in performance contexts. And it was beautiful. I loved these women; in their straight up vulnerability and normalness, they made me love them.
The first lecture was to be given by Skeena Reece - a Canadian artist of Native American (Tsimshian, Gitksan and Cree) descent - who, according to the program was going to "use black humour to critique the representation of 'Native Americans' in the media and on the world stage and the gross misappropriation of land and resources in Canada." She entered the stage wearing a red corset, wincingly high heels, a wrestling mask, and a cape with the image of a hand grenade on it. With her was a woman in 'ethnic' traditional clothing, also with wrestling mask, and a man in street clothes wearing a plastic horse's head. They danced on the stage to a fairly agro rock and hip-hop soundtrack with images of the riots accompanying the 2010 Olympics being projected behind them. The dancing wasn't particularly performative; It went for a very long time; and on top of that the projections were constantly minimising themselves and revealing the computer screen from which they were running, requiring a tech guy to run up and click a button every four odd minutes. When this trial of concentration finally came to an end, Skeena took off her mask and assumed her place at the lecturn. Surely now, we'd get the lecture we expected. But Skeena looked awkward, she told us that she felt wierd and she didn't know what to say, and suggested, plaintively, that we ask questions. It was clear she had no speech written, amazingly, I thought, given that she'd been asked to come down to Melbourne to give a keynote lecture. My patience was wearing a little thin, wondering when this woman was going to make it worth my while. And then she did; she ingratiated herself into our initially remote audience affections. People asked their flashily worded, PC questions, and Skeena answered vaguely, making the questions sound strangely artificial, making the whole context of the lecture seem plainly bizarre. She was a person, we were people; why all the fuss?
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