Laomedia

I recommend Born under the Paperbark Tree 1996 and Grief Gaiety, and Aborigines 1961 for an accurate picture of NT early last century from multiple racial perspectives.
Bill Harney jnr is a phenomenal man born into unbelievable circumstances like many others at the time. His performance of a mosquito at the ‘Barks, Birds and Billabongs’ symposium was the most remarkable and intense indigenous performance I’ve ever seen.
I hope to see him again in April on his Jankangyina tour of Wardaman country and the Lightening Brothers Rock Art.

In reading ‘In Defense of Animals’ edited by Peter Singer, a collection of essays by various authors and activists, it becomes overwhelming as to the extent of the war human animals continue to wage against the innocent. Our twisted laws that view animals as property without rights and their subsequent torture and massacre through factory farming, scientific testing, and mass killings. Although the examples supplied in the text were all unbelievably horrific, and extinction rates due solely to humans alarming, the Monkeys discovered in 1981 who were kept in small uncleaned putrid metal boxes without vet care for scientific experiments in a basement provided the worst image in my mind. Their limbs had been deliberately been disabled through surgical interference to record how they managed, they were strapped to chairs and given electric shocks or burnt with lighters to record their reaction and in another denied food to record their levels of frustration. The monkeys were neurotic and were resorting to self mutilation, biting or tearing their fingers off, the worst being a monkey that had torn open its own chest cavity as a result of the torture and even in that state was still subjected to further experiments. Human society is very sick and has been for a very long time.

Anyone interested in animal rights should explore Animal Liberation and organisations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, formed by Alex Pacheco and others who notified the world about the monkeys mentioned above, and particular to Australia Voiceless.

In the preparation of ethics information and consent forms to formally ask permission from Kunwinjku speakers living in Gunbalanya or nearby outstations to teach me language and culture, I attempted translation into Kunwinjku.
My only reference in Canberra was the 1998 edition on Kunwinjku Kunwok produced by Steven and Narelle Etherington in consultation with members of the Gunbalanya community. The Kunwinjku Language Centre’s current Kunwinjku Language Project is managed by Donna Nadjamerrek, Ngalnarridj skin (kunkurlah) and a Ngalmok woman from well known outstation Kabulwarnamyo established by her father Wamud, respected painter (bim) of bark (dolobbo) and rock (kunwardde) using traditional ochres (delek). I met Donna formally in Gunbalanya at the Rock Art Field School and we spoke informally at the Barks Birds and Billabongs conference at the Australian Museum. I hope she will agree to teach me Kunwinjku kunwok, as I am determined to learn this wonderful ancient language of Australia.

Reflections on the rhizome “the line of ‘nomad’ thought”, the abolishing of hierarchical structures in the process of writing (or making). In psychoanalytical terms, Massumi explains, “The central perspective is…to promote human relations that do not automatically fall into roles or stereotypes but open into fundamental relations of a metaphysical kind that bring out the most radical and basic alienations of madness or neurosis.” A dissipation of constructed dualism in the cauldron of multiplicity. For the conscious embodiment of becoming we must be the sorcerer, the magician who, for Crowley, “brings all set ideas and judgments into question, which often makes him appear in a questionable light himself. As a creative creature, he knows no conscience.” Paths open are taken without judgment and what was hidden is revealed. Hierarchical laws imposing order are broken when convenient anyway, and are therefore grounded in hypocrisy. A clearer analysis of this feature of human law is proposed by Bataille, “When a negative emotion has the upper hand we must obey the taboo. When a positive emotion is in the ascendent we violate it.” Therefore the taboo is irrelevant when we follow our instinct. Becoming being our true state of instinctual negotiation, to always freely form alliances where borders to the known are sensed without the restriction of an external law. “A Thousand Plateaus is an effort to construct a smooth space of thought…an open system.” The human who is becoming unfolds the magic of life, and just like fellow animals negotiating nature, is free. Creative practice is, in essence, the space of becoming allowed to a select few. The continual work to reach a plateau which, as Massumi explains, is “when circumstances combine to bring an activity to a pitch of intensity that is not automatically dissipated in a climax…A Thousand Plateaus tries to combine conceptual bricks in such a way as to construct this kind of intensive state in thought…The way the combination is made is an example of what Deleuze and Guattari call consistency…a dynamic holding together or mode of composition.” The relevance of this text to painting is invited, “lift a dynamism out of the book entirely, and incarnate it in a foreign medium, whether it be painting or politics…pry open the vacant spaces that would enable you to build your life and those of the people around you into a plateau of intensity.” That’s my kind of bible.

Like a turtle paddling in the shallows I observed the sharks manoeuvre in the depths of an ocean made of language and questioned wether I really wanted to enter those depths and why? On the day I was there, speakers from the arts spoke in an intimate theatre. I wondered if there was any tension between the artists and animal activists due to the fine line between animal exploitation that some artists tread. The specialised audience created an expectation for dense theoretical papers, which I had not prepared for, my presentation being for a general audience. Video, photography and installation/performance were the preferred mediums to express animal/human relations by the artists, I was the only painter.

Indigenous culture was not mentioned at all in this session by artists. The animals involved were urban pets and farmed animals. My perspective of becoming animal is unable to disassociate from indigenous culture because it informs my own relationship to animals which are indigenous or feral.

The artists who presented were:

• Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir
• Jessica Ullrich
• Yvette Watt
• Kathryn High
• Julia Schlosser
• Lisa Jevbratt
• Ionat Zurr

All women.

Steve Baker and Yvette Watt discussed photographs by a woman called Mary Britton Clouse.

A recent exhibition in relation to the theme involving some of the artists Becoming Animal/Becoming Human
The work of Sam Easterson interested me the most due to the natural habitat context the animals were in when making the work.

I had the privilege of meeting associate professor Linda Williams and artist Maria Fernanda Cardoso at the conference.

I have been given the opportunity to present at the minding animals conference in Newcastle on the 18th July. The conference runs from the 13th-18th and is filled with local and international speakers from many disciplines discussing animal/human relations.
Below is my abstract.

Becoming Animal: Investigating painting materials and processes that communicate current animal/human relations in Australia

Deleuze and Guattari’s definitive philosophical essay 1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible 1987 examines symbioses between animals and human animals in popular mythologies. Their challenge to Western cultural constructions that view animal as other and becoming animal as a process of contagion is discussed in relation to my current practice-led research into the status of animals in Australian visual culture. My reflections on the human animal and becoming in Australian indigenous cultural traditions focuses on the study of animals in rock art and recent fieldwork in Gunbalanya, Arnhem Land. Comparisons between representations of animals in natural history illustration and indigenous painting in Australia seeks to discover the extent to which materials and creative process used in the production of imagery defines the relationship between the artist and their subject.

What better preparation for the study of Rock Art than through first hand experience.

Its official, I am going on this field trip in Gunbalanya Arnhem Land from 20th June to the 4th of July. We are spending the last 3 days on the coast at Waminari opposite Goulburn Island.

Deleuze and Guattari capture my imagination in A Thousand Plateaus pages 32-3,
“Let us return to the story of multiplicity…It was created precisely in order to escape the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one, to escape dialectics, to succeed in conceiving the multiple in the pure state, to cease treating it as a numerical fragment of a lost Unity or Totality…continuous multiplicities…multiplicities of distance, which are closer to the intensive…rhizomatic multiplicities…micromultiplicites…libidinal, unconscious, molecular, intensive multiplicites composed of particles that do not divide without changing in nature, and distances which do not vary without entering another multiplicity and that constantly construct and dismantle themselves in the course of their communications, as they cross over into each other…their quantities are intensities, differences in intensity.”

I was reminded of Deleuze and Guattari's description of Freud and Jung while watching the birds

The induction presentations as part of Research Fest today were very informative. Alot of advice on supervision, research management, conferences, publishing and networking. We were told to write thoughts down each morning before reading (or practical efforts) to become habitual about it as writing is the most difficult part. This writing could be in the form of small papers or exploratory essays. In addition keep an interactive plan from the beginning that evolves into a chapter outline. Read critically and always write down responses (follow practical work with evaluations too).

After visiting museum websites,

I became even more inspired to travel to NT and find an ochre and rock art learning adventure. Learning material processes from artists working with ochre and bark, or weaving at Oenpelli and Yirrkala art centres interests me.