What a terrific 10th SquatFest. How amazing to actually reach a full decade!

As we announced at the end of the night, this will be the last SquatFest that we (the SquatSpace collective) will organise ourselves.

So, it’s over to you, folks! If you love it, DIY! (And let us know so we can come along and cheer and heckle from the stalls, and help clean up the beer bottles after)…

[photo by Jessie]

Here are some photos from the night, from Bilateral, Kegroll, Mikofanclub, and Passmeawine. We’ll put up more links as we find them.

…and here are a few comments from the punters we got via email:

- - -
Thanks for a really special night last night.
I’ve been getting down on how dorky Sydney is but it was a good reminder that the art squad dream is still floatin’ out there.
- - -

- - -
thanks to the whole team for putting on such an incredible event.
The venue, the hosts, the comfy-ness and popcorn, all made it one of the most memorable cinema experiences ever.
The first time I went to Squatfest was only last year, so it was sad, but understandable that you want to pass on the reigns.
If you decide to keep going next year, I would like to volunteer my time to help out. I’m good at AV, graphic design, cleaning, etc…
Thank you once again for an uplifting night out.
- - -

- - -
too bad if you didnt make it cause you missed ‘the ride of your life’.
- - -

- - -
Sorry I didn’t make it last night. I was busy chowin’ down on some CC!
- - -

(This last comment was from none other than Tropfest guru John Polson Himself (via facebook!) … Of course by now seasoned SquatFest goers would know that CC=”corporate cock”)

An emerging theme in the films this year was the value of the old: old technologies, old performance-art documentation videos, even old memories of queer cultural manifestations. History seeping back into SquatFest. Which is appropriate, given that it’s a decade since we started these shenanigans.

Not to mention the history embedded in the incredible venue itself, the rooftop of an abandoned Motel, with million-dollar city skyline views!

We are incredibly grateful to our comrade Brad, who lent us his battery powered system. This meant we could operate ‘off the grid’, as the Motel’s power had rather inconveniently been disconnected before our arrival…

[The view from the rooftop of the venue for the 10th SquatFest]

Interestingly, we had fewer films submitted this year - in fact, just the right amount for a scorcher of a screening. In previous years, too many films have been brought along, so that some folks had to miss out and ended up a bit grouchy.

We should point out, for the record, that SquatFest is entirely uncurated. DVDs, VHS tapes or USB drives (and in previous years, super 8 reels) are handed over just half an hour before the screening. We have no idea what we are going to watch, nor in what order - the filmmakers themselves take responsibility for all that. And we must say, the quality this time was very high! During the night filmmakers from the audience are invited to shout out a few words about their work, making for a very intimate and sometimes rowdy rooftop celebration of experimental and activist film culture.

[winner Dean making his acceptance speech…]

Our winner, Dean Sewell, crafted a beautiful documentary poem about an old musician who lives in squatted shacks around the river systems of Sydney. Constructed from still photographs overlaid with music by the old fellow himself, this piece was unanimously judged “tremendous” and entirely appropriate for SquatFest, by our 300-strong, highly intelligent audience.

Dean walked off with the gorgeous prize, a plate featuring popcorn and a choc-top holding aloft a golden trophy, made specially by guest artist Matthew Hopkins.

[The SquatFest 2010 trophy, a hand-painted plate by Hopi…]

In second place was Tom Jackson (a previous SquatFest winner) with his very funny dramatisation of a film-crew working with cardboard cameras. (Tom’s film also had cameos from Sally and Nicky, his very popular sister-superstars - always a sure way to please the crowd).

Third place might have gone to a great VHS tape brought by Tobin Saunders documenting the 1996 Drag Races on Bondi Beach. But I could be mixed up there, my memory gets a bit cloudy… Or no, maybe that’s wrong - perhaps third prize went to the Post-Arrivalists with their Holden Porno film starring a mustachioed and very buff Lee Wilson…

[the crowd enjoying themselves on the rooftop…]

The night was peppered with the often moving, completely rantastic and grandiosely punchy improvised speeches of Jay Katz, our invited un-celebrity guest. Jay’s spirited denouncements of Tropfest (not to mention Facebook and any other technologies of subtle social control which happened to step in front of his tongue) was the perfect counterpoint to our own rather shambolic (but loveable) method of introducing each film.

We’ll post up some links to this year’s films as we upload them for your viewing pleasure!

Many thanks to Brad, Chris, Tim, Jackie, Alex, Adrian, Andy, Swerve, Benji, Falcon the barman, Nick, and everyone else who helped set up, take down, loaned us equipment and made the night great.

That’s all folks! SquatFest is dead… LONG LIVE SQUATFEST!

Squatfest is on again in Twenty Ten!

It’s our tenth year, can you believe it?

WHERE and WHEN?

Tune in here on the day for the exciting secret location of the tenth annual SquatFest!!

WHY?

BECAUSE AS YOU ALL KNOW, TROPFEST SUX CORPORATE COCK. And besides, the films at Tropfest are bad and you have to sit through countless offensive ads and embarrassing b-grade celebs, desperately trying to come up with something good to say about rubbish attempts by misguided young filmmakers eager to claw their way to the bottom rung of the Hollywood sweatshop. Fah-geddaboudit! You know you want to, so tell your friends:
“Sorry guys, this year it’s SquatFest for me!”

(and for the record: we happily suck cock, just not corporate cock!)

Get Involved!

Please get in touch with us if you’d like to be involved in putting on the nite: finding a venue, technical setups, collecting films, publicity etc. Email info@squatspace.com !

Entries are now invited for SquatFest 2010:
simply send ‘em in by post:

SQUATSPACE
PO BOX 391 Newtown NSW 2042

or get in touch with us to arrange a rendezvous/pickup: info@squatspace.com
or, simplest of all, just bring ‘em along on the night!

…but get in touch with us via email if you’re a really keen-bean, as we always have too many films to show…

Formats we show:
VHS, miniDV, DVD, super8 (by pre-arrangement), 16mm (by pre-arrangement), expanded cinema (ditto), sound and vision spectacle, video and performance, etc.
If it’s not on this list, get in touch to negotiate! (Please contact us in advance if you wish to show super 8 or 16mm works).

About Squatfest:

SquatFest happens every year at the same date and time as TropFest. While the hopeful entrants for TropFest are fretting about whether they’ll get the chance to move up a rung in the Hollywood Sweatshop, artists and activists from ’round Australia are living it up, projecting films and videos in an inspiring squatted venue.

SquatFest began at the Broadway Squats in 2001, and has since made appearances at the Midnight Star Social Centre, the Sydney Park Brickworks, the Sydney Dental Hospital, under the grandstand at Esrkineville, and many other amazing venues! Our film programmes have toured to Newcastle, Melbourne, Perth, and Indonesia.

Check out a site by some friends of ours, dedicated to the history of SquatFest here (that site uses Macromedia Flash, let us know if you have troubles viewing it!)

Announcing another, long awaited, SquatSpace Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty, on 31 May 2009!

As part of There Goes the Neighbourhood, an exhibition at The Performance Space curated by Zanny Begg and our own Keg de Souza, SquatSpace is offering another Tour of Beauty.

The details are as follows:

Date: Sun 31 from 1pm-5pm. Arrive by 1pm sharp, please!
Where: Meet at entrance to Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh [see it on google maps]
Bookings: places are strictly limited, so book in advance by emailing info@squatspace.com

…for more information about the Tour, including links to documentation photos and videos, have a look at our Redfern page.

…for more information on There Goes The Neighbourhood, have a look here.

PLUS!…a new book is now available, also entitled There Goes the Neighbourhood, published in conjunction with the exhibition. The book contains an essay reflecting on the Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty by Lucas Ihlein. You can download the book in pdf form here.

[SquatFest 2009. Image thanks to John Douglas.]

Thanks to all who made SquatFest 2009 such a tremendous success.

Extra special thanks to our hosts, Jack and friends at “The Chemical Spill” for making our night such an event. Those lucky punters who came early were treated to the “People’s Kitchen” dumpster feast. You really outdid yourselves, guys. The Tibetan Prime Minister would be proud of your non-violent ways with agriculture and food-production!

It was a rather large year. Our 9th, can you believe it!?

The warehouse was packed to the white-ant infested rafters. We had a few extra random punters coming along, on account of the article which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday the 21st of February. (Here’s the online version). Hilariously, the Herald even published our “secret location text message number”, so people could access SquatFest directly from their Saturday NewsRag. This was interesting, as it expands our network beyond the usual “underground” suspects. It turns out there are “normal” people who hate Tropfest too (not just us miscreants, troglodites and misanthropes)! We even met some of them on the night, and they were nice!

Working on the Herald interview itself was quite enlightening. The end result was a heavily chopped down (they took out all the juicy bits!) version of an interview we did with Herald journo Sacha Molitorisz. But Sacha, bless his cotton socks, took the full draft of the interview and discussed it with John Polson himself, who is like, the pope of Tropfest. Polson had this to say about us:

Good luck to them. If I hadn’t started Tropfest, I might have started something along the same lines. Sure, they can claim Tropfest is corporate, but unless they’ve got a cheque for 1.5million bucks and can help us put up the screens, then we have to have some support from big organisations.

Ah, you’ve gotta love handing sufficient quantities of rope to these people. Do we even need to comment on the circular logic of Polson’s philosophy? (I tell you what we’d do if we had 1.5 million bucks, John. We’d buy ourselves a freakin’ building. I wonder how much TF’s public liability insurance cost, hmm?)

Aaanyway, enough about those on the other side of the barbed wire fence.

OUR night was great. Winners were Leigh and Miss Helen, with their little animation “Walking Through the Stinky City”. It seemed to have that delicate balance between humanism and estrangement that we all love in our cutting edge urban art. Good on you guys. Miss Helen and Leigh walked away with the 2009 trophy (actually a pennant) made by our guest artist Alice. It was gorgeous, hand sewn, and it doubles as a pillow case.

And here, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, is the film itself:

Second prize went to Teshan for his documentary “SHAC is the answer”. SHAC is the Student Housing Action Collective from Melbourne who were recently involved with a gutsy campaign squatting Melbourne Uni buildings in protest at the lack of affordable housing there.

Third prize was won by Princesses Amy and Caroline, with “The Day the Banks Froze”. Which they shot in Iceland. Its big budget special effects were no doubt what blew the audience away.

But SquatFest is not just about winning. It’s about cultural participation, right?

All the films are brought along on the night. We don’t vet them for quality beforehand, some of them delight and astound, some are godawful, some are “diamonds in the rough”. There’s a lot of rough. But we laff our heads off every year and drink the bar dry and run out of popcorn and stumble home happy and filthy. With every teenager at the helm of sophisticated pirated video editing software carving up chunks of videotaped experience and spitting them out as crafted visual storytelling, there are no limits to your participation! SquatFest is the new folk-art, folks!!

What some folks perceived as a lack of “quality” drew a little criticism in the post-SquatFest washup (thanks everyone for your feedback emails, both praising and criticising).

Let’s be clear: our philosophy is to create an environment which is uncurated, since there enough avenues in life where dodgy and arbitrary criteria for aesthetic judgement are used as a way of sorting people into levels of quality. To be sure, we’re not against quality, we just provide one night of the year (one single night!!) where the audience takes responsibility for their own work. If you reckon the quality is a bit low, bring something along next year to raise the tone, eh!

At any rate, the star of the night is always the squat itself, and this year was a doozy. We look forward to seeing some photos that all you folks took on the night, send em in.

John (who sent the great shot which leads this blog post) also took the enterprisingly self-referential initiative to videotape the context in which his own film was being screened at SquatFest. Holy Solipsistic Moment Batman!!

Over time, Engage Media will be posting up some of the films from SquatFest to their website. (Have a rummage around, they’ve got past SF films there too). If you’re searching for SquatFest on the net, steer clear of this sort of thing. But here’s one little video that was shown on the night, a “doco” (if that’s not too grandiose a term) about another fabulous DIY cultural/sporting event in Sydney: Fools Afloat.

We thank Engage muchly for the use of their cool sms service. Our big thanks also to Chris T, and Andy, and Andy, and Adrian, and Dodo and Grampa and Fred and Elly and Ally and everyone else who made it great.

Oh, and here is some NEWS! which is not-very cleverly held to the bottom of the blog entry. Ah well, anyway. Next year, we are looking to initiate a “next-generation handover”. If you want to get involved in running SquatFest, please get in touch with us. We want to pass on the torch, slip back into the crowd and cheer and heckle and then slap you on the back for a job well done!

’til 2010, Over and Out.
-the (old) SquatFest Crew.

Here below is the full text for an interview squatspace’s media officer Simon Daring with the Sydney Morning Herald. You can see how much was chopped by zealous editors in the clipping above. The interview was conducted by Sacha Molitorisz, who we think is a top bloke.

Sacha: Simply, why?

SquatSpace: the inaugural squatfest took place at the broadway squats in 2001. In the years leading up to it, some of us had attended tropfest and been flabbergasted at the gulf between the amount of hype thrown at the event and the quality of the films shown. we felt kinda sad that all these budding filmmakers were putting energy and high production values into terrible story-films with no soul - you know, “white city kids have some pissweak overdramatised ethical dilemma which gets “solved” at the end with a humorous twist.” Yech. And the ADS, christ almighty, you really knew you were at a sponsored event, it broke our little anticorporate hearts.

And we discovered that there is actually a growing movement of folks who dislike tropfest.
As we overheard recently, “the growing wave of anti-Tropfest sentiment is almost as popular as Tropfest itself!”

So we simply decided to use the occasion of tropfest, and the massive amounts of energy and publicity it generates, to have our own film night which encourages moving image culture of a completely different sort.

People bring their films on the night, filmmakers and their communities take responsibility for their own work, rather than offering them up to some unqualified “judges” who are famous for being famous, using dodgy criteria to grant the status of “quality”.

We show artists films, story films, animations, abstract stuff, performance films, activist documentaries, genre no boundary.

Sacha: Does sydney in particular need squatfest?

SquatSpace: shit yeah. fox studios!? Young film-makers are training themselves up to be shoe-horned into this industry, they forget that making films can be so much more than the production of a digital a calling card enabling you to knock on the door of someone powerful in the hope of moving up a rung towards hollywood.

This phenomenon has led to an atrophy in independent and experimental film culture in sydney.

You don’t even want to get us started on the property market in sydney, and for that reason, why squatfest captures the imagination of so many people. it’s the venue that is the real star of the show, each year.

Sacha: What can you tell me about this year’s venue [this year’s is the ninth, yeah]? will there be secret maps, sneaking down dark tunnels or climbing through windows? what’s been the hairiest venue thus far?

SquatSpace: Yes our 9th year! Yes to secret maps and exciting secret venues! Yes to discovering hidden pockets of abandoned real estate in sydney!
But no, we can’t tell you any more than that however, you’ll have to find out on the night!!

Sacha: how do people find out where to go? by texting ’squat’ to a mobile #?

SquatSpace: yes, text “squatfest” to 0428 477 128 from noon on the day.

Sacha: Is it tough to organise?

SquatSpace: not as tough as getting a permit to organise public event from the sydney harbour foreshore authority!

Sacha: Have you had any run-ins with the law?

SquatSpace: squatfest has been amazingly run-in free to date. Fingers crossed we fly under the radar. and any way, we’re doing nothing wrong, just using wasted property that should not be left to rot by the vagaries of the property market. It’s a celebration of culture at it’s grass-roots-finest,. It’s wonderful people showing films to excellent people. Why would The Law want to interfere with that?

Sacha: how many entries do you get? how many visitors?

SquatSpace: We get enough entries to show a full evening of films, and many left-over which we run out of time to show! The amount who show up to watch varies, perhaps a a couple of hundred each year…

Sacha: You’ve toured the films to newcastle, perth, melbourne and indonesia … how did that go?

SquatSpace: Great - that is the excellent “side effect” of squatfest. By now we have a big archive of excellent work dating back 10 years. Every year we get a request from somewhere to come and show these films, and talk about the context within which they were generated and shown.

Sacha: What’s wrong with tropfest? i gotta admit the slogan is catchy: ‘because tropfest sux corporate cock’?

SquatSpace: Well, i think i might have answered this above. Tropfest, so the legend goes, started as a small grassroots festival (like squatfest). but by the strange logic that seems to attend to these things, its very success has led to a disconnection from that grassroots history. It is now corporatised beyond recognition, which means the ballooning scale of the event leads to the impoverishment of the film making and watching experience.

SQUATFEST ?? YES WE CAN !!
In response to all those SquatFest fans who have emailed us enquiring about Squatfest, the answer we are happy to say, is YES! SquatFest is on in 2009.

It’s our 9th consecutive SquatFest.

When?
Sun 22 Feb from 7.30pm

Where?
The exciting secret venue for SquatFest 2009 will be revealed at noon on the day —

Find out the location by SMS!
Simply TXT “SQUATFEST” to 0428 477 128 from noon on the day for the location

What?
YOUR FILMS, screened in glorious DVD, VHS, MiniDV, hard drive, ipod, mobile phone, digital camera, super8 or 16mm (contact us in advance if you want to screen celluloid please!) We also encourage performance and expanded cinema…

Why?
BECAUSE AS YOU ALL KNOW:
“TROPFEST SUX CORPORATE COCK!”

And besides, the films at Tropfest are bad and you have to sit through countless offensive ads and embarrassing b-grade celebs, desperately trying to come up with something good to say about rubbish attempts by misguided young filmmakers eager to claw their way to the bottom rung of the Hollywood sweatshop. Fah-geddaboudit! You know you want to, so tell your friends: “Sorry guys, this year it’s SquatFest for me!”

On “Australia Day” 26 January 2009, an exhibition called “Terra Nullius” will launch in Weimar, Germany. It’s a show of Aussie artists curated by Frank Motz and Deborah Kelly.

Squatspace is working towards a piece for the show that will encompass contributions from the German students who came on our most recent Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty in August 2008.

Here’s a roundup of what the show is all about:

The double exhibition with the name “TERRA NULLIUS - Contemporary Art from Australia” will be seen at ACC in Weimar (Germany) from January 26 (Australia Day) til March 22, 2009 and from May 1 til July 26, 2009, at Halle 14 in Leipzig (Germany) - co-curated by the Australian artist Deborah Kelly. The latter space is located at the Leipzig Cotton Spinning Mill, the new epicentre of contemporary art in East Germany (with 13 galleries and our non-for-profit Halle 14).

Approximately 45 works of art (installations, photographs, mixed media works, paintings, moving images, and other forms of presentation) from approximately 20 artists and artists groups will be shown on an exhibition area of about 300 square metres
(Weimar) and 1,500 square metres (Leipzig).

The artist include
Tony Albert, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Jon Campbell, Destiny Deacon, Merran Sierakowski, Squatspace, Richard Bell, Brook Andrew, boatpeople.org, George Gittoes, Dianne Jones (see flyer above for complete list)

The exhibition might become a process-based project, developing further from station one to station two of the exhibition, from Weimar to Leipzig, or might even change a bit on each of the specific locations. Here are some more information about the show:

TERRA NULLIUS
Exhibition rationale

The 17th century British Crown considered Australia to be an empty, uncultivated land which could be claimed without impediment.

Indigenous peoples were denied rights to their land, using “terra nullius,” a legal principal only finally overturned in 1992. The ensuing conflicts between settler and indigenous peoples remain unresolved to this day.

When former diplomat Kevin Rudd defeated long-time conservative prime minister John Howard, an era came to an end – and with the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, and the Australian government’s formal apology to the “stolen generation” a period of change began. Perhaps, even hope. Nevertheless, terms like the “stolen generations,” “the intervention,” and “mutual obligation” persist as political realities.

Art is a civilising force that negates physical and psychological boundaries, undercuts the idyllic construction of the multicultural nation, calls into question political complexities and incongruities in Australian society, interrogates social exclusion, representation of Aboriginal people and interests, historical and current immigration and refugee politics.

The exhibition “TERRA NULLIUS,” with diverse contributions from contemporary Australian artists across media, is co-curated by Galerie ACC founder Frank Motz with artist Deborah Kelly from Sydney. It opens on
the 221st anniversary of the European invasion of Australia, Australia Day: 26 January 2009.

On August 11 2009, we ran a custom Tour of Beauty for a group of geography students from Germany.

Soon we will upload some photos from the day.

If any of the students (or their professors) who came along would like to contribute a story about their experiences, please feel free to write a comment below, or email us - info[at]squatspace.com - we’d love to see your photos too!

Cheers and more soon
Luca from SquatSpace

If you came on the 22 June tour, you might remember Ross Smith, who spoke at the site of some recently demolished public housing buildings. These were located at the corner of Elizabeth Street and Kettle St, Redfern.

Ross sent us through two documents which he thought our tourists might like to peruse.

The first one is a media release issued by the state government of NSW, and titled “NSW Government gives go-ahead for Redfern Redevelopment“. The media release begins:

Minister for Housing, Matt Brown today green lighted the redevelopment of the Elizabeth Street, Redfern public housing site, which aims to revitalise the inner-city neighbourhood and help turn it into a welcoming community for more young families, the elderly and those most in need.

In his email accompanying the document, Ross comments:

This official document [media release] makes claims about the glories of the project.
However, it does not mention:-

• that the existing residents and/or community have been scattered to the four corners of NSW - some had been in the area for four generations going on five.
• that there is no absolute guarantee of right of return for the displaced tenants when the Housing NSW part of the project has been finished.
• that the new tenancies on offer will be fixed term leases with eligibility for offer of a new lease subject to compliance with the criteria applicable at that time.
• that the new leases are for 1,2, 5 or 10 years - the latter in the case of elderly applicants only.
• that the fixed term nature of the new leases prevents the formation of a functioning community - it takes 5 years for a new resident in an area to start to become part of the area’s community.
• that Housing NSW ceased to be a supplier of affordable secure rental housing in April 2005.
• that HNSW is now a supplier of fixed term rental housing to those deemed to be in a ’special needs’ category where health issues are a prime requirement for consideration of granting tenancy - creating ghettoes of absolute need.
• that to have the same number of units of housing on half the landmass means that there is a corresponding reduction in the amount of green space per capita - where do the kids play and where do you put the clotheslines to dry your laundry?
• that this was HNSW ’s way of avoiding paying for outstanding maintenance - swap land for new buildings on half the original land mass.

The sign on the site that I stood in front of had all the glossy selling points, as did the Media Release.

Here is the sign that Ross refers to:

The second document is a set of short notes compiled by Ross detailing the current demographics in the Redfern Waterloo area.

[above, artist Michael Rakowitz speaks at the Block on the Tour of Beauty… more photos from the tour here.]

The most recent Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty happened to coincide with the Sydney Biennale, so we had some artists who are exhibiting in that behemoth exhibition along for the ride. The following report by blogger Willam Sturrock was published on the Biennale’s website. We reprint William’s generous observations below…

As the first week of the Biennale drew to a close, a small group of weary Biennale pilgrims embarked on a journey known as the Tour of Beauty, operated by artist collaborative Squat Space. The tour was not formally organised by the Biennale of Sydney, instead it was an event held in conjunction with the exhibition Concrete Culture*.

Squat Space described themselves as a group of ‘artists and activists engaged with the politics and pleasures of space in the city, a spaceless organisation [who] organise events, co-ordinate projects, and host websites’ ( www.squatspace.com ). They have now organised over fifteen tours around the Redfern / Waterloo areas of Sydney’s inner city and in doing so, have significantly contributed to a growing awareness within the community of the problems and challenges concerning these areas’ locale and inhabitants.

After a short briefing by Lucas Ihlein, a member of Squat Space, the group left the docile and quiet surrounds of Paddington on board a City of Sydney bus. The twenty eight tour participants’ first destination was ‘The Settlement’, a recreation hall situated behind an unsuspecting terrace-house façade on Edward Street, Darlington. Historically a dance hall, frequented by inner city Sydney’s immigrant working class, the space is now a centre for youths in the local area. Lyn Turnbull, The Settlement’s director spoke to the group here about the centre’s provision of meals for and engagement in activities with local youths, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Although the centre could easily be mistaken for any other terrace in the street, the warn nature of its floors and walls, together with its comprehensive array of activity stations spoke of the generosity and dedication to the people of an area, often unmentioned in a cultural discourse of Sydney.

From The Settlement, the tour proceeded to the infamous ‘Block’ on Eveleigh Street, Redfern. After another brief discussion lead Squat Space, Biennale artist, Michael Rakowitz was asked to deliver an ad lib commentary of his installation White Man Got No Dreaming, dubbed the Block Tower. Rakowitz’s site specific ‘social sculptures’ are no stranger to confronting social issues and problems relating to areas of contention and The Block, for a multiplicity of reasons, is one of these. Rakowitz eloquently explained the nature of his work in relation to Vladimir Tatlin’s model for the Monument to the Third International (1919) as an icon of revolutionary ideas and processes. Constructing his installation from discarded materials, originating from derelict, unoccupied and, soon to be destroyed houses owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company, Rakowitz’s installation evaluates the relocation of revolutionary architecture to an unfamiliar location which is potentially unwilling to receive it. Expressing an unique knowledge of The Block’s internal politics, gained during the his residence in Sydney, Rakowitz encouraged the entire group to understand his work and further question his understanding of its place.

Shortly after Rakowitz’s conclusions were discussed, self described Aboriginal activist and freedom fighter, Jenny Munro spoke to the group. A recently appointed Elder within her community and long-term devotee to the community of the Redfern / Waterloo area, Jenny spoke authoritatively about her understanding of ‘problems’ associated with The Block and her perceptions of ‘White Australia’s ’ inability to understand it. She articulated that the failures of understanding, between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are the product of a Euro-centric political model which doesn’t recognise the ‘internal politics of Aboriginal people’, and that the tumultuous situation between Frank Sartor MP’s Redfern / Waterloo Authority, City of Sydney Council, Aboriginal Housing Company and local residents manifest this. Jenny exclaimed that one of her most important vocations in life was generating an understanding of this issue within the minds of future generations of people and many in the tour group returned to the bus digesting much food for thought.

Before returning to Paddington, the group heard from RedWatch who delivered a unique commentary on the future of the site around Carriage Works, as well as residents and groups which constitute the Redfern / Waterloo’s diverse community. Squat Space Tour of Beauty and the array of presentations delivered along its course spoke directly of the revolutionary spirit that exists within Sydney’s community. Coinciding with the Biennale, the topics of discussion contextualises the Biennale’s themes of Revolutions – Forms that Turn and show the poignancy of issue on a local level.

*Concrete Culture
Ivan Dougherty Gallery – UNSW COFA
Selwyn St, Paddington, Sydney, NSW
May 29, 2008 - Jul 5, 2008
Artists:Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan (Philippines/Australia), Richard Goodwin (Australia), Ou Ning (China), SquatSpace (Australia), Ashok Sukumaran (India)
Curated by:Felicity Fenner
Forum: Monday, 23 June 2008, 9.20am-5.45pm Extra/Ordinary Cities: The Cultural Dynamics of Urban Intervention - Convened by the Centre for Contemporary Art & Politics, UNSW and the Biennale of Sydney with Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in connection with a Linkage Project funded by the Australian Research Council [ARC] Bookings: www.bos2008.com/app/biennale/event/8 -
Reception with the artists: Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Monday 23 June 5.45-8pm

Biennale artist Michael Rakowitz, who is mentioned in the above blog report by William, has been in the media a bit recently. Check out this article which mentions his Redfern involvement, and this is a short clip of him speaking…