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activity, Taste My Sorrow’s tacit exploration of “material elegy” as a
methodology for performing the experience of unspeakable loss, evokes an
empathic yet critical textual horizon that opens up possibilities for art to
contribute to discussions regarding bodily/embodied experiences of “empathic
unsettlement” (LaCapra 2001). Penetrating the barrier which puts space
between self and the “Other” when faced with instances of trauma, Taste My
Sorrow’s literal collapsing of symbolic space into material form acts as an
“encountered sign” (Deleuze 1964). Evoking a pre-discursive, pre-cognitive, prelanguage
affect, the works in Taste My Sorrow provoke a fleeting yet empathic
contingency that signifies a way of being momentarily amidst rather than
standing before the “otherness” of trauma.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Kirsten Hudson is a practicing artist and academic based in Western Australia.
She is currently employed as a lecturer in the School of Design and Art and the
School of Media, Cultural and Creative Arts at Curtin University where she can be
found speaking her mind on trandisciplinarity across all manner of things design,
fashion, art and cultural representation. Her current research interests include:
the creation of affective spaces/objects and humanistic ideas and assumptions
concerning body materiality and morphology.
JENNIFER DEGER
Borrowed rites and the gift of grief: a Yolngu experiment with video art
For the Aboriginal people of Gapuwiyak, Christmas has become a time to
remember—and make palpably present—lost loved ones. Ritual preparations
begin in mid-October when the first thunderclouds of the season herald the
coming of Christmas and trigger tears for the dead.
This presentation will preview Christmas Birrimbirr (Christmas Spirit), a major work
by Miyarrka Media, a collective of indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers
and performers based in Gapuwiyak in north Australia. Under the guidance of
Yolngu directors, Fiona Yangathu and her husband Paul Gurrumuruwuy, this work
explores the potential of new media to produce the connective and
transformative work of ceremony in art gallery and museum settings. The result is
a multi-channel installation structured by the performative aesthetics of Yolngu
ritual and charged with the luminosities of Christmas lights, tinsel, and video itself.
Motivated by a sense that the brittle satiations of Balanda (non-Aboriginal)
consumer Christmas rites lack both force and meaning, Yolngu offer Christmas
Birrimbirr explicitly as a means of turning away from distraction and dullness, and
to stimulate a dynamic openness to oneself and others via the work of feeling.
The result is a work that challenges conventional understandings of the efficacies
of Aboriginal art and media. Rather than positioning non-local viewers as
witnesses to contemporary indigenous trauma, or as spectators to a hybridizing
exotic, Yolngu invite audiences to engage as subjects whose own lives and
relationships can be enriched and empowered by the dense and sometimes
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