Abstract
This essay describes the ways that an indigenous aesthetics of the new informs emerging forms of digitally-driven creativity in Aboriginal north Australia. Central is the media art project Christmas Birrimbirr (Christmas Spirit), which began as an ethnographic experiment with digital media and ritual aesthetics. Taken up by Yolngu collaborators as something new and exciting, the project explores uses of video art and more supposedly traditional media to produce ritual in a gallery setting. The imagistic dynamics of the project gave rise to dream visions and ritual innovation resulting in the production of a Christmas unlike anything previously seen in Arnhem Land, or for that matter, anywhere else. The aim of thinking through the idea of newness itself is to get closer to a sense of what the project leader, Paul Gurrumuruwuy, means when he says about our media work: 'When you make gamununggu (ochre painted sacred design) yuta (new), you make it talk'.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 355-371 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Culture, Theory and Critique |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Video artist David Mackenzie later joined the project bringing with him his technical and creative skills, together with a rare openness to working under Yolngu direction. Together the four of us formed Miyarrka Media and began applying for funding. In our applications we called the project a Yolngu experiment ‘new media art’ (although, according to the Australia Council for the Arts advisor I spoke to, the project was not technologically innovative enough to warrant funding as new media). At Mackenzie’s suggestion, the project shifted from a single-channel work to an installation featuring a three-screen projection (synchronized by computer). This move allowed us to play up the rhythms and repetitions of ritual as events unfolded across three screens at once. Open to suggestion and experimentation, Gurrumuru-wuy and Yangathu agreed to work in this way, even though they had never seen video art before and had difficulty imagining the effects of the three-channel projection until we finally sat down to edit many months later (see Figure 3).
Copyright:
Copyright 2013 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.