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The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. – Aristotle

Here are some of those parts.

If I hadn’t been able to do film at university, I would be studying fashion. Represented in this wasteland of dismembered mannequins is one of the world’s most creative and exciting industries. The presence of such a mannequin graveyard situated in this graffitied alleyway of dumpsters could almost constitute an installation in itself.

The image below was taken at a rally held in Melbourne’s CBD just a few days ago. It was incredible to witness so many people coming together so passionately to advocate feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, environmental action, racial equality, and rights to education and health. Social activism is deeply important to me; being an ally to those who need it, and an active contributor where possible. This picture shows the aftermath of the rally, wherein the messages remain, present and pressing.

 

There is an almost complete absence of wildlife in the city; something that is quite disconcerting to me. There is however, a constant barrage of traffic. The above audio clip was filmed in the city centre, and illustrates the general rumble that emanates from the city. I currently live facing a main road so this brilliant cacophony is incessant and inescapable.

A big believer that you are, at least in part, a product of where you reside, below I’ve included a picture of where I currently live; it’s an incredibly old building with high ceilings and windows that rattle like nothing else. I reside on the third floor, which, as illustrated by the photo, provides a fantastic view of the sky.

 

For my text, I chose to handwrite the beginnings to some of my favourite pieces of poetry. The decision to write these lines out by hand was deliberate, for you can often find someone’s complete personality wrapped up in their handwriting. Beyond the actual content of the text (which merely tells you what kind of material I enjoy reading), you can infer a lot about me simply by the way in which my pen falls.

This clip is simply going through the motions of making tea. As this is something I do multiple times a day, each an every day, I thought it would be interesting, in true Marina Abramovic fashion, to record just the audio of the practice, and listen back to distinguish each of the individual sounds that are created by this process.

 

I have great admiration for and interest in 1970’s punk culture, fashion and it’s importance as a socially defining period in history. Tartan was used as a focal item in some of pioneering punk designer Vivienne Westwood’s earliest creations, which are now characteristic of the time. This material will forever be linked to the 1970s as an artefact of punk history.

 

The above audio recording stands in sharp polarity with the previous cityscape clip. This was recorded in the heart of the Royal Botanical Gardens; one of the only places in Melbourne where traffic noise is not the dominant sound. Here it is the breeze and the leaves, the birds and the water. While the sounds of the city are at times entirely overwhelming to me, this soundscape is far closer to that which I am familiar.

Growing up in a small town surrounded by bushland and desert, nature was always present; kangaroos would lay about in your backyard, black-tailed goannas would live in your roof, and most nights you could hear the dingoes howling at sunset. Through its ubiquity, the natural environment grows to become a part of you in a place like that.

The city however, is a beautiful concrete wasteland; there is barely any wildlife (save for the people), and nothing but the most manicured greenery.

The image below was also taken from within the Royal Botanical Gardens, looking back towards the city. The green expanse is set in stark contrast with the packed high rises in the city, while the empty seats serve to reinforce this contrast. The photograph reflects the necessity to escape the greyness of the city for something that resembles the nature that pervades everything back home.

Communicating with people and sharing in their stories is one of the greatest privileges, and is a joy that I wish to pursue as a career. In the almost three weeks that I have been in Melbourne, I have met and interacted with so many intensely interesting people; from impassioned theatre interns, to fiercely independent eighty-year-old asian women, to famous production designers, to homeless men. Many of these interactions have occurred on trams. I shot these empty seats to show the incredible opportunities and promise that they hold, in discovering and understanding the people who may choose to sit there.

 

I have an enduring love for film in all its forms. It has become a defining part of who I am and the work I wish to pursue. Due to this, and in congruence with the short nature of the clips we were required to produce for this project, I saw it fitting to pay homage to the very first filmmakers, whose works were confined to just fifty seconds in length. This train clip is a modern mirror of the Lumière Brothers’ 1895 film Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.

I hope to become a documentary filmmaker. Every day on my way to and from school, I pass this same group of skaters, who serve as a daily reminder of two films which have influenced me to an incredible extent; Larry Clark’s Kids (1995), and Gregg Araki’s Totally Fucked Up (1993). The films feature gritty depictions of teenage life; the latter featuring skating, and the former very much inspired and shaped by it. With uncompromising representations of issues such as sex, sexuality, HIV and AIDS, both Kids and Totally Fucked Up give cinematic nods to documentary storytelling. Despite being fictional, these films showed me a new way to approach documentary film in way that is both highly cinematic and brutally honest.

I shot this footage to seem incidental, reflecting the way I see the skaters each day, whilst also being reminiscent of documentary film style.

 

Moving to the city from Alice Springs has reshaped my world, giving me an entirely new, foreign terrain to explore.

The decision to shoot this footage upside down reflects this.