Today was the first day of the summer studio Recording Place, a studio I am really excited to take part in. To start things off we watched Rohan’s documentary Winter at Westbeth, a film I really enjoyed. It got me thinking about all of the smaller places that can be found within one large place like Westbeth, and the stories that can be found within. I thought the subjects in Winter at Westbeth balanced each other while subverting common perception of elderly people really well and I teared up towards the end during Wesley’s final appearance as I felt as an audience member that I had been given quite in intimate glimpse into his life.
In the second half of the class we were given the option to visit the Queen Victoria Market at that time (when it was closing up) or to visit anothertime before class on Thursday morning. I opted to head there straightaway as i couldn’t make it the following evening and didn’t trust myself to get up early and make it there before class on Thursday. When I got there there all of the stalls were either packed away or in the process of being packed away but I decided to sit down and observe anyway and ended up noticing a bunch of things I usually wouldn’t.
I didn’t really see anything in particular that struck me as interesting but I’m definately going to visit the market while it’s open within the next week. While at the market I was reminded that thousands of people were buried undernearth it, including Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, two indigenous men who were the first people to ever be hung in Victoria. I don’t want to become set on an idea too early but I think that could be an interesting direction to explore.
Here are the notes I made for PB#1:
3PM Tuesday 3rd January 2017
Everyone is packing up, there are more cars parked than people walking around in the Queen Victoria Market. The few people still walking around look disappointed and probably expected the market to still be open. A little boy is chasing a bird while yelling ‘HOO! HOO!’ at it and i can hear the noise of metal objects clanging together. Maybe the little boy was swooped by a magpie at school today and he’s taking it out on any bird he sees . A lady is wheeling away a trolley filled with head mannequins displaying wigs. I wonder how she ended up selling wigs. Did she grow up with a passion for wigs? I wonder the same about most of the very specific stalls here. I think it would be interesting to find out how people end up selling really specific things. The only thing i can smell is the leather of a heap of belts that are being packed away. Maybe that man started collecting belts as a hobby and now he has so many that his wife has forced him to sell them. Or he just really likes belts. Further up there’s a man packing away a collection of didgeridoos. That reminds me that the QVM is built on a graveyard. The first people ever hung in Victoria (two indigenous men) were buried here. Everything is packed away now and I keep getting in the way of people.
