‘you can leave a mark on the land or you can let it leave a mark on you’*
A #storybombing event
Landmarks An Interactive Pop-Up as part of the Surry Hills Festival and Double Take Projection and Pop Up Arts Festival. Presented by Spineless Wonders in partnership with Surry Hills Festival, The Pottery Shed, Melbourne installation artist, Richard Holt, Deborah Szapiro and film animation students from University of Technology, Sydney and Newcastle Writers Festival.
Address:
The Pottery Shed, 7 Nickson St, Surry Hills (rear entrance)
Installation times: Sept 23 – Oct 15
Program:
Saturday September 23rd – Festival Day, 11am -8pm
*Live Performance – 4pm (30 mins)
Thursday September 28th – Double Take Tours, 4 – 6pm
Thursday October 5th, Double Take Tours, 4 – 7pm
*Live Performance – 6pm (30 mins) Plus social event.
Thursday October 12, Double Take Tours, 4 – 6pm
What to expect:
You enter The Pottery Shed via the rear lane and you are immediately drawn to the retro push button telephone. Pick up the receiver and listen. Push two or three of the buttons and hear micro-stories about landmarks – read to you by an actor. There’s an Australian woman dreaming of being in France and becoming Amelie. There’s a person overdosing in front of the dog on the tuckerbox at Gundagai. You are in the head of a fly-in, fly-out mine-worker.
You wander the perimeter of the room. Among the rows of student pottery you read stories of other landmarks on posters as tall as phone booths. A shot tower where lead bullets are made. A woman from upcountry tongue-tied by her new city life. A museum where butterflies sit alongside the stolen remains of Aboriginal people.
A flickering catches your eye and for minutes you stand, mesmerised by the colours and the sounds projected on the wall. A girl sits in an apple tree, high above her squabbling, dysfunctional family. A bridge where boys are chai-yacking. The Chinese Garden at Darling Harbour.
If you are lucky enough to be there for a performance, you’ll hear a story about death and the lesbian, about Marlon Brando’s lips, passion, possums and the Seacliff Bridge. You’ll see images from the nearby streets of Surry Hills and be transfixed as the magic of poetry brings each photograph to life, giving the familiar new meaning.
And then, it will be your turn.
All this time you’ve been thinking about your special landmarks. The beach holiday from your childhood, the abandoned water tower you pass on the way to work, the birth of your first child – a glowing baby girl. Your fingers itch to record the thoughts swirling in your head. To capture the larger idea that a physical landmark sets you thinking about.
You pick up the blank sheet of paper, thread it into the portable typewriter, and start tapping…
*from Jodi Vial’s ‘The Span’