The idea
To research, develop and present a community slide show performance that exposes and examines the climate of fear in Melbourne (Australia) today and puts into perspective the everyday risks we take.
Audiences are invited to share in a vision of our collective nightmares and personal dangers presented in a gentle, tongue in cheek manner so as to enlighten, amuse and empower. The performance will be a carefully crafted show in the guise of an informal community information evening at two site-specific meeting spaces– the Seminar Room upstairs at the City Library and the Reading Room at the Fitzroy Town Hall.
This project takes inspiration from my 2005 performance work ‘Strangerous ‘– a slide show of strange and dangerous things in London. Developed with co-creator Jo Wright, the project was presented as a Neighbourhood Community information evening post the 7/7/05 London bombings. The slides presented focused on themes such as travel, stranger danger, surveillance, warning signs and a series of very dangerous looking fences – which related to a personal incident involving a security fence and losing the end of a finger. The commentated performance drew out narratives and juxtaposed images, using two slide projectors running simultaneously, to take a humorous and ironic look at our personal perceptions of danger. Images of luxury items, high heels, and chocolates were also categorised as ‘dangerous items’ and drunken office parities were definitely dangerous situations! The idea behind the project was to not only document and present a personal collection of fears but to gather a community of people into a room where it was safe to acknowledge the bigger terrors we were facing and put into perspective the everyday risks we took.
I am significantly advancing this original concept to develop a new and improved Melbourne specific project. Moving away from a solely personal perspective I am researching the contemporary fears – the ‘dangerous things’ – as seen by young women aged 18 – 30. Through a series of surveys and interviews this engagement, with this specific sector of the community (which most mirrors my own perspective), is to open up my eyes and ideas on what can be fearful.
I am also researching Melbourne itself, taking my camera out on the streets and capture what the city is telling me to be fearful of. Warning signs, newspaper headlines, billboards, graffiti – a visual vox pops as the ‘voice of the city’.
I am concerned with exploring the tension between what we fear and what is an actual risk. An intangible, invisible force and that which can be assessed, managed and avoided or neutralised.
The task then becomes how to photograph or ‘capture’ fear.
