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2004
I began 2004 in Wellington, NZ, where on 9 January we launched UpStage, new software that provides a web-based venue for cyberformance. No sooner was this done than I said goodbye to my cat and my friends and boarded a plane for Denmark and the Odin Teatret, where I was attending the fourth Transit Festival. This festival of women's performance is organised by Julia Varley roughly every three years, in association with the Magdalena Project. I attended a workshop taught by Julia and Sandra Pasini (Teatret Om) and gave a presentation about my work.
But this time of peace was not to last. I had barely caught up on sleep and emails when I was plunged back into the hectic pace of life. Avatar Body Collision was devising a new show as well as beginning to work with UpStage, I had several friends to catch up with and I also needed to earn some money. In between rehearsals, I gave lectures at Goldsmiths University (London) and Aberystwyth University (Wales) and taught a one-day workshop with Karla at Manchester Metropolitan University. Just to complicate things, a key fell off my keyboard and I had to go through a convoluted process to get a new one under warranty. A free replacement keyboard was provided, but unless I wanted to spend hours travelling across London, its installation was my job. The phone technician assured me it was straightforward, and the instructions looked simple enough - until I realised that they were not for a laptop that had had a wireless card installed, with miniature screws, over the place where the keyboard cable plugs in. This held me up for as long as it took to borrow a miniscule screwdriver from a passing fairy and get the itsy-bitsy screws out. I felt quite proud of myself when I finally put my laptop back together and IT WORKED!
During April I lead a double life, working in Belgrade on funding proposals for Inanna and assisting Antonella with her studio renovations, while online I was busy working with the Colliders on our first show using UpStage - DTN2. This was a development of themes from an earlier anti-war show, Dress The Nation, which had been staged in The Palace. Despite starting out with the intention of reworking an existing show, we ended up creating a new show, as we were working with new software and that required a rethinking of many things - not just technical elements but also how to incorporate the online audience in the new role that UpStage gave them.
I then headed to Zagreb, and the FAKI Festival, where I gave an UpStage workshop and assisted Zoe and Lori with their crazy comedy show "Transkuhinski Raj". Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, wedged between Germanic Europe and the wild Balkans; the young anarchists there were going through a Balkan phase - enamoured of everything Serbian, even turbo-folk music. Outside the festival, I had a bit of a nosey round the city and caught up with net.artist Maya Kalogera, who gave me a personal guided tour of some of her work. My next foray out of Belgrade was to Novi Sad for the Transeuropean Picnic. This was held to mark the accession of ten new countries to the European Union - of which Serbia was NOT one, but neighbouring Hungary and former Yugoslavian Slovenia were. The event was a gathering of artists and thinkers, one of these great Serbian events where everything is free, programmes are guidelines only, and you can never be quite sure what's going to happen next. During the opening, I was listening to speaker after speaker from Eastern European countries talk about Europe and the European Union, and contemplating the fact that I was one of the few non-Europeans here, and most definitely the only New Zealander - when a woman approached me with a quizzical look on her face and asked, "Helen?"
After Porsgrunn, and a couple of days in Oslo with Miff, Terije & Georgi, I returned to Belgrade via Amsterdam and Brussels. This wasn't the most direct route, but it meant I got to hang out with friends in those cities, who treated me to a Pixies concert and gave me my first experience of Brussels. Knowing nothing about this city other than it's where all the European Union bureaucracy happens, I was pleasantly surprised by Brussel's art nuveau architecture and hospitable inhabitants. I checked out the Belgian Center for Comic Strip Art, a fantastic flea market and the cafe on the roof of the Museum of Musical Instruments.
The end of the /etc coincided with the beginning of the PGA (People's Global Action) conference, which some of the /etc women were staying on for. I was too festivalled-out to attend, but I got to hear about it and reconnected with one of the organisers, who I knew from years ago in Dunedin. The final night of the PGA was an on-again-off-again screening of an illegal pre-release copy of "Fahrenheit 9/11", which never eventuated - but instead a happy mob spilled out from the Studenski Kultural Centar (SKC) and onto the main street, stopping traffic with drumming, fire-juggling and a celebratory atmosphere. An elderly woman passer-by who asked me what was happening was delighted by the mood of the crowd and the idea that this was a party, not a demonstration. All this time I had been continuing to work with Antonella and Vesna on our Inanna project: we had spent hours planning, researching, gathering material, writing funding proposals and trying to make our computers talk to each other; we had had meetings with important people, made models and mock-ups, and explored caves on field-trips. But despite having a date and venue to present the work in August, we hadn't succeeded in getting any funding for the project and it was impossible to realise it with absolutely no budget. We had to accept that we would not be able to do it this year. For me, this meant that my main reason for being in Belgrade was, temporarily, over.
Trondheim Matchmaking "is a meeting point to present innovative ideas and artistic projects, a place to ensure and develop competence and resources within new technology and electronic arts", organised by TEKS (Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre). It was great event, and I've written more about it for in an article for Furtherfield (online soon). As well as the festival itself, I was able to continue my Magdalena networking, staying with Eva who I'd met in Porsgrunn, and having dinner with Coby and Jaap from Teatret Fusentast. I also made a connection with Letizia Jaccheri, who teaches an interdisciplinary course at Trondheim University and will propose UpStage to her students as a group project. Back in London I managed to see a couple more friends and attend the opening of Furtherfield's gallery HTTP, where I finally had the pleasure of meeting Neil Jenkins, who had been the technician for the first Colliders' show back in 2002. Then I had to focus on packing and working out the best way to get from Deptford to Heathrow. I opted for the bus as it was a minumum of changes and stairs, and as I hadn't travelled this way before I got to see some new sights through the drizzly twilight as I took my leave. And now? I'm sitting in the drizzly New Zealand summer, with my cat on my lap and some old vinyl on the turntable, contemplating what lies ahead for 2005 and enjoying simple pleasures such as waking up in the same bed, same city, same country each morning. It's good to stop sometimes.
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© Helen Varley Jamieson 1999-2019 |
Magdalena
festivals are intense experiences, with little time for sleeping in between
workshops, performances, discussions, meetings, reuinions, housework and
feasts. As well as being responsible for co-ordinating participant access
to email, I became a gatherer of digital photos and spent many hours at
the end of the festival burning cds. After 10 days of early starts and
late nights, and with a brain swollen with inspiration, I headed to London
where I was to apartment-sit in Paddington for a month. For the first
week, I didn't go outside other than for essential supplies. The white
bed in a small, white room was the perfect haven in which to rest and
digest.
There
were many pleasures during this time in London, not least of all spending
time with my wonderful friends. There was a talk by Erik Davies, author
After
the show, I headed for Belgrade, to 
I
knew that I knew her but at first I couldn't think who it was, as that
this was not someone I expected to see in Serbia. It was Caroline McCaw,
who had been editor of 
Back
in Belgrade, my New Zealand flatmate Jessica arrived to study with Dah
Teater at their annual summer school. I enjoyed playing the local and
showing her around, but only for a few days as I was off again - this
time to the 
I
returned to Belgrade for a hot, wet summer and the 
I
was a bit exhausted from travel, festivals, rejection letters and hip
pain, and facing yet another birthday. A rare rain-free day was arranged
and I was joined by friends for a picnic in the park (Belgrade is blessed
with some excellent parks). Then I said a reluctant ka kite, videmo se,
see you again, and with some difficulty forced everything into my suitcases.
Milica helped me onto a train bound for Ljulbljana, where I spent a relaxing
few days with friends before heading for Munich. More relaxing was in
store for me here, including an alpine excursion and great quantities
of good food, good beer, great company and at last seeing "Fahrenheit
9/11". My train journey onwards to Amsterdam was uneventful, despite
a person under a train at Munich Hauptbanhoff just before I left and a
late-running train nearly making me miss my connection in Coln. Like every
traveller's nightmare, I heard the guard blow his whistle and saw the
train doors close just as I reached them. To my relief, the guard saw
me and made the train wait a few seconds longer.
While
staying with Brenda, Jane and Jesse in Amsterdam, I did some web site
testing work and a performance slot for the 
From
Amsterdam, I returned to London, to Karla's warm family home in Deptford.
This was to be my base from which I bounced off to Dublin (Kushla's 30th
and the