Adhocracy reflections on my way to Adelaide from Sydney, 3rd September, 2019, 9.55am
The last few years of participating in Adhocracy I have been jetlagged or jetsetty, so it is apt that I am on a plane right now.
Starting back in 2015 I have travelled a lot, and the dates of Adhocracy always seem to align with my flying in the day of or the day before. I often arrive at the event with luggage, with Heath or my mother collecting me from the airport and taking me straight to Waterside. In addition to all the shit we carry for documenting, the luggage is... a thing. Itʼs become an emblem somehow. Baggage. A messy life. A messy event.
Everything comes out of the bag and gets put back in a few days later as though nothing happened here.
Anyway, this time Adhocracy coincides with me packing up my house in Adelaide and moving my stuff to Sydney. Iʼve been living in Sydney for two months but I havenʼt had my own place and Iʼve been living out of a growing number of suitcases. This time last year I was returning from three months overseas, the longest trip Iʼve done. I was still jetlagged when we took up residence at Harts Mill for Adhocracy and had just started house-sitting for the Power sistersʼ parents. As I type that, I smile, wanting to remind whoever is reading this that Olivia Power designed the first two posters for Adhocracy, and her sister Kate Power has been a volunteer and artist in residence at several of the events, too. One of the things I dearly love about Adhocracy is the connection.
“One of the things I dearly love about Adhocracy is the connection.”
Today at the Virgin gate, as I was getting ready to join the queue, I looked up to see an artist I had the privilege of working with at Adhocracy the year before last, when I was also jetlagged, having returned from Europe and the UK the day prior to starting a residency. Today, Sarah Rodigari and I saw each other for the first time in what I think is over a year. She mentioned she needed to write a text for the Experimental Art Exchange (which I am also going to), and it reminded me that I needed to write the documentation schedule for Heath and I. Sarah, Mish Grigor and SJ Norman were the three artists who led a process-driven residency called Second Hand Emotions. It changed my life. It was a pivotal point for me being able to claim space as an artist, having worked as one for years. More on that later, probably in a voice memo.
Now seems as good a time as any to introduce (to whoever is reading this) my collaborator in documentation, Heath Britton. He has also participated in the event as a resident, an artist, and a VJ. Weʼve shared the documentation responsibilities for every event. He was a participant in the very first Adhocracy, and that was back when we were a couple, in a domestic partnership, I was Managing Producer at Vitals and he was (and still is) a photographer and videographer. Maybe he was still studying and painting then too, I canʼt remember.
Our relationship has evolved enormously throughout the decade weʼve undertaken this role; lovers, colleagues, friends, collaborators. We remain the last three in that list. In 2013, the year we broke up, Heath was doing the residency and somehow we thought that he could do documentation, too. The time pressure, the stress of the residency, our freshly changed relationship (weʼd only been broken up three months from a 15 year long partnership)... fucked that year up monumentally.
We went a whole day without speaking to each other while working together, communicating mostly by text and our pre-arranged schedule. At some point we got our shit together and made up, and I recall being quite proud of our efforts in the end. Heath will most likely be prominent in my memories of Adhocracy, so I wanted to give him space in my initial thoughts and reflections.
Adhocracy was the event that we launched our documentation collaboration. The first year I filmed on my own (I was still working at Vitalstatistix as Managing Producer), and he helped me edit the video for a grant application. I remember it had a fucking typo and we had to fix it in the eleventh hour.
The following year, Iʼd left Vitals to work on my own and we took on the documentation together. We have a short-hand that I have with no-one else, we know what weʼve seen for reference, we can speak to each other without flowery pleasantries and get to the crux of a situation quickly. Itʼs quite a pressured environment. We have ingested the same culture for most of our lives, having met in 1992, and therefore our aesthetic tastes – while not the same – certainly overlap. We have, to put it mildly, ‘an understandingʼ.
Heath taught me how to use video and stills cameras, and I learnt about composition and light through watching him study painting and drawing, and everything I know about video editing, I learnt from him. We have a system that we have honed over the course of our relationship whereby we recognise which skills we bring to the table and work with the strengths we have... I am an organiser and a communicator. I handle all the schedules, do the talking to artists, emails and contracts with Vitals, organising where / who / what / when weʼll be doing whatever it is weʼll be doing. Heath knows the technology, the suppliers, charges, maintains and organises the equipment, sets it up, and at the other end of the process, downloads all the footage and has the majority of the editing skills and patience when it comes to learning new skills. We build the videos we make together, although our process is that I generally watch all the footage to pull out the bits that are most useful, we cull it together, I cull it again and then we try to sort out a narrative or structure together. We both have ideas about how to trick it up and it is always him who learns how to do the tricks or make sound effects or animate things. I donʼt have the patience or skill for that. I like things that work the first time. I mostly find the music for the soundtracks and do the admin and organising all the things...
On music... We have caused each other so many ear worms over the years from listening to tracks on repeat as we edit. Hereʼs a bunch of music that weʼve used in videos but also just songs that remind me of Adhocracy in general.
Popcorn
Wrecking Ball (karaoke version)
Itʼs Tricky (karaoke version)
O Superman
Work (Rhianna)
Lots of Beyoncé (Bron Batten, feminist visual art project, general bangers for the dance floor)
Janet Jackson from Liamʼs project
Running up that Hill (Kate Bush and the karaoke version)
Whatʼs love got to do with it (Tina Turner)
West End Girls (Pet Shop Boys)
Death is not the end (Nick Cave)
My plane is about to land. The next thing Iʼll do is meet Sarah at the luggage carousel, get picked up by my mum who will take us both to Waterside via my house in Adelaide, where I will grab the sheets off my bed in order to do my washing at mumʼs tonight as I no longer have a machine to wash my clothes at my place. I have a mattress on the floor and no chairs. I am also about to fuck with Heathʼs world and retrieve my coffee machine from his house because I want it for the next week and then it is moving to Sydney with me. I am about to sell my cupboards and fridge. I am trying to decide what books I need to take.
“ I have most of my clothes in Sydney except for the few essential winter items in my suitcase because it is always so fucking cold at Adhocracy. ”
I have most of my clothes in Sydney except for the few essential winter items in my suitcase because it is always so fucking cold at Adhocracy. I know I havenʼt brought gloves this year and I can already feel my finger bones aching. Tonight I will stay at Mumʼs and cuddle Tiger who is also yet to move to Sydney. I am without canine and coffee there so far, what is my life? She is accustomed to my absence during Adhocracy – I always make arrangements for her to be looked after for the duration of the event due to the long hours we do. I have brought her to visit a couple of times before audiences arrive, but she is petrified of applause so unable to participate in the event fully. She is the same age as Adhocracy, and showing the signs.
