on the radio

The opening is coming closer, and we're beginning to get some press - well, some air would be a more accurate word. Last Thursday, I went to 3CR on smith street for 15 minutes with Rachel Cook. Today, I am going to talk to Michael on Joy FM, and Saturday, Joy FM again for the general Midsumma programme. Wowowow, keep your radio tuned it to follow us!

Reading room

We discussed what would be in the small room of Alliance Française with Françoise, the head of exhibitions there, and came up with the idea of really setting it up as a 'reading room'. We wouldn't only provide copies of the stories, but also books about multicultural migrations and multicultural gay issues, as well as leaflets and brochures from Midsumma and other associated events. So visitors could spend time in the room, reading, getting ideas, maybe starting a chat. Fortunately, I have inherited a big pile of books on this subject from Palmina before she left for China.

Why stories?

I’ve been asked now a couple of times – where did the idea for the exhibition come from? Why the stories and pictures? Well, here it is, in a nutshell: I went through the interdependent visa thing myself – in France, early 2008. We downloaded the paperwork, and saw that one of the elements to be provided is a ‘statutory declaration’ where both partners have to tell about their relationships and its history. Trying not to copy each other as much as possible.
As an ex-linguist and still writer, I found that intriguing: how interesting that story-telling should be the basis for the right to migrate. It felt very… antique – memories of when I studied ancient Greek rhetorics, and had to talk about narration as part of the judicial discourse. Anyway, that’s where the idea came from.
And then reinforcements: when we arrived in Melbourne, Philip found a job at the Immigration Museum, and started talking about the ‘share your story’ database; visitors are invited to tell their migration stories (to the computers in the discovery centre) for publication on the Museum Victoria website, or something. Again, migration stories. There must be something about Australians and migration, mmmm, what is it, I wonder?

Everything is going to print

I gave final approval today, after receiving proofs yesterday. Now it’s all going to print. It feels oddly quaint, in this super-digital and online age, to still worry about printing issues. I mean, imagine a text you can’t edit after publishing! Sounds retro, doesn’t it. When will they invent self-correcting prints??

Small room

I was delighted when the Alliance Française accepted to host Love Journeys, but I didn’t put any further thought into what the space actually was, or what we would make of it. I knew there was a big ‘ball-room’ with a chimney and period features, and I was happy with it. As it turns out, there’s actually two exhibition rooms in Eildon manner: the big ball room, and a smaller one on the side.
Patrice, the director, asked if we planned anything for that small room – he’d like us to use it. I thought about it, and first had the idea that we could make long vertical panels, like Chinese painting rolls, exploring themes like storytelling, money, border control, or community. I even drafted a model and discussed imagery with Joy. But, as it turned out, it would be a lot of extra work, extra budget, and so we decided against it. I’ll be putting up some of the discussion themes on this blog later.
Phil had another, simpler ideas: there’s a lot of text in this exhibition – each version of the story is about 900 words. It may not be comfortable for the viewers to read all of that standing up, with people around. So why not provide a print out of the texts, and install chairs or a couch in the small room, for the visitors to sit down and read at leisure? I pitched the idea to Patrice, who was happy with it. It’s got a bit of a Sophie Calle touch, which I like, and fits with the Alliance Française.
Now, our next step is to locate the table and couch. Ideas anyone?

A mad week-end

After the first interview in Geelong two weeks ago, this was our mad week-end. Two days, three interviews: Ana and Gopika in Elsternwick at 10h30, David and Alex in the city at 3h00, and, on Sunday, Jerome and Brett in Camberwell at 1h. Joy and I were exhausted after that week-end. I pondered – how come? It’s, after all, way less than we did on certain films. But, upon reflection, going into the homes of people you haven’t met, move their furniture and set up a breakfast for them, ask them personal questions, at length, and make them look natural on a photograph, is not a normal thing to do.
Well, at least we’ve got good results; and now, even if everything goes wrong, even if Anne-Sophie and Keren were to cancel, we’ve got enough material to do this exhibition!

Precious help

Halfway through the project, very precious help came in the person of Keanyen Chin, that Philip recommended to me. He worked in Museum design in Singapore and Malaysia, and will coordinate the material set up of the whole thing. One element I hadn’t really thought about – but once the photograph is printed, it doesn’t hang itself on the wall. Now I can delegate that to someone, yeah!
And with people come ideas: we are going to make articulated wooden panels, like late medieval church altars, framing together stories and photographs. The upper band will have the originally planned two versions of the story with a photo in the middle; in the lower band, the names of the couple, an object that symbolises their relationship, and a photo of their front door. That should look interesting.