Televisions constantly bombard us with slogans and propaganda; these screens publicise footage of my protest to stop Hobart’s Tall Ship Festival . Throughout the five-day celebration I stood alone against the raid on our fair city by this invasive armada. I became so engrossed in my campaign I began to see my body as a weapon. Through the cypher of morse code; flashing, blinking, knocking, tagging, verbalising, chips and screaming are some forms of methodology I employed to communicate my message “STOP!”. When verbalised the morse language becomes homage to Hugo Ball and the dadaists. Throughout the duration of this public work I engaged with passers-by, the police and the local fauna. This work is derived from the observations I have made about our current political climate and the everyday Australian’s unfounded sense of ownership about this land. By juxtaposing these very serious notions against the absurdity of my intensive protest against the Tall Ship Festival I hope the viewer would question their own stance on immigration and asylum.
3 Channel video installation of a performance in 2013
di, di, di, dit, da, da ,da, da ,di, da, da, dit, Stop the boats!
Semaphore: something about tinea and lonliness.
A video work based around the concepts of coded statements. Semaphore is a universal, visual and physical form of communication using flags in which each letter is linked to a pose. For the work I filmed myself responding to various public locations, expressing my inner thoughts and secrets. These messages are unplanned and honest. Semaphore out of her maritime context can be a kind of therapy. Whilst researching this endeavour I sought assistance from the Australian Navy. This process culminated with the construction of my own adapted manual for semaphore in which the learner follows bums like in the case of following the person in front of you in the nut bush dance. Traditional flags are replaced with props that I found on location. As a further level of encryption my manual is reversed so that even with it’s assistance the viewer would have to first learn the signals and then dance them out before trying to decipher each pose. With our societies’ rapidly evolving modes of communication I found value in re-examining archaic methods of announcement and re contextualising them to fit within current paradigm.
Semaphore manual with bum following instructions. (like how you learn the nut-bush: follow the person in front)
Georgia Lucy 