Aboriginal Terraformations

The work revolves around issues of land rights for the indigenous populations of Australia and is a result of a collaboration between Amanda Newall (directing and costume), Ola Johansson (dramaturgy), and Antti Saario (digital composer), all from Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, as well as Stephen Pritchard (ethnographic research) from Monash University, Australia.

Synopsis: Two figures from entirely different walks of life crawl out of their cultural cocoons only to find themselves in a terra incognita that they must hasten to choreograph in order to continue avoiding each other. One of them has been there for tens of thousands of years, the other one just arrived, and yet it is as though the first one is forgetting his ways while the second is finding his feet across the territory. One figure’s mask shows exactly how history creeps into the wrinkled face of the present, whereas the other one’s mask is posing one tacit question after another. Time eventually grinds to a halt as audible value statements overshoot the scene and the choreography transfigures into down-to-earth gestures and portrayals with the gravity of a past chain of command. The only way out of the stagnation is to reactivate the non-intercultural drill to the point where old paths through the desert are wholly erased. What one of them does not know about the other one though is that he is not one but two: one for the show and one for the future.

Aboriginal Terraformations is based on interdisciplinary explorations of mapping, perspectives and reterritorialisation of pre-colonial rural landscape within a post-colonial conceptual and aesthetic framework. The cultural, visual and sonic mapping of the dynamics governing the Australian outback and English rural countryside in the age of global citizenship manifest in the depiction of, and is informed by: tribal awareness in media and theatre; electronic songlines, GPS mapping, and the ritualistic physicality of Beckett’s minimalist choreography of Quad, along with critical commentaries as narrative and costume design. The named artists and researchers completed the work in technical cooperation with Per-Anders Rudelius(director and photographer of Kultfilm, Sweden) and Chris Mansson (executive producer at CNN International, London).

The work is growing out of the existing interests and praxis of the named researchers and artists, effectively mapping out, extending and bringing together a unique set of research practices from a wide source of subject disciplines, thus investigating uncharted terrain in terms of process and method(ologies). It was in part a response to the theme of the international conference “New Sciences of Protection: Designing Safe Living” (Lancaster University), where the presentation of the work was accompanied by an academic paper presentation.



Amanda Newall is currently an artist and visual arts lecturer at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts. Has a Masters in Intermedia/Fine Art from Elam. Her work has been exhibited throughout Oceania, also Great Britain/Argentina. Themes explored via nomadic interventions include conflict, identity and performance, including semiotically explosive costumes and concepts of becoming.

Amanda Newall – http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/lica/profiles/Amanda-Newall Ola Johansson – http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/lica/profiles/Ola-Johansson Antti Sakari Saario – http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/lica/profiles/Antti-Saario Stephen Pritchard – http://arts.monash.edu.au/cais/staff/spritchard.php

Keywords: contestation, global citizenship, site, land, reterritorialisation , interdisciplinary.