Conference Room Foyer Riverside Theatre. Parramatta Multicultural Festival.
This site specific work was projected on delegates as they entered a multicultural forum, that was part of the festival events. Projections of 'possibly' offensive words, threats and recriminations indiscriminatingly landed on any bodies negotiating their way through the foyer space.
The slides constructed from cut out newspaper text looked something like ransom notes. The work was made in response to a festival climate in which the multicultural debate was rapidly deteriorating, locally and nationally.
The agenda to all purposes had been hijacked by a slanging match between two historically opposed protagonists and further inflamed by hysterical tabloid editorials. The work was removed from the foyer for 'security reasons'. The question that arises for me in all of this is: How does any cultural group after migrating under the pressure of historical antagonisms on one hand hold onto shared cultural values and develop an identity that enters into a productive discourse in a new place with different cultures?