Lumen Winter 2023 - Flipbook - Page 39
thought. He slinks away from the crowd,
sprints up the shoreline, and hauls the
cockle-crusted bucket from his boat. He
pushes through the crowd and hands the
bucket over the yellow tape.
The experts lay out the seafood smorgasbord.
A paw quivers. Lids flutter. Eight-ball eyes
open, green mucus oozing down her snout,
and Lucy accepts the garfish dangled above
her head like a sword swallower. With every
bite, her strength recovers. With every bite,
the crowd’s spirit rises. But Lucy’s future is
uncertain. Some argue she should remain
in Adelaide; some believe she should be
transported to London or Paris or New York
where more people can visit her.
The Premier takes off his thongs, the
Prime Minister her blazer, and they agree
on keeping Lucy in Australia. Just as they
prepare to front the press, they receive a
phone call: an anonymous person is offering
ten million dollars for Lucy. The Premier
glances at the Prime Minister; the Prime
Minister glances at the Premier. With
diligent yet decisive diplomacy, they decide
it’s in the public’s best interest for the bear
to be cared for in private rather than in the
public sphere; to put it simply, the world
must respect Lucy and her owner’s privacy
as they begin their new life together.
But then the Chief of Staff receives another
message: an offer of fifty million from a
Silicon Valley tech-exec. Then: one hundred
from a Shanghai businessman looking for
a last-minute graduation present for his
daughter. Another message, another offer.
Eventually, after careful and considered
deliberation, the Premier and the Prime
Minister decide to hold an auction overseen
by Sotheby’s. As the sky bleeds with sunset,
Lucy perches on all fours, her eyes scanning
the crowd, her body still as an opal statue.
The crowd stares at her, their hearts beating
harder, eyes big and bold, lost in the polar
bear’s majesty, in her mystery, overwhelmed
by this monument to Mammalia.
Lucy digs her front paws into sand and
heaves her body upright. Her silhouette
stretches behind, across the shore and the
sea towards the dying sun. Her mouth opens
and a sound echoes across the beach. Not
a roar, but a whimper. Lucy shakes, limbs
flailing, swaying, as if bowing to the cheering
crowd, hypnotised by the thousand smiles
before her, until she falls headfirst into the
sand with a force felt across the earth.
First published in South Australian digital
journal The Saltbush Review, Issue 2, June
2022 – a sustainability issue which examines
“our tangled relationship with the land and how
we exploit it, and explore its beauty, uniqueness
and power, both in relation to and beyond the
human”. saltbushreview.com/issue-2/
Rebooting the Muse
Harnessing digital technologies for sustainability
in the Australian performing arts
By Mark Carroll
The performing arts in Australia today face unprecedented (that word again)
challenges on multiple fronts. On the one hand, the social-distancing measures
needed to control the COVID-19 pandemic undermined the live performance
model that is the very bedrock of the profession. That base had in any case been
eroded by the national bushfire emergency that preceded the pandemic, which
itself led to widespread cancellations. Last year’s catastrophic floods made a dire
situation even worse. Even the sceptics among us now acknowledge that something
is climatically amiss, and that we all need to do something about it.
These calamities have precipitated a wholesale shift from real-time performances
to online delivery. This in turn has helped not only to lower the risk of infection
for audiences, but also has led to a reduction in size of the carbon footprints
generated by touring. But while effective up to a point, this response is grounded
in a mindset changed little since the days of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, which
also saw technology employed to capture, reformat and disseminate content
intended initially to be live performances in front of physical audiences. The
danger now is that performing arts organisations and venues may become unviable,
caught as they are with artistic content and business models that rely on real time
audience experiences and physical box office income, while plying their trade in an
increasingly virtual marketplace.
A team of University of Adelaide researchers, led by the Elder Conservatorium’s
Professor Anna Goldsworthy, was last year awarded an Australian Research
Council-funded Linkage grant to work towards a more artistically and
administratively sustainable solution to the conundrum. The team will document
the impact of digital technologies on the various stakeholders in the creative
equation: from creators whose artistic vision calls for a given technology or
process; to performers who have to realise that vision; to audiences for whom the
technology might be a help or hinderance, a source of enjoyment or irritation, and
finally to administrators who have to parse the results into a sustainable business
model fit for the organisation’s purpose.
“These calamities have precipitated a wholesale
shift from real-time performances to online
delivery.”
To that end, and thanks to the generosity and vision of the Light Cultural Fund,
a South Australian philanthropic organisation dedicated to fostering community
wellbeing through artistic excellence, the project has at its disposal a cutting-edge
performance space, The Lab, which is situated in Light Square in the centre of
Adelaide. In this controlled environment, our project partners – the Adelaide
Symphony Orchestra, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Patch Theatre,
and Illuminate Adelaide – will create and perform works using the available
technology. In that space we will be able to track creative processes, document
participant reactions, formulate strategies and, ultimately make meaningful steps
towards future-proofing an industry that enriches the lives of us all.
Mark Carroll is an Adjunct Professor at the Elder Conservatorium of Music.
Rebooting the Muse: Post-COVID-19 sustainability in the performing arts
(LP200300899)
Nicholas Duddy graduated from the University
of Adelaide with a BA (Hons) in 2018. He is
now a doctoral candidate in English at the
University of Oxford.
LUMEN – WINTER 2023 39
