Year of Living the Community: Week 21

Place as Storyteller

this place is a CCP storyteller: where the experiment team shares life and work (as often as we can) with others in a property collective 

Dr. Romaine Moreton: professor, filmmaker, poet, artist

Last night in Adelaide, Romaine Moreton was talking at a conference about her transmedia production "One Billion Beats." The name is a reference to the number of heartbeats the 100,000 year history of human community on the Australian continent represents. The project tells the story of the portrayal of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in film, and how the artist and her collaborative team understand these portrayals to have shaped not only non-aboriginal culture's perception of aboriginal people in Australia, but also the self-perception of aboriginal people. It's a stunning work that presents challenging metaphors about the effects of colonisation, like the butcher shop. Here's an article from the SMH about the inaugural run of the show; Moreton said last night that she hopes it will tour in 2018.   

At one point in the Q&A, Moreton said, "The place becomes the storyteller." And later, "You belong to the story." 

What places tell your story? 

To which stories do you belong? 

Romaine Moreton in a scene from "One Billion Beats" photograph by Heidrun Lohr