The Migrant Project

It is a city viewed through its history of migration.

From 2005-2009, 50 Sydneysiders with cultural and artistic roots from across the globe contributed. Monologues, short films, arguments, songs, costumes, agreements, music, ensemble dance pieces, speeches and more were made.

They were presented in a series of showings and forums and, ultimately, weaved together into a theatre performance and then feature documentary of the same name, This City is a Body.

I just want to make a comment about you bringing different art forms and cultures together… and how natural it is, I want to add, that people like you, from different backgrounds, find it almost a must to bring together different art forms, because it is as if one art form cannot contain.

I see you, as a group, exactly like explorers, going into new territory, whilst you are both the explorers and the cartographers, so as you move into this new territory… you’re actually circumscribing, describing, refining a land that becomes clearer and clearer and clearer as you travel…

I am looking at you, getting a sense of us, going out into the ocean, and that is extremely powerful, extremely hopeful, it is an incredible statement that you’re making and that you’re bringing us in that journey… and you’re open, see here you are, you’re absolutely open, everything you see, everything you’ve done, even to this forum, even the way that you stand, in front of us, is all about hope and courage and vision. I really commend you.

- Audience Member

Opening scene of This City is a Body, Hyde Park Barracks Museum, Sydney. The audience is standing on three flights of stairs: amongst them performs the musician, singer and narrator. The dancer is on the ground floor. 

Dancer: Latai Taumoepeau
Musician: Robin Dixon
Singer: Mahesh Radhakrishnan
Narrator: Shakthidharan
Editor: Shakthidharan
Filmed by: Elias Nohra

Led by CuriousWorks' Creative Director, Shakthi Sivanathan, The Migrant Project was Shakthi's first creative initiative: the second, now running, is The Lanka Project.

Designed by the wonderful Stuart Gibson.

The original article can be found here.

MIGRATION PATTERNS
Torres Strait Island dance meets Indian singing in this exploration of migrants’ lives.
BENITO Di FONZO reports

Immigration and multiculturalism are emotive and potentially explosive issues. Politicians on both sides often use them as footballs to score votes. Yet Mahesh Radhakrishnan, the musical co-ordinator of Standing, a work that mixes song and dance with the stories of migrants, would like to put the politics aside for the sake of art.

Whenever we talk about multiculturalism as more than just people dressing up in traditional outfits and serving food, or whenever we talk of reconciliation outside of Cathy Freeman carrying the Olympic torch, it seems as if we’re being overtly political,” he says. “The very fact that what we’re trying to do is tell migrants’ stories, and the whole question of whether or not we’re being political comes up, is indicative of that.

“I think the important thing is that if we are to have multiculturalism as a concept then I, as the refugee activist son of a migrant living in Lidcombe, should be able to stand shoulder to shoulder and converse with a Liberal voter in Padstow or wherever. Those dialogues don’t happen enough. We want to get people talking to each other, no matter who they vote for.”

Standing initiator Shakthidharan agrees. “We have this great diversity of experience in Australia; we have this common identity as migrants. All of us have arrived in this space at some time and forged a new sense of home here,” he says.
“The reason it’s called Standing is that it looks at the different ways that a body can stand up straight, be grounded.”
Standing is the opening work for the Migrant Project, run by an eclectic artists’ collective including Indian Australian classical musicians, Maltese Spanish dancers, as well as Torres Strait Island dancer and choreographer Albert David, formerly of the Bangarra Dance Company.

A mix of music, dance and theatre, the Migrant Project will culminate in a series of performances and exhibitions next year. “It doesn’t have a conventional narrative, but rather in the sense that the stories move in and out of each other, and there’s a framework that connects it all,” Shakthidharan says. “Each actor tells their personal story, but the opening and closing are geared towards creating a language that covers all these.”

Writer performer Gary Lo says they want audiences to walk away with an understanding about how difficult it can be to be a migrant. “Migrants are often portrayed in the media as freeloaders, coming here and taking ourjobs, our welfare,” Lo says. “My father had to work 16 hours a day, six days a week, and he had to learn the language, and he had very little in terms of government support. And that’s part of the reason I wanted to do this piece to tell the stories that haven ‘t been told.”

Does Lo feel that multiculturalism has less mainstream support than it did a decade ago? “We could go into a big political debate about that.” Well, go on then. “We’d rather let the theatre speak for itself than show our political colours,” he says.
Shakthidharan says Standing starts with an empty stage. “Then we drag all these suitcases on, this baggage, the shit that everyone brings to Australia,” he says. “It’s a complex metaphor.”

Shakthidharan approached David about collaborating on the project after working with him on Lingalayam Dance Company’s production of Shakespeare’s Tempest, in which David played Caliban opposite visiting Indian dancer Astad Deboo. “Albert had a knack of making everyone feel at ease in rehearsals and was very grounded,” he says. “He’s also very open to new ideas. Our show starts with a dance inspired by a traditional Torres Strait Island piece, accompanied by classical Indian singing and all over a flamenco-inspired beat. “We showed him what we’d been getting up to and he just jumped into it. But at the same time he’s also been a kind of mentor, especially in terms of the dance and physical work. “His own ability is quite infectious he makes those around him feel more confident in what they’re doing,”

With 15 artists including actors, dancers, musicians, and a culturally diverse band playing tabla, violin and cello, Standing explores eight tales of migrant experience. “What we want to know is do communities speak with one another?” Shakthidharan says. “We all arrived here at some point, we have that in common, do we feel like we share a space together?” The response to Standing will be used to develop later works. “That’s why we’re having forums after the show, so that people can go, ‘Yeah, that happened to me as well’, or, ‘None of these stories are like me,”‘ Shakthidharan says.
“On our website (migrantproject.com.au) there’s a blog, and on Wednesday and Friday we’re inviting the audience to talk to the artists about their stories. This is just the end of this stage of development, not our final work. We’ll expand a lot from here.”

Our first showing (2005) at the old Performance Space, on Cleveland St, Sydney.

by Deepa

I never really considered the intense relationship between first peoples and the land until I moved to the Northern Territory.

It was at Gagaju (Kakadu) National Park where some of this realisation first revealed itself to me.

The tour guide at Ubir rock (married to a local woman) had a great depth of knowledge of the local area. Tracing his finger around the natural curve of the landscape he pointed to rock faces, symbols from the rock art, certain birds, trees and fauna and said each one had a certain significance. He weaved a story with his finger and it was the framework in which the local people of the area lived by. Rich and beautiful-an existance unseparated from land.

I accept myth and story telling does not explain entirely why certain things happen, where science certainly provides more logical explanations. However these shared stories/legends is what identifies a community and provides richness and security (culture).

As I was marvelling at the raw beauty around me it suddenly hit me-LAND! This land is me!

Without a genuine sustainable relationship with the earth we have no future. If we continue to ignore our interdependance with the earth (we being both individuals, governments, beurocracies, big business etc) in the way we live, we actually destroy ourselves.

You can call me overdramatic but this is the plight of indegenous peoples all over the world-survival. Whether we accept it or not, it is our plight too.

by Rebecca

Was just thinking about what some people said, about how Standing was a good description of the status quo but didn’t really talk about where to go from here. i realise that a lot of you probably haven’t been privvy to the various email discussions that take place between Siv and me but I was talking about this idea of dominant stories. In family therapy we often talk about the dominant story of a family. So that you get some families who believe that life is conflict and bitterness and don’t ever consider anything different. But if you dig a little bit, you find all these little ways in which this screwed up family has shown love and care and kindness to one another. By concentrating on these times you “thicken the alternative narrative”. When the family entertain the possibility that they are capable of other ways of living, that’s when you see change. So that’s what I’d like to do in Grounded. I’d like to look at not only the stories of sadness that never got heard but also how migrants can get it together in ways we’d never expected. Be nice if some of you research kids could think about that side of things too. I know it’s not what you all had in mind but I’d like it if it was part of it. I found this little thing in a short play I wrote a year or so ago and thought it kind of said what I’m trying to say now:

Maybe there is a place in the sky for all things gone. Where they
huddle together, bulky and massive; their gravity exerting its
rightful pull on the waters of this earth. But maybe, before he can
become a man, a boy must do what it takes to defy the tides.

In various rehearsal rooms and venues in inner-city Sydney.
by Steven Papadakis

This film was made by the Villawood Koori Kids with the support of CuriousWorks as trainers, mentors and facilitators. Their work was part of The Migrant Project performances and is part of This City is a Body: The Migrant Project Film.

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Images from the shoot:

Original article can be found here.

Spinning outside the artistic – and racial – boundaries
By Clare Morgan
March 22, 2006

The artists and performers who have spent the past year devising a
show about the migrant experience certainly haven’t been short of
material. From debate about Islamic culture to the Cronulla riots,
issues of race and national identity have dominated headlines for
months.

Those issues have found creative expression in The Migrant Project, in
which artists and performers with cultural heritages from around the
world have come together to weave music, dance, theatre, visual media,
sound, light and installation.

After 12 months in development, the project culminates this week with
Grounded. The first instalment, Standing, played at the Performance
Space last September, and Drifting, was part of the National
Multicultural Festival in Canberra last month.

The man behind The Migrant Project, Shakthidharan, says he wanted to
create art that moved away from compartmentalising migrants. “I have
seen some really amazing shows, often from quite mainstream
companies,” he says. “But I was thinking about it and realised they
are all very much about one particular culture, one particular issue.
I was worried that while they were fantastic shows, in a way they were
supporting the very thing they were criticising. They would be outside
everyday Australian life, and people would come and see it as being
outside Australian life.

“We wanted to explore what happens when these
things come into contact with each other. We talked a lot about that
and what came out was the idea that everything we have in common in
Sydney is our identity as migrants.” The 23-year-old set up the group
Curious Works to bring together “people who don’t usually meet each
other, ideas that don’t usually come together and community groups
that don’t normally speak to each other”. “To the extent that we could
manage it, they are a bunch of strangers in a room trying to find out
common points between each other. It was about people stepping outside
their boundaries, artistic as well as cultural.”

That has meant some creative friction: “The dancers want to know that
the whole story can be told in movement, and the musos say you can’t
do that. It’s about being co-dependent, and working that way is really
hard. We argue a lot but it’s all really good argument.”

The Cronulla riots inevitably get a mention, although Shakthidharan
says it is not in the context of an expose or laying blame. “With the
Tampa and the Cronulla riots, they’re all about this idea that some
group somehow possesses something,” he says. “If you start from the
viewpoint that all of us travelled here, and none of us own this
place, I think it would help things a lot.”

Conscious that some might regard the project as a leftie love-in,
Shakthidharan says: “It’s not about having a show that says ‘Howard’s
an arsehole’ or a show that says ‘Aren’t people beautiful?’ We want to
bring those things together to see them in contrast with each other.
There are parts of the show where people who are ‘left’ will be
challenged.”

He admits that whatever audiences take away from the performance, it’s
not going to change the world. “It’s a show, so it’s not going to
create legislative change. But unless you’re a superhero politician or
a really good leader, the arts is one area that can bring different
groups together.”

Primarily, he wants to celebrate Australia’s diversity. “It’s
unfortunate how desperate our need is to do that now. We are built on
migration – if we can just get that idea across, I’d be so happy. The
whole argument about who is Australian and what makes somebody an
Australian is a waste of time. What makes us Australian is what makes
us human beings.”

Grounded opens at the Seymour Centre on Friday.