Tag Archives: Fusion Strength

the air in darwin

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Tuesday, nine am. I’m just about to head back to the air-con-bedroom with a coffee when I bump into a woman in the hostel kitchen. She’s a job search broker from New Zealand. She’s doing her washing up from breakfast. She asks me if I’ve “seen everything there is to see in Darwin”.

No, not really, I say. I think of the crocodile farm, the cyclone simulator at the museum, fishing boats down at the harbour, trips to Litchfield, etc etc. People say you should see them, but we haven’t done these things, and we’re running out of time. Two weeks is not enough for Darwin.

There’s not very much to do here, is there? she says. And the heat. Your hair is constantly dripping: drip drip drip drip drip I can’t stand it. You just never get comfortable.

She is a large woman. She’s probably having a hard time of it. I sympathise with her about the sweat. The air in Darwin is like a gentle sauna. I feel moisture in every crevice. The back of my neck where my collar touches the skin has developed a stinging roughness which I can feel with my fingers, but I can’t see it in the mirror. Is this “heat rash”?
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Coffee Stains in Bed

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[The following was first published at the Fusion Strength Blog]

Thursday, nine am.

Each morning I set my alarm for 730 or eight. The idea is that I’ll get up and do some study. I have discovered that the only way I can study here is to sneak out of bed early, before the others wake up, tiptoe to the kitchen, and make myself a pot of black coffee. While the coffee is on the stove, I put on two slices of toast. Just before the it pops up, the coffee boils, and I take it off the element. Then, almost immediately, the toast pops. I butter it with vegemite, pour two cups of black coffee, stir sugar into one of them, balance the whole ensemble on a dinner plate, and go back to the air conditioned bedroom. Jason is still sleeping. My clatter makes him stir, however, and he opens his eyes a crack, laughs quietly in that way that he does and says “I smell coffee!” “Wake up and smell it,” I say. Thankfully, this is probably the lamest joke I’ll tell all day.
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what am I doing in Darwin?

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the following spiel is lifted from the artists' village website: http://www.tav.org.sg/

Fusion Strength '05 = 24hr Art, Darwin

Fusion Strength is, as the title suggests, a fusion of strengths for the participating artists as well as the audiences. Based on the three notions of collaboration, intervention and performance, FS (Fusion Strength) is a heady mix. Started by Juliana Yasin, its initiator and artist, it has proved remarkably successful in Singapore and Indonesia. FS'05 now hits Darwin, Australia.

Structured around the idea that an art practise is organic and rhizoid, FS is about collaborating through intervention and performance. At the heart of it being the artist’s own interests and practises. Execution of the project begins by a Singaporean artist selecting an Australian counterpart to form a single cell. Each cell will then be given the opportunity to work together but nothing is made nor prepared before arrival at Darwin. It is at 24Hr Art where it really starts. Tapping into the local community there, the first cell will work towards a piece that will take form in any medium the cell decides, which could then be altered in any way by another cell based on a planned schedule. Three cycles of actions then form for FS in Darwin with three outcomes, all potentially beguiling.

What and where else could be more explosive than six artists given the creative freedom, the space and time to collaborate?

FS' 05 = 24hr Art, Darwin will be showing from 16th to 30th September 2005.

Participating artists
Elka Kerkhofs
Hayley West
Lucas Ihlein
Jason Lim
Juliana Yasin
Lina Adam

more info about the project at juliana's site…http://jy1970.tripod.com/id17.html

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ps: there was a Fusion Strength Blog during the project.