Interdisciplinary artist Jason Sweeney was installed on the mezzanine at Waterside Hall for two weeks. The public were invited to submit a memory of a live event at Waterside Workers Hall via the Public demands website. Jason responded to these memories by making short art works that might be a sound piece, a film or performance (the public can choose which art form when they submit their memory).

All art works are made in residence at Waterside. Then, in a potentially astonishing feat of endurance Jason reviewed all the works developed over the installation period in a 3 hour durational performance.

Hall Monitor Report
Waterside Worker’s Hall
Submitted 23 October 2011
Jason Sweeney

1. A Set Up

I have arrived at the hall on the Friday afternoon, the opening event day, to set up the Hall Monitor and the space is wide open, lit up, but dark around the edges, alluring and echoey. Everything sort of exposed, kind of raw. This hall is so artist friendly. I’ve always thought of it as a kind of dream-space. The first thing that always takes my breath away is that incredible stage with those Lynchian red velvet curtain, foot-lit and waiting for late-night cabaret ghosts, melancholy singers and a lonely stand up comic whose jokes are not very funny but the people stay cos the bar is open and the drinks are good. Anyhow, as I say, I’ve come here to make a work in response to the submissions of memories of live events that have happened in the hall, particularly the memories of my contemporaries and fellow performance artists and comrades who have done or seen work here. So I’ve arrived and Justin has created a great working space for me behind the ‘other’ bar which is both comforting and revealing, somewhere I can work but also somewhere I can’t necessarily hide. Which, for the purposes and role of a ‘hall monitor’ seem perfectly apt. For this work I am both artist and public respondent – a person to create feedback loops of memories, remixing the fragments of things that people can remember, regenerating ideas through the creative processes of another. It’s quite a responsibility but also a bit liberating as it allows me to take these memories to new places, to find the joy or sadness in them, to allow them to breathe new life, to conjure up ghosts, to dance an old dance, to repeat the lines, to invent from scratch, to respond through music, film and performance.

2. A Process

I feel at times somewhat at odds with this project. I don’t have a history here and sometimes it feels like I am an outsider trying to be an ‘authentic’ Hall Monitor and really, as a solo creative artist, this is my first true work to be made in the hall on my own terms outside of collaborations or curations. It feels different. But then I take these awkward feelings and put them to good use. Cutaway, the project, is about old and new histories of the hall, a celebration of the ‘then’ and ‘now’ and I fall into the latter. What I really wanted to do was make sure there was a constant ‘liveness’ in the hall during the installation, to maintain the more recent history of this hall as a place of new performance and live art events. This was at the heart of my Hall Monitor process. To be ‘live’ at all times during the opening hours of the installation. When it closed up at the end of each day, so did my process. It was a 6 hour working day that was to be adhered to. Self-made Union rules please. I wouldn’t want to get myself into any trouble and I’m certainly no scab. So each day my aim was to respond to a minimum of 5 memories resulting in the creation of 5 new works per day which were immediately uploaded to the Hall Monitor website. A call and response between the memory-giver and me the artist. It was mix of rapid response video, sound and documented 1 minute performane making. On average, one new work made every hour, with a bit of mandatory lunch and tea/coffee breaks thrown in. There was certainly quality control measures in place but there was no time to look back and do fix ups. Like a diligent art-factory worker the conveyor belt of memory-made-product turned over like some very well-functioning … hall monitor. Off the belt, at the end of the 2 week process, were 40 new works made over 7.5 days. I mean, according to my own rules and rate of days-to-work ratio, I over-worked but that’s the artist in me. A job over-done. Why, thankyou.

3. A durational performance

From the outset of this process I had committed to doing a three hour durational performance ‘retrospective’ of all works made during the 2 week period in residence at the hall. I tried not to obsess over this although at times it was difficult not to, staring each day as I did at the space I’d chosen to deliver this live event – the red-curtained stage. Even before I began the process I knew I wanted to force myself onto the stage because my history in performance is usually about working on the floor, amongst the audience, ignoring the conventions of the proscenium arch stage set up, doing everything possible to not do anything resembling ‘theatre’. The ‘anti’ approach which I haven’t seemed to shake off since university days … anyhow … it was too seductive and the Lynch-lover in me couldn’t resist the allure of using that stage, framing myself against the curtains, foot-lit, like some dodgy vaudevillian actor dragged screaming out of the theatre relics to deliver the ‘memories’ shared by the ghosts of performances-past. A (dys)functioning variety (three) hour host.

So it began and it went like this:
• Write a memory ‘signifier’ on the blackboard (ie. Lazy Stripper, Bingo Caller, Vicious Angel, Big Pretzel, Sorry Sorry Man etc…)
• Take a black balloon, blow it up and the explode it in front of a reverb-laden microphone
• Speak the memory (#1… #2… through to the last) and use the different microphones (one dry and one with a pitch-shifted female voice
• Perform a ‘moment’ that resonates with the memory (bad strip routine with feather boa, devil dance, the ‘milkshake’, stillness, chainsaw act, guzzling soy milk, drink a glass of wine, throw confectionary out into the audience…)
• Sometimes accompanied by a sound made during the process or a song from one of the memories
• Rub out the blackboard and start again

Three hours passed and I only repeated about four memories. I guess I underestimated that 42 memories would take nearly three hours to get through. The question is now: what do I do with memories? The ghosts of my own performance, now past…

Or download here

Memory:
I was at the hall in 1969. It was the Adelaide University Prosh Prang. There was lots of beer. The stripper “The Big Pretzel” was due to do her strip act but we she came on there was a big rush towards the stage. The barriers down the front on the floor began to break. “The Big Pretzel” looked very frightened at this point and decided it was probably best that she leave the stage and her show was abandoned. The organisers of this event then announced the night was over: “you have 5 minutes to leave the hall, please leave the building, and if you don’t then the fire hoses will be used to clear the hall.” But the drunken crowd did not leave and the fire hoses came out – one each side of the stage – and for 10-15 minutes everything and everyone was drenched. Halfway through this mayhem I watched one guy run towards the stage from the back of the hall with a beer keg held above his head with the aim of throwing it at the men with the fire hoses. He was about mid-way to the stage before both fire hoses hit him square in the chest, knocking him over, and the beer keg just missing his head as it hit the floor. It was a mess. Everyone was soaked, there was beer everywhere. Water covering the entire hall. The university was, inevitably, charged with paying for the replacement of the floor.

On this night, amidst the din of drunken university students, some fights broke out and I believe a girl was even raped upstairs in the balcony area. Although, to this day, nothing has been proven.

I left my ball behind.

Oh shit.. what am I gonna do? I can’t..i mean If I dont have the ball we cant play handball and the. THE DODGEBALL GAME. Oh ffs I gotta do something.. we’re walking out..towards disco pants lane.. I know. That’s it. I’m gonna bust a stupid dope move. okay.. step..step..step..and EXIT LEFT.! I burst throughthesidedoorandnarrowlymissEmmaasIwhiparoundthecornerandchargeupthestepsasfastasIcan…. where is it where is it.. THERE. I grab the ball and realize how very,
very
long
the dance in disco pants lane really is.. still jogging but carefully..dont miss a step now because you’re running.. just get outside before the call of RRRRRIIIGHT.! I hear them laugh as I come back through..must have a sheepish grin on.. good thing I’m wearing this mask or they might see that I’m a bit embarrassed… and out into the lane.. looking for my space.. clutching the ball and laughing.. how could i perform without you, yellow ball?

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Memory:
Walking into the bar section for a play, heaters on, bar open, a play about to start, floor boards- everything was heightened. There were people chatting, the chatting was the music, the play was about to begin. Feelings of space, being alone and being there for an event were strong. A feeling of a community as well as a feeling that I was far away from a city. A feeling that this was a space that existed and was happening but wasn’t quite in working order. I felt lost in all that space around me and above me as well as being excited by it. Once the reading began, that feeling of being disconnected just left, and it felt really ancient- sitting on wooden chairs on wooden floor boards hearing a tale begin read about incest with many mainly women sitting around listening and working out what it means. I was young- I felt young- I felt like one of the ladies.

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Memory:
I’m exhausted after a week working on 2009 the Port Festival.

It’s the last night; I’ve been on a kids parade; sung ‘Row, row, row your boat’ as a giant paper bird went up in flames on the Port River; watched lights bring a building to life and now I’m walking into Waterside wearing red velvet shoes and a hi-vis vest.

Everything is happening quickly: old friends, emotional conversations over loud music, red wine, a big band, crazy dancing, more dancing, Emma smoking, more dancing and wine.

I realise that nearly everyone has left. A few of us have the whole of waterside to ourselves.

I start to play the old, out-of-tune piano. Most of the lights are off. The others are smoking and drinking outside. It’s me and ‘I’ll be seeing you’ in the dark.

I’m leaving- carrying a paper boat with a light in it. There’s a stain on the paper, it looks like sauce.

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Memory:
MAKING ‘MY VICIOUS ANGEL’

that day lucia hung above caroline like a burnt and broken bird and we understood the notion of gravity for the first time and that the cage had to be as high and as dangerous as we could make it.
so it grew another metre.lucia laughed and we knew she was up for it. caroline tried to laugh but she was bound to that hospital bed so brutally and her mind had absorded the idea of paralysis to the point where she could only get out her lines for the day and stagger home.
i hear the sounds of the accordion mimicking human breathing and the cello making fire.
i hear the single words of dialogue clashing and crashing against each other like the souls of those two sisters, one dead trying to find a re entry point, one barely alive trying to escape memory.
i see two little girls lighting a flare to bring their sailor daddy home and a burning pet parrot indicating an innocent plan gone awry.
i go out for lunch and the port is there waiting for me like a scene from the play. my sandwich is soggy and it is too hot and my coffee is a bit watery and i feel like crying because the play is making me really sad.