AUGUST

Looks like I am now in my hometown of Melbourne as I can smell the Australian football fever tainted with beer, eucalyptus and an assortment of Asian gastronomic delights. There are plenty of family and friends for me to catch up with also a whole mess of art business to sort out. First up is a small drawing show to do and preparations for further art activity in 2012.  Carolina is lost in Patagonia on a vino-biz trip but we do team up again in Bangkok in a few weeks.

Bye Melbourne…Sydney was a blur of funky pubs, a lovely dinner party with oysters, a bloody Mary or two, catching up with assorted friends and then time for more airports, buses, trams, trains and taxis. The frequent flier or should that be frequent flee-er hits the road again. I flee from staying still and really cant get out of this habit. Not having a job that is grounded to a particular location makes the concept of creating a stable home just not there for me. Am I just a camper in this life that I lead? No place is The place for me it seems so what I am left with is many places and the network of lines constructed by pit-stops, couches, transport hubs and all those seats in motion that take me away.

Hong Kong and straight into to a small gallery called Experimenta  (www.experimenta.hk/blog/) where I screened a number of Antarctic films but before that event I presented my Antarctic documentary Winterover at the Foreign Correspondence club of Hong Kong. This formal dinner function saw me chatting about my experiences at Mawson station and afterwards having a quiet drink at Club 71 just off Hollywood road Central. 

Experimenta was a great chance to get immediate feedback about my film work from a broad range of people on the opening night. Chinese, Irish, French, Canadian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, New Zealand, British, Swiss, and Australian accents floated along the alleyway leading to the gallery. A very cosmopolitan crowd turned up to my film screening and all seemed pleased by the visual and audio adventures spread around the small gallery.  I could not have done this without the help of Gina Wong and John Batten so Big thanks! Now I really need to eat alot ot dumplings to cure that after opening party fuzziness.

The constant drone of air-con, traffic, people, more people and then some more all crammed onto a small island is intense. The noise level of consuming food, liquid, smoke, smog and the cacophony of visual overload are all Hi-Rise. Neon noise is all about me with a buzz of activity that delights and burns, as well as burns-out the odd glutton. More is ok it seems but actually it is not. Hong Kong is a place with lots of more. I buy bright pink dragon fruit and more iced coffee as the jack-hammers hammer, drills scream into cement and metal beams are pounded into earth. I watch thousands by the minute flow up the silver escalator and just as many slide down this metallic waterfall into the mouth of the dragon. Where is everyone going I wonder? Perhaps to the Fire Dragon Dance in Pokfulam Village which takes place on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival of every lunar year. Spectators insert the incense sticks on the dragon for luck and that’s exactly what I did just before I left Hong Kong.

The link to the FCCHK guest speaker.
http://www.fcchk.org/fccweb/news.html?id=FEB2A21F276022A98CEFB01412BA1C3A
http://www.fcchk.org/fccweb/pdf/20110908.MP3