Presentation to the Australian Fairy Tale Society National Conference 2017

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Welcome to Luxville.

I acknowledge elders of the Kulin Nations past, present and future.

Once was, is now, always will be Aboriginal land.

The stories of this land are old as time itself. Yet our fairies are mostly European.

 

Luxville takes place on Waddawurung land. Yet what is born of this place is not what is revered.

In Luxville they are no longer curious about themselves. A sad envy hangs over the town like dry ice. Luxville citizens have been shackled so long; they have forgotten they can fly.

I shall return to Luxville in a moment.

Today I am in awe of the talent and tales present. This depth at once intrigues and scares me. I am a lover of fairytales, they make me feel both safe and scared. It is true of today. I am a foreigner in fairy-tale land, but it feels like home. I do not speak fairytale, I know only my own story. I am a questioner who is aware my lack of knowledge of your land may grate. Please forgive.

As a girl I was afraid of the dark outside and what was in it. My favourite fairytale was the 12 Dancing Princesses; read from a Little Golden Books Anthology. Read in a warm bed, by a reading lamp. My four older sisters in the same room. All in bed, all reading, or fighting.

As I read I imagined it was us tripping down those secret stairs and out into the night. Dad the King angry at the mystery, and sensing some deceit. Our mother the Queen knew exactly our need to dance and allowed it, turning a blind eye. My elder sister Kerry ignoring the intuition of the youngest, me. How I wished for more sisters. And me, always on the last boat, and somehow bringing trouble along for the ride.

And to arrive at my adventure all I had to do was close my eyes and snuggle in. These stories helped to drown out the dark outside. But I was also afraid of the dark inside, inside me. What if that was empty? What if there was nothing there. Nothing interesting anyway. As I grew I ignored that dark, or found things to light it up.

Older, wiser and bolder I began to explore that dark inside me. It felt like a blanket, warm, comfy. And It wasn’t empty. I was there. The king, my dad, used to say wherever you go there you are. And I was there, and I was enough. The dark inside was a cinema as the house lights dim and the movies begin. An expectant dark.

This curiosity of self I had to RE-discover. And fairytales felt like footprints in wet grass, finding a way back to myself. Not in a conscious way, but serendipitous, the flavour of something you forgot but would recognize anywhere. So I wrote, correct, began to write Luxville. All my work previous had been complete. A film not screened until it was finished, a photography exhibition not shown until it was finished, a story not shared until it was finished. And only then move onto the next thing.

I knew the core story was my hometown Ballarat, once bold but had fallen on less curious times, much like myself. If I was really wanting to be curious I had to go in another than my usual direction of complete one work move on; complete one work move on; repeat.

So I chose to explore a long form, episodic transmedia model, which mean one story in many places. Elusive, mysterious, appearing in different places in different forms, shape shifting. Like a fairytale, so many versions, different elements revealed, characters ad story to the front.

So Luxville is photography, film, written story, poetry and performance; it is online, face to face, synchronous, asynchronous, individual and group. Each Luxville citizens all have a different understanding. And that’s pretty cool.

And what if I created my story in public? FREAKY Realising it before it was finished

So if I appear not to have answers to questions you ask about Luxville, it may be because I don’t yet have the answers. However your questions do inform the work, your curiousity adds to mine and together we shape the work.

Luxville tells the story of a group of artists that shake the town up, and force it to look at itself, to be curious about itself once more. To value culture for its own sake.

This work is a fabulism, taking elements of fact and melding them with elements of fancy. Like a fairy tale with a stroke of truth, a message hidden in a story. Something’s impossible others only improbable.

Luxville is my attempt to illustrate my curiosity, and expose my terror. To show that stories are mutable, messages are capable of change, artists are leaders and women are bloody fantastic.

First I wrote in what we like to call our parlour. It has a bookshelf wall as you enter. And everytime I entered I looked to the bookshelf. No idea why! I thought it was that eventually I could add my own book to the collection. Part of my creative process is to tidy. It’s about busying the hands, engaging the monkey mind in ordering while freeing the creative mind. One day I tided the bookshelf and my fairytale anthology made itself known. RE-known. And it fell open to the 12 Dancing Princesses as it must have laid under my bed each night while I was dancing.

And Luxville is a wonderous and most irritating of places. Mainly because – well – sisters.

At 5 I didn’t have enough and 12 seemed like too many. So I chose to muses. The Nine muses of legend plus Sappho taking it to ten. The Luxville book shows ten characters, all women (sisters), all actual artists (just the one dancer) that reside in a world not built for them, where artists are used rather than revered (like the dancing princesses). So they plan for the city to dance until the end of time. How that happens will be revealed eventually.

While writing and researching I wanted to understand how the story of Luxville interects with the heritage of this place, our stories do not began with invasion and settlement but in the time before. The Seven Sisters creation story is an indigenous tale of seven sisters who dance across the evening sky as they evade the amorous attention of men who wish to make them wives. This story is told by many people across many lands of Australia. One story in many places, all co-existing, all different. What is the same is the sky.

And then there is the Irish heritage of my family. Our matriarch we called Queen Mary, her party trick was to sing Patsy Fagan the story of a man who leaves Ireland to find work, he aims to show the world he is a decent Irish man. She told few Irish fairytales, yet after she died I found a number of books in her collection, now mine.

Film has a language all its own, where the colour of the dark is blue, where nightmares can be revealed or suggested, where all that is improbable is possible. Cinema is only possible in the dark, it is a font of story – yet here our popular stories are American.

In Chicago, April, 1900 L. Frank Baum wrote:

“Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to pleasure children of to-day. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out. “

Nightmares left out? Flying monkeys anyone? Maybe you prefer Evil Witches? Or Powerless Gods?

And from his story a message of hope – you always had the power, you just had to learn to use it for yourself.

So how does that sit with our dancing princesses. This is a prologue, back story, while I weave the story of todays Luxville. Women have power, but we live within a system where that power is not recognised. That does not make it any less powerful, simply disrespected. However we need to use our power to feel it, need to dance our freedom to keep it, need to make our own stories of what happens when our themes collide.

The truth lies within the many mattresses – indigenous, Irish, film, feminisms, fable, fabulism,  – my mattresses are connecting. I hope they don’t suffocate me!

Thank you.

All proceeds from the book, cards and prints all go back to the Luxville Treasury for the development of the cultural heart of Luxville.