Title: Top left: Workshop delegate
1Top left Workshop delegates spontaneous design,
Corporate man -) 1997 Top Right Illuminating
Aboriginal ancestral design, Warlpiri man
-) Bottom left 'Kabbalist' Amulet design, North
African Man -), anon. Bottom right Workshop
delegate design, CEO Man -) 2000 Net-Walks "Ri
tual provides the main context for learning about
the meaning of art, and shows that the
construction of meaning is an active process.
Some instruction is given to people when they are
seated at the men's ceremonial ground, or when
they are making paintings for commercial purposes
or being shown how to do a painting by a
relative. However, the main context for learning
is through participation in ceremony, where
people learn how to perform songs and dances and
how to do paintings. People observe who produces
which paintings and the context in which they are
used (for example) they learn to do the yellow
ochre dance when it is being performed for a
particular purpose, and they see how a ground
sculpture is used in a particular way. Meaning is
built up over time, and what is learnt in one
context about an object can quickly be applied to
other contexts and objects. It is possible to
learn about paintings as maps by walking around
the landscape it is equally possible to learn of
the significance of particular features of a
painting or a landform by seeing them danced out,
sung about or enacted in some other way.
Aboriginal art is learned behaviour that comes
alive and gains a purpose in the context of the
present. And in this way ancestral experience is
incorporated in present experience while
simultaneously underpinning it." Aboriginal Art,
Howard Morphy Summary of content -) A Wavering
Truth. SNIP PS, You are a fine poet so are your
feet Longfellow's? Peter Beamish, Trinity Bay,
Newfoundland www.oceancontact.com
Net-walks
2- 'That truth in which all intellect finds rest.'
Dante.
- Fragments to shorten the long.
- An infant died in Gurka'wuy on Trial Bay, Eastern
Arnhem Land, in the country of the Gumatj and
Marrakulu clans. The child's spirit home was in
its own Mardarrpa clan country 100kms away. -
The objective of the ritual was to move his
spirit from Gurka'wuy to Gunmurruytjpi. -To be
accomplished by calling upon the ancestral
beings that created the areas bridging the land
between the two. -Each place associated with
particular ancestral songs, dances, and
painting. The form is the 'restored behaviour'
of ritual, resources upon which people can draw.
- Participants in this ritual select from
particular places on the journey and so organise
them in a sequence to move the 'body' from a to
b. A dance is then performed from a place, a
series from another, a painting will be made
from a third, a ground sculpture from a fourth
and so on...-Many alternative routes could be
taken. In the case of the Mardarrpa child the
choice was between the coastal route or the
inland route, the latter being chosen. Decisions
like this are based on multiple factors to whom
the dead person is related, who offers to take
part in the ceremony, which groups decide to
stay away. It is thus an affirmation of
friendship, also trust since it involves using
one's own spiritual powers and restricted
knowledge on behalf of others. For the Mardarrpa
child the journey began with a dance led by Yama
Munungurritj that represented the yellow ochre
ancestors from Yarrwidi Gumatj nearby at
Gururrga Bay the site of a big yellow ochre
quarry associated with the child's clan, the
Mardarrpa. The ancestors were portrayed walking
along the beach searching for yellow ochre
deposits. They dragged their digging sticks
behind them and held sacred woven-string dilly
bags gripped between their teeth. Every so often
the dancers would stop and dig the sticks into
the ground, representing ancestors levering up
bits of ochre which they tested the quality of
by rubbing on their own bodies. The highest
quality ochre happened to be found in front of
the shade where the child's body lay through
this enactment the ancestors found the child's
spirit, which would them commence it's journey.
3- The dance allowed the anger and pain felt at the
child's death. The dilly bag gripped tightly in
the mouth was not simply for collecting the
ochre it contained the anger and anguish of the
bereaved. The journey then unfolds itself
through time space as macrocosm and microcosm,
implicate and explicate. - A 'key' component was
provided by the coffin lid. Among the many
designs that could have been chosen in this case
it was one that belonged to another clan
grounded on the journey at a place about half
way on the spirit's journey the painting
represents a place on the Gaargarn River where
the waters flood in the wet season and where a
fish trap is set up by blocking off the stream,
it represents in its details the fish trap at
Gaargarn the diamond patterns signifies the
raging torrents of the wet season floodwaters
over the site of the fish trap streamers of
weeds extend from the limbs of the freshwater
tortoise and mark patterns on his shell. In
songs and dances the participants referred to the
same floodwaters carrying the coffin on its
downstream journey and onward to the great snake
who swallowed it and took it to the coast. This
was the snake whose ribs were used, in turn, to
make the fish traps in the ancestral past.
Finally the journey ends at the graveside when
dancers acting as crocodiles 'buried' the child
in the crocodile's nest, for it was from the
crocodile at Gunmurruytjpi that the child's
conception spirit had come. 'Each element woven
in a complex way into the whole, yet each
existing independent of it's context to resonate
in the minds and memories of those taking part.
- For those confused as to the relevance of such a
contribution in this virtual place may I offer
off the 'top of my head' the article in The Dance
of Change 'Moving Upstream from Measurement' H.
Thomas Johnson. pp 291-298. (A man who IMHO
moved his own river and so may yet shift a mighty
nation from another kind of slumber from which
it is not yet, quite, too late to awaken itself.)
But you will all and each be the best judges of
that -) But for those with a disinclination to
read backwards, sideways and maybe even forwards
this might make it plainer. " Perhaps Johnson was
resonating with this point when he said that 97
percent of what matters couldn't be measured and
conventional measuring was tampering
manipulation without genuine understanding. He
seemed to recognize that many of our deepest
frustrations come from an inherent sense of the
natural way of life, lost in the process. Lost
in the process...Mmmmm. - With Care,
- Andrew Campbell