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Personally, I feel immensely privileged to have been part of Cementa_13. Not because I was chosen to be a participating artist – which is an honour and privilege in itself (Thank you Anne, Alex & Georgie) – but because of a small group of Kandos locals who opened the town up to me with their writing.
Each staging of The Spectral Committee is preceded by an open call for “ghost stories”, with a particular emphasis on works from the wider community in the vicinity of the location where the staging will occur. The contributions I receive often take the project in directions I never anticipated, and I always hope that I can express my gratitude for these unexpected gifts by recording or presenting them in a way that does them justice.
Thanks to the efforts of Leanne Wicks, I was gifted with four works by local writers – two by Leanne herself, one by Colleen O’Sullivan, and another by Cos, a radio identity and employee at the local cement works. Through her connections, I also acquired a piece by a professional out-of-town writer that was based on a cherished local legend – the Lady Bushranger, Jesse Hickman.
By no stretch of the imagination could any of these pieces be classified as a traditional “ghost story”, but every single one of them engaged with “ghosts” of the town in ways that were both touching and compelling.
Leanne’s two pieces were poems that focused on prominent historical tragedies – one was an epitaph for a mother and child killed in an early 20th C train accident; the other was an apology for an 1824 massacre of the local indigenous population filled with flatly-delivered anger and remorse. Colleen’s piece was effectively an “anti ghost story” – a prose work that began with an exercise in “peering over a neighbour’s fence” and ended with a closely-observed description of a local eccentric designed to transform him from a “ghost” to a “real person” via the careful accretion of details about his life.
But the piece I felt most honoured to receive was The Conveyor of My Life by Cos. Cos had passed away last year and this piece was taken from either a diary or notebook. It wasn’t about death, but rather about life; about its dreams and its frustrations, all explored metaphorically through descriptions of the daily grind of a conveyor belt operator. And it was a song – one section of it was mark “CHORUS” – but no one had ever heard sung. I thus decided to give it a melody and double-tracked myself singing and reciting the piece.
Leanne approved of what I had done, but I hope it would have pleased him because this is the final part of the project – “returning” the works to the writers as recorded performances.
Leanne got to listen to her pieces at the museum and I was gratified that she seemed moved and excited by what she heard. Then, at Leanne’s insistence, I played Colleen and Cos’ pieces over the PA at the Poetica night. Colleen was in attendance, and she came and thanked me – I don’t think she had heard her story performed before…
Beyond the personal impact Cementa had on me through the works I was given, I was charmed by the convivial atmosphere of the whole festival, and relished the chance to meet so many artists who I had only known of by name in Sydney; and, without exception, they proved to be not only inspiring individuals, but wonderfully warm and friendly people.
I only have two regrets about Cementa – firstly, because I was so busy with my own project and the occasional equipment run to Mudgee, I didn’t get a chance to sample all the amazing works in the festival; and secondly, because of technical hitches, I was unable to get the augmented reality version of the Sydney Harbour Bridge up in the main street of Kandos. I was nonetheless grateful that I got the chance to meet Rowan and Sage, the two talented and inspiring high school students who came up with the Kandos Bridge idea and created the model. (Hopefully, the project will come to fruition at some point in the future…)
I haven’t been an artist for very long and Cementa_13 was easily one of the highlights of my short career.
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