A little while ago I started lala (live art list australia). It emerged due to a number of different reasons.
The first was a visit to New Zealand where i went to the ada (aotearoa digital arts) conference. I was impressed with the way they had put together a cohesive mailing network where people contribute and share ideas amongst each other in a relatively simple way.
It made me reflect a lot about my own community and how it functions. Something that we had already started out of the back of pvi collective’s symposium in 2008 was a loose collection of artists who would meet monthly in an informal gathering. We came together out a shared understanding of the gaps in the system for work that didn’t fit the structures that existed. We were broadly talking about work that was not theatre, dance or visual art. Work that defied genre. Work that asked something different of the artist/audience relationship work that didn’t necessarily have an output that was a show with seats in it, that wasn’t a group of items placed on a wall or in a room. A show that might continue for a day, a week or years.
Finally, I think it was a want, a need to reach out to people in other places and to connect them in a place online. This work and this large country can be isolating. I spent the last three months of 2008 in Perth and as much as people say it isn’t a problem, I feel like it is. Even in Melbourne and Sydney there can be a feeling of isolation. Perhaps this venture will fall over, but i can only hope that there is enough work to talk about that it can feel like things are alive in live art in Australia.
