Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu √ and Marc Peckham √
Ngurra Kurlu (HOME): Creating an embodied understanding of desert culture through art

Prof Wanta Jampijinpa Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu and his 90 year old father Jerry Jangala Patrick are fully initiated First Nations Elders from the remote Warlpiri community of Lajamanu in the Central Desert of Australia. Alongside a 20-year history of creating the extraordinary large scale community performance event of Milpirri in collaboration with Tracks Dance Company for his remote community of 900 people, while also experiencing cultural loss of Elders and sacred knowledge at a devastating scale, Wanta had an increasingly urgent drive to share the importance of First Nations culture with wider Australia, beyond Warlpiri borders. The provocation was: How could one invite a distant urban audience into an embodied felt sense of a First Nations culture and worldview, across a seemingly insurmountable gap of distance, culture and language? This presentation introduces the Ngurra Kurlu (HOME) artwork, created by Wanta and Jerry in collaboration with award-winning music producer Marc Peckham, with whom they share a creative relationship spanning 14 years. Blending the sensory experiences of cinema, music, song, and intimate conversation, Ngurra Kurlu (HOME)explores the charged intersection of culture, politics and humanity in a quest for yapa and kardiya to re-imagine a post-colonial future together. The presentation includes screening of a trailer for the project.
Key words: First Nations art and new media; Warlpiri; Place-based belonging; Ngurra Kurlu (Home

Noramin Farid √, Dalisa Pigram √ and Rachael Swain √

Aliens who walked on land and under sea— embodying the survivance, surrealism and South-South allyship of the north west Australian pearl shell industry 1860s–1960s

This paper will identify the multi-modal sensory practices engaged in the making of Mutiara (2023), an intermedial dance work created in Yawuru land and sea Country, Broome, in remote north Western Australia. Mutiara takes 1860’s-1960s as a 100 year window to bring attention to the inhuman labour conditions, racist pseudo-science and brutal government policies that forged Broome’s fabled pearl shell industry. The production was co-created by members of Marrugeku, a Broome based Indigenous governed-intercultural performance company, in collaboration with guest artists of Singaporean and Australian Malay diasporas. Mutiara’s co-choreographers and dancers Dalisa Pigram (Yawuru/Bardi/Malay Filipina) and Noramin Farid (Malay-Singaporean) and dramaturg Rachael Swain (Anglo-settler) will share insights into the intergenerational, improvisational and intermedial processes applied in the making of Mutiara. Through case studies, images and documentation they will unpack how relational, community informed approaches enabled the experimental somatic, visual and conceptual investigations to embody and stage unsung Indigenous-Malay allyships of the global South.

Keywords: Dance, Malay, intercultural, choreographic-truth telling

All Panel Presenters

Panel discussion + Q&A with the audience.