The Politics of Architecture
Presented in association with the Louis Laybourne Smith School of
Architecture & Design
Delivered by Peter Sellars
5 October 2000
Peter Sellars is the Artistic Director for the 2002 Adelaide Festival of
Arts. He is one of the leading theatre, opera and television directors
in the world today. Sellars has a deep interest in the intersection
between the political, social and design spheres and offered a thought
provoking address.
Elizabeth Ho, Director of the Hawke Centre, welcomes the State Leader of the Opposition, Mr Mike Rann and other VIP guests; and notes an apology from Professor Denise Bradley, Vice Chancellor of the University of South Australia.
Elizabeth Ho
I would also like to welcome other senior members of the university. I
would particularly like to welcome members of the Louis Laybourne Smith
School of Architecture and Design and Councillors and officers of the
City of Adelaide, representatives of the Adelaide Festival of Arts,
representatives of the Capital City Project, of the North Terrace
Redevelopment Project and Planning South Australia, members of the Royal
Australian Institute of Architects and other professionals involved in
planning and design. We are very pleased to have all of you here, even
if you do not fit into any of those categories!
The format of the evening is that we will hear from Peter for
approximately an hour. There will be a short question time of up to 15
minutes followed by a vote of thanks. Can I draw your attention to the
Mind Space brochure which is sitting on your seats if you have not
already picked it up. This lists a number of upcoming events which
relate to this wonderful topic of politics, space, design, architecture
and arts and as usual it is Adelaide putting the collaborative foot
forward. A number of people are involved and we hope that members of
this audience will become involved with it.
I would now like to issue an extremely warm welcome to Kaurna Elder,
Josie Agius to perform a traditional welcome for us to Kaurna land.
Thank you, Josie.
Josie Agius, Kaurna Elder
Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Kaurna elders and the Kaurna people I would like to welcome you here tonight in this theatre to hear some very good speaking, I hear, and to know that we are on Kaurna land and I know that we all respect the land that we are on because it belongs to all of us and it is good to share with each other, I know. So let us work together as indigenous and non-indigenous people, walk together in peace and harmony. I would like to say thank you for inviting me here tonight to welcome Mr Sellars and other people and I have heard him, so you are in for a treat, I think. I would just like you to say thank you very much for the invitation and I hope you enjoy the night. Thank you.
Elizabeth Ho
Thank you, Josie. Now, Peter promised me that he plans to light a fuse tonight but we cannot let him start the fire without a rousing welcome and this is to be the very pleasurable duty of Professor Michael Rowen, Pro Vice Chancellor for Education, Arts and Social Sciences. Michael's portfolio is a very extensive one but for tonight most importantly it includes art, arts, design and architecture. Thank you, Michael.
Professor Michael Rowan
Pro Vice Chancellor,
Education, Arts and Social Sciences,
University of South Australia
Thank you, Liz. It is my pleasure to introduce to you Peter Sellars this
evening. As we all know, Peter is the Festival Director of our next
Adelaide Festival of Arts and we wait with eagerness, as I am sure you
will appreciate, Peter, we always do, to see what this brings and how we
can each of us work out how to gobble up as much of the experience that
will be on offer as will be possible for us to do. We look forward to
2002 with great anticipation.
We know that you are one of the leading theatre, opera and television
directors in the world having directed more than 100 productions, large
and small, across America and throughout the world. You are a graduate
of Harvard University. You have also studied in Japan, China - I must
say I have been to China twice this year and I have totally fallen in
love with it - and I have a renewed interest in architecture in this
town having seen what extraordinary buildings the Chinese are building
in their rapidly modernising cities and feeling so bored with my city
when I get back. So I have got a match for your fuse as well as you if
you have not got it running.
You also studied in India before becoming Artistic Director of the
Boston Shakespeare Company and then at the age of 26 Director of the
American National Theatre at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC. Peter
is a recipient of the McArthur Prize Fellowship and was recently awarded
the Erasmus Prize at the Royal Dutch Palace for his contributions to
European culture. In 1990 and 1993 Peter was the Artistic Director of
the Los Angeles Festival, a large-scale, grass-roots, international,
inter-cultural and inter-disciplinary civic experiment in mobilising the
arts.
In an ABC TV interview in August 1999 Peter talked about cultural
activism in the new century and put forward the view that the function
of humanities was to build a safe and secure society based on an
understanding among peoples and in reference to the Adelaide Festival he
said, "We are going to use the Adelaide Festival as a point of focus in
this country and that is going to attract the world's attention because
the issues that need to be discussed here need to be discussed
everywhere. I would like to think that in Australia and in this next
generation we have an amazing opportunity to take a leadership role and
to face the issues that are urgent all around the planet, to face them
here with courage, invention, skill and the hard part, generosity. This
is the moment where Australia moves into a leadership role, not
following, because we have seen enough examples. We need new ones.
Cultural life will be our laboratory. The research and development wing
needs to be supported and let us build the next society."
In that vein of cultivating cultural development Peter has kindly agreed
to be with us this evening to share his thoughts about the politics of
architecture. As one role of universities is to foster and encourage
intellectual thought and debate, The Hawke Centre, together with the
Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design at the
University of South Australia, is delighted that Peter has agreed to
give us his insights in this topic and that you, our magnificent
audience this evening, are here to witness him, as Liz put it, light a
fuse in the politics and architecture keg.
Peter brings to the topic of politics and architecture a well-travelled
and experiential view of the relationship between art and life and more
than this, a stated commitment to building those relationships through
the Adelaide Festival of Arts. He also brings a willingness to be
honest, refreshingly so, about what he sees around him in terms of art,
architecture and design and how this relates to our public life. He has
been quoted as saying, "When I came to Adelaide I was shocked because,
you know, in downtown Adelaide there are just more ugly buildings than
you can imagine. Many extraordinary architects are doing what is
absolutely path-breaking here. The question is: where is this work in
our public life?"
Peter's criticisms about architecture in Adelaide relate to, among other
things, the need for Adelaide to retain a human scale, fitting with our
enviable lifestyle, not to emulate necessarily larger cities which have
made many mistakes but to chart our own way and to value the importance
of our public space. This evening's topic will give Peter, I am sure,
plenty of space to range over these and other things in the politics of
architecture. Please join me in making him welcome.
Peter Sellars, Artistic Director of the 2002 Adelaide Festival of Arts
That was quite an introduction. My gosh, I am not used to so much
substance coming beforehand. That is great. Do you mind if I just roam,
free-range chicken tonight, just get a little space going here. Ladies
and gentlemen, good evening. Thank you so much for coming. Tonight's
topic of course was selected for us by The Advertiser and I am very,
very grateful because it just has stirred up a hornet's nest which is
terrific because in this city, I have to say, things must be done. It is
pretty dire out there needless to say. The charm of the building that we
are in, of course, was not lost on people coming up those stairs but the
fact is right now I do believe a society that is able to build something
that you actually want to be in, it is a function of vision, it is a
function of what kind of world do we want to live in and now let us
build it, let us construct it.
It is the ability to get from the vision and the imagination, to the
blueprint, to the ground-breaking, to put it into practice. In other
words, to live your life actually putting into practice the things you
believe in, as opposed to saying: "I believe in a bunch of these things
but actually, I go to work every day and do something else." Right now,
the big task is for us as a society to put forward things we actually
believe in, and follow them through. This question of embodying your
beliefs rather than just talking about them, as you know is practised in
many cultures in South-East Asia just near us; I am thinking of two
primary art forms and they are related, dance and architecture.
Why? Because it is not just enough to talk about something, you have to
inhabit it, you have to prove it with your body. So in South India you
just do not recite the sacred scripture, you levitate. It is that idea
of directly employing it as healing practice, as taking everything you
believe in and you care about and using that to transform your life, the
lives of the people around you. Architecture is a way of taking that
process and making it civic, a real society, and of course one of the
things that just knocked me out when I first got to Australia was how
many extraordinary architects here in Australia are making Australian
architecture.
It is not like American architecture, it is not like European
architecture. It really is completely unique and they are all making
private homes - for a handful of people who can afford it and have the
interest, these beautiful sites, majestic, hidden away, ecologically
intelligent; and then you turn around and look at this country's public
works. This is the task now. Can we make public space for a public? Who
is the public? What are we trying to say by democracy? Why are we so
intent on constructing and sustaining a democracy? That is, I think, one
of the biggest questions right now.
We have inherited from the British Isles a beautiful tendency towards an
inside job, an aristocratic approach: the best people know the best
people and that solves that and no further discussion is required. I
think the task with public space is that democracy all over the world is
in its infancy. Right now nobody is that good at practising it. Right
now it is in a lot of trouble everywhere. In my country most people
don't vote and if you saw the debate last night you will know why. There
was absolutely no debate. All over the world people are waiting for
leaders, people are waiting for someone who will stand up and use their
voice to say something they actually believe in.
That is the task right now and right now people are waiting. It is a
very, very intense situation because there is so much that needs to be
done and needs to be said and so few people are willing to stand up in
public and say it and do it. So what happens is we get public work that
says nothing and does not do much more. This sense of absence, this
sense of blankness, this sense that a movement in architecture which was
modernism which is very, very complicated, the Bauhaus, Mies van der
Rohe, all of this streamlined architecture at the beginning of the
century, the twenties and thirties, I actually have a personal theory
about. I think it was the first example in the century of ethnic
cleansing.
That is to say people like Stravinsky and Kandinsky, whose names are not
Smith, showed up in places like Paris and Berlin and said: oh, I am
cosmopolitan, I did not come from a little Russian village, my culture
was not formed in a shetl and I am going to act like I am from nowhere,
and I am going to act like I do not know my parents, and I am going to
create a culture which erases the Polish village I came from. I am going
to create a culture which erases the Russian village I came from - which
removes the ethnic roots, which says: oh, there is such a thing as
international style, we can all just be international, as long as you
have your Diners Club card you can go anywhere and do anything you want
- with no larger sense that one place is different from another place.
They made modern art that could be the same in Paris and New York. They
made an approach that was about: "okay, modernism does not belong
anywhere, it just exists universally". Of course, it went together with
marketing, the other great art form of the twentieth century, which
means you can get the same toothpaste anywhere in the world today, which
is really convenient if you use Colgate. At the same time what we are
missing is something else. For example, in the old days of travel it
used to be if you were going to China you would say to your friends:
"okay, I am going to Shanghai, see you in 25 years", because a trip to
China would take 25 years and it would change your life and you knew
that and you would spend 25 years, probably 10 years going there, 5
years staying there, another 10 years coming back and see by the time
you got back if any of your friends recognised you.
In Sufi parlance, travel is called cooking. You are raw and you travel
in order to become cooked, this idea that you yourself will change in
the process of travel, in the process of going somewhere. Now, we have
the same ugly Hyatt in Shanghai that we have in Adelaide and it is owned
by the same Singapore real estate company. Amazing. The idea is you do
not have to change your life to go to Shanghai. You can be your same
self in Shanghai and there is a Hyatt Hotel you can go to that will make
sure you do not have to change who you are.
So this culture of some things the same everywhere and we just need the
identical supermarket, the identical convention centre, the identical
everything everywhere so you can go to whatever city and find all the
same things you are looking at and looking for. Now, I would say that is
a side of modernism that turned out not very well and in fact, just in
terms of building procedures, it produced a lot of ugly buildings that
by now we can genuinely say do not age gracefully. They really look bad
as they live longer. The Bauhaus style apartment blocks turned out to be
the model for urban housing projects, estate housing I think you call it
here. What you do with poor people is you destroy blocks and blocks of
flats and you build these gigantic, undifferentiated places where people
live anonymously.
Now, in America we found out that those are centres of violence, suicide
and genuine pain. All that streamlining certainly gave the developer a
profit, but the society is going to be paying off this debt for
generations. This question of what it means when you put up housing for
people and you put public architecture in place that is cold, brutal,
heartless, without cultural reference points, culturally blank. In other
words, the centre of people's life is their television set because their
environment itself is completely sterile and there is nothing you can
look at apart from your TV set that would remind you that there is a
world we live in that has values, because none of those values are
available in your horrible front door, your horrible front window that
does not work, the really bad kitchen.
In no place is there a statement of any other value than cheapness,
cutting a corner, trying to get something for nothing and this whole
question of what architecture represents of the great moments in history
which is when people cared enough to build something that was more than
functional. Yes, it is functional but you do not congratulate yourself
with that, you do not say: "wow, function, we got it". Like Carnegie
Hall is definitely functional but it is Carnegie Hall. It is a beautiful
place to be, it is magical, it is exhilarating, it has class, it has
style, it has presence, it has beauty, it has in the decoration the
sense that somebody cares.
They did not have to spend all that money, they did not have to go to
all that trouble. You know what? They did. They did that little extra
bit that said: "you know what, somebody actually cared once and was
doing more than the bare minimum". It is an amazing way to live a human
life, is to aspire to more than the bare minimum and for a society to
reach further than that, for a society to say: "actually we are here to
create a generation of the most exciting, brilliant, spiritually
illuminated human beings that have ever been on the planet and what we
want for our kids is to grow up in a paradise. We want our kids to be
surrounded with learning, with pleasure, with intelligence, with beauty,
that is what we want for our kids and that is why we are not going to
build some crappy school, we are going to build a school that is
inspiring".
Now, I mentioned when I was talking in the Town Hall that when my
country was coming out of the Depression in the thirties we had
something called: The Works Progress Administration, the WPA. What was
very impressive about that - I mean, I must say we have a little bit
forgotten that. Our current approach to homelessness is to put people in
gaol but in the thirties the idea was that these are not bad people just
because they are poor. It is actually about deep belief in every human
being and saying actually if you believe in people they are capable of
amazing things and if you do not believe in them then you might as well
just throw them out.
The task is to believe in people. The task is not to constantly set up
cycles of dependency for people who you do not actually believe in. The
task is to understand human beings are amazing and they need to be given
the occasion. WPA took all these homeless and out-of-work people and
rebuilt bridges, libraries, schools and post offices and to this day the
backbone of America - I mean, it is my theory of why America was able to
go in and be heroic in World War II - is actually because it had
invested in itself, a country coming out of a depression in the previous
decade. America had invested in itself and it said: actually we are
going to take the poorest people in this country and put them to work;
we are going to employ artists; we are going to employ historians; we
are going to employ community organisers and we are going to make a
period that is a renaissance, that is a resurgence of national strength.
That is when the United States emerged on to the national scene after
one decade of investing in itself and investing in the worst
neighbourhoods and the people who were at the lowest point. That
heroism, that can-do America that went into World War II, that emerged
out of World War II as a powerhouse, that is the task. That did not just
happen because it was an accident or historical moment. That truly was
because the decade before America invested deeply in itself and
literally in its poorest. It was binding up the weak and broken-hearted.
It was an actual gesture of belief in every person on the street.
I should show you some of those programs. It created the greatest
theatre in American history. Orson Welles Mercury Theatre came out of
the Works Progress Administration. They did a series of spectacular
living newspapers, including one of my favourite shows called: Power,
which is: who owns the power company and why and how come we all do not
own it and how come electricity is not free? That is another topic.
Anyway, interesting question because there is a lot of money moving and
the question is how does that money move and who gets it and what is
that money being used for and how is it being shared back into the
society?
So this idea of mailing a letter is one of the big events of my day in
Venice Beach where I live because the post office in Venice was part of
the Works Progress Administration. You go into this adorable building
that says: my God, I live in Venice, it is so cool, I love living here.
You go in and there are these murals on the wall. First of all there is
beautiful woodworking everywhere. None of this tacky formica but it is
woodwork, beautiful woodwork, California redwood, interior of the post
office. Then all around the post office are murals of the future of
America, as imagined in 1932, that are just inspiring to this day.
So just mailing a letter as an average citizen my day is lifted, my
thought is lifted, my imagination is opened, my sense of possibility is
refreshed, my sense of purpose is renewed. I am energised by going to
the post office and mailing a letter. The idea is that there is no
moment of your day where your imagination should not be ignited, where
you should not be invited to some new horizon and that is what we are
talking about, about public architecture. We are talking about waiting
for the bus; we are talking about crossing the street; we are talking
about going to the park; we are talking about simple moments in your day
which are either an energy drain, dull you out, make your mood worse, or
are that moment of inspiration, refreshment, surprise, learning,
insight, discovery.
Now, recovering from this period of architecture which has been so
errored and I would say we are really coming from a very, very painful
period where, I think the easiest way to say it, easiest way to look at
it is, most architects for the last three generations have had no clue
how to decorate a building. Just there are no details that are
interesting enough. Decoration is in crisis because everything is being
pure. So the simplest little pleasure of: I was here, you know, all we
have, a lot of the 20th century is just the world's largest invitation
to graffiti. All you want to do is just take this wall out of its misery
and spray paint all over it, you know, because this wall is so uptight
and you just want to say: "relax, it is fine". You just want to come out
and do the place.
What does it means that a building has meaningful detail on it, well,
for one thing is that the building breathes. The detail is what gives
the building dimensionality and structure and lets there be space,
aerates the building. There are not these big, solid slabs of surfaces
but in fact it is what articulates the surface, invites you in, invites
you out, lets breathing occur. All of this decorative surface is what
lets the whole thing breathe and be alive and it is where buildings can
come to life.
Now, again if you are on a certain type of budget or if you are
impressed with sheer volume and sheer surface, then there is no
decoration. But I think we are moving into a new period where what we
will insist upon is like Gothic cathedrals, that every surface be
articulated and be articulated beautifully and interestingly. Gothic
cathedrals are these extraordinary records of the people who built them
with the people who built them are all up and down the walls and you see
them, the walls are alive with statuary and sculpture. Those buildings
are speaking to you. They are records of everyone who lived there and
you cannot mistake the cathedral in Chartres for the cathedral in Paris.
They are really different and you can see from the cast of characters
right on the front door.
You cannot miss it, that sense that this building is going to talk about
who is here now, what they have been doing, what is on their minds, what
they are going for, what their aspirations are, what their genuine
struggle is. That is articulated in the surface of the building. Now,
this sense that our buildings can speak for us is a really important
thing because you cannot change the world until you can first stand up
in public and articulate it. Coming from a country that created
something called the: Declaration of Independence - if you want to be
independent, hello, declare it first. There has to be that space for
declaration, that space for public saying: this is where we want to go,
this is what we mean, we are not there yet but we are going to declare
it.
This architectural gesture of the public declaration which is laying out
something you want to aspire to so you can move towards it. Again you
are not there yet but it is about a vision. It is about where we are
going, not where we already are, where we might go. Can we articulate
that in public so that every day we can all look at it, comment on it,
reflect on it, add to it, discuss it. Again these cathedrals are the
works of generations. Lots of people have lots of input. There is lots
to discuss. These buildings are the reflection of that discussion. So
this sense, which I think is really important, that right now in our
generation we are going to articulate architecture differently.
May I underscore one more key point which is this question of social
justice. We are living in a period where anybody who has the most money
is looked up to. Bill Gates is, I will say, definitely the greediest
person on the planet but there are more interesting things going on and
this is the time now, grass-roots level, where I think most of the world
is wearying of this kind of gigantism, this sense that the only solution
is big and bigger and bigger and joining larger and larger corporate
entities. People are realising the quality of life in a giant corporate
entity is not what they had imagined and, in fact, the quality of life
you are looking for is in a community, is intimate, has pleasure, has
shared experience and a whole series of other things.
So to me the reason I came to Adelaide and the reason I was so excited
to be here, and actually still am excited to be here, is because I think
South Australia is where the future not only of this country is going to
be written, but where the future of the industrialised world is going to
be written. To me I am really interested in being surrounded by the
detritus of what did not work here in South Australia. That is
spectacular. In case you thought it worked, take another look. The proof
is staring at you in the face. Okay, South Australia becomes the key
place where the alternatives are going to be developed and this is where
the leadership is right now.
The idea that this is the first place in the industrialised world that
will go green, that really is: the future is in olive groves and
wineries, and IT and this whole idea that you do not have to damage the
planet to live here and that South Australia will be the first place to
demonstrate that and that people will in South Australia connect quality
of life not just as a dopey brochure for a yuppy holiday package, but
quality of life for social justice, quality of life as what it means to
live well, to live in harmony and balance with the planet. Quality of
life, which is what everybody everywhere on the planet is looking for,
believe me, here you have the best chance to get there and develop the
alternatives here first.
I am so impressed that already South Australia is the IT-wired state in
Australia. South Australia is way ahead of the rest of the country in IT
development and this leadership is really crucial. It is what is so
exciting for the rural population here, as obviously isolation is one of
the nightmares of living in this far-flung manner in rural South
Australia. And I have to say no doubt one of the reasons I was brought
to town was Adelaide is a long way from London. Everyone says: "why
cannot we bring a little of London here, please, just once every 2
years?" What is so great is the internet. Everybody is connected,
everybody is wired and people are talking, particularly youth now.
Youth are talking all over the planet and conversations are going
between Adelaide and New Delhi. Conversations are going between Adelaide
and Johannesburg, conversations are going between Adelaide and Los
Angeles and New York and London. It is IT. The idea that this IT
initiative is moving full blast in this state is so crucial and is very,
very, very impressive. It means buildings can be intelligent. It means
all kinds of parts of our lives can be newly intelligent. That is
really, really crucial and at the same time to go with it the organic
movement, this question of organic farming, obviously this question of
the wineries, that is a future, that is an amazing future.
To articulate that future at this moment and to, at the same time, put
historically what South Australia and Adelaide has stood for which is
the sense of tolerance, this sense of open-mindedness, which now I think
needs to be reflected in a series of civic projects. That is to say, as
you know, tolerance and open-mindedness, like democracy, they are lovely
but highly perishable. It is amazing how 5 minutes after remarking how
tolerant we are and how this is the only city not founded by convicts,
we are trying to pass a dry zone in this city. Tolerance, hello? Hello?
Where are the convicts? These are really serious questions, these
questions of tolerance, these questions of open-mindedness, of
maintaining a civic culture of open-mindedness.
It must be maintained. It does not just stay by itself. Like democracy,
well, like raising your kids, you have got to work at it every single
day. It is not that Billy was fine when he was 10 so we do not have to
worry about it. Billy is a teenager now, get ready. You have got to stay
in there every day and what I am talking about, these monuments to
tolerance is: could Adelaide, city of churches, city of freedom, city of
tolerance, city of generosity, city of open-mindedness, please
articulate these values in the public sphere so that they are there for
all to observe, to be reminded of, so the bar is raised for everyone
that walks in this town that this is what this city is standing for and
is based on, that there are values in this city and these values are in
our public places, our public architecture?
Now, I would just say for me one of my greatest pleasures is the Botanic
Gardens here and when I think of public space that is so exciting
because you go in there and it is non-stop surprise, fun, contrast,
delirium, craziness, range of cultural reference, really inspiring
place. What are the new cultural references? Well, it is very
interesting. Can Adelaide articulate the reality of its Muslim culture?
Can Adelaide articulate, you know, what does it mean that we have the
first Chinese mayor in Australia of a major city? That is big deal. This
is really extraordinary stuff. Can we have public images of this city
moving forward, of this state moving forward, because frankly human
beings are capable of amazing things unless they are depressed,
demoralised and their energy has dissipated.
Why I love that it says, "The Festival State" on the licence plates here
is: let us juice it, let us heat it up, let us get festive. Enough of
hanging around looking all sad. Let us go there, put your foot on the
gas pedal and go. Let us go into the future. Let us not run from the
future, let us run into it, towards it, embrace it, go there 100 per
cent. Now, most people are a little timid about that and they need the
public encouragement of a tell wind, a ground swell, a movement, because
that is what it is about right now. It is not about little individual
people doing this and that. It is realising: hello, we are alive, a
movement. This is a generation that is transforming the culture and the
civilisation and it is happening here and it is happening now and we are
articulating that in a series of public works.
Now, when I say public works, I really must emphasise the kind of
process the Adelaide Festival - as most people in this room probably
know, the 2002 Festival will be devoted to truth and reconciliation,
ecological sustainability, rights of indigenous peoples, right to
cultural diversity really. What do I mean by that? I just mean: does
anyone have a right not to be American? You know, will all culture have
to be this mass culture that is given to our kids every single day or
can we have our own culture and our own cultures and live in ways that
are unique to here? The reason I came from Los Angeles to Adelaide is
Adelaide is unique and I was interested in it.
I am happy that Adelaide is not Los Angeles and everything that makes
Adelaide more like Los Angeles makes me sad. Everything that makes
Adelaide more like Adelaide makes me really interested and want to go
back to Los Angeles and say: see what people can do. That is right now
the task, not to let things go the way they have gone in the major
American cities. Not to go in this direction of gigantism, in this
coldness of public works, this coldness of public life, but instead
towards the actual heat that was the foundation, Colonel Light's
foundation and, if I could say, the indigenous meeting place that
Adelaide always was. This special magical place between the hills and
the sea where all of these really crucial lay lines are all intersecting
and the deep, deep, deep power that is in this place in the world and
that has been here for centuries and centuries and centuries must be
respected, must be developed, must be understood, working with
indigenous people here.
So much of what is beautiful in this part of the world has been covered
with cement. What does it mean that this is actually the most fertile
land right here, we are on it, but it is mostly covered with cement, the
most fertile land in the state? Can we really renew Adelaide as a
garden, really re-invigorate that idea of a garden, deepen that idea of
a garden, the garden of paradise, you know, Ohler's [phonetic] Garden of
Paradise, that place of rest and recovery for all? This question of
repose, of respite, of pleasure, of peace, place for world peace, a
place for reflection, a place for imagination, a place for the
development of the spirit and the soul, a place for human beings to
inhale and exhale.
Not a factory, not a place to be driven, not a pushing, loud place but a
place of inner spaciousness where the greenery and the richness of what
grows is the urban image. This we have to learn from our indigenous
peoples here. So many of the Kaurna people have been so generous but it
is really time to take that on board very, very, very seriously and look
at what this place was before Colonel Light and then see the light and
enlightenment of Light's vision which is very real, this magical vision,
vision of that much greenery, that circle and the idea of Victoria
Square as a very deep place.
We really have to move beyond Victoria Square as a political football
and understand Victoria Square as a much deeper phenomenon which right
now in its current state is so unsatisfactory for everyone. We love
Rundle Street. Rundle Street is a very inspiring phenomenon if you have
money. When I am talking about public space I am talking about space
also for citizens who do not have money and I am talking about citizens
who have money are not more important than citizens who do not have
money because citizens are citizens. Every single human being is equally
important in the eyes of God and everyone else and can we reflect that?
Can we have beautiful public space for people with no money to sit down
and not worry about it?
That is going to be really, really crucial in this next period. I think
Adelaide in these next 200 years is actually going to truly begin to
fulfil its promise that in 1838 was a glimmer. I think it is now time
to, first of all, see the industrialised developments that did not work,
see where Sydney, Melbourne and so on are going. There is no point in
being the next Brisbane or Perth. There is a great, great, great, great
point in being the next Adelaide. The Adelaide Festival, as I mentioned,
is going to focus on these questions of reconciliation but again, as
Nelson Mandela suggested, perhaps the word "truth" should come first,
modestly.
How do we engage in truth-telling? How can we begin to open up our own
history? Obviously Australian history is a pretty fraught field but also
very mysterious. Let us open this up a lot more, please. It is way more
interesting than it looks. Let us get a little more real. For me the
cultural reality, you know, was the Chinese opera was here before
Western opera. That is very cool. The reality of the history here is so
much more interesting than the fantasy of the history. So it would be
really interesting to explore some of that and we are working on that.
Also this question of the ecological future because obviously this is
not just after-dinner conversation. This is a part of the world where
the question of salination is so urgent. It is not like just an
interesting thing to talk about. It is: hey, everyone, we have got to
deal. So you have been placed by God in a leadership position on this
question, which is fantastic. It means it is time to really make huge
strides and to be seen making strides. Now, I mentioned that the
Adelaide Festival when I first came here will not primarily be worked
from abroad but instead will be commissioning Australian artists to work
on the real issues here because I am tired of this notion that
Australian is second best when, in fact, it is just great.
I am coming from elsewhere and I am really interested in what is here,
and what I am seeing is really exciting. Talk about the dollar.
"Undervalued" I think is the word and I think right now here we have to
start valuing things and valuing the work of our artists and valuing the
voice of this generation. I always remember the second night of the Los
Angeles uprising and the city is in flames and helicopters are going all
over the place. I was having dinner with a woman named Bernice
Johnson-Reagon who would hate it if I said this but she was essentially
the Music Director of the Civil Rights Movement.
That is to say, when you see all those clips of Martin Luther King
marching through Selma and Albany and people are singing, that is
Bernice leading the singing. Of course, all these reporters were coming
up to Bernice that night and saying, "Bernice, Bernice, what do we do,
what do we do?" You know, we do not have Martin Luther, we do not have
Malcolm X, we do not have these leaders any more and Bernice very calmly
looked up from her dinner and said, "If you are waiting for a leader you
are not hearing the sound of your own voice." This is the time. This is
the moment and what the next few years are is Adelaide moving into this
new century not just slipping into it but really full blast.
We are trying to make the Festival a way to focus this sense of: this is
the state with a future; this is the state that is moving into that
future, engaging with that future. The reason we have picked
architecture, film and food as primary focuses of the Festival is
because those three art forms are under the most commercial pressure.
That is to say, most people working in those forms imagine they are just
service providers, and to be able to remind architects, film-makers and
cooks that they are artists, invite them to act like artists and take
the space that artists take and get the recognition, will be a pleasure.
To reduce some of the commercial pressure on those fields and again to
invite people in those fields to work with greater sense of idealism,
pleasure and imagination will be one of the main tasks and challenges of
the Festival. Now, one of the ways the Festival is structured is I have
hired eight Associate Directors and in turn we have a 20-person steering
committee of artists from across the country and those artists are
architects, film-makers, chefs, poets, a whole range of people who do
not normally see each other every Friday night, and different
combinations so the conversation really has to go deep.
The Festival itself is being programmed in working groups. Probably
about 300 people will end up choosing what is in the next Adelaide
Festival and developing it. So there is a group of artists from up and
down the Murray River working on the Murray River questions. We have
working groups around all of these questions because, of course, when
you are confronted with these things you say, "Well, this is more than I
can handle myself alone personally." What you want to do is get the most
interesting folks you can to gather and all work on it together, create
a space where the best ideas can begin to emerge.
Similarly as Adelaide and South Australia look forward to a series of
visionary architecture projects, I would suggest it is not so much
hiring the official genius to deliver the wacky building, although God
knows we approve of that in a certain way, more importantly right now to
me is the question of cultural engagement, is the question of beginning
to value people's view and points of view about what gets built. Now,
this is a little bit tender, I realise, but for me one of the problems
we had in the last couple of decades is there has been a lot of art but
not much culture.
What I mean is some balls get put up next to the bus stop and they are a
work of art but they do not mean a whole lot to people taking the bus.
They are just some balls over there. The question is, aside from putting
your balls around, are there other ways in which you can make a
contribution to public space? Is there a question of something that
would mean something to people waiting at that bus stop? How much work
can you go to actually take the trouble to meet people so that those
lives are recorded, so that every human life here is recorded, is
registered? Because, of course, one of the big crises around so much of
multi-culturalism where certain people from certain backgrounds look
around and everything reinforces their self-image - other people look
around and there is nothing in the environment that reflects them back.
They look everywhere without seeing any place where their own life is
reflected back to them and after a while if you cannot find a mirror in
the world you do not exist. So this question of how many different kinds
of mirrors can we create for how many different kinds of people, to say
all of these people are here and with us, not just in the image of a
handful of people but in the image of all the people taking the bus, in
the image of all the people taking the tram.
I do not just mean asking people what they want because that, as
politicians can tell you, does not necessarily get you that far because
if people could have what they wanted - I think you probably know that
the biggest hit sites on the internet are pornography and whatever -
mostly, I think as you know from just being a human being, usually what
you want is not a good idea.
I do not mean to just generalise but, just as a human being, chances are
if you want something it is probably not a very good thing and we mostly
need to be protected from most of the things that we want. Also if
people could have imagined it they would have done it already. It would
already exist, is my belief. I think most people have not yet been able
to imagine it and the question is how you create the focus groups that
give people permission to think outside the boundaries of their usual
thinking? So again to a very simple example. Obviously if you are around
a dinner table and somebody says something totally brilliant and
amazing, the unbelievably stupid thing you are about to say you do not
mention and you are just silent and you just chew on something for a
little while, take another three bites, take a drink of water and then
finally come back with your hugely revised thought.
So that is the kind of dinner party we need to invite everyone to, where
there are just a few more exciting ideas on the table that are more
stimulating than what most people get to see every day and that do wake
people up and that do say: "wait a minute". Well, if you ask the
question that way and then people's response is not the predictable
thing that they walked in the room with, but they themselves are
stimulated and that is the question right now, is not to leave everyone
where you found them but to create a process that allows everyone to get
past the first, second, third, fourth and fifth idea into the twelfth,
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth idea and in fact to realise that as
human beings on the face of the earth all of our ideas get better when
other people have engaged with them. That is a really very, very, very
important thing to being alive.
I constantly tell my students because we over-value drastically this
notion of self, when in fact who you are does not really exist. You are
just everyone you ever met and if you want to be a little more
interesting then meet some more interesting people, please. You would be
amazed, because you only find those parts of yourself when you are with
people who allow those parts of yourself to emerge that you have never
met before, and it is always those life experiences that are so
shocking, where you are in some horrible situation but actually you find
out things about yourself you never knew.
It is those ways in which we put ourselves out for the experiences we
did not expect. So how do you go about public planning along those
lines? That is what is interesting, that is what is exciting. This
question of throwing open the gates, having a genuine participation,
having the energy of a genuine democracy, because believe me, once
people are invited into the process they stay interested. Then you put
something by that bus stop and people are proud of it, they bring their
friends there, they drive by it and point it out and it tells their
children what is going on.
You know one of the most important public works projects that we did in
the Los Angeles Festival was around the Salvadorian community. It comes
to mind since I was proposing chaos theory and crisis as an approach to
public policy. In the 1990 Los Angeles Festival we invited 10
distinguished Latin American poets to come to Los Angeles because, as
you know, in Latin America poets are more distinguished by far than
heads of state and are really heroes for the people. So we had a
committee and they read lots of books of poetry and then invited their
10 favourite Latin American poets.
All 10 of these distinguished people accepted and we announced this list
of poets in the Los Angeles Times and we were feeling very proud. The
next morning I walked into my office to find it occupied by 50 very
angry Salvadorians. We had invited Davide Escobar Galindo, the right
wing extremist whose signature is on the peace documents with the Reagan
administration, who was Alfred Cristiani's closest personal friend, Mr
Cristiani who personally supported and created the death squads. So the
reason why there were all of these Salvadorians in Los Angeles was they
were fleeing for their lives from indeed these people. So the idea that
we had invited Mr Cristiani as a spokesman of Salvadorian culture was
horrifying.
Now, my problem was I had never met any Salvadorian artists in Los
Angeles. I met them that morning. We then had a really profound and
extraordinary Salvadorian program and we would not have if we had not
invited Mr Cristiani. We would just not have had a Salvadorian program
but because we invited Mr Cristiani, suddenly we had an extraordinary
encounter with Salvadorian artists and what they are doing in Los
Angeles. So in the next Los Angeles Festival we invited one of these
artists, Dagoberto Reyes, a sculptor, to create a sculpture.
His process in creating the sculpture was every two Friday nights a
month at El Rescate, the Salvadorian refugee centre in the Pico Union
area which is the most densely populated area in the United States. It
is intense and it is where all of these people are living, trying to
dodge the immigration authorities and it is a nightmare. They will not
let their children out of the house because they are afraid they will be
picked up so the children never go to school and, you know, on and on
and on and on. Dagoberto Reyes had every two Friday nights an open
exhibition where Salvadorians were invited to bring memorabilia,
photographs, objects, things about their previous life, how they
escaped, how they made it across the border and exhibit them.
This exhibit would stay up for the next 2 weeks but every Friday night
you would have the people talk you through the exhibit and what these
objects meant, the lives that were lost, the many lives that people have
had, people who again you would not look at twice on the bus, and you do
not realise that person three seats over on the bus escaped from a
Salvadorian prison camp, had their entire family slaughtered, got over
the Mexican border - God knows how - is missing her left breast because
it was removed in a torture session, was a university student in El
Salvador 17 years ago.
We are living with heroes right now here in Adelaide. You have not met
them yet. How do we meet the people we need to meet to realise giants
walk the earth and are among us, people of courage, beauty, vision? They
are here. So they shared their stories for 6 months and Dagoberto Reyes
made a large bas-relief sculpture called: Why we Emigrate. We installed
it in McArthur Park where it was the first permanent marker of the
Salvadorian community in the United States and all of the objects from
the exhibits are buried underneath the sculpture in a time capsule to be
dug up 100 years from now so their great-grandchildren will know why
there are Salvadorians in North America.
That is the kind of public art we are talking about. It is the kind of
public art that Australia felt deeply about at the end of the First
World War and at the end of the Second World War. I would ask you now to
update those memorials and ask us once again to ask what it is we care
about and believe in most and then to choose a place in the middle of
town and vision it, imagine it, build it. Thank you.
Elizabeth Ho
Well, that was a very stimulating hour but someone else is going to thank you very profoundly in a minute and that is Gini Lee, but before we do that we have got time for a few questions and we have got a couple of roving microphones. Over in the back.
Question from audience
My name is Joyce. Thank you for speaking and articulating what a lot of
people in Adelaide who are living in pain want said because they are not
being listened to. In particular I would like to ask you what we should
do. Two-and-a-half weeks ago a building was knocked down in Victoria
Square. It was an old building. For about a dozen years or so before a
lot of people around Adelaide had got together to work with creativity
and hope to be of some support to the Aboriginal people that meet there
and who meet in other places in Adelaide and 2½ weeks ago we failed
because on the Sunday morning of the Olympics opening weekend that
building was knocked down.
We do not know what to do now. One of the things you have said was
people can do great things if they are not depressed and demoralised. We
have seen over the last 200 years our indigenous people get depressed
and demoralised. We know there are lots of heroes here in Adelaide and
we are glad you recognise that in the indigenous people, in the refugees
that have come here, in all sorts of ordinary people that are living
with courage at a time when homelessness is the worst it has ever been
here in Adelaide in probably 200 years. What do we do because we are
demoralised and discouraged? What do we do if when we get together in
our neighbourhoods, in our concerned citizens groups, and somewhere,
somehow a hidden agenda is still knocking buildings down like it did 2½
weeks ago?
Peter Sellars
Thank you very much. I have to say it does seem a little crazy to be stripping buildings of their historical registration in a city that has really crucial old buildings.
Question from audience
I am sorry, can I just explain that that was a small building and it was a toilet block and the significance of it is that the Aboriginal people who met on the square and did not have anywhere else to go, had to use those toilets. When that happened about 20 years ago in Hurtle Square, Hurtle Square lost all the people that used to meet there and rely on the toilets. That is one of the reasons why it is so significant.
Peter Sellars
No, I mean, the politics of toilets are very serious and obviously are
used. Skid row in Los Angeles where again the same techniques were
attempted to remove all the toilets, there are over 600 people sleeping
there every night and in conditions that are fairly shocking. Everybody
is in these - you see them lined up - furniture boxes. The fire
department comes in at 5 am every morning with hoses and hoses them all
down, so you have got to be out of your box by then and of course that
destroyed that box so the search is on every day for the next box and so
on and so on. It is a very intense thing.
Finally there are portable toilets which are not in downtown Los Angeles
but we have had the same battle around the same lines in Los Angeles.
Again I think one of the things that is pretty exciting right now is, if
I could emphasise, this is a time to support youth, youth agendas, youth
initiatives. Right now I really feel very deeply that everything that
needs to be done in the world there are enough people to do it. It is a
question of mobilisation of the people who need to do it and frankly our
young people are being told that their only form of cultural expression
is their choice of, as consumers, which brand of sneaker they wear and
in fact the only way you can express yourself is as a consumer.
I think it is very, very important that our young people are allowed to
be active, activist and are out there doing things, building things,
helping out and doing what needs to be done and I think that is the most
important training and I just cannot tell you today, I feel this whole
session is under a special spell from Aunty Josie being here from her
work with Port Youth is one of the most inspiring things. Right down
there in the port, you know, Port Youth Theatre is out there taking
young people and giving them things to do and the things that needed to
be done and I think to me one of the most important lessons in life is
to, as a young person, be told and taught to not just get a job because
that is very demoralising and all you think is: I need to do something
for me.
Instead to turn that around. Do not say, "Get a job", but say, "Look
around you and see something on the planet that needs to be done". Now
do that because right now it is looking at you and you are going to make
another set of jobs, a whole new set of jobs is waiting. They need to be
created now. It is not that there are not things that need to be done.
There are things that need to be done and now we have to make those into
jobs. So that is the movement now, I would say really personally, I feel
very strongly. Most of my work is aimed directly at 17-year-olds and I
really do feel right now it is about mobilising young people and
encouraging young people to be participants in shaping the world they
are growing up in rather than passive consumers.
So those kind of programs are crucial and I had a great morning, as you
can tell, at Carclew House this morning and I am very wired because
there is a lot to be done and there is a whole generation to do it and
to me, I have said this in public in the past but I feel very strongly,
South Australia is a terrible place to be a young person. It just is. It
is just terrible to be young here and you see it from the suicide rates,
the attrition rates in school, it is very, very, very serious and I
think if we can make youth programs our priority and that means youth
working with the elderly, youth working with the homeless, engage youth
in problem solving because it is their world. Set them up for it,
prepare them for it, have them develop the skills and the compassion,
they have got everything else, and let us watch the transformation.
Elizabeth Ho
I think importantly that was a conversation more than a question and I think we have probably got time for just two more if we have any hands up. We have got some students here tonight too and I did not welcome them in the beginning.
Peter Sellars
I am going to come visit you guys next week because I meant to get over here to hang with the classes here. Next week I am going to come visit.
Question from audience
Peter, you know me. I am a musician so I am not qualified to talk about architecture but I have always been really fascinated by Hundertwasser who would go to a German city and convince them to make the most ugly building, maybe the incinerator building or something, he could turn it into a tourist attraction. I just see that as the most civilised thing that anyone could ever do but I do not understand how the hell you do that if you are not Hundertwasser and famous and sought out across the world. We have an abundance of ugly buildings and we cannot tear them down and they are going to be there and how actually do you create a culture that finds ways to renew that which is ugly?
Peter Sellars
Well, thank you. I mean, the Los Angeles examples are pretty
interesting. I mean, Frank Gary took this derelict warehouse in the
middle of downtown LA, two blocks from city hall and when the Museum of
Contemporary Art had its new building built they relocated there and it
was called the Temporary Contemporary. Of course, it has become one of
the great museums in the world, these two warehouses that were a rehab
in one weekend by Frank Gary, just because it needed a little care.
In the Adelaide Festival we are right now very, very, very, very, very,
very seriously fund-raising to try and make some of these things happen.
There is so much space right in downtown Adelaide that is waiting for
somebody who just cares to do something beautiful. Hundertwasser could
take any urban eyesore and of course it is a cafe now, of course people
go there. Anything you want becomes attractive if you care about it and
put in time. Again I try and draw the example, you know, since we are on
the edge of the desert here my favourite desert community is Florence,
Arizona which does not compare very favourably to Florence, Italy.
Florence, Arizona decided that their future was going to be in prisons
and it is the prison capital of America and they have non-stop prisons,
every kind: maximum security, super max, the whole range. They have
holding centres for immigration, the entire town is a town of prisons.
Florence, Italy took a different approach and if I may say, real estate
values are higher. So the question is: hire a bunch of artists and
create value because that is what artists do, they create value. We are
surrounded by profit and no value and most of the profit-making
operations have actually depleted value from the society. The question
is when will the society decide it is time to create value and that is
what we want to offer our kids.
Question from Audience
Thanks Peter for all that energy tonight and I guess I am listening to my own voice of leadership right now. One of the things that I have been thinking about in the last few weeks is how I can get involved in the process of creating a wave of determining the sort of airport that we want built because this is architecture but this also is the possibility that we have available for us to create something that reflects Adelaide and South Australia. I guess just thinking about it I probably need to have a sheet for all those people that want to be involved on that trip.
Peter Sellars
Wow, that is very exciting. Thank you. The airport is in a very exciting
place right now, a very exciting moment, and I would encourage people to
really get involved seriously. There are a couple of major projects that
are under way here in South Australia that I would really encourage
people to positively engage with because input is really needed. If you
have ever been in any room where most of these projects get done, it is
a bunch of over-worked people who are not evil, these are just the best
ideas they have that day. If there was a better idea they would take it.
I think one of the key things is to try and constantly present a rich
field of ideas, of opportunities, of alternatives and also to do it in
such a way, if there is any way to do it, that it is not this versus
that. To me we are in an age where it is not this or that. The obvious
answer is both and that is where you need an artist because art is about
bridging the contradiction. Art is about living in the contradiction.
Art is about not being frightened of a contradiction but being able to
have this side and that side represented and I think sometimes I am a
little misunderstood in the Festival because I am constantly trying to
take very hot political issues and work with them as an artist.
Of course, it is one of the biggest tasks is because an artist can work
within a way that is not merely politicised. Most issues are not
conservative and progressive. Most issues are humans and most human
beings have human reasons why they feel certain things. If you had their
life you would feel they way they feel. So it is not about they are
wrong and you are right, but it is about figuring out how you can make a
space that they can exist and you can exist, where the range is
represented, where the contradiction is rich not just frustrating. Where
the greatest art is the art that holds these oppositions in fantastic
tension and interplay across centuries so that 500 years later you can
still see people disagreed but it is all in that building and that
building keeps those tensions alive every day and that is its magic and
that is what makes it a living being and not a dead object.
The great buildings are living beings because the contradictions are
keeping them alive every day and that is the mark of great artists. So
my hope is that this airport is a vision and is a visionary enterprise
and does become an emblem for a part of the world that is entering the
future and not escaping from the past.
Question from audience
About young people getting involved in the arts. I am a desperately unemployed young person who would love to get involved in the arts. Where do I go tomorrow and say: here I am, how can I contribute, how can I help, give me work, without credentials?
Peter Sellars
Well, you know, one of the main things in life is start by getting
credentials and the way you get credentials is, again, do some work. You
want it now without credentials? Right. Speaking personally, when I was
10 years old I went and knocked on the door of a marionette theatre and
said, "Hello, I would like to apprentice", and for the next 6 years I
apprenticed and for the first 2 years I worked for free, for the third
year I got paid $2 a weekend and then eventually got up to $4 and it was
a very big deal. But what you do is you learn something by carrying
somebody's luggage, by cleaning the toilet, by mopping the floor and
meanwhile you are watching, you are taking it all in, you are taking the
phone calls, you are taking out the garbage, you are doing everything
that needs to be done, and meanwhile you are just watching and paying
attention.
Usually you do that with somebody you admire, somebody who is doing
something you would like to do or related to what you would like to do
or something you see. When you see something going on you say, "Yes, I
want to support that", and so you go and you support. You go knock on
the door and say, "I want to support your work. Can I help? Do not pay
me for the first year", or whatever. I think I mentioned to you maybe I
mentioned in one of my previous talks, I actually feel a lot of arts
work should not be paid. I like artists to be paid, do not get me wrong.
On the other hand I think once artistic practice became a career the
heart went out of a lot of it and actually it is something that we all
did just because we knew it would make our lives better rather than that
we would get any money for it.
It is actually a contribution you made rather than a career and so I do
not ever advise anybody to go into the arts for a career. In other
words, let us put it this way, a couple of years ago I was hanging out
with the Dagar Brothers who are the leading Dhrupad singers in India.
Dhrupad is the oldest, kind of the most ancient vocal art of India
pre-Vedic. They do not use words because words are too imprecise. They
always only sing with vowels and they have in their family - they are
the leading family - they have the school which goes back 500 years.
So I asked them what they taught in their school. They said, "Cooking
because you would never dream of accepting money for your art and what
you learn to do is feed people and then practise your art on the side",
and that is a really important thing just to have in mind always is to
feed people and then to practise anything you can on the side. A lot of
artists I think throughout history have had day jobs and that is a
really, really important thing because it keeps you in solidarity with
what is going on and with workers and what real working people are going
through.
I think again in the last two generations when artists could have
careers we ended up having a lot of art that was about art because most
artists did not know about anything else. So I think it is a really
interesting question right now, and again I do think artists should be
paid. Do not get me wrong. I want to pay artists in the Adelaide
Festival. Why we are raising money is so we can pay artists. The other
reason we are raising money is to open access because the more money we
can raise the more things can be for free and the more things can be in
more places all over the state and so that is what it is about. Please
come to the Festival. Start volunteering for us and we will hook you up
with somebody who needs to meet you and who you need to meet.
Question from audience
That brings me to another point which is, I mean, you are talking about working in the arts but if we accept the argument that the arts is about expressing ideas and improving social justice, things like that. Expressing ideas in itself in a forum is great, but what about the actual on-the-floor, person-to-person art that both engages people who perhaps do not know a lot about the arts, things like that. Do you know what I mean?
Peter Sellars
I think again I just have to emphasise one thing that we do as artists
that politicians cannot do, that doctors cannot do. It is about
restoring and empowering the whole person. If an arts experience works
correctly you leave empowered. You leave empowered to do anything you
need to do in your life and that is a very specific thing. It is not
that a bill was passed and now you are funded. It is that you yourself
are empowered and again I must emphasise, please, we have all accepted
this last 20 years, the tyranny of the budget, as if all of life is
about money. It is not. Most of the most important things in your life
are not related to money.
Please let us notice that, let us re-energise those parts of our lives
that are not in the budget and actually that are really important and
again are important to do anyway. When Martin Luther King decided to
march in Selma there was not a budget. It is something that needed to
happen and people did it because it was necessary. That is what I would
like to see now and I am hoping the Adelaide Festival is not an
entertainment option but it feels more like it is time to march.
Elizabeth Ho
End of four small conversations and I suspect the beginning of many, many more, but I would now like to ask Gini Lee who is head of our School of Architecture and Design to give thanks to Peter. Thank you.
Gini Lee, Head of School, Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design, University of South Australia
Thank you everyone and thank you, Peter. How do we start to thank you?
You have just started. We have got a couple of years here and I think
that what is really fabulous about what you have talked to us about
tonight is two things. First of all you are here and you actually do
want to talk about architecture, that is pretty fabulous, and in a kind
of an ongoing debate that is extremely inclusive and not just talking
about whether we like the buildings or not, although that is how the
notoriety started, I realise.
I think the other thing that you have been talking about tonight very
much is what the invitation is for architecture and how our whole
business of architecture and design is so much broader and that the
importance is that we start to deal with our culture and with our
society in ways that actually encourage us to make our own projects. I
think it is the kind of attitude to making that you are talking about
which is about involvement engagement and the ultimate artefact that
comes out of it. It is going to be so fantastic, the next Festival, and
we are rallying our cause with our students and we are looking forward
to you to come to see us. So we would like to thank you very much for
opening up all these kinds of ideas and we look forward to a kind of a
friendship that is going to happen over the next couple of years too I
think, so thanks very much.
Elizabeth Ho
I know many people have to move now but just a couple of things that I wanted to say. We are having our annual Hawke lecture which is our major event of the year on 8 November at the Adelaide Town Hall and our speaker will be Dr Mamphela Ramphele who is the Managing Director of the World Bank. She is speaking on human development and her background is really quite astounding. She has been a civil rights worker, partner to Steve Biko, she has been the first black woman ever to be appointed a Vice-Chancellor in South Africa and we think it is going to be an event, another ‘mind’ event. So please do book for that. There are some leaflets on the chairs, or give us a ring at the Hawke Centre and we will book you in. Thank you all very much for coming.