Pemulwuy Dream Team
SBS Living Black coverage of the Pemulwuy Dream Team, September 2009 (please be patient, this is slow to load).
Boxing game by You Are Here, 2009
Video editing and deisgn: Zanny Begg and Keg de Souza
Software development: Andy Nicholson
Music sampled from Wire MC
 
 
Pemulwuy Dream Team is an interactive boxing game inspired by the legend of Pemulwuy who led Indigenous resistance to European settlement in 1788. The game grew out of animation workshops conducted during a Performance Space residency at the Redfern Community Centre in February 2008. The participants were asked to create a Pemulwuy “Dream Team” to continue the fight for justice but in the contemporary context - exploring the complex interaction between community, space and identity on The Block.
The game was filmed in the famous Tony Mundine Gym, training centre for Champion boxer Anthony Mundine and involves local residents who assume the identity of boxing heroes and take on opponents as diverse as dealers, developers and colonialists. The software was developed by Andy Nicholson and released under GNU license. The work makes an intervention into traditional gaming practices by transforming generic experiences of violence and competition into the specific context of Redfern. It invites the participant to step from the confines of the game and participate – intervene – in the issues of the local community.
Wasana and Naryma Dixon, The Twins, Pemulwuy Dream Team, 2009.
"The Battle for The Block is heating up at Mundine’s Gym tonight… we have an all out fight between the young challengers for the Lightweight Championship, The Twins, who will be hitting hard against the reigning champion, The Dealer, who holds the heart of Redfern in his fierce stranglehold. The Dealer has hooked in a lot of local support, but tonight expect a backlash against her addictive power.
The Twins - affectionately known to the locals as “Double Trouble” - have a creative training strategy which they hope will clean The Dealer right out of the ring. They work as a team – one going straight for the teeth and the other aiming for a single blow which will rub out the opposition.
They will need to polish their punches as the Dealer is notorious for her sly, illegal moves and low blows to the body. The Twins are lower in this weight range and have less experience in the ring but then again their opponent can be sluggish and often deals her blows from the corner. Who will win tonight? Be gob-smacked by the result…
In the far corner and wearing Black we have The Dealer, … in the near corner wearing Red, we have The Twins. Let the fight begin…"
This work is funded by the Inter-arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.
|
