Installation photographs, Over the Ditch, 2014.
Photomedia
installation, with found and donated photographs, ethnopoetry, and recycled timber.
Over the Ditch, which is part of On Islands Eramboo: Creative Collaboration Festival, is a collaboration between Andrew Gorman-Murray, Chris Brickell (University of Otago) and Anna De Jong (University of Wollongong).
On Islands Eramboo, 15-30 November 2014.
The Antipodes – Australia and New Zealand – are large islands
surrounded by the Pacific, Indian and Southern Oceans, sharing the Tasman Sea
as a fluidic border. There is a long history of island-hopping between
Australia and New Zealand, which share cultural traits and open borders.
Trans-Tasman crossings are colloquially called ‘hopping over the ditch’.
Over the Ditch is a photomedia installation that explores and visualises the experiences of gay men from Australia and New Zealand who have hopped over the ditch. The installation comprises found and donated photographs from seven men who crossed the ditch. They span a period of eighty-three years, from 1931 through the early post-WWII years to 2014. Many of these men wrote diaries, stories and blogs of their journeys too, and these texts are rendered as ethnopoetic verse to add layers to our sense of their experience over the ditch.
The installation takes the form of a journey, with 22 route-markers created from recycled timber, which present a sequence of visual and ethnopoetic narratives from the men. Materially, the route-markers invoke ideas of breaking down fences, journeying through life, and seeking a place of belonging.
Hopping over the ditch is significant for these men. Experiences
on the other side of the Tasman shape subjectivities, identities and cultural
worlds and issues social and political messages. Sydney has been a symbolic and
material beacon for Antipodean gay imaginaries. Connecting with place – in and
through movement – informs who we are. It also builds our relationships with
each other. In the last year, around 240 Australian same-sex couples have
married in New Zealand, which is now a beacon of acceptance.
Over the
Ditch is a collaboration across disciplines, linking history, geography
and visual art. In bridging gay worlds across the Tasman, our narratives reach
across disciplinary boundaries.
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