Intro - Video-poems, hybrids

The collaboration with John Laidler on video poems began half way though 2008.

It began after we had been for a few months on soundworks,

I had video of events that I had written poems about - which illustrated the poems,

and footage I liked with no poems and worked from both directions

so that the images and words (visual or aural) work off each other in different ways.

March 09 latest video:

Harmony with the Breeze, an improvised poem about Icarus with a kinetic sculpture by Kozo Nishino, with local wildlife, from Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi (2008).

‘Tracking the Tank Stream’, video, first prize (joint), GOYA, Dec 08

Thank you speech

‘Tracking the Tank Stream’ is an 8 minute video in search of signs of life along the cold trail of the Tank Stream which once, “stole silently through a very thick wood”. Its catchment is now pure urban tarmac, glass and concrete.

Our appetite has become enormous. Sydney expands consuming its surroundings, clearing land, constructing more buildings, squeezing in more people, excreting more sewage and litter, fouling the air and water catchments. The surface is paved, the water trapped and channelled; we are kept from the earth, the rocks and soil, leaves and flowers, the birds and insects.

On January the 25^th 1788, Phillip begins clearing the bush at Sydney Cove, at the head of the run of fresh water. This is one key anniversary. What we have done to the Tank Stream is one example of how we have despoiled the continent.

$197.61M dollars was recently spent - not on closing the 17-year life gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians but the Baz Luhrmann's hyped up epic ‘Australia’. This video formed from 30 minutes of guerrilla video filming using a borrowed video camera ($250 on ebay) and then a few hours in the studio.

A Satin Bowerbird collaboration This is an introduction to a poetic essai examining human-animal relations at Bundanon.

Through a glass darkly A 60 second poem on global warming - say no more.

Song starting with air Listening to a recording I made of a concert with William Barton, I thought of some footage I had just taken walking by Sydney Harbour, the footage took a few minutes to shoot but when I looked at it, I saw a rhythmic beauty. so we put them together and I quickly wrote about 20 haiku - we chose two to bookend the film.

a found poem in the shape of a piano poem from the CD - a true story - somehow.

Fraser Island Epic People have actually asked me if I pulled off the appendages to make the video. The poem includes a scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian, a Bee Gees impression and a meditation on life, death, the universe - that kind of thing.

About John Laidler.