BLUE CHILD RESIDENCY PROJECT MOUNT LAWLEY SHS
This project was about discussing students’ fears and concerns within their daily environment by addressing terms of interaction, tolerance, acceptance and difference. The Blue Child, an animated figure – created as a basis for the video/sound installation – served as background (wall-projection in the theatre room) for the performance and as a tool to define a rejected outsider/person. The students did a role-play, in which they should express young people reaching out for attention. Slowly they incorporated the Blue Child into their performances and created connections among themselves and in-between the real and virtual/foreign space (of the Blue Child). The project further questioned the world and its current, global situation. It discussed how people would have to overcome their differences and value judgments to achieve real changes.
Students were asked how they felt about tolerance and cultural difference in their own environment and where they thought, ignorant behaviour would lead to social exclusion, patronisation and general abuse.
AIR project Blue Child – the world is seen as a blue planet
Blue Child, video/sound installation in collaboration with Year 10 to 12 students, during a one week AIR
at the Mount Lawley Senior High School, Perth, 2008
Artistic Idea on which the work process was based on: Our world is seen as a blue planet from outer space… Separated from the real world the blue Child is reaching out for attention. It starts to make contact with human beings. First they have problems to communicate, fear to touch it, but then they start to create a community where everyone is meant to be part of something. They slowly start to incorporate the blue Child into their community but also begin to create true relationships among themselves… We are urged to think global today and should urgently work together on protecting and rescuing our world. We need to tolerate everyone who lives in this world. We need to see that others are affected by climate change as well. While complaining about lots of things, we forget about the millions of people that starve to death. We have to overcome ignorant behaviour, because the blue Child (or any person that seems different to ourselves or just so far away) should not be ignored, patronised or excluded. A starting point is to reach out for the people next to us. We have to open our mind. Globalisation means to get aware of the many and various people and cultures, which make this world our world. We are all the blue Child – in many ways we are all the same.
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