Overview

During their 3-month residency at Artspace Tellervo and Oliver will undertake a travelling film project, with an ambition to portray a number of intentional communities located in Australia. The portrait will consist of short feature films written and directed in close collaboration between interested community members and the artists.

In a 1-2 day workshop the artists and participants collect ideas for a short feature film, and are then realised with the assistance of the artists and a small film crew. "While we welcome any idea–from the wildest flight of fancy to solid storytelling–we would hope to find interesting images and sequences emphasising the utopian vision of the community. We are interested in the conflict between 'utopian dreaming and communal reality' and how everyday life has altered the possibilities of utopian dreaming altogether. We also would like to discuss the issue of how social experiments on a micro-scale can function as facilitator of building social change on larger scale.

For the student of utopia Australia is a very interesting place. A substantial part of immigrants to Australia had the dream of a better place. Also one of the first Finnish utopian communities started in Australia. About the turn of the century Matti Kurikka founded El Dorado in Queensland. Nevertheless it has been said that the typical Australian utopian literature is a dystopia. A standard theme of Australian utopian literature throughout history has been the problem of the "empty middle" or the great Australian desert. Most of the imaginary societies placed in that desert have been dystopias. Despite that Australia has produced more intentional communities and has made more attempts to establish Garden Cities than any other country. The communities we will be working with are Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, Dharmananda, Bodhi Farm and Moora Moora."