Groovers included adolescents and baby-boomers, with an array of dance styles to suit the spectrum. NLNL patriots could be spotted in sports gear- seemingly incongruent attire for a Saturday night in Civic. However, they were much better equipped than those in layers and heeled shoes, unaware they would soon exert the energy required to flip a truck.

It is not just the concept of NLNL that was widely accessible, but the music selection. Although mostly pop and rock, there were also jazz and alternative tunes mixed in among The Bangles, Pharrell Williams and Beyoncé. A comic surprise came when the audience realised they were thrashing around to a hard-core cover of Piero Umiliani’s Mah Nà Mah Nà, a song best known here for its use at the Banana Boat sunscreen jingle, and of course there was the lascivious classic Oh Yeah by Yello. The NLNL team just played songs that make patrons want to move. As obvious at it sounds, it was a pleasant relief from monotonous club music and bad remixes commonly found at Canberra dance venues.

Dancers were there purely for a good time. Testimonials regard NLNL as an opportunity to escape the ennui of popular dance culture and every day life. This became even more evident when one rabid patron (my sister) grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me, yelling ‘you’d better take me to emergency – ‘cause I’ve got DANCE FEVER’.

Despite the deranged strangers throwing themselves around like lunatics in faint lighting, the event felt especially safe. NLNL is open and appropriate for all ages, so given the demographic you’re unlikely to find the unwanted ‘bump and grinder’ looking for a hook-up.

The night closed with a warm-down session featuring the Piña Colada song. Heart rates slowed and water canisters were emptied. Club goers looked on in horror at the sweat stained shirts and make-up-less faces of the satisfied dancers escaping the Money Bin into cool night air.

No Lights No Lycra is what has been missing my whole life; a glorious facility for those who want to twist and shout without fear judgment or wandering hands. Encouraging freedom of expression and physical activity, No Lights No Lycra is a fresh awareness of the community’s unknown needs.

Details: No Lights No Lycra is run weekly: Tuesday nights 7:45pm – 9.15 Corroborree Park, Paterson St, Ainslie. It made an outing to You Are Here on Friday March 21, 2014.

Bio: Grace Flanagan is an undergraduate student at ANU who traditionally pens short-fiction. She’s been grabbed by an octopus and found $50 in the ocean. Her life’s goal is to perform a handstand unassisted.

Image by Jake Pember

The evening was curated by digital artist and musician Danny Wild, founding member of audio-visual collective Zonk Vision. Most films shown came from artists Wild knows personally and were not merely recorded skits. Few videos contained dialogue and only one seemed to have a script of some kind. The rest were ultimately video art, smashing film and animation together and finding beauty in the mundane.

Part one consisted of the results of an open call for one-minute films. The collection opened with Sarah Byrne’s Internet Psychosis, an array of jarring images and layered web pages in overwhelming colour. Luke McGrath’s Johnny Bastard told the story of a one-night stand through subtitles. With lines like ‘he described my pubic hair as angel fur’, McGrath had his audience in giggles.

The highlight of the screening was Raw Nature Films’ Subtitles, footage of a grocery-store clerk patting a watermelon, glaring the cameraman. The clip was increasingly hilarious each time it was repeated. Kat Martin entered an incredible animation of colour and light (not for epileptics). She hypnotised the audience with overwhelming angles and finished with a contrastingly fluid end.

Part two was shown across the room, where the audience huddled together on their cushions in what felt like a screening in Wild’s lounge room. The team struggled with some technical difficulties, but it was of little concern with the show’s relaxed vibe. Pieces shown here had been specially selected by Wild, and began with shaky footage of Toast, an old Canberra club familiar to the crowd, care of Timothy D (Zonk Vision).

Jason Galea (also of Zonk Vision) had two features, both one-minute excerpts of a thirty-minute film. The first section showed footage of an anchorman underneath animated oil paint that moved across his face like a weather map. Wild then played a segment from the beginning of the video, an instructional collage of how the piece should be viewed. Sara Wurker and Tim Guthrie worked together on one of the final videos. Through smoke and flame the camera captured a woman’s movements, mesmerising the audience with its intimacy and grace.

An eclectic collection of just over ten videos were screened, each with clear objectives but little meaning. Most were aesthetically pleasing, though a few still procured a ‘what the hell am I watching?’ The audience were obviously well acquainted and unabashed: heckling from the festival coordinators lent the evening a comfortable informality, though it was Wild’s use of Holden Hands’ beats that formed such a distinct community atmosphere. 

Details: One Minute Film Festival was shown at The Money bin at 10pm on Wednesday March 19, 2014.

Bio: Grace Flanagan is an undergraduate student at ANU who traditionally pens short-fiction. She’s been grabbed by an octopus and found $50 in the ocean. Her life’s goal is to perform a handstand unassisted.

Image by Chase McCormack

Just after midnight on last Sunday morning,

A new evening social occurrence was dawning,

Across from the crowds outside of Mooseheads,

An audience listened, all warm in their beds.

The Night Fort, curated by the You Are Here festival producers, is a community sleepover held in Canberra Museum and Art Gallery. Unlike gigs that leave an audience standing for hours, shifting weight between aching feet, The Night Fort offers the highest comfort, encouraging people to slob out and indulge in soft furnishings. As the show started, the audience settled among tents seemingly made from oversized clothes horses draped with sheets. Combined with the blankets and pillows strewn over the floor, CMAG had the feel of a childhood lounge-room on a wet June day.

Opening the night was Finnigan and Brother. Like others on the night, they combined elements of spoken work with sound-scapes; their confronting story transformed a graphic phrase from mere repetition to ruminating lyric. The listener’s mind wandered and absorbed their poems, lost in thought and residual rhythm.

Performances took place in a central tent, somewhat isolated from the ‘sleepers’. As unusual as it was to not view the acts, but very much experience them, this set up created an impressionable audience, who were able to experience the work in its purity. The first few acts were accompanied by Danny Wild’s improvised projections of delayed live footage played over kaleidoscopic images.

Maitland Schnaars and Thomas Day delivered their self-absorbed piece with aggression and volume. Clichés littered their monologue, but the imagery and repetition of ‘blood, mud, salt,’ was effective and sat thick on the listener’s tongue. Emma Gibson followed, spinning a bedtime story of love, betrayal and conjoined twins. Engaging her audience with a circus of characters, bodies slept while minds were pulled through mermaid tanks, tree houses and gypsy vans, demonstrating a sophisticated command of a juvenile narrative format.

Beau Anthony Deuwaarder then gave an abstract, strangely scientific monologue presented in several ‘plateaus’. The gravity of the piece, however, could not be appreciated by a foyer of under-30s at 3am on a Sunday. It was at this point in the evening that reality and dreams seemed to merge as sleepers fluttered in and out of consciousness. Just before 4am, Shoeb Ahmad’s spacey synth took over and lulled the foyer into slumber.

All performers exhibited outstanding delivery. Most acts were widely accessible, exploring themes of identity, nation, mortality and isolation, although some were far from conducive to sleep. Some sleepers though, proved resistant to disruptive swells in music, their snores calling through the gallery. The Night Fort had an incredible atmosphere, created equally by aesthetic, performance and company present.

Details: The night fort was held at Canberbra Museum and Gallery at 12am on the 15th of March, 2014.

Bio: Grace Flanagan is an undergraduate student at ANU who traditionally pens short-fiction. She’s been grabbed by an octopus and found $50 in the ocean. Her life’s goal is to perform a handstand unassisted.

Image by Adam Thomas