I began the sharing of Scratch with an acknowledgement of Country and paying respect to First Nations Peoples past, present and emerging. I then stated that the meditation/performance was an homage to each person that came to the sharing and the bodily histories each carried with them into the space. I then invited the participants to close their eyes to experience the work and framed that they had the choice whether or not to open them from that point onwards.
I guess the piece was basically tossing around a couple of main ideas which included sampling or ‘scratching’ (from Twyla Tharp), which are kinda these ways of creating which is basically taking inspiration from many different influences, dabbling and creating something new from these points of departure. The other idea I was exploring was that of transculturation, which is a word I’ve been using to encapsulate cultures meeting, converging and overlapping. Usually this term is used in relation to ethnic cultures overlapping. It usually means something is lost or something arises in that process (ie. colonisation). I wanted to use transculturation as a metaphor for how this work functions which is basically encouraging overlapping sounds, objects, sensations and shared experiences - essentially encouraging the emergence of new cultural phenomena.