Australia: More than the Outback

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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2005-03-19

Australia: More than the Outback
By Marcy Sutton, Brooks Institute of Photography

Photo by Marcy Sutton

Wongo of Wongo and Fongo competes in his underwear against Troy and Rush in Dancekool's two-on-two breaking finals at Sydney Olympic Park. His risk paid off, as Wongo and & Fongo won the battle.

Once a year, Brooks Institute of Photography hosts a documentary class that allows students to travel off-campus and to a foreign country. In November/December 2004, it was my turn to travel with Brooks Visual Journalism Coordinator Jim McNay and a group of other students to Australia. We're back, we've gotten over reverse culture shock, and we're working hard to premiere our work on March 25th in Santa Barbara, California and April 1st in Ventura, California.

Before any of the parties can officially start, I must say that we have been at work for months on this project. We started meeting officially as a group in April 2004. Since then we have spent a lot of time outside of normal classes for fundraising, brainstorming, and working as a group. We thoroughly thought out story ideas and pitched them to Jim before we even had plane tickets. In my attempt to document something fun and relevant, I decided to work on a story about one of my personal interests: youth subcultures and music. I did some research on the "scene" in Australia and learned quite a bit about young people and music styles, such as hip hop and electronic music. I wanted to find out if it all existed before going there and by researching I found that it did indeed.

By November, we finally made it to Sydney with five weeks to photograph. On the first day in Sydney, Crystal Shelton and I went wandering and we found a record store, providing my first opportunity to infiltrate "the scene." I found party flyers and got some great leads on places to go and people to contact. Then the amazing happened. We walked into The Civic Hotel and Bar on Pitt Street and started asking questions about Sydney's music. Crystal and I happened to ask the best person in the world, a guy named Eric Hoenig. He was 21, working behind the bar, and he knew all about hip-hop and electronic music. He gave me Sydney's underground music publications and told me to contact artists Morganics and MC Wire, who he said worked on music tracks with young people in the past.

Santa Barbara Showings - Multimedia Presentation: 8:00 pm Friday, March 25, 2005, 2:00 pm Saturday, March 26, 2005. Victoria Hall, 33 W. Victoria St. at Chapala, Santa Barbara, CA 93101.

Print Show at Brooks Institute Montecito Campus - Friday, March 25, 2005 to Friday, April 22, 2005. 801 Alston Rd., Santa Barbara, CA 93108.

Ventura Showings - Multimedia Presentation: 7:00 and 8:00 pm Friday, April 1, 2005, 2:00 pm Saturday, April 2, 2005. Brooks Institute Ventura Campus Screening Room. 5301 N. Ventura Ave., Ventura, CA 93001.

Print Show at Brooks Institute Ventura Campus - Friday, April 1, 2005 to Friday, April 22, 2005.

All events free and open to the public. For more information call (805) 966-3888.

Photo by Marcy Sutton

Group members Sheila White and Al Merion on day one in the infamous Civic Hotel.

I also found out from Eric that people in Australia made hip-hop in rural areas, not only in cities. Morganics and MC Wire went into the outback and recorded some incredibly authentic Aussie hip-hop. I was very excited to find so much information on the first day! I contacted both artists who were very open and allowed me to follow them to some hip-hop workshops.

I got more ideas from Eric and we became inseparable. We went to some events together and I got to experience Australia's music scene. Eric cheered me on and helped me stay driven to the task of documenting youth subculture and hip-hop. The craziest part about going to Australia was finding so much on that first day: leads as well as life-changing friends. I am pretty sure it was the Aussies' openness and kind spirits that made this trip so amazing. I know that many of us in the group felt cut short with only five weeks in Australia; I plan to spend a longer period of time there after I graduate from Brooks Institute in August 2005.

We are currently finishing up post-production for the Australia presentation. The projects include audio/visual and print shows (the big premiere is on March 25th in Santa Barbara) as well as a book and a website. On March 25th you will be able to surf the website that I created with help from Adam Stoller at: http://documentary.brooks.edu/australia.

Related Links:

Australia: More than the Outback

Marcy Sutton's member page