GLOBAL SHUFFLE Review + memory piece

DISTANT PAST. Sometime in 1992 just after I met Stelarc he introduced me to his friend Garry Shepherd - composer, artist, musician and pyrotechnics performance artist. We became friends and there were occasions when I visited his studio space, come living quarters in one of the upper floors of Commerce House, Melbourne. I remember sleeping over one night because I was too tired to take a taxi home. Garry slept in his bunk, a bed made up high on a wooden scaffold in an adjoining room. I slept on the couch in the studio apartment, which was filled to the brim with books, records, videos, computers, sound recording equipment, artworks and stage props left over from one of the performances by Melbourne Band Boom, Crash, Opera who Garry had worked with in the late 1980s.

Anyway, staying over that particular night remains a significant memory because I barely slept. The couch I lay on faced huge bare windows and all I could see was rooftops and  moon light that flooded the room. From about two o'clock onwards shadowy figures passed outside the windows and then disappeared from view. Garry informed me that it was usual for residents of Commerce House  - artists and Goths, to meet on the roof, play role games, dance or just hang together. This was Melbourne’s underground. They lived in or around Flinders Street and Flinders Lane. Considered vaguely Goth myself (though hadn't I always worn black) it seemed appropriate that Garry allowed me (just once) to do some of the filming for him of people dancing at the Goth club in a downstairs venue in Swanston Street, Melbourne.

In 1994 Garry had a program on Chanel 31 called TOE: Theory of Everything and he visited me at my place in Hawthorn to conduct an interview. I still remember saying that I wouldn’t be on camera (I’ve always been happier behind, rather than in front of a camera), but was happy for him to record what I said and to film my artwork. Garry and I ran into each other regularly over the next few years, usually around Nicholas Building where he lived after he left Commerce House or at his favorite coffee shop in Degraves Street  lane way and we’d have long chats about his Cyberfaeries project. One day around the end of the millennium I stopped running into Garry because he'd disappeared up to the hills.

FAST FORWARD. Yesterday I received in the mail a copy of Global Shuffle a documentary by Garry (music, editing and direction by him) and I watched it last night.

REWIND. About once a week I walk through the foyer of the Sydney Myer Asia Centre at the University of Melbourne and have been captured by the dozen or so male Asian students who rehearse an energetic dance in which they contort their bodies, do amazing movements with their feet, undertake almost impossible acrobatics like twirling on one hand - arm outstretched or twirling around on their heads. They’re amazing. But it wasn’t until I saw Global Shuffle last night that I could even put a name to this kind of dancing. I’d been calling it break dancing. Occasionally I’d be in the city and see some young men perform these amazing feats combined with dance. So now I know what the dance actually is. It’s the Melbourne Shuffle, or rather, the Global Shuffle. But I’m sure now after watching the documentary that this underground dance style emanated from Melbourne at the beginning of the 90s.

FAST FORWARD.  So I’m watching the documentary and Garry’s showing someone around Melbourne. They stop at Peril Underground an alternative music shop in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne where I first met (in the early 90s.) and had amazing conversations about viruses, techno-music and Stelarc with Australian sound artist, Darrin Verhagin (Shinjuku Thief). I still listen to some of Darrin's earliest CDs. I suppose they'd fall within the Industrial/Goth genre. 

Global Shuffle documents footage of Melbourne shufflers dancing in Brunswick Street, at the Espy in St.Kilda, at Commerce House, and some old TV footage of National Nine News from 1994 when the police strip-searched about 400 people attending Tasty Night Club, which was held in the basement at Commerce House.

When I saw the footage of shufflers at The Lounge in Swanston Street I was beginning to think that this documentary was in some strange way a trace of my life. The Lounge was a place I would regularly frequent, but I guess all art students who attended RMIT did – I know the Fringe crowd met there often. We’d see the bands, the art and listen to poetry readings. Somewhere along the way the clientele of The Lounge changed and I stopped going there.

The trace becomes more significant as I continue to watch Global Shuffle in that there’s footage of Don’t Shoot the Messenger and one of its members, our own Steven Middleton (friend who writes for this blog) gives a brief wave (my god, he looks so young – this was a few years before I met him) and then later on in the documentary he appears again wearing a red jacket.

If you love the driving beat of mechanical sounds, then you’ll love this DVD. It’s filled to the brim with techno-music, persistent strobes, dark spaces and hypnotic laser lights. It’s thoroughly mesmerizing, not just because I’m from Melbourne and because the marginal life of underground Melbourne touched mine, but because it’s filled with vibrant colors that gleam in night’s dark sky and a city invaded by lone shufflers dancing unconsciously in empty alleyways and stark city car parks. It's alternative Melbourne at its best!

But the documentary is not only about Melbourne shufflers and the shufflers' frenetic state, there’s some  quieter, softer clips of shufflers all over the world. Snow covered ground in Russia - young people dancing on an ice white surface that doesn’t slow down their feet, they just breathe faster and dance in time with an internal rhythm; their cold breath hanging in the crisp, cool air. The Kremlin 2009 shuffle competition, people dancing inside and out of a stadium and somehow the large statue of Lenin with his feet outstretched, mirrors the stance of the lone boy dancer, if you can imagine his movement FROZEN STILL FRAME. The eerie mist of the snowy landscape somehow akin to the glow of Melbourne's interior dance club lights. 

PRESENT. I'm thinking this documentary is not only about the Melbourne Shufflers its a record of Garry's life for that period. It describes in many ways his absolute determination to record Melbourne's alternative culture, the energy and utter creativity of our people as well as his own creativity. I hear that Global Shuffle is coming to a film festival near you very soon, catch it if you can it's well worth a look.