Brecon Charles Walsh

In memory of my long time friend Brecon Charles Walsh who passed away late last year. Photo I took of him at Federation Square in 2010.

HAARP: Brecon Walsh

This earthly plane = Bill Viola

Still shot of Bill Viola's Ocean without a shore, NGV International. Photo: Julie Clarke, 2009

Yesterday, had a really good chin-wag over lunch with the always entertaining, larger than life, ex-rock journalist from the seventies and avid photographer, Brecon Walsh. We were lucky to secure a table at the NGV International bistro because the Gallery was absolutely packed with patrons who were attending the European Masters Exhibition. Brecon and I took the opportunity whilst we were there, to have another look at Bill Viola's three screen video/sound installation Ocean without a shore, which was purchased by the NGV last year. The artwork, shown in a dark, black space displays individuals emerging into or out of a watery threshold. It makes one think about life and death and was a fitting complement to the conversation Brecon and I had been having about the flimsy as well as the strong connections we have with others in the arts and music industry and the risks we took when we were young, including several times in my life in which I might have drowned. Each time I visit Viola's installation I see a different body emerging. This time it was an old woman, whose face revealed so many different emotional expressions. Sometimes I wonder if we see what we want to see in these emerging figures and we imagine that someone recently passed, uses Viola's screen as a vehicle to re-enter ~ if only briefly, this earthly plane.

Brecon Walsh photographs of Stelarc, 'Spectacle of the Mind' performance

Stelarc 'Spectacle of the Mind' performance for Global Mind Project Launch at Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia, 15 January, 2010. Photograph: Brecon Walsh (copyright, 2010). Reproduced with kind permission of the artist.

This on-screen multi-image produced by the interaction between Stelarc's brain-waves, Karen Casey images and Stelarc's own Prosthetic Head is reminiscent of Surrealist art. Generally associated with unusual juxtapositions, strangeness of composition, the depiction of chance events, an engagement with the other or depictions of the unseen world of the unconscious, this somewhat surreal image appears somehow appropriate in a performance that attempted to depict the spectacle of mind.

The manifold faces, distorted as they were by brain-wave activity hint at the schizophrenic nature of identity mediated by technological interface. The self is simultaneously self as non-self - self as other, split between real and virtual body image.

The picture produced is fascinating (and I must admit I'm happy that Brecon managed to capture it because it eluded me) for, as Stelarc conducted a series of screeching sounds into the performance space by moving his right hand slowly up and down, he also appears in this particular screen-grab, to be orchestrating his own self image in the myriad of occurring overlays.

'A Forensics of Alarm Nietzsche's Corpse' by George Goldberg

This unpublished book review written in 1998 by George Goldberg was sent to me by Brecon Walsh who kindly corrected the spelling and syntax. I have published this review because prior to his brain damage George Goldberg was a prolific writer.

I haven't read the book reviewed by Goldberg, nor do I necessarily agree with Waite's ideas about Nietzsche, indeed I believe that much of Nietzche's writing has been misunderstood, particularly his notion of the Ubermensch, which has been used in political, social and cultural ways to support the humanist program to promote strength, order and control, whilst unwittingly disavowing the relationship of the Ubermensch to the imperfect human body. Indeed, the prosthetic human body, as a form of Ubermensch is not a departure from the human, but accentuates humanity’s dependence on technology and continues to be used as a metaphor to define what counts as human.

A Forensics of Alarm Nietzsche's Corpse PDF.pdf