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Sifi specializes in fire events, pyrotechnics,
performance, sculpture, painting, theatre and arts education
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Archive: February
Friday, February 28, 2003
test
Posted by webmaster
05:51 PM AEDT
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scanning
Have been scanning all day with new apparatus ....nice buzz.. will post some pics in the journal soon
Posted by sifi
04:12 PM AEDT
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scanning
I have just got my new and first scanner an I am scanning my heart out...yippee ....was hoping to post a small image today but am having minor technical difficulties...but soon!
Posted by sifi
04:10 PM AEDT
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Landmark....and its imaginings.
I have just reached a significant landmark in my life....twenty years teaching within what I imagine is the legendary Rusden Drama Deoartment...although by now it is only a stream within a university it still has quite a kick and will always be a department in my stubborn mind. My first boss Mr Robert Holden,was a great educator, ....he would talk of consciousness raising and advise on staying 'medium cool' in your teaching...a truly wonderful man and gifted theatre mind...Iadmire him enourmously. I have truly loved my time in teaching theatre, but it has become quite difficult in our fucked up education system...our universities have become pathological and sad. churning out dunny roll undergraduate degrees whose marrow was so blindly extracted through economic sic rationalisation. We are not investing in our minds... it is ridiculous...and in Bobs' terms we are not investing in our consciousness raising...The sparse funding creates a bitchy competition for limited resources and beaurocratic structures institute bizarre rules, regulations and procedures that are inscrutable...I am extremely effective in my expertise, a practising artist and a true educator, but I am a fucking hopeless academic within our newly evolving university system.
Posted by sifi
10:41 AM AEDT
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Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Small revelation
For the the time that I lived there, Kenya was a colony and protectorate of the United Kingdom, which had declared a 'state of emergency' in response to what it labeled the Mau Mau insurrection' This little discussed part of African colonial history was overshadowed by events on the Malay Peninsular but was a rather nasty and bloody affair that dragged on almost for a decade. This backdrop to my early childhood has been evidenced in my recent painting where a kind of underlying trauma requires the practice of a magical form to ameliorate difficulty.This has only recently become apparent to me and is all quite strange and new largely because it sqeezes through so much unconscious reppression.
Posted by sifi
11:53 AM AEDT
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Monday, February 24, 2003
I remind myself.
Relaxing within limits is proving enourmously successful because it is allowing an inventive spontaneity to occurr - limitations works well when we accept them with grace.
Posted by sifi
10:47 AM AEDT
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Thursday, February 20, 2003
Humour
It is so important to keep one's sense of humour.... sometimes we forget.
Posted by sifi
01:01 PM AEDT
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Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Strange Days
Such strange days.it was amazing to see so many of the people of this world out on the streets in anti-war demonstrations.....we all wait.
Posted by sifi
01:40 PM AEDT
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Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Posted by sifi
03:16 PM AEDT
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Tuesday, February 11, 2003
Fear
New Years night 2001...i worked all day and night 22 hours straight on these pyro lance effects at the Woodford fire event..I was to get two hours sleep that night and be woken up by the the most fabulous Shakahatchi player {perhaps Riley Lee ] Lance effects are always time consuming and it all becomes even more complex when the effect is to be handheld. Lance effects use an inordinate amount of fusing. I use tapematch for ease,it spits a great deal of molten plastic on detonation and therefore it is necessary to provide the armature with shielding as protection. One of the central themes of the event was compassion and I was writing IGNITE COMPASSION in handheld lance writing....the question I now have is...how do you feel compassion for those you strongly disagree with? How do you feel compassion for the primeminister when you disagree with his war plans? How do you feel compassion for a George Bush or a Tony Blair? Perhaps the answer lies in recognizing the humanity of their FEAR .
Posted by sifi
12:19 PM AEDT
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Monday, February 10, 2003
war
It is so profoundly disappointing that our government seems determined to lead our beautiful nation into a stupid and unecessary war.....
Posted by sifi
02:47 PM AEDT
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Friday, February 7, 2003
No War, no war, please no war.
No war, no war , no war, please no war.......I am reminded of the quote from Bertrand Russells bible listed as the eleventh commandment....Thou shalt not follow the multitude to do evil....No war, no war please no war.
Posted by sifi
11:06 AM AEDT
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Thursday, February 6, 2003
The Day.
It has been a great relief to have the cool and rain set in over the last few days... the earth has been so parched...
Posted by sifi
12:17 PM AEDT
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Tuesday, February 4, 2003
The silly people 2
Neil wisely drew it to a close and the silly people were no more. It is important to note that no significant injury was sustained by a silly person over those few years, most silly people look back and are incredulous at their behaviour at that time and all silly people would thank Neil for enabling them to be silly for as long as we did. Viva the silly people.
Posted by sifi
02:17 PM AEDT
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The Silly People.
During the mid to late 1990's a small number of individuals within Neil Camerons core team formed a group within the company known as the silly people.The fundamental aims and objectives of the silly people were very simple- to wear and ignite in close proximity to the body ,pyrotechnical devices in performance contexts, as often as possible. The silly people designed and manufactured all manner of inventions, gizmo's, away from body extensions, armouring and shields to which they attached arrays of commercial fireworks such as fountains, gerbs, lances and catherine wheels. These would be fused with tape-match and electrically detonated by the silly person wearing that apparatus at any given time. Silly people performance sequences were necessarily short, given the 90 second life of most fireworks .The silly people were most commonly used towards the end of a show leading to the climax, as their action was thick and fast.The sensation of wearing powerful fireworks is extraordinary, the rush, the loss of volition, the aquiessence to larger forces acting on the body and the overwhelming of their linear time sensibilities , propelled the silly people to wonderful extremes. The silly got sillier. I remember a certain silly person literally having their headgear blown-off leaving only the remnant inner lining of his heavy duty construction helmet left on his head. How we howled with laughter...we were nuts...
Posted by sifi
02:03 PM AEDT
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Monday, February 3, 2003
A burnished copper sun day.
A slight blue smoked sky filters an angry burnished copper sunlight on this day and I cannot help but think what a strange seventeen years span the two space shuttle disasters.
Posted by sifi
01:59 PM AEDT
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911 series
