Hell d'enfer!

2ème épisode de ma manifestation individuelle entre NAS et COFA. Version bilingue.

I turned up on the NAS campus with my bed, my mini-kilt and my fluffy white gorilla, Manilla, who's a vanilla dyke, and we started performing dutifully.

At that point, some members of the staff came to me with soft smiles and asked me if I was going to stay there long, that maybe I could move, hum, before the Honours Degree Show opens at 6pm? Please? And why not right now? No?

This is a rock, a peak, a peninsula! (to quote Cyrano de Bergerac) Un comble, puisqu'il faut parler frog! I tried to contact these people during a week for them to tell me what would bean appropriate time for my perf to take place, and no-one told me THAT? Ouh là là là là là là........

Never mind, ça ne fait rien. I went on and tried to engage with students and passers-by, to try and raise questions, statements of opinion, et coetera. I got a few amused encouragements, a lot of indifference, and giggles galore. No-one seemed to take the matter seriously. ARe we so used to the masks and screens that we ignore the faces and real world behind? Are NAS people so blasés about my humour?

You want my word? I think the whole Caca thing is way out of their cognitive field because they believe in good taste, les c...s.

So off I went, je suis allée me faire voir ailleurs, namely at COFA. Believe me, pushing a hospital bed on Oxford Street at peak hour is fun. Now I've got the six packs and each time I laugh, my abds hurt as hell! Thank you RTA for the bus lane. But not for the hole in the bitumen each five meters.

At COFA, which is to some NAS people what Saddam is to George, I had a better welcoming. Not only did the students there cheer me and engage seriously with me, but the head of the marketing department and the dean himself insisted on dialoging with me. I don't think they got the Caca humour either, but well, as Gertrude Stein said, "There is, was and always will be the official art, and the art." And heads usually are on the official art side. Nevertheless, the dean invited a few students and myself to have an impromptu conference in his office, during which he exposed his vision of the future if COFA takes over NAS.
As a matter of fact, he was speaking about it in the indicative future, giving us the impression the merging had already happened. Maybe it's just like the cross city tunnel, it HAS already happened but we don't know it yet, we'll wake up one morning and there'll be twins towers instead of the good old chapel. He looked really confident and radiated with good will.
But he was still heralding the disappearance of one more art school in Sydney and finding it would be a good thing, R.I.P. National Art School.

Manilla started sobbing and I got scared she'd get upset, so we shook hands and anded the dialog.

Don't miss the next episode, "Cockatoo Island by night"

Yer Fluff