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June 27, 2004
I saw this film last night---Japanese Story. It juxtapositioned the city with the landscape. In terms of the visual language the urban was downplayed in favour of the landscape.
I had been hoping for a postmodern link back to this kind of work:
Robert Rauschenberg,Estate, 1963
But it was not to be. The emphasis was on the stunning desert landscape of the Pilbara in Western Australia. It plays a familar theme: the familiar Australian landscapes (remote, desert, outback) and character types (brash, laconic, independent) as the bedrock of an Australian identity based on white settler masculinity. Only this time the bearer of the core of Australian identity is a woman geologist.
Do Australians have a urban visual language? We live in cities not the desert.
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Well yes we do, its of upwardly mobile young professionals in expensive outfits eating out and drinking in designer bars. And the old boys club still lingers. But again how much of this is a real portrayal of the urban lifestyle?