95 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
95 lines
5.3 KiB
Plaintext
operation rhubarb * by Flick Ruby
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L: To me OR is more than just a street theatre group because its so
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intertwined with being political and I think that the effect that street
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theatre has during demonstrations is to give some sort of focus for people
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because people are often confused and disempowered and wondering what to do
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and walking around bored.
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F: I started getting involved with OR during the Gulf War and for me OR was
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a really empowering thing because I was able to unleash some of the drama
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and terror that I felt internally in an external way and for me that was
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the most appropriate response to what was happening. It was also a good
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way to shock people and bring the message of blood home to the streets of
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Melbourne.
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G: I also joined OR during the Gulf War when it first started. I was sick
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of boring protests where there was one leader who was seen as the be all
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and end all. I though than many messages were missing, one of them was
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war=death and as part of OR I think we achieved that message by splattering
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blood on the pavement.
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F: The thing for me that is most attractive about OR is its looseness of
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definition. There is no meaning essentially to the term OR. We are not
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screaming slogans or apocalyptic scenarios which is what is happening at a
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lot of demos. We are begging questions, placing questions in people's
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minds, we are not even asking a specific question, we are getting people to
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ask their own questions, stimulating some kind of response in them. We
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don't have a line or a message all the time. A lot of what we do is quite
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obvious, at the George Bush demo, we carried around a coffin and had a
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person personifying death and another personifying the corporate monsterism
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and that is all easy to understand. At the same time there is scope there
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for people to place their own meaning and that is an important act to me.
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L: Another good thing about OR is that we have no definate membership,
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therefore a lot of people are able to join in and get involved on specific
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issues that they are interested in and they don't have to be involved in
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everyting we are inolved in and that means we have a variety of input at
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different stages.
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F: Using mediums of humour is going to be more empowering to people at
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demos than more empassioned speeches. I think you can say a lot more in
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the cloak of a joke at the moment. I also think that laughter is what is
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needed. We need to be at least appearing to be having fun while being
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politically committed, feeling good about ourselves, being strong and
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determined but not depressed and nagging all the time.
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L: One of the good things about OR is that things seem to come together
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really easily and we don't get bogged down. We are also committed very
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strongly to feminism. Womens voices are often lost in the arena of
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politics which is dominated by men. The gender relations in OR are really
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good and we work to keep them that way.
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G: I think one of the important things about OR is that we don't have a
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definition so therefore it enables us to do a variety of things, one of
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them was the stickers which we produced with slogans like 'stop racism',
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'stop sexism', 'stop hetrosexism' and with our logo on it and the important
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thing with that was to stick them up over offensive posters and stickers
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and although the quality of the stickers was not that good the message was
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there and hopefully the messatge got back to people like national action
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with their revolting racist stickers.
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F: Turning up the Heat, OR's magazine is about giving voice to the
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different groups in Melbourne that are working politically and creatively.
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It is also to further the feminst and anarchist analysis of things that are
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going on right now. We feel as though we have our own political
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perspectives and encourage people to express theirs It will be a forum for
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anarchist and feminst news and reviews.
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G: Turning up the Heat will replicate what OR is about, it is creative, it
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is interesting, it is not a boring revolutionary magazine.
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G; Another thing with OR is that we don't wait for invitations. We attend
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things like the Myer Christmas parade and we produce a message that is not
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produced there, that is denies there ,like "CONSUMERISM KILLS", like
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"WAR=DEATH" like "AIDEX KILLS" and they are images that mainstream
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carnivials and mainstream media have denied access to.
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F: It is good media wise to be some sort of bridgeing gap between scuffles
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and police lies to have images of people being creative in a symbolic sense
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or talking about issues in a different way.
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F: I think it is high time that activists got into affinity groups and
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actually did things that impowered them. So many times people are saying
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'oh we need to join a big revolutionary organisation' and their whole
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energy gets absorbed into that and they don't form their own actions where
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they exhcange their reading into idea tools that can be taken into actions.
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That is what OR is all about. It is a group of like minded people not
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waiting around for the revolution.
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L:The good thing about OR is that it sparks off other peoples imaginations
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when they see us doing simple and efffective street theatre. We don't have
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to have a lot of props, we don't have to spend a lot of time and money
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putting energy into it and it is a really effective way of getting messages
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across and also it encourages other people to do the same thing, acting up
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in new ways.
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