Earlier this year a music dream was realised: I got to see the Killerbirds play live. I know one of the ‘Birds: Prue Allan. I count her as a friend, a beautiful, wise, hilarious person with a giant heart, and, a rocking good yoga teacher. I got to know her over the five years I spent living in Bendigo, frequenting her yoga classes for some much-needed respite and restoration. We hadn’t known each other long before I kidnapped her to take A VERY LONG DRIVE to the outer south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne (read five hours in the car together.) Travelling in my sardine-can-sized Getz, we drove there and back in one day, me fuelled with the kind of drive-by ‘buying mission zeal’…
“Travelling: it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Muhammad Ibn Battuta Ally Portee loves people. She also loves her Christian faith, travelling and telling stories. It’s no wonder she’s taken on the challenge of transforming her humble blog into a burgeoning online magazine, Seele (“soul” in German.) With the tag line “Bridging Faith, Cultures, People” – and an academic background in history and international relations – Ally launched the independent e-publication in May. Keen to use it to develop her writing, editing and storytelling, already she’s racked up readers from 80 countries, offering interviews with an impressive array of (mostly) women – from judges and social entrepreneurs to activists and filmmakers. Hoping to eventually grow it…
Human rights journalist, magazine editor and social storyteller Vanessa Ellingham seems to regularly be mistaken for someone else. It’s something which has beset her for the past five years, since “Jasmine Cooper” first got glasses. “Jasmine Cooper” is one of the characters on New Zealand’s most famous soap opera, ‘Shortland Street‘. It seems Vanessa and the actress who plays the troubled teenager share eerily similar features: honey-brown hair, perfectly-manicured bobs and cat’s eye glasses, framing heart-shaped faces and delicate smiles. Both call New Zealand home. And as I discover soon after meeting Vanessa at a writers group in Berlin (where she now lives), it’s a case of mistaken identity the 25 year-old is wont to write about in hilarious, excruciating detail.…
“I love William Turner: that’s why I took ‘Turner’ as my performer name,” Stella Belinda Franke tells me as we walk down a busy Berlin street, looking for an impromptu photo shoot location. Her eyes glint with inspiration as she speaks the Romantic landscape painter’s name. It turns out the artist now known as Stella Turner loves to talk about art, and music. As we dodge cars, dog shit and stinging nettles, she manages to cram a lot into our brief conversation. Her aliveness is palpable. Stella Turner also loves to play music. I first saw her belt out a couple of well-honed originals late one open mic night in Berlin. While clearly in her formative stages, she had something special to…
This is my music video tribute to ‘the present moment’, in all it’s authenticity, goofiness, love, humanity, beauty and ragged wonder…
‘Salted’ by Cooperblack stars “Cooperblack” (then Jeremy Conlon, Simon Kormendy & Oliver Budack), and a rag-tag group of Darwin friends with playfulness and courage in their hearts. Recorded in 2009, before I even knew what mindfulness was – and meditation for that matter (I now study and teach both) – I also layed claim to inventing a new genre: Music Video Diary.
Inspired 1000% by Jeremy‘s exceptionally beautiful song – such an exceptionally talented musician and composer! – footage for ‘Salted’ was (mostly) recorded on one infamous Darwin balcony, in the heaving, sweaty climes of Northern Australia. Channelling Warhol (one of my biggest documentary inspirations), I asked my willing ‘non-actors’ to sit together, listen to the song “and kiss when you feel like it.”
Furthermore, “I’ll leave the room once I hit record. Just be yourselves. The rest is up to you!” Such was my sparing yet golden direction…
The biggest challenge was getting the song playback to work and not tipping over the wee camera! (I’d bought a very cheap, crap tripod.) Some months later, one afternoon, my talented, kind filmmaker friend Tom Salisbury drove several hours to edit it on my kitchen table. For nix.
Looking back at ‘Salted’, I still find it such a funny, intimate, moving clip. A series of moments unfolding in real time of people just being: being playful, being thoughtful, being authentic in ‘the now’… And trusting the music to support them in front of the camera and me ‘behind’ it (well, in the other room), whatever the hell they thought I was doing! Some people have moved on from Darwin; some from each other… The beautiful dog Chio is no longer with us. Jack the galah flew off into the bush. Yet there they all are, perfect – and perfectly themselves – embedded in a sweet, living, present moment experience, together.
It’s a tribute to love, actually. While it might be difficult for some to watch now, I feel so grateful to have been allowed to submerge this moment (and song) in the river of time (and video) with such a bunch of bighearted people, to one of whom I’m now married.
I’m also reminded that impermanence is a constant and vulnerability only a kiss away. And while a great physical distance now cleaves us, I love that we’re all still in each others’ lives, somehow. This funny little clip unites us us together, forever. Much love and thanks to Jeremy, Oliver, Simon, Jess, Mega-Jess, Deb, Karen, Lauren, Aaron, Amy, Erin, Jack the galah, and vale Chio the dog.
Travelers, it is late.
Life’s sun is going to set.
During these brief days that you have strength,
be quick and spare no effort of your wings.
Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.”
~ Rumi
Circus Folk + Flower Punks was a performance and portrait photography exhibition at the Australian Embassy in Berlin, a co-exhibition between myself and Berlin-based Australian music photographer, Kate Seabrook (aka “Flower Punks”). On in the foyer space for three months, it celebrated the various musicians and performers we’d both had the good fortune to photograph over the years, doing what they do best on the stages of Berlin and Australia.
I chose 25 colour and black-and-white photographs to go up on those dignified walls. Opening on International Women’s Day 2016 (March 8), it ran until May 27, which in my estimation officially makes this Embassy “the most rock on the planet”.
The images I included enthusiastically embrace those among us who venture into the world high of spirit, with something delicious to say, dressed in the accoutre of the unabashed and the fearless. Regardless of which city they call home, the individuals pictured below share fascinating everyday stories that speak of the passion, inspiration and courage cultivated by their artistic calling. They beguile, bewitch and enrich our lives; they entertain and engage us in the ‘tough’ conversations, often without much in return. They are a community of marvellous misfits, whose calling it is to connect us all, through moments of empathy, insight, beauty and mirth.
I’m grateful to all those I documented, and to the staff at the Australian Embassy in Berlin for the opportunity, and support. Many thanks also to my collaborator Kate Seabrook, my husband Oliver Budack for his endless encouragement, and to everyone who came along and supported the exhibition.
Click: on the photos for titles and complete credits.
Copyright: all images are subject to copyright and may not be republished or reproduced without express permission of the copyright owner, Megan Spencer.
Feel free: to link to the images, but please don’t steal!
I first stumbled upon Carrington-Brown as ‘civilians’ at an open mic night in Berlin-Neukölln. As professional comedians, Kabarettisten and amateur storytellers came and went on that tiny stage (myself in the latter category), a giant baritone laugh filled the room. During the break the owner of that laugh came over and introduced himself. Having only just arrived in Berlin I was horribly jet-lagged; in all likelihood I shouldn’t have been anywhere near a stage let alone jumping up with a somewhat serious, heartfelt, wordy tribute to one of my music heroes. That night at least, it really was a comedy stage, and if I was up there it should have been to make people laugh. Clumsily broadcasting songs from my mobile…
“Australia-born, Berlin-based photographer with a fetish for metro systems, giant strawberries and punk rock.” With characteristic word economy, this is the sentence Kate Seabrook uses to describes herself in her photographer profile. It’s spot on. And characteristically again, just as humble. Since beginning her photography journey in 2009, Kate has had work published in a slew of Australian and international publications (Mess+Noise, Berliner Morgenpost, Tagesspiegel, Couch, Tip and the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Good Weekend’ among them.) And her epic, independent ‘Endbahnhof’ passion project (photographing the iconic underground stations of Germany and Europe), was recently featured in Berlin-based, literary travel publication, ‘Elsewhere: A Journal Of Place’. In addition to ‘rockumenting’ music stages on two continents, Kate has a soft spot for…
Imagine: you’re not long out of high school and barely a whisper into your twenties. Your star is on the rise as a cabaret artist in your home city of Melbourne, but instead of staying put, you take a giant leap of faith by moving lock, stock and barrel half way across the world… After a brief OE (“overseas experience”), you decide to throw your entire life into a suitcase and join the diaspora of countless artists who, over the century or so before you, also emigrated to Europe’s unequivocal cabaret capital: Berlin. Sporting a wide smile (and a colourful dirndl) you get a job in a traditional German restaurant (serving pork knuckles and sauerkraut to traditional German diners), teach singing on…
“Destroyed, divided and held captive during a century of chaos and upheaval, borderless Berlin has yet remained a city where drifters, dreamers and outsiders can find a place — and finally run free.” – Stuart Braun, ‘City Of Exiles’ It’s no secret that for decades Berlin has become famous for attracting bohemians, artists and performers, from the world over. Many put it down to the Berliner Luft: a certain freedom of spirit and dirty glamour that infuses the air, and sounds a siren to the seekers, the playful, and those adventurous of heart. Former mayor Klaus Wowereit echoed this idea when in 1994 he famously described Berlin as “poor but sexy”. As he was recruiting potential tourists and tech industry investors to…
