Roaming Graffiti Wall

It has taken a number of years but I finally edited Ivor's great footage of our temporary autonomous zone. Thanks again to all the supporters* of this project. At the time The Age ran this article.

Background
It's March 2006 and it's the height of two disparate cultures in Australia – Howardism and stencilism. The City of Melbourne is hosting the Commonwealth Games and the authorities of the city have taken it upon themselves to enforce a zero-tolerance policy towards graffiti. This was our response.


Roaming Graffiti Wall from Patrick Jones on Vimeo.

A WorkmanJones action, 2006. Film and music by Patrick Jones (Peej), 2009. Roaming camera by Ivor Bowen. Wall roamers and supporters*: Jeff Stewart, Cath Davies, Pete O'Mara, Tim O'Sullivan, Jasmine Salomon, Patrick Jones, Laura (the RMIT student we roped in off the street), Tara Gilbee, Jason Workman, Cath Ryan, Ruark Lewis, Petra Beuskans, Peter Tyndall, Adrian Kosky and Nikki Blanch.

How to Do Things With Friends (2005)

Several years ago, inspired by reading John Cage, I asked Michael Farrell and Toby Sime to join me in a day's adventure with big dice in Melbourne. I made the dice with off-cuts of plywood and painted them with fast drying acrylic – my work tends to be compulsive; no rehearsal, little planning, loads of opportunity for de-authorisation. I asked a filmmaker friend, Ivor Bowen, to document the day as a surveiller, or as a jaw-agape tourist. Michael, Toby and I just hung around the city inventing games, sitting around, talking to people, walking aimlessly and throwing the dice. A few years later another friend of mine's band, The Haints of Dean Hall, put out an album and I choose the following, completely unrelated country soundtrack to accompany the activities we had previously invented in the city, and spun the two together into the following flick.

In short, Cage's writings on chance and the Situationists' manifesta on 'experimental behaviour' and 'drifting' cumulate into three poets fucking around the city writing poems with big die.