Whither the Australian Western? Performing Genre and the Archive in Outback and Beyond

Abstract

“Outback and Beyond: A Live Australian Western” is a live audio-visual performance by myself and Rome-based sound artist Mike Cooper. In the show, Mike’s soundtrack of deconstructed Blues and processed electronics is juxtaposed against a live re-mix of archival footage of the Australian outback cut from films in the National Film and Sound Archive. The result is a live “Australian Western,” a meditation on Australian iconography and mythography. Despite historical and geographical similarities to the USA, Australia has no cinematic tradition of the Western. Its archive is filled with images of harsh desert lands, of hardy Colonial settlers, of burgeoning communications technologies, the railroad and the telegraph, and encounters with native peoples; yet these images do not coalesce into “the Western” as such. In this paper I will explore the notion of the Australian Western in the context of “Outback and Beyond.” Why did Australia not develop the Western in the formative years of its cinema industry? And what does it mean to propose a live Western, built from archival materials?