Set in Europe during the Thirty Years' War, Bertolt Brecht's 1939 play Mother Courage and Her Children follows Anna Fierling (the "Mother Courage" of the title) as she and her children pull a wagon of wares through bloodied, war-torn landscapes in an attempt to make a living by selling goods to soldiers.
Widely considered to be the greatest play of the 20th century, Mother Courage and Her Children has inspired and influenced many other artists' works, including a powerful new piece by Alice Springs-based filmmaker and artist Warwick Thornton (director of Samson and Delilah).
Commissioned by ACMI and dOCUMENTA (13), Mother Courage is an immersive video and sculptural installation that explores cultural displacement and the tensions between contemporary urban and traditional Indigenous lifestyles.
Like Brecht's leading character, the Mother Courage of Thornton's work lives a nomadic lifestyle; forced out of her community, she travels from gallery to gallery creating and selling paintings from the back of a van.
"I immediately saw a correlation between Brecht's Mother Courage...and the situation of Indigenous people in Central Australia today," says Thornton.
"There's a lot of social dysfunction in my community, with people being forced to leave their homes, their families and their friends, to economically survive."
In the same way that Brecht's heroine has a formidable will to survive, Thornton's Mother Courage possesses a self-determination to not only survive, but to stay true to her roots and culture.
"Some audiences will see Mother Courage as a victim, and that's a valid response," Thornton admits, but then adds: "The work encourages this ambiguity - the social situation and history I refer to is really complex and difficult. I trust my audience to find their own meaning and come to their own conclusions."
Mother Courage
Season: 7 February - 23 June 2013
Venue: Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
Address: Federation Square, Cnr Flinders and Swanston Streets, Melbourne
Image: courtesy of Scarlett Pictures
Mother Courage
Season: 7 February - 23 June 2013
Venue: Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)
Address: Federation Square, Cnr Flinders and Swanston Streets, Melbourne
Image: courtesy of Scarlett Pictures
For more information, visit: www.acmi.net.au for details.
