Shared experiences at a distance chat #1 with M’ck McKeague
Facing months of lock down, without housemates, an end date, or any more masterchef, is - oh, why not - unprecedented. Learning to master swirl-poached eggs, and propagating a monstera will only amuse me for so long. So, I’ve set myself a task - talk to 11 friends with an interest in participatory or community-engaged arts, to chat about shared experiences at a distance. In particular, shared experiences that might spark creativity, wonder, and connections.
First up, my dear friend M’ck McKeague, who I met in an online forum (before facebook) in the early 2000s. It was the forum of our favourite band, george. We bonded in the “babble place” section, posting and replying to threads like “gay or straight?” , “Feel the LOVE”, “Anyone have any gmail invites left?”, “Poetry Treasure Trunk”, “Big Brother 2005” and “Does anyone know why and or if katie noonan baby has appeared yet?”
As two young queers from regional Queensland, this forum was one of the only spaces where we could be a little more honest and a little more vulnerable. And that wasn’t a dangerous thing to do there, infact, it was embraced. Honestly, where are rougevelvet, mojo-pin, raingbow_punk_fairy, conflakegirl, jesus_christ and Cheeseguy now???
When my high-school georg- inspired alternative pop/rock band, Maestoso (catchy name, right?) toured to THE VILLAGE FESTIVAL in Yeppoon, M’ck and I arranged to meet IRL, and the rest is history.
It makes sense then, that when M’ck and I met on the computer telephone yesterday to chat about shared experiences at a distance that spark creativity, wonder, and connections - early internet forums came up as a tried and tested option. Unpacking why, we talked about how it was a community of people with a shared interest, how it was public but not as exposed as your facebook wall, and how it managed to cultivate a culture of openness and respect. Turns out fans of george were good at that kind of thing.
We brainstormed other times that screen-based activity has made us feel things, and agreed that Masterchef has really nailed that. Other examples from M’ck included Pen15 on Stan, the Hunger Games, and anytime parents are nice to their children on reality tv shows. But this screen activity isn’t a shared experience, so doesn’t achieve that connections part. And while zoom meetings/social catchups were fine for information sharing and collaboration, we agreed there’s not alot of wonder going on there. For that, we thought, we should look at options away from the screen.
M’ck’s go-to was phone calls with friends while walking in nature. We talked about how the combination of movement, the natural environment, and conversation, resulted in a rejuvenating rather than draining experience. M’ck said this combination might help with being a less self-conscious version of ourselves, and might help us create more moments that “can’t be faked” - that is, genuine communication where we’re present, listening, and contributing.
One of the experiments I’d like to do as a part of this investigation is a project called Stargazing with Strangers (working title). Imagine a conversation with a stranger, who’s looking at the same night sky from a different part of the world. In a three-way phone convo, artists facilitate this shared experience, and add their contribution - musical underscoring, questions, poetry… or something. M’ck was keen to trial this. It’s another example of a shared task that’s separate to the conversation, connected to nature, and outside the everyday. Did you know that if aliens are looking at Earth now through their powerful telescopes, they would see dinosaurs because of how far away they are and because of the speed of light? Thank You for that, M’ck. I can imagine you going outside to wave to the aliens who might be spying on you thousands of years in the future. Tell them to hurry up and intervene because we’ve gone too far in the wrong direction here to fix it. Shit - where was I?
In conclusion, M’ck and I have the most rewarding friendship that exists because of a shared experience at a distance. Because of that shared experience, our creativity has been sparked, we’ve experienced (and continued to experience) wonder together, and we developed a friendship that I’m sure the spying aliens of the future will think is cute.
I’ll leave you with this brief one from the Poetry Treasure Chest:
M’ck McKeague is a performance maker, set and costume designer and installation artist currently based in Melbourne. M'ck's work often experiments with non-traditional spaces and reimagines the audience-performance relationship. Dissatisfied with master narratives and the systems and spaces that uphold them, M’ck seeks out collaborative scenographic practices that embrace difference and disrupt privilege in process, form and content.