Blue Invasion Project - (codename c.r.a.p)

It's January, summertime in Sydney and that usually means some sun, late afternoon storms, humidity, cricket, afternoons drinking and the festival of Sydney. For the last few years I've always promised that I'd get out during the mid January offerings and check out what the festival had to offer. So it was with some excitement and some media support that Adrian and I stepped out on a particularly balmy evening in order to catch this 'challenge to our senses'.....that and the fact that it was a freebie helped.

Quoting directly from the SMH article;

'Oursler's night-time projection, Blue Invasion, turns Hyde Park into the site of an extraterrestrial incursion'

'Blue Invasion draws on a fear that has racked humans since we
first dreaded an attack from the skies. But invasion could come in many guises',
Oursler says

For Sydney Festival director Fergus Linehan, Blue Invasion is about "the media and their pervasive control of our minds".

Really, Absolute CRAP

Am Image Projected onto a tree...CRAP

My opinion of Blue Invasion is that the metaphor and the symbolism for the garbage that they came up with is fair but these guys are meant to be visual artists. This project was 2 years in the planning and one of the main attractions of the Festival of Sydney. It reminded me of a particularly bad Yr 12 High School project. To use a line from Sex and the City, this was some 'Harvest, harvest bullshit'. A couple of trees lit up in colour with additional, spooky audio, some OK projections into a fountain, cubes with pulsating red lights placed here and there and some non-sensical drivel to accompany the useless projections.

The highlight of the Crapfest was a string of Christmas type lights hung out from a pole. The only amusement from that was the fact that it was bright. If this was intended to make us think about our fears and consider what we are being challenged by, ie; the ultra power of the conservatives, the bullshit that our media feeds us and perpetuates, the reappearance of racism - then all I can say is that, it was CRAP .

It looks nothing like this !

I guess the best analogy I can draw is that of the Royal

Easter Show. If you remember, as a kid, it was always exciting, new showbags, rides, fairy floss, ferris wheels etc. Now, for some reason, that same excitement remains with you for the rest of your life and year afer year you go, right into adulthood....although in adulthood you forget every year that the show is a waste of time and it too is CRAP. That's how this Invasion on my senses felt, like a huge rip off (..and I didn't even pay anything to see it). It was cheap and nasty, just like the kebabs outside of Scruphy Murphy's, great when you don't have your faculties about you but when you're our for a culinary experience, or in this case something moderately cultural then the reality failed to match the promise by the length of the straight.

Alas, Adrian and I headed down to the Quay after that in order to grab a gelato. The real highlight came from me virtually driving onto Wharf 2. Actually correction, the highlight was us watching four police walk by the car and me thinking that i'd be swearing about a $100 parking fine within the next few minutes. Anyway, that was my Sydney Festival experience, I might actually step up and try out the In a Blacktown Backyard offering for $38.50. Apparently the deal here is that you get picked up from Parramatta, show the sites of the Blacktown burbs and then rock into someone's backyard, presumably in Shalvey, for a theatrical peformance .....can't wait for that one !!