On Dreams, Innovation and the Emerging Genre of the Individual Artist

Abstract

Amongst Bardi of north-west Western Australia, ilma is a genre of dreamt material that has three interrelated components: song, dance and ‘totem’ (a string and plywood object carried during the dance). These constituent parts, along with the whole, are referred to as ilma. This article considers the social tensions surrounding the commodification of one of these elements, the ‘totem’, as art. The production of ilma for the art market largely precludes the development of associated songs and dances, and their integration into group repertoire, giving rise to tensions between social expectations about such dreamt material and those of the person who dreams them. These tensions reflect Bardi understandings of the provenance of this dreamt material, as ancestrally revealed: hence dreamt songs, dances and objects belonging to this ritual genre are not considered as creative works produced by a person or persons. Contestations over ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ in this context highlight the tensions between the forces of convention and those of innovation in times of social change, in which the emergence of persons as creative individuals may be understood as signalling broader societal transformation.

Keywords:

• Dreams
• Innovation
• Individual
• Art
• Aboriginal Australia

Notes

[1] Acknowledgments: The research on which this article was based would not have been possible without the support, at various times over the years, of The Australian National University, the Berndt Foundation at The University of Western Australia, and the Kimberley Land Council. I am grateful to Roger Lohmann, James Weiner, Heather M.-L. Miller, participants in the 2008 and 2009 sessions of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Oceania panel, ‘Imagination and Innovation in Oceania’, and to Anthropological Forum's anonymous referees, for their comments on previous drafts. I am especially grateful to the many Bardi and Jawi people who have, over many years and in various ways, generously shared many aspects of their lives with me.

[2] Photographs of an ilma performance at Stonehenge are available at: http://www.internationalpeaceandconflict.org/photo/bardi-stonehenge-050606l?context=user (accessed 31 March 2010).

[3] Some photographs of Roy's ilma are available at: http://www.moragalleries.com.au/rwiggan/ (accessed 31 March 2010).

[4] Bowern (2003:3) identifies the earliest recordings of these ilma as those recorded by Alice Moyle in ‘1966 or 1967’; followed by Toby Metcalfe's recordings of an ilma performance at Lombadina in 1970, and his further recording of Billy Ah Choo singing the ilma, including its ‘recent additions’, in 1971.

[5] For example, see his interview with well-known Australian journalist Phillip Adams (Australia Adlib 2003).