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Samoa on 7 September 2009 became first country for three decades to change the side on which it drives.

Stop at the kerb
Look to the right
Look to the left
Look to the right again
Then if the road is clear of traffic walk straight across the road
DON’T RUN
Walk straight across the road

Straight Across
ISALINE. (Notations on this proposition)

  1. BETWEEN
    THE ‘S’ AND

THE ‘A’ AND

BETWEEN
THE ‘A’ AND

THE ‘L’

  1. This may or may not be true
    This may or may not be a girl’s name
    This may or may not be a particular way to tell a story
    This may or may not be a judicial sentence
    This may or may not be a typo
    This may or may not be an aesthetics choice – a dumb fashion
    This may or may not be an end.

SAMOA

Its common signification is for me, only slight. I grew up not knowing much.

SAMOA

I was born in New Zealand, moved to Australia when I was 6, have been ever since. I am now 35.

SAMOA

Should I have responded in such a way for him to think that his (re) search, (google) search would have felt like he wanted

SAMOA

From me, validating then

SAMOA

Narratives, that for him are not allowed to be concrete poems infused with narrative notations of exposition;

SAMOA

Has to make sense; be sensible; talk about class and struggle; talk about loneliness and struggle; yet Len Lye (whose work I admire and respect) can bless his experimental film work with the abstract poetics of Samoan artistic cultural expressions

SAMOA

Is a way in, and a way out, a go away

SAMOA

Is a performance of his intimacy that I should’ve acknowledged and been grateful; the way he went in, the way he went out, and now the way he goes away; leaving me here alone like a dumb heterosexual girl. Not dumb as in the derogatory word of being daft; lacking wit and smarts; but actually dumb as in unable to speak because of a congenital deafness. Now, as this dumb heterosexual girl I will continue to call out, unable to hear his silent responses till this job is done. This she learnt from her father, his –now hers, working class ethics to finish a job to completion.

I remember thinking to remember.
I remember thinking to forget.

I remember a friend standing in Stephansplatz in Vienna, saying my name is Stephen this is my place.

I remember a text he wrote ten years prior to that about Roland Barthes’ S/Z, where he equated the SZ of the title with himself, his initials, signifying him.

I remember thinking is this Narcissism?

I remember thinking is this Inevitable?

I remember two brothers from Wisconsin, both named with names starting with G.

I remember thinking of the G on the helmet of the Green Bay Packers and wondering how that felt for them when they were younger.

I remember thinking is this Belonging?

I remember thinking is this Identifying?

I remember a playground besides my workplace that was the name of the apprentice.

I remember imagining his internal excitement on seeing the sign.

I remember thinking is this Projection?

I remember thinking is this Inference?

I remember looking in the phone book when I was growing up and seeing no one else listed with my surname.

I remember that this was both comforting and discomforting.

I remember thinking is this Solitude?

I remember thinking is this Individuality?

I remember thinking to remember to remember.

I remember thinking to forget to forget.

LUCKY
FOR
SOME

I’m tired tonight.

I was in the sun for eight hours on a white concrete slab the same size ratio of a piece of A4 paper. I got it especially made. It cost $2200.

I call it my concrete page.

9 to 14 (2014) is an excerpt of Brian Fuata and Tony Schwensen’s contribution to Fuata’s ‘Call and response: changing title 2010 to now’, a correspondence performance where Brian invites a writer to begin a call and response for the duration of a calendar month.

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May reading group

Join the May reading group hosted by Brook Andrew. This month the reading group will use as a leaping off point Brook’s letter to NIRIN artists in the leadup to the Biennale, as bushfires raged across Australia. Register your interest here

Reading Nirin—Gladys Milroy

A series of short readings by artists who have contributed to the 22nd Biennale of Sydney publication, NIRIN NGAAY. In this session Gladys Milroy reads her story ‘The Black Feather’.

Lucky for Some

Watch Brian Fuata perform at the Biennale of Sydney opening week.

An artist’s book by Stuart Geddes and Trent Walter.
Edited by Jessyca Hutchens, Brook Andrew, Stuart Geddes and Trent Walter.
Commissioned for the 22nd Biennale of Sydney.

The Biennale of Sydney team and authors of this publication acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation; the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation; the Bidiagal, Dharawal and Gamaygal people, on whose ancestral lands and waters NIRIN gathers.

NIRIN is a safe place for people to honour mutual respect and the diversity of expression and thoughts that empower us all.

NIRIN NGAAY is a compilation, a collection, a volume, an Artist Book, a Reader, an artwork, a sprawling, excessive heterogenous space of connections. Published as part of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (2020), titled NIRIN, A Wiradjuri word meaning ‘edge’, this book is a space where ideas, themes, research, and experiments arising out of NIRIN find places on pages. Traversing many disciplines and forms, encompassing new and previously published works, complete works as well as excerpts and fragments and responses, each piece may ask for new modes of reading and seeing. Instead of disorienting, we see many lines darting and weaving across these works, beautiful moments of syncing and overlap, affective and abstract resonances, moments of density, as well as pauses to breathe deeply. Read and see and touch at random or with resolve – we hope that you will appreciate the way these works unfold and twist together, creating movements of meaning between them. ‘NGAAY’ is a Wiradjuri word meaning ‘see.’ To really see ‘edges’, might also be to sense and feel and trace them, they come into view with clarity, hover in the periphery, or drift away like memories.

Buy the book

Copies of NIRIN NGAAY can be purchased at the
Biennale of Sydney Shop

Book credits

First published in 2020 by the Biennale of Sydney Ltd.

Published with generous support from Aesop and the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund.

This publication is copyright and all rights are reserved. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced or
communicated to the public by any process without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

© Biennale of Sydney Ltd
All texts and artworks © the author or artist.

Published for the exhibition the 22nd Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN, 14 March – 8
June 2020.

ISBN: 978-0-9578023-9-1

Biennale of Sydney
Chief Executive Officer: Barbara Moore
Artistic Director: Brook Andrew
Editors: Jessyca Hutchens, Brook Andrew, Stuart Geddes and Trent Walter
Publications team: Sebastian Henry-Jones, Liz Malcolm and Jodie Polutele

Designed, typeset and printed by Stuart Geddes and Trent Walter on a Heidelberg GTO 52. Some sections printed by Printgraphics and Newsprinters.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Biennale of Sydney.

Biennale of Sydney Ltd
Level 4
10 Hickson Road
The Rocks NSW 2000
Australia

Film credits

Directed & Edited by
Amy Browne

Camera by
Amy Browne
Jason Heller
Kim Nguyen
Isabella Plaza

Sound by
Ben Coe

Nirin Ngaay