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No Fear: Boys' Own Beach Adventure.
Mary Ann Hunter, Department of English, University of Queensland
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Images of the Australian beach usually centre on a holy trinity of sun, surf, and sand. But what about the beach at night, the beach dotted with military bunkers, the beach as setting for fear and invasion? This paper examines the underbelly of 'beach' in a performance by Arterial, a community-based company developing public art "in the public interest". Titled Zen Che: A Tactical Arts Response, the project involved a group of young men from Ningi Youth Centre who created a 10 minute broadcast-quality video around a range of performative acts, including going to the beach, being young, and being blokes. But this paper questions the wider representational politics of this performance of masculinity and of 'youth'. In this analysis, the beach becomes both a setting for and protagonist in a complex politics of reinscription and resistance.
