Wilhelm von Blandowski - interlude

This arvo Rebecca and I drove into Sale and there was time, as there often is, for a bit of a sit down after checking into our hotel (tonight, The Princeton Motor Lodge).

Ahh, you know?

Soon, though, it occurred to me that the first page of the Blandowski Paperpoint presentation ('Performance today at 11.30 & 1.30') had been getting a bit tatty.

See?


So I thought I'd re-draw and re-letter it for the last two days of the tour, and the new picture ended up looking like this:


Both of them are versions of the classic Blandowski self-portrait, which you can see here. Neither of them really captures him, which is 1) a little bit disappointing and 2) fine. As a maker of comic books, I enjoy (but REALLY. I really enjoy) play with representation. As a maker of theatre, I really enjoy playing historical figures because of the degree of interpretation it invites - that is, people who have seen Blandowski on this tour have really been seeing my Blandowski.

Although in terms of the 'real' Blandowski, I hope that the performance ignites interest in him and that people leave it with another name, another fragment of a piece, of the story of Victoria that we all carry around as a backdrop to our lives. The story of where we are. The story of how we came to be.

Before this all gets too deep, check out this 3 minutes of audio of an interview I did as Wilhelm on Mildura ABC radio with Louise Ray a couple of weeks ago. Oh, yes, it's a pretty funny accent, ze Prussian one...

And here is the very exciting news about the publication of Blandowski's book of illustrations of Australia. The illustrations are actually by Gustav Mutzel, who made them under Blandowski's directions after he had returned to Europe. Blandowski then photographed the illustrations and stuck the photos in albums, as I understand it, in order to self-publish a small number of the book 'Australien in 142 Photographishen Abbildunggen'. A zine, effectively.