Photo: www.birmingham2022.com
The Birmingham 2022 Festival, which runs together with the Commonwealth Games, will showcase a reimagining of Australia's national anthem - combined with table tennis.
Anthem Anthem Revolution invites audience members to battle an increasingly defensive table tennis robot, hell-bent on protecting the old national anthem.
Visitors will step up to the plate and reveal a fresh word from the updated anthem with each successful return, testing their skills and their commitment to the children of Tasmania.
With each hit or bounce, players will hear a child’s voice or musical sound. The more successful the player is, the more voices and sounds they’ll hear, creating the player’s own unique anthem.
Players who complete a bonus round unlock a completed recording of the anthem that rapper DENNI (Denni Proctor) wrote with a group of Tasmanian children.
DENNI is from the Pakana people of Tasmania.
“Working with these young people, it was just very apparent how much of their environment - and what’s going on in the world - that they are absorbing and critically thinking about," she said.
A few themes (during the writing process) came up in the room, just about identity, place and culture, and we landed on Australia as a body, and our body as country,” Proctor said.
The anthem is called Milaythina, which means country in Palawa Kani, one of Tasmania's Aboriginal languages.
You can see a video of the creation of the installation here.