Title: No Future by artist Christoph Büchel
Production: Clare Lewis
Screened: Sydney Biennale 2008, MCA, Sydney

Jill, Violet, Joan and Wilga were four 80 year old strangers with no musical background who auditioned to be part of a band. The group were to learn to play the Sex Pistols 1977 punk anthem ‘God Save the Queen’ (originally titled ‘No Future’). Rehearsals took place a few times a week, live in front of visitors at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney for the duration of the 2008 Biennale. The project was conceptualised by Swiss artist, Christoph Büchel, and turned the rebellion of punk on its head (in keeping with the Biennale’s theme, ‘Revolutions, forms that turn’) by having the quintessential song of anarchy performed repeatedly by the generation that produced the children of punk. I was responsible for casting the project, coordinating music tuition, performance schedule, equipment and filming rehearsals. Each rehearsal was recorded, with the most recent session screened on the television when the band was not present. The project was hugely popular with the press and public, a clip I uploaded to YouTube received over 70,000 hits. Büchel produced a DVD collating some of footage generated during the exhibition.