Tina Havelock Stevens
By Nat Grant. First published in Drumscene Magazine in 2018
Sydney based drummer of thirty years Tina Havelock Stevens has a practise that spans traditional performance, live art, documentary, video installation, and University teaching. She’s drummed in the desert, in the carcass of a jet plane, and in 2013 was commissioned by MONA FOMA to perform a drum kit solo fully submerged underwater. Tina’s drumming has been re-imagined from what she calls a “more traditional band format into an art practice which is now about spontaneity, unpredictability and the non verbal … It’s not about writing music in preparation” she says: “I work with video in the same way…I love a type of immediacy. I have a DIY punk hangover ethic and I make a lot never knowing where it’s going to turn up. I also get asked whether I have an idea for a festival or am invited into a Gallery show. My projects are essentially portraits of the state of the contemporary world, they have an experiential quality and are open to interpretation for a viewer. I like to get in on our limbic systems.”
“I’ve been playing on and off for about thirty years” says Tina, “Eons! … I was really into music from when I was super tiny, I had decade-older siblings so listened to their records, I listened to heaps of radio too and I was obsessed with music shows on TV. Drummers always looked like they were off in their own zone up the back, holding it all together and having a good time. I started hitting saucepans with chopsticks and my Dad asked why I had my hands crossed over (snare/hi-hat manoeuvre) and I replied that’s what they did on TV. I ran all the way home the day my school got a drum kit… and yelled out to Mum that I was learning a ‘musical instrument’ even before I’d gotten in the door. I wasn’t attracted to the violin or piano. It all felt a bit serious. When I watched fellow students performing…it just didn’t look too fun and they were always doing exams to be graded on their instruments and that seemed even more un-fun.”
Tina’s life as a drummer “basically emerged from the post punk scene drumming with Plug Uglies, which formed back in the mid/late 80’s.” She then went on to play with Crow, The Titanics, Chicks on Speed, and instrumental band The Mumps with long-term collaborator Liberty Kerr on guitar. “That’s been going for about ten years in a very sporadic fashion … It’s pretty much a driving post-rock three piece. Our bass player is Adele Pickvance. (Robert Forster, Dave Graney) We get in trouble for only playing occasionally, which is a nice way of audiences saying they like us! We all live in different cities and have other jobs which adds to the trouble. Liberty and I also play as an experimental duo and its all improv. It’s a pretty nice conversation to be able to have with such an old pal.”
This duo with Havelock Stevens and Liberty performed most recently for Tina’s large-scale video installation THUNDERHEAD at Dark Mofo in Hobart, and at Carriageworks in Sydney (both in 2016). “The work is of a storm I encountered by chance in Texas” Tina says: “After I’d done the edit I showed a bit of it to Liberty for one minute in my kitchen and then we went into the lounge room, hit record and played to it for 17 minutes. In exhibition mode THUNDERHEAD plays with that soundtrack which loops and then in the evenings we do an ever-evolving soundscape for two and a half hours in front of the projection. We had a great time. I also hired nice sturdy kits. The DW I used in Sydney was particularly satisfying.”
As an interdisciplinary artist Tina’s work is really varied, but all her projects related back to drumming in some way. Her recent video work ‘Giant Rock’, featuring her drumming at Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert, California, is a finalist in the Blake Prize which is one of Australia’s longest standing art prizes. “The site has a rich history and is considered a ‘spiritual vortex’,” she says: “Theres no doubt that place had a vibe. This work is very much an example of my art practice of spontaneous drumming in loaded (for whatever reason) spaces.”
Tina has also just returned from the inaugural Manila Biennale where she made a new video work called BEATS OF DARKNESS. “Using the 1979 film ‘Apocalypse Now’ as a departure point BEATS OF DARKNESS features sites that were once locations for the production shot in areas of the Philippines. So I literally ’deployed’ myself into the process and gave myself a week turnaround time to shoot and produce it myself. It was a pretty wild ride. The work is a combination of experimental documentary and drumming performance which is my usual methodology I use to make works at these charged sites. I added an additional layer to the work by performing an improvised live score in front of the finished projection in collaboration with local ethnomusicologist and percussionist Tusa Montes. She played the Kulintang (a Southeast Asian instrument comprising rows of gongs and drums) which was fantastic.”
In April this year Tina was invited to curate the monthly ARTBAR event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Each month a different artist fills all the levels of the museum with performance art, music, film, and a DJ on the rooftop. “They require a theme” she says, “so I went with the spirit of the world from which I came…this of course comes with a bit of DIY punk ethos … The night was basically a mix of music, performance art, and film. I mostly curated my collaborators! My band The Mumps ended the night in the best way we know how.”
Tina will be returning to the Philippines later in the year to produce a new commissioned video work for an exhibition, drumming one of Imelda Marcos’ buildings. She is also working with Melbourne contemporary dancers Jo Lloyd and Shian law in “a development period for some shows in Toronto, Canada in a few months. With our last show for Liveworks Festival at Performance Space, Sydney I was drumming against all odds and driving the performance with those two (nude dancers) climbing on my back and I was also subjected to a large ‘dumpling’ continuously falling from above while I tried to play… It's a helluva show! Letting the situation determine the outcome defines my work after all…I’m improvising all over the place!”
Perhaps Tina’s best known performance project is under the moniker of ‘White Drummer’. White Drummer “taps into the frequencies of site and place,” giving improvised performances that are both music and performance art. Tina has been performing as White Drummer since 2010, and in 2013 played a full kit underwater for 10 minutes for the MONA FOMA festival. That year Tina also made a work where she drummed my way through the post-apocalyptic city of Detroit. These performances are often recorded for future video installations.
Havelock Stevens brings a unique perspective to drumming as an art form. “I love things that travel and soar,” she says: “I love quiet and loud. Fast and slow. I love minor chords, intuitive surprises and whatever that equivalent is in all of my visual work too. I like that an audience can share an experience but have multiple perspectives. I don’t practice so there’s a certain spontaneity in my playing I suppose as I sit down on drums and think…oh yeh I love this…I need to do this more! Ouch is that a blister? Maybe it’s all just the autobiographical exorcism…”
