“No Future” by Christoph Büchel

2008 · AU · colour · En · 6’

Conceived for the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, Revolutions – Forms That Turn, Christoph Büchel’s No Future brings together four women in their eighties to form a punk band and continuously rehearse the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen (1977)—originally titled No Future—inside the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Situated at a site marked by the arrival of the First Fleet with convicts and marines in 1788 and the beginning of British colonisation of Australia, the work transforms punk’s anthem of rebellion into a meditation on generational reversal, colonial history and endurance.

Conceived by Christoph Büchel for the 16th Biennale of Sydney, Revolutions – Forms That Turn (2008), No Future was a durational performance that unfolded throughout the exhibition’s three-month run. Four women in their eighties—Jill McKay, Violet Read, Joan Kersey and Wilga Leone—none of whom had any previous musical experience, auditioned to form a punk band and continuously rehearsed the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen (1977)—originally titled No Future and famously banned by the BBC—in a rehearsal room installed inside the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

The museum occupies the site where Great Britain’s First Fleet landed with convicts and marines in 1788, establishing the British penal colony of New South Wales and marking the beginning of the colonisation of Australia. Against this historical backdrop, the project echoed the Biennale’s theme by inverting the mythology of punk: replacing its young rebels with elderly women and having its quintessential anthem of anarchy repeatedly performed by the generation that preceded punk.

Every rehearsal was filmed by the band in its entirety throughout the exhibition. The resulting video is an edit of a rehearsal session, documenting the band’s persistent attempt to inhabit one of punk’s most iconic anthems through repetition, endurance and collective performance.

Recorded at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2008

Performers

Joan Kersey – drums

Wilga Leone – bass

Violet Read – guitar

Jill McKay – vocals

Produced by

Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

Biennale of Sydney 2008

Clare Lewis

Supported by

MONA – Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania