Peltz Produces Chinese Opera about Australian Mining Town

TOM PRICE: The Opera, a 30-minute work by Prospectus artist Daniel Peltz (Unrealized Gain/Loss), performed and recorded on video in Taiwan, was shown in the Western Australian mining town of  Tom Price in June 2014 and is scheduled to be part of an exhibition at the Western Australia Museum in Perth in February 2015.

According to Peltz: “Just as most of Australia’s iron ore is now being refined in China, the story of Tom Price has been refined by a Chinese opera company and is now being brought back to the town of Tom Price as a new Chinese Opera.  This “new” opera uses the classical style of Peking Opera to tell the complex tale of global relationships that make up Tom Price; the town, the mine and the American man whose name they both carry.”

Synopsis: The opera tells the story of Shirley Price, Thomas Moore Price’s only daughter.  Shirley ascends Mount Nameless, where she encounters the ghost of her father.  They reunite as she tells him of his complex legacy.  Thomas listens intently and then makes a last request.

Background: Thomas Moore Price, the namesake of Mt. Tom Price Mine and the town of Tom Price, worked as a vice-president for the American steel manufacturing giant, Kaiser Steel. Thomas flew over the Pilbara in the 1960s and wrote back to his superiors at Kaiser Steel of the riches he glimpsed, waiting to be tapped. Thomas Moore Price died, reportedly at his desk, the same day the approvals for the first mining operation came through, a collaboration between Kaiser Steel and Hamersley Iron. By the 1980s, Kaiser Steel, and most of the American steel industry, was bankrupt.  Kaiser sold their state-of-the-art steel manufacturing facility in Fontana, California to Beijing Capital Iron and Steel, who sent 300 workers from China to the U.S. to dismantle this monument to American industry and float it, in pieces, to Southern China.  There, it lingered in several suburbs, waiting out intense environmental debates, before finally finding its new home in Baotou Inner Mongolia, China, where the mill is still in operation and continues to receive its iron ore from Tom Price.

link to an ABC interview with Peltz:
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2014/06/19/4029046.htm