Next Wave 2012

Some tasty morsels from this years Next Wave Festival program in Melbourne…

Tickets are flying  – so get in now……

BINGO UNIT

Team MESS love two things – everyone and television.

For their new major work they combine the two by shooting a pilot for a new television crime drama, and everyone can play a part! The public is invited to participate in playing the role of the detectives in the show and get to the bottom of solving the crime.

BINGO Unit toys with the formulaic limits of narrative, where the story-telling is more important than the story. Filmed at sites across Melbourne during the festival, BINGO Unit will be screened as a back-lot tour at ‘Team MESS Studios’ at Arts House Meat Market.

http://nextwave.org.au/event/bingo-unit/

BONE LIBRARY

A major new work from durational performance artist Sarah-Jane Norman, Bone Library considers the living essence of so-called “dead” Indigenous languages. For five days during the festival, Norman occupies a room of the Melbourne City Library, where she begins the process of engraving a complete dictionary of “extinct” Indigenous Australian languages onto the prepared bones of sheep and beef cattle. On the final day of the festival, audiences will be invited to take a single bone into their custodianship. A haunting and visceral intervention into the public archive, Bone Library asks the audience to assume personal responsibility for what our culture chooses to remember.

http://nextwave.org.au/event/bone-library/

Note: On the final day of the installation, the audience will be invited to become public trustees of the collection. With the blessing of each language group’s living descendants, each bone-artefact will be placed in the care of an individual audience member. A national registry, detailing the whereabouts of each bone, will be created for the public record. Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people are invited to become Bone Librarians.

FLYWAY

Strange strangers! Go onwards. Look upwards. FLYWAY  invites you to join the flock.

Trust your instincts and the golden wings. Channel your vision and take a migratory walk through the city, to quiet bird spaces and spectacular scenes. Cousins! Follow Elizabeth Dunn, with sound artist Lawrence English, as they investigate the enchanting nature of migratory birds and the epic annual journeys they make across a shifting globe in search of rest, food and a nest. In the midst of the human and bird networks that are devoted to this epic act of travelling on, there are signs of hope. We will welcome tomorrow.

http://nextwave.org.au/event/flyway/

GOODBYE, CSIRAC

Goodbye, CSIRAC invites you to experience a retro sci-fi audio tour, leading you into the guts of the Melbourne Museum to uncover the true story of CSIRAC, “Australia’s first computer”. But watch out! As lights blink and paper tape whirrs, the forgotten history of female computer operators just might summon the mysterious Ghost of Computers Past…

A love letter to 1960s computing and sci-fi, Goodbye, CSIRAC commemorates the things – and people – we forget when technologies become obsolete.

http://nextwave.org.au/event/goodbye-csirac/

HIATUS

Hiatus is a live performance work propelled by recent and ongoing natural disasters. Assertions that we are now experiencing “the beginnings of a new kind of future in which mega-disasters are going to be more frequent” are both subject and inspiration of artists’ Fiona Bryant and Lucy Farmer’s performance – a guided bus tour to the edge of the earth. This is a bus tour with a difference. Its destination is purposely imprecise. One performer is sensibly riding the bus; the other is fervently running…all the way. Hiatus is a bold and refulgent offering for a broken world and uncertain future.

http://nextwave.org.au/event/hiatus/

Boho Interactive

I came across your company/group Boho Interactive whilst flicking through TED one day, can you tell us how you came to give a TED presentation and what that was like?

TEDxCanberra approached us around six months before the talk, so we had a good bit of time to think about what we were hoping to achieve. They were pretty happy for us to take the presentation in whatever direction we wanted to so long as we kept under eighteen minutes, so we wanted to be as big and loud as we could while still getting our point across and not being overly obnoxious. Pegging a few hundred balloons at people’s heads while yelling at them about multisystemic apocalypse seemed about right.

The approach we took was to look for places where our work and the usual TED style met. We’ve got a bad habit of cramming as many different stylistic options into a work as possible, and it’s fun to see where the faultlines along ideas are, so that happened. We don’t really have an aesthetic or a style as a company, but we do work entirely within the area of concepts that relate to or are informed by complex systems science and similar fields. We try to let the format, style and content mirror the nature of the system we’re looking at, so for example our game theory show was an iterated competition, and we looked at Australian history by simulating social influencers and having them interact. With TEDx we wanted to adhere fairly closely to a lecture sensibility, and the eighteen ideas we looked at flow on from one another logically, but we wanted to echo the cross-disciplinary nature of complexity study by considering these ideas in a conceptual space that was as multidimensional as we could make it. I think by offering a lot of different perspectives that share a core intention you give a whole heap of opportunities to an audience to find the ideas that click in an intuitive way, and once that’s achieved they are in a better position to receptively add information to the scaffold.

TEDx was a bit different for us in that we were actually pretty familiar with all the ideas we were looking at before we set out to write the script. Generally our process is to find an area of complexity study that we have a layman’s interest in, then to devise the work as we’re learning about it. It sounds backwards but I think if you set out to communicate an idea that you’re just starting to understand yourself, you still have a fresh grasp on what made the idea resonate in your own mind, so it’s easier to identify and reproduce that logical leap. If you’re coming from the position of a person who has an encyclopaedic understanding of the topic at hand you have to guess at how people can best start learning the information. So this was actually a bit of a challenge with TEDx, trying to get to the bottom of what information would be most useful to communicate, and what aspect of that information would be engaging. All in all though it was great to have an excuse to try out a lot of techniques in a lecture theatre context, which is an area we’re looking to spend a lot of time working in for the next couple of years.
Can you tell us how technology, both lo-fi and hi-fi, operates in your practice?

Interactivity with an audience while you’re in the process of delivering a narrative is risky as hell, because you’re removing the pretence that there is a distinction between the worlds that you and they occupy. Once people are interacting in a narrative it’s impossible to avoid characterising them, even if it’s as nebulous as a ghostly presence or whatever, there needs to be a reason which is consistent with the story as to why events are modified by an external input. Given all that, it’s one thing to ask people to believe that you are someone you aren’t, it’s totally another to ask them to believe the same of themselves. If the interaction mechanism is clunky, if people feel confused or frustrated or embarrassed, then the odds are that the audience member will reject the characterisation you’re imposing on them, and then they don’t need to go far to stop believing in the rest of the show.

So the main use we have for tech is making the interaction with the audience as seamless as possible. This generally means that tech is chosen based on its function rather than as an end in itself, so we like stuff that is reliable, simple and discreet. A wiimote hidden inside something is basically indistinguishable from magic.

Your motto is ‘we fight dirty for science’ – are you all scientists? where did the love for it come from?
None of us come from science backgrounds, but we’re very aware of the frustration that scientists must feel whenever they have to wade into the battle for public opinion. Science is constrained, as it has to be, by the need for transparency, to acknowledge the uncertainty in findings, to be totally impartial. On the other hand, vested interests that inevitably wish to maintain status quo have every opportunity to muddy the waters without any accountability whatsoever. The result is that the people least qualified to comment are the ones who are the freest to. The arts has a responsibility to try to balance that out. Fortunately for us, as artists we are expected to appeal to emotion on topics that we feel strongly about. So we are allowed to extrapolate and dramatise, without having to worry about being ridiculed.

We chose to work in complexity science because it aligns really well with what we wanted to achieve in performance format, and it’s a mindset that can be applied to just about any field of human endeavour so it’s not actually all that limiting when it comes to stories we want to tell. I haven’t come across many scenarios where considering an issue from a complexity standpoint hasn’t thrown up something interesting.

Interactivity and science work really well with one another, too – you can use interaction to demonstrate the idea you’re getting at, or to verify to an audience that what you’re doing is real, or to rubber-band the pace of the information you’re putting out there. For me the best moments in a show are where the behaviour in an interaction evolves from random experimentation into a considered application of the rules – it’s great to see that change happen and it’s a really effective mechanism to ensure that the story doesn’t move forward until the ideas are understood.

I have a running joke with some friends about the futility of ‘writing a play about climate change’, how can you tackle big issues with your work, in a meaningful way or that has a big impact?
Yeah, it’s tricky when it comes to the impersonal issues found in the development of climate change because theatre works more naturally with people stuff – individual stories that take place as you are watching them. It’s kind of hard to turn deteriorating methane clathrates and ice albedo into relatable characters. With climate change you’ve got this enormous intangible problem which is unfolding over decades and the only way to deal with it onstage is to abstract the issue and look at its impact on an individual rather than systemic level. But when you do that, you’re no longer looking for a solution to the problem, it just becomes a big bad. Our focus is on tracing a logical progression through the mechanisms of climate change rather than focusing on the end result, which can be so cataclysmic that people refuse to acknowledge that it’s possible. If you’ve got a series of steps that each make sense that take you from where we are now, I think the chance of the message getting through is a lot higher. I reckon the critical gap in climate theatre is somehow getting back from the crisis to initial behaviours that need to be fixed.

How theatre can actually do that I’m not sure. Since it’s an issue that is only going to loom larger as time goes on I think it’s going to start forming a background to more and more work, without being addressed directly and without solutions being proposed. It’s naïve to think any one work is going to have much of an impact on people’s behaviour but hopefully the arts is able to make a difference in the aggregate. I know turning lights off when I leave a room isn’t going to cool the earth down, but I still do it.

Is there a community of makers in Canberra like you? Or are you going it alone in the nations capital?

Canberra has a really good continuum of art-makers, there’s a lot of cross-arts practice and people are generally pretty willing to dive into collaborations. There’s huge talent about but the scene is just small enough that you can still find a niche with room to move relatively easily. As you’d get in most smaller towns there’s a trend of people uprooting and moving to Sydney or Melbourne, which doesn’t necessarily result in them doing more cool stuff than they did when they were here, but by the same token there’s also a good takeup of overseas residencies that injects a good international perspective into the stuff that goes on here.

There are definitely artists doing similar stuff to us – for instance Last Man to Die do shows made up of sequences of sound, performance, interactivity and tech, and Cathy Petocz does science theatre and installation work, both of whom we’ve worked with in the past. And the You Are Here festival in a few weeks should have a pretty good lineup of the more experimental artists about the place – that’s being produced by David, who’s another Boho member. But being the company that does complex systems concepts with interactive narratives and live trombone hopefully carves us out a space we can comfortably claim is all ours.

Thanks Jack and Boho Interactive…

Martyn Coutts.

www.bohointeractive.com/

Arts House Season One – 2012

In the new 2012 program at Arts House in Melbourne, there appears to be a continuation of the type of programming done in previous years with a nod to the UK intimate performance style.

Some works of interest that is being premiered in Australia are;

And The Birds Fell From The Sky
Pixel Rosso

An immersive performance combining ‘autoteatro’ style instructions with film, by artist/devisor and ‘autoteatro’ pioneer Silvia Mercuriali (Rotozaza) and multi-award winning filmmaker and artist, Simon Wilkinson, And the Birds Fell from the Sky casts you as the central character, located at the heart of the story.

Equipped with video goggles and headphones so that sight, hearing and movement through space are hijacked and fully fused with the work itself, get ready to enter a compelling fictional reality that becomes gradually more real and present than the world around you…

Alma Mater
Fish & Game (UK)

A filmic tour-for-one, Alma Mater fuses high-technology with lo-fi charm as individual audience members enter a specially constructed, full-scale child’s bedroom to immerse themselves – via iPad – in the world of a little girl.

An Appointment with J Dark
Triage Live Art Collective

An Appointment with J Dark is a one-to-one participatory performance event, an individual appointment with an enigmatic stranger. In response to a calling card, individuals will rendezvous at an appointed time and place in North Melbourne, with a woman named J Dark. Each meeting becomes a unique and intimate journey – often playful, sometimes confronting and always surprising.

Arts House Season One 2012

Tiny Stadiums call out

CALL FOR LIVE ART WEEKEND SUBMISSIONS

Groundwork and PACT invite applications from emerging artists for inclusion in the Tiny Stadiums Live Art Weekend. The Live Art Weekend will be presented on June 2-3, 2012, in Erskineville village and surrounds.

Download the application form and more information HERE.

Application deadline: Monday 13th Feb, 5pm. Late applications will not be considered.

Email your application to assistant@pact.net.au with “Live Art Weekend Submission” and “your name” in the subject line.

Curatorial Criteria
Groundwork are seeking applications for bold, immersive and site-specific works by emerging artists that respond to the concepts centre and margins. Artists working across the disciplines of performance, dance, new media, sound and visual arts are encouraged to apply.

Experimental, interdisciplinary and community engaged works will be prioritised, as will projects that critically consider their location or context and shift how the community access public space. Artists living outside of Sydney as well as local artists are encouraged to apply.

Some questions that you may wish to engage with in your application are:

Does the work consider or respond to the histories and geographies of the local area?
How does the artist want to involve the local community?
Does the work take risks artistically?
Is it achievable logistically?

Occupy This Zizek!

Occupy This Zizek! My new Potts Point Apartment!

The following text was recorded by Agatha Gothe -Snape, in conversation with me, Sarah Rodigari, about the Field Theory Zizek Excursion, held in my new Potts Point apartment on October 15^th 2011.

There is a lot to be said about Zizek and Live Art.

Actually, I don’t even want to talk about Live Art.

No, don’t write that down.

So… the topic, Zizek.

Um, the Zizek Excursion was an opportunity for peers and friends and thinkers to get together and talk about the relationship between psychoanalysis and performance. We all know this is a broad church.

In true psychoanalytical form, this excursion happened the same night at Occupy Sydney commenced in Martin Place Sydney.

So, the next thing is, what’s the next thing.

I have no idea what happened.

We ate socca.

I invited ALL THE PARTICIPANTS to reflect on their experience of the night.

What follows are their account.

Dear Koji, Nina, Brain and Jess,

There were over twenty RSVPs for the Zizek excursion on Saturday October 15, more people than could be accommodated. This date also marked the first day of Occupy Sydney and on the evening it was you dears (oh and Tessa for a brief stint) who tore yourselves away from such a momentous occasion and came to my place, where as relative strangers we shared food together and watched a documentary about Zizek.

Thank you all for coming.

I am writing to ask if you might like to write a brief response about your experience of the Zizek excursion? I have been thinking about Zizek a lot.  I have been thinking about his acknowledgement that he is a performance of himself, resting somewhere between truth and fiction, and that he is aware that his idiosyncratic honesty in acknowledging this is also a performance and a parody of himself. I often find myself lost between truth and fiction, are these separable? I have also been thinking about his writing methodology and how he tricks himself into writing, first by saying I am just getting ideas down on the page and then after bashing out these ideas he says to himself, I only have to edit now. This again seems like a relationship between truth and fiction, in which Zizek is both clairvoyant and storyteller.

Will you be the clairvoyants and storytellers of this Field Theory Excursion?

Cheers

Sarah

 Brian Fuata’s response

I came down from Newcastle to attend both Occupy Sydney and the Zizek screening.  I was excited to see how big the protest might be after the NY and London versions. The film I hadn’t seen yet also excited me.  I wanted the experience of the film to be imbued by the reality of the protest.  I was reminded of a story about Guillermo Gomez Pena and La Pocha Nostra holding a workshop somewhere in Mexico, I think it was Oaxaca, where there was civil unrest directly outside the building they were in.  The story goes, that apparently Pena had no choice but to take the workshop outside.  Workshop participant and protester became interchangeable.  I never thought that anything like that would happen on this day, but there was some myth rub off that entertained my mind, and it did colour how I saw the protest and film screening as a double bill.

I had been attracted by the spectacle of protests over the years, the performances of protestors, police, horses and passer-bys and media, and although very familiar with this performance trajectory, the documentation of NY and London had me excited in the way I see a Best of album; a Greatest Hits.

I’m reminded of Le Tigre’s song Cry for Everything Bad that’s Ever Happened.  How late-nineties-Newtown-queer of me!  I mention that with a genuine blush.

I arrived at the occupation at 5pm and bumped into a friend Sumu who also introduced me to two friends of his.  Sumu and I spoke about the last time we saw each other, which was at a performance of mine at Tin Sheds Gallery and after that, talk of possibly joining him in the birthday celebrations of the nightclub Good God.  I decided to stay in that night.  He went.

Our conversation at the protest continued.  I had asked him how the nightclub was for him.  He said it was a strange night.  Our talk moved on.  I remember then, him, his friends and I laughing over small talk.  I think I said something funny about protest drum circles, can’t remember if Sumu’s friends were part of this conversation.

I remarked on how small the crowd was.  I saw a few familiar faces from previous protests I attended over the last ten years.

I was disappointed.  The occupation was a bad performance in its typicality.  It seemed out of place, no direction, and no design.  A pale imitation of what I had seen in the media and not because of the lack of fervour in the protestors and organizers, but of its innocuous Australian middle class context.  The general feeling of the masses is a good one, this good feeling was reflected in what seemed like an air of irrelevance of this Martin Place organization.  I lasted about 15minutes then walked aimlessly around town to kill time before Zizek.

I got a text from Nina.  Nina was at the protest.  I was at McDonalds for the free Internet, which I mention not to be ironic or cynical towards the protest.  I have faith and believe the cause, it was a genuine coincidence.

I arrived again at Martin Place, and Nina was with Sumu and one of his friends.  I stood quiet while watching and listening to Nina and Sumu speak to each other.  Witnessed them laugh.  Saw some cute boys; the sky darkening.  I nodded in agreeance to the things said.  Nina spoke of calling Sarah to bring the screening to the occupation.  I felt uncomfortable that the screening at Sarah’s house was a sanctioned stage and to bring the film outside would disrupt a specialised space of conversation.  A conversation separate from the crassness of mass hysteria; this isn’t Mexico and we were not activists.

So the film then happens.  The food was delicious.  It wasn’t as many people as I thought.  I was surprised to find Koji there.  We sat down and watched the film.

Zizek himself, on film is a great guy.  He is believable and entrancing and incredibly funny.

“Vegetarians are degenerates who will turn into monkeys”.

Encore! Encore!

Koji Ryui’s response

Dear Sarah,

My apology for such a delayed response. I am sure this would apply to everybody and so it would sound very lame but amongst all the end of the year / semester commitments, I was not able to find time to respond to your request any earlier. I myself felt like being a hopeless student who do not get his act together till the very end with all the over due assignments. I hope my absence did not come across too offensive to you.

Now my memory of the excursion in terms of the content of the film is also quite hazy and I can no longer remember what was from then and what was from the other times, although my memory of the actual evening is quite sweet and clear. Unlike the other participants there, I would imagine that I was  ‘the new face’ to the group taking up on the random invitation I received through my newly created Facebook account. Despite my attendance being rather ‘experimental’, you guys were very generous with the hospitality and made me feel welcomed throughout the evening. The meal was delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed your company and our conversations there.

I believe Zizek was quite a mediator raising valid enough points for us to engage with and simultaneously kept us entertained and amused both with his presence and his intellectual gymnastics – some totally articulate and some a little tricky to understand. Here, I am in two minds about the tendency of ideology and politics being an entertainment. I enjoy them this way probably in a similar way to say enjoying the aesthetic of the protests. However, another part of me really would like to embrace possibly naive, utopian and perhaps very daggy yet sincere attitude which reminds me of Zizek’s quote discussing the Slovenian band Leibach (which is also appropriate to the aesthetic of the protests) that i overheard somewhere

..cynicism as today’s prevailing mode of ideology means that it is the positive condition of the functioning of the system that its own ideology must by its own subject not be taken seriously. An ideal subject today is the one who has ironic distance towards the system, etc., etc. And the reverse of this is that the only way, I would even say, to be really subversive is not to develop critical potentials, or ironic distance, but precisely to take the system more seriously than it takes itself seriously.

Anyway, regardless of which angle we managed to engage from (and it probably would have been an oscillation between the two, sincere and cynical, for many of us), Zizek & dinner felt very special and intimate where several people who all had different days coincided to share the same experience. Thanks again for hosing the evening, and i hope there’ll be more of these in the future.

PS: I agree that Zizek rests between truth and fiction with his words. And his experimental writing methodology (which I wonder if it is a bit like him playing exquisite corpse with his own words but being super rational at the same time) does indeed make him clairvoyant alike. Sort of like Carlos Castaneda back in the day, what amuses me is not only what he says or whether if that is true or false, but how much it resonates. (I wonder then, the discussion of Simulacra and Simulation is valid here at all.) Controversial thoughts of philosophical geniuses often become a well accepted mentality of the future generations decades later. I look forward to the day when everyone thinks like Zizek. If that ever happens that would be very entertaining.

Kind regards

Koji

Jess Olivieri’s response

It was a little while now that Sarah and I sat at her kitchen table wondering if we had over catered, convincing ourselves that we could happily eat the tomato and spinach stew for the rest of the week and perhaps the week after. When people finally did arrive it was with great anticipation that I sat on the floor to watch Zizek in all his idiosyncratic glory.

This is where my memory gets hazy, I know, the important bit, but it was a lot to take in and the challenge of conveying the ideas of this man seemed to be lost on me among the biopic elements of this documentary. It made me wonder if it really was Zizek’s ideas that I was excited by, or him as his constructed public persona. Really how interested am I in communism as being the answer to capitalism, or in his constant use of sex as a metaphor for, well everything.

It seemed appropriate that we were watching this documentary on the eve of Occupy Sydney, Zizek has a mainstream appeal that the Occupy world wide protests seemed to also receive and in Occupy New York Zizek aligned himself with the values and aesthetic of Occupy as he gave a rousing speech to the gathered crowds.

As our late guests arrived straight from Occupy Sydney our night had begun with a discussion on the aesthetics of leftist protest, and the need for the crust punks to rethink their presentation to the world, is the dirty green hair stereotype really the road to getting people on side?

Perhaps this is where Zizek could be an answer to the great problem of capitalism, in his acknowledgement of the importance of the separation of private and public persona, in what one might say is as an open armed embrace of the performance of the self, perhaps some might even be so bold to say he is the new king of Live Art. If there where more enigmatic round bellied sweaty people tugging at their over sized t-shirts spraying spital as they use sex to dissect the evils of capitalism, maybe then more people might listen.

Nina Stuhldreher’s response

 A large microphone in a Bauhaus Paradise or What can a former rebel do?

 Žižek! The sound of this word, pronounced harshly but with a little Slavojesque lisp, was perfectly repeated by the lighting of a TV-camera lamp – zz zzt – that later on that night targeted me and a fellow protester at Martin Place. It was October 15, the day when the wave of the Occupy movement hit Sydney. After an exciting media reunion with my former hero thanks to Field Theory, my way home dropped me into field research again. I don´t know if the image ever hit the internet. The gaze of the cameraman, anachronistically exposed by the lamp, is still in my mind. Commodified memories.

Commodified Communism! Is the key thought I recollect from my discourse-tourist trip to Sydney. I haven’t seen so much flowery beauty in a long time: everything seemed to spring and bloom. Even artworks criticizing colonialism, kwila wood frames bought in an op shop, or the notion of “communism” itself that all of a sudden burst with a glamorized blaze of color.

“White tiles were recently still in, which means most likely already out now. Cardboard is, post-Hirschhorn low-tech craft, very retro in the German-speaking world, but ok in London as the pictorial that breaks up slick video installations. The MDF-look is totally retro pre-millennium game-theory aesthetics, but pale pine plates are fully trendy. In the 90s paintbox silver was the hip opposite of gold leaf, but currently light gray and flat yellow get on fantastically in the rhombus business”, I declined it like a verb in my head.

It seems that the introduction of a certain book had come to my mind, “Postmoderner Links-Nietzscheanismus” (“Postmodernist Left-Nietzscheanism”), published in 2004 during “times of political disappointment”, as the cover blurb states. It asks whether post-modernity was born out of Deleuze and Foucault’s reading of Nietzsche, and examines the way they re-evaluated Nietzsche’s overman and neo-religious ideas – the price of which being allegedly a contradictory aesthetization of the political. To illustrate the insufferableness of this development’s touchdown in the meatspace, the book quotes a scene from Marco Giordana’s film “To Love the Damned” (1980) where a former rebel returns home from exile, “torn between leftist terrorism and yuppie culture”, and finally puts a pistol in his mouth after spelling out “a new version of post-leftist political correctness”. Marx – I really don’t know how that happens – Marx lands on the right. Boom!

With a glamorous roar Zizek also landed in the mediatized matrix of the social arena again. Back home at my place, the guru of “Enjoy your Symptom!” had finally appeared next to my computer as a spitting image of himself, as a little psychological drill instructor, wildly gesticulating, calling out “Why hesitate!? What do you fear!?” My milieu had perceived him disappearing into a discourse-niche, a socialist-pensioner with an enthusiasm for Lenin bordering on a hobby-horse. But now he was back. With the help of this year’s revolutionary sex-appeal, beamed right into the lounge room of Field Theory, next to hip rubber trees, fantastic silver beet hot-pots and the most beautiful, meditative Bauhaus aesthetics. And with a traction beam connected to the giant white space ship at Circular Quay, the rhombus-layer-shaped Bastille, where one cannot be sure if – when the “Festival of Dangerous Ideas” takes place – the mighty concrete is supposed to stop those ideas from getting out or rather to protect them against the outside. If the igloo tents at Occupy-Sydney hadn’t been real but 2D, it would have been easy to collage a small Sydney Opera House from them.

The night was warm and I noticed how little I knew. Lacking a sleeping bag kept me from having an overnight share of world history. Perception-drunk I staggered home, passing through a street named after an unhappy gay dandy. Rather famous as a minister of war for a former Occupy Australia movement, he had lost his reputation starring in the role of murder in the accusatory poem THE MASK OF ANARCHY. Written in 1819 in respond to the Peterloo Massacre by Percy Shelly, another young rebel torn between beauty & the fight for freedom, it is believed to be the first modern statement of the principle of non-violent resistance. Mahatma Gandhi is known to have referred to it. And the Occupy movement recently referred to Mahatma, by making Pepperspraying Cop attack him in a cynical photoshop meme.

“Do Australian artists dream of rotating Pyramids?” I had shortly before asked in my performance. Only a short time later it was the activists of Occupy [Venice] Biennale who discovered the similarity between tents and triangles.

I sank into the white-white sheets of my fancy hotel bed and dreamed of a morning swim in the square roof-top swimming pool.

Glossary

- Cardboard: I am mainly referring to the „Bataille Monument“ that artist Thomas Hirschhorn installed at documenta11 in Kassel (2002). For pictures see http://legermj.typepad.com/blog/2010/12/community-subjects.html – This article reviewing European ‚community art’ projects also features interesting quotes by Zizek and the Dutch urban theory group BAVO on the role of identity politics and art activism in multinational capitalism.

- Postmodernist Left-Nietzscheanism: Jan Rehmann’s main points from this book can also be found in his English essay „Towards a deconstruction of postmodernist Neo-Nietzscheanism“ at http://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/situations/article/view/176/200.

- Rotating Pyramids: A scene from my performance „Nootropics“ shown as part of the „Islands“ series, initiated by Brian Fuata fort he „Rules of Play“ exhibition at Tin Sheds Gallery, September 2011. http://playingrules.tumblr.com/Islands (3rd picture from top)

Nina Stuhldreher

Translation: Anita Fricek

Image of Zizek Excursion taken from Nina’s Facebook Album, Oddities from an Evacuated Artist

Image of Occupy Sydney taken from Nina’s Facebook Album, Oddities from an Evacuated Artist

Live Art Almanac, Volume 3 – Call Out

The Live Art Development Agency has put a call out for writing related to live art or radical performance practices for their Live Art Almanac Volume 3. Deadline is January 31, 2012 – get yer skates on..

See below;

We are seeking recommendations for material to include in The Live Art Almanac Volume 3. What articles or reviews have you read, what new stories have you spotted, what emails did you receive or forward to a friend, what blogs have you visited, what texts crossed your path? Did they engage you, provoke you, amuse you, or make you rethink Live Art and radical performance? If it caught your eye and had something interesting to say then we want to know about it.

We welcome all kinds of submissions for The Live Art Almanac Volume 3 – from more traditional forms such as journal essays, newspaper reviews, transcribed interviews, symposium papers, public lectures or book chapters, to digital forms such as blog entries, Facebook pages and Twitter conversations, to even less conventional forms of “publishing” such as emails, diary entries, and letters. The submission must be engaging, provocative, and thoughtful writing on and around the contemporary cultural landscape in which Live Art practice sits and must shed light on the various debates and ideas in circulation within that landscape.

For more information please download a copy of the call out PDF here;
Live Art Almanac Call Vol 3

Latte with Judith Bowtell and Kim Spinks

WHO: Judith Bowtell, Kim Spinks
ROLE: Arts NSW
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 5.6 x 8m

Judith and Kim met Jason and Lara in a large boardroom and immediately commented that their shirts functioned as costumes. They also offered them tea and scones.

They discussed existing models of presenting and facilitating Live Art and process based community projects and Kim offered the example of Minto Live as an alternative to the usual festival approach. She was concerned that we avoid returning to a “plonk art” model and believed that Western Sydney, particularly Campbeltown and Blacktown had pioneered a socially responsive method that had produced ‘Live Art’ successfully for many years. Kim also spoke at length on the issue of artists objectifying their projects enough to be able to pitch them at specific funding partners – she gave the example of finding the ‘health’ angle in community dance projects. She often saw her role as adjusting her language to speak multiple beaurocratic dialects. A skill that was becoming increasingly important as  governing agencies were now approaching arts bodies to broker problems and issues using artistic strategies.

There was speculation as to whether Melbourne lagged a little behind Sydney in this regard.

Both Judith and Kim expressed a strong sense of “trust the sector” and had great faith in the work currently being produced in Sydney. Allowing institutions to develop their own programs and tailor funding directly to artists and specific objectives was, they believed better than shifting to a direct project based government support structure.

Latte with Podium Innovative events.

Who: Julia Marr and Mellissa Aquire

Role: event manager and events co-ordinator.

Office Measurements: 3x3m

Jason and Lara met Julia and Melissa at ‘the Barn’ in Leichardt. They were slightly perplexed that they were not pitching to perform at one of their events. They asked: “So the purpose of this is pure art for art sake?”

The office was playing the Coldplay parachutes album.

“Podium like to create high profile events for companies, which are more than just good food and music, they like to take inspiration from culture, art and design and translate that into a corporate environment.”

Lara asked them to describe a particularly exciting event they had created, imagining detailed themed decorations and catering, but “nothing sprang to mind”. Julia and Melissa said it takes a lot of work to get corporates to trust new ideas.

Latte with Hugo Moline

Who: Hugo Moline

Role: Architect

Office Measurements: Thai cafe.

Hugo Moline is a good guy. Jason and Lara met him over laska to discuss ideas of ‘social engagement’ in architecture, urban planning and contemporary art.

Hugo is interested in getting people involved in making cities, making decisions and shifting the way we consider urban space. He gave a great example of a marketplace in Thailand that needed to come together to talk about a redevelopment, but personal disputes between stallholders got in the way. A team of young Thai architects encouraged a local teenage songwriter to make a video clip of all the stallholders lip-syncing one of his songs. The screening of the clip brought everyone together and allowed to a dialogue to begin.

Too often Hugo hears developers saying ‘people don’t know what they want’. He likes to see architects approach things sideways, to be adaptable through community involvement. He sees the strategies contemporary artists use as great for opening such dialogues and potentially very useful to architects. Hugo cited projects by Bababa International and an initiative by Bek Conroy to negotiate with Sydney’s gentrification (space rangers) as exciting examples of artists rethinking urban environments.

Latte with Simon Mordant and Rachel Kent

Who: Simon Mordant and Rachel Kent

Role: Chair and Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art.

Office Dimensions: 3.6x5m

Lara and Jason were a bit terrified about this meeting.  Simon Mordant is such a high powered business man, would he really want to spend time to chatting to such pseudo leaders? However, upon meeting in the foyer, Simon immediately complimented their ‘fantastic’ shirts’ and told them he loved their cheeky letter.

Rachel and Simon were both excited by this kind of practice, evidenced by the success of this years off- site Primavera exhibtion and the very interesting c3 West project. They are now thinking about continuing to exhibit off site. With the current renovations there will also be more space for performative and participatory practice, and they will begin this by partnering with Performance Space next year. Rachel feels very ready ‘to take it on’ and think about art in unexpected spaces within the gallery, on the skin of the museum, off-site and virtually. She sees visual art as encompassing so much, “from dance to psychology to phenology.”

Rachel said that the gallery shows the full stop. She would love to present “the whole sentence”, by conveying artists processes and research. They both liked the term live art and said it was up to artsits to define their own terms.

Jason made the mistake of calling the gallery a box, to which Simon said “We musn’t think of ourselves as a box, there is so much going on outside.”

Both believed that administration could be art and were curious about Field Theory’s methods. When asked what makes a good leader, Simon said “Don’t be shy – approach it all with enthusiasm and passion, like you are”.

Latte with Lisa Havilah

Name: Lisa Havilah
Role: CEO Carriageworks
Office Size: 5 x 8m

We met Lisa in the meeting room at Carriageworks.
She thinks that Live Art is starting to move into other areas – things like David Young with Chamber Made Opera doing opera in a loungeroom.
Carriageworks fits in with the rest of Sydney by being a place for contemporary artworks – hosting festivals like the Sydney biennale and the Sydney festival.
In terms of their own program they are going to work with the context of Carriageworks – its location and its scale. In terms of location – it is in Redfern and the Aboriginal community is key to its history and identity. It is a nationally recognised place for indigenous people, Carriageworks wants to connect with a history of Aboriginal practice, of aboriginal politics and the history of Black Theatre which the tent embassy came out of.

They will also make new works which reference this history. 

Carriageworks will also work with the scale of the building – so work that takes on the scale of the building and then work that is a counterpoint to the scale – ephemera.

In addition to these foci Carriageworks will also engage with the Asia Pacific area, producing culturally diverse or cross cultural work with ideas of exchange.

“Live Art is the reason that we were able to bring more audiences”
Rosie Dennis came in as the live art curator and deepened the level of engagement.
It is incredibly resource heavy to keep the engagement going like with her project Minto:Live at Campbelltown Arts Centre (where she was previously Artistic Director)
Audiences weren’t engaging with art in Campbelltown they were engaging with an idea or a point in time, something that reflects them.

Latte with Damian McDermott

WHO: Damian McDermott
ROLE: Senior Producer SBS and Stvdio Channel 132
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 3.20 x 2.10m
North Shore offices of SBS surrounded by light industrial – a real mix of clientele in the cafe, hi-vis workwear mixing it with suits.
Damian, in solidarity with our fourth coffee of the day, had a short macchiato  - this meant the majority of the time was spent being very animated with each other, yelling even.
Damian works at SBS TV who also run the cable channel Stvdio, which is a 24 hour art channel showing both internationally bought in content and shorter local content.
He wants the station to be seen as the tv ‘place to go’ to for arts in Australia.
“Live art – its a very broad term isn’t it!”
At the moment he is shooting artist profiles of Australia Council ‘Artstart’ grant recipients and Synapse (Science and Arts) projects
He also was doing festival based stuff “festival tv” which meant broadcasting a show every night of the festival
“If the work is unique and has longevity we can play it”
Are you beholden to ratings? “We are, but the short stuff doesn’t really apply” (The longer overseas stuff are programs like Andre Rieu)

Latte with Grace Archibald

WHO: Grace Archibald

ROLE: Communications and programming, British Council

OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 3m x 3m

Grace had just begun in her role and was filling in for Amber who was away sick so her understanding of the Council’s history was fairly limited but she spoke about encouraging cultural relations. Grace is also a director of First Draft gallery so is familiar with this kind of work.

We discussed examples of recent work  through the experimental curators program she had seen that might fit under the live art banner and mentioned projects by ‘I Can Draw You a Picture’ and ‘Southless’. She also brought up the example of a UK artist who does a one on one work where he bathes an audience member.

Lara queried if administration could be art she replied “I think It can facilitate it but I don’t think it can be it” “but if you guys weren’t wearing your colored shirts you would be Mormons.”

Latte with Sam Sweedman

Who: Sam Sweedman
Role: Festival Program manager, New Mardi Gras
Office Measurements: 6m x 3m
Mardi Gras do really public events, that include a lot of co-producing with arts organisations – STC, Carriageworks, Performance Space, PACT, ATYP etc and will do so again next year.
They are setting up a youth program, they work in a development way with young people to make work for Fair Day, which is one of the major Mardi Gras events.
Their community likes public spectacle, next year they are really at the stage where they can push more arts practice.
Sam is looking for more contact with interested artists.

Latte with Denise King and Gabrielle Eade

Who: Denise King and Gabrielle Eade
Role: Acting Senior Contracts Officer Visual Arts Team and Manager Performing Arts – Arts NSW
What is live art?
“I don’t really understand it that well, maybe like Tess De Quincy – spectacle, free access to everyone, performance. Makes a bridge between art and the real world. It challenges assumptions.”
ARTS NSW don’t have artform panels, all artforms are assessed together. “It is a very human thing to categorise and put things in boxes.”
“New audiences are looking for cross fertilisation – new media has had a huge effect on this”
“Has anyone talked to audiences about what live art is about and what they think it is – what they are seeing?”
Good question.

Latte With Elizabeth Rogers

WHO: Elizabeth Rogers
ROLE: CEO, Regional Arts NSW
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 3m x 4m
In the pouring rain we went to the wrong building, but finally found it, an office overlooking the water on the wharf.
“I have no idea what live art is unless it has to do with Dance, Theatre or art in the streets”
When we showed her a work by Bababa International she said “for what purpose is that for?”
We think that is a valuable question – what is the purpose of some of this work?
Regional Arts NSW jurisdiction lies outside Newcastle, Sydney and Woollongong (Campbelltown Arts Centre is not within that boundary) It is an organising body as the funding and direction for the arts is driven by the local councils. It is the only Regional Arts body that operates in this devolved way.
There is great demand for Arts content in the regions – for example Armidale has the biggest collection of modern art and impressionism outside of the major cities in Australia.
She believes that the sort of practices we were talking about or work that happens ‘outside’ would mainly happen in a festival context.
Regional Theatres are starting to produce their own work.
The main things that regional audiences want is a) art for arts sake (Galleries and travelling Opera works are very big) and b) to tell their own local stories.
One set of cultural leaders are young city mums who have married farmers and moved to the country. An example of this would be “A Day in the Life of Denny” (Deniliquin). The organisers handed out cameras to everyone and asked them to take photos over the period of a day midnight to midnight, they put the photos online (http://dayinthelifeofdeni.blogspot.com/) and produced large scale posters for sticking up around the town, which degraded over time.
This was great for the town as there is a lot of depression, suicide, alcoholism and deaths from car accidents.

Latte with Daniel Brine

Who: Daniel Brine
Role: Performance Space AD
Office Measurements: 3 x 5m

What is live art in Australia?
“Its a very difficult question – I’ll tell you what i usually say – it represents a wide range of work that falls between cracks. The term has a specific relationship to the British scene. It becomes very complex in Australia when you think of other things such as social engagement and community art.”
He cited Ralph Myer’s quote in the National Cultural Policy document – ‘That future work would reflect the city it was made in.’
Everyone is being acknowledged – community arts, social practice and live art – the sense of live art being a term that fills the gaps between practices may be no longer useful. He doesn’t use the term and hasn’t in his job as Performance Space Director.
Other things to note – He doesn’t talk about a ‘live artist’ he talks about a live art practice or approach to someones work,
which artists may use for one particular work but not another.
Question – What is the role of arts organisations in Live Art – MCA, Performance Space, Belvoir etc
Answer – Engage with a range of practices.

Latte with Antonietta Morgillo and Lyn Wallis

WHO: Antonietta Morgillo and Lyn Wallis

In the breakout room of the Theatre Board office in the Australia Council building with back issues of the big issue on the table, banana flavoured milky ways being eaten to celebrate the live art craze currently sweeping Australia.
Antoinetta on the definition of Live Art – it is unpredictable and crazy, don’t know what is happening, engagement that happens, element of surprise, it is intense, I figure it out as I go along. It is in public space, (their definition of public space was broad – can be a theatre, meeting place, cafes, galleries – public space is just outside of the home. The audience is everybody.
Lynn – not unfamiliar with it – what she likes is that it bridges areas of contemporary practice. It is challenging, but successful. It is intellectual, but IT IS FUN!
Antonietta – Live Art applications to the Theatre Board speak about ‘what it is doing’ as opposed to script based projects which speak about the play.
They feel that Live Art leadership could be encapsulated by the work of pvi in Perth. Live art is a description not an art form or a field of practice. i.e when they talk about a project they may say “this work was a text based performance work or this work was kind of live art.”
Antoinetta is a killer table tennis player.
The Museum of Modern oddities is a good reference for a work that fits into the term Live Art.

Latte with Hugh Nichols

Who: Hugh Nichols
Role: City of Sydney, Cultural Development Officer
Office Measurements: 3m x 10m
“Live Art is a slightly confusing term, a rebranding of Performance Art with a more narrative/story telling element.
A less obnoxious form of performance art” Hugh thinks.
Hugh also said that the City of Sydney is not involved as a cultural producer and shouldn’t be.
“We are a funding body, we fund non-profits, very small individual grants, individuals can also apply under the auspice of a gallery”
Hugh believes that Live Art is a great way to broaden audiences (Applespiel and Bakesale and Eddie Sharp are all doing stuff in the Surry Hills Library which is controlled by City of Sydney), “The interactive nature is rewarding – that is my experience of it.
Live Art is a great way to push the community into action especially in the library”
Hugh has asked that if artists who want to use spaces in the City of Sydney especially the Library spaces to contact him.

Latte with Martijn Wilder

Who: Martijn Wilder
Role: Head of the law firm Baker and McKenzie’s Global Environmental Markets and Climate Change practice
Room Dimensions: 5m x 4m

Each room in the Baker and McKenzie offices was called a different city name. We were in Rome.
He had just came back from China and he thought our email sounded  interesting and thought “what the hell I’ll meet with them.”
In regards to his connection to the arts he has been on the Board of national trust and his kids are “into this kind of stuff.”
The law firm deals with global climate change practice gets climate change laws up and running. He is interested in how to get art to appeal to young people.
He was influential in getting a melting polar bear ice sculpture outside the town hall. The Sculpture melted over 12 days in what was a simple but beautiful representation of climate change.
Always looking for different ways to deliver the message of climate change – use the arts and creativity to get important information across.

Latte with Bel Macedone and students

WHO: Bel Macedone, Harriet and Hannah
ROLE: Drama Teacher and Students, Newtown Performing Arts High School
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: Cafe

These drama students and their teacher were savvy to this kind of work thanks to youtube and studying the ‘street theatre’ elective in year 9 and 10.

Bel Macadone, a inter-disciplinary artist in her own right, shared a lot of current Australian work with her students and we were surprised to hear that groups such as Welfare State and Matt Cameron were studied as part of the syllabus.

The year tens once did a work with their teacher MR POK (the famous artist Teik Kim Pok), whose eating a spoonful of custard and jelly from the canteen acted as the signal for thirty students to perform a ‘die- in’ in the playground. Even though some of the other students stole their shoes, they remained frozen.

Year 11 Student Hannah loves “theatre that is fun and random” and believes this kind of work can bring people together that might not normally be interested in art. She sees STC subscribers as the same kind of people, seeing the same thing, and prefers the kind of work that tricks you into being an audience.

For example, if there is a political work in a theatre, people who disagree with the politics simply won’t buy tickets, but if they see it on the street their opinions may be transformed through watching the spectacle – a theatre can shield you.   Also this kind of work is good for young people “who never ever have any money”.

Bel sees this kind of work taught either really well or really badly and recognizes it requires more energy and commitment from teachers and students than teaching the Shakespeare unit. Recently they made a work based on the manifesto “offending your audience” which placed the audience on chairs onstage while the performers were in the seating bank.

Latte with Ann Reeves

WHO: Anne Reeves
ROLE: National Parks Australia
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 3.20 x 2.10m

Anne got straight to the point: “research has a purpose – so what is the purpose of this?” Hopefully she received an answer through the course of the meeting. She was very interested in messages and ways to convey them through traditional versus innovative forms such as social media. Anne said the field of communication was changing and there was an increasing need for creative  methods of communicating environmental issues to an urbanised society.  She liked the idea that artists mine science for poetry.

Her idea of the best bang for your buck was a groundswell grass roots approach.  She was concerned that if you sit at pokies everyday you obviously have a radically  different approach to a bush walker, and that there is a conscious need to relate to different sectors of the community. Together they talked of using social modes – Where is the meaningful exchange in Youtube? There is the risk of superficiality.  Jason and Lara talked about artists enjoying working site-specifically and with particular communities, for example Liz Dunn who is making a work researching birders between VIC and QLD.

Anne thought artists might transcend the heaviness that so many drastically urgent issues convey – to burden people with guilt was not healthy.

She spoke of the perception in Indigenous cultures that all life is part of a cycle and agreed that communal sharing with office workers, bushwalkers, nature and conservationist societies was an important step towards lessening the disconnection between urban dwellers and the natural environment.

Latte with Theresa Famularo

Latte with Sebastian Goldspink

WHO: Sebastian Goldspink
ROLE: Alaska Projects Director
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 5×4.9
Sebastian has a new art space deep inside a Kings Cross car park. He asked Lara and Jasons driver, Boyd Burger, who has a driving hat and a name tag, to buy them all coffee and Boyd politely obliged.

Sebastian is a big fan of this kind of work,  he recently bought a Bababa International work, which was a key to their studio, which means he is now contributing to their rent. The Kings cross carpark draws a lot of unexpected punters to visit his space Alaska which may be their only art experience for the whole year.

Sebastian sees defining this kind of work as a “double edged sword”. Sometimes it is not street art or live art, it is just art. The kind of live arts he hates is the Olympic opening ceremony.  He likened the difference between theatre and live art to the difference between cinema and video art. He has a personal collection of paintings and drawings that have been stuck up on the walls of a major contemporaty art gallery by cheeky patrons.

Lara enquired as to whether administration could be art. Seb responded by using the analogy of a director on a film set micro-managing his haircut.  Jason then asked if the film set could be an artwork itself. Lara desperately tried to hold back from asking about Drazic from heartbreak high, the Australian television show in which Sebastian (also an actor) played a computer nerd. Both artists had had 4 coffees by this stage.

As a gallery director, Seb drew a distinction between being “pro artists” and being “pro artist run iniatives”, as he saw economic imperatives in some spaces as an issue interfering with ultimate artistic goals.

Latte with Eva Rodriguez Riestra

WHO: Eva Rodriguez Riestra

Latte with Neva Grant

WHO: Neva Grant

ROLE: National Public Radio (USA), UTS Journalism lecturer

MEASUREMENTS: 6m x 5m

Neva understand Live Art as “art that you don’t expect to see, or that has more to do with where you encounter it”. She has just finished a radio documentary on intimate theatre which featured Sara-Jane Normans work.   Neva thinks that Diego Bonnetto’s work falls under a different category and gave some examples of NYC subway flash mobs where people don’t wear pants.

She thinks that it is a trap to think that the desire for intimacy is anything to do with digital connectivity, and that artists are and always have sought a direct connection and closer relationship to the feedback they receive from an audience. Lara spoke about Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ project Touch Sanitation where she shook hand with 8500 sanitation workers across NYC. Neva asked where the engagement was for audiences but agreed that a concept can live on through memory, word of mouth and documentation without needing an immediate ‘audience’.

Latte with Joshua Safaer

WHO: Joshua Safaer (What is live art?)
ROLE: Artist & Thinker in Residence, Performance Space
OFFICE MEASURMENTS: A small Park
Joshua met Field Theory  in a park on Wilson street near Performance Space because the nearby cafe was closed at 4pm. He knows little about ‘Live Art’ in Australia, and what he saw of the works we showed him, was that that the models of re-appropriation were very familiar – a marathon, a tour, a sewing workshop.  He was interested in the Australian term ‘come out’ to describe someone arriving from another country rather than to describe someone who had revealed their true sexuality.
He also liked the fact we called superannuation ‘super’.

Latte with Anneke Jaspers

WHO: Anneke Jaspers AGNSW
ROLE: Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of NSW
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS:

Anneke was met in the beautiful surrounds of the AGNSW café, looking out at sandstone and the green lawn as an ibis tried to get some food off an outside table.

Anneke was interested about the idea of what a leadership activity looks like through the lens of practice, such as this Durational Lattes project. She sees Live Art as fluid, mobile, interventionist but also that the term is a Catch 22, that when funding bodies announce Live Art as part of its agenda, it closes down Live Art in other spaces. Her interest in the work, is that it is driven by ideas and therefore vital and she has actively approached the AGNSW curators with this type of work. In AGNSW performance tends to be staged events, durational or one offs in the gallery spaces but not in longer terms programs.

Latte with Michael Goldberg

WHO: Michael Goldberg
ROLE: Head of Sculpture, Sydney College of the Arts
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: Cafe

The vibe was a quiet art school, the conversation was very philosophical, looking at the big questions, predominately WHY.

He thought Field Theory was looking to the expanded notion of performance and that the term Live Art was odd and difficult. “You don’t want to find a definition, you want to keep it flexible and itinerant”.

He talked about the myth of Beuys as studied in most art schools and how you can’t teach the indefinable and instead you provide a context, a parameter and a workshop situation for it. He also said they hadn’t had much call for performance art at SCA , although they have had a performance night.  Over 3 hours the students can do anything they like, which is not assessed so they can really take risks. He spoke about de-regulation of the arts market as being similar to the de-regulation of financial markets, except the financial market hurts, whereas in the arts it just makes things more adventurous.

When Martyn and Sara asked ‘What can we do for you? he replied “What we can all do for each other?” and suggested a commons of opportunities. On the way out they noticed two young students having coffee with a porcelain doll.

Latte with Ann Mossop

WHO: Ann Mossop
ROLE: Head of Public Programs, Opera House
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS:

While they may house the national ballets and symphonies, the Opera house is no stranger to this kind of work. They have recently seen tens of thousands of people naked on their front steps posing for a Spencer Tunik shot, people popping up in the lifts with their pet for Laurie Andersons “Songs for Dogs” and a contemporary dance duet with an earth mover.

Ann Mossop programs  projects such as the annual Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Indigenous Message Sticks and the Graphic arts festival. The Opera House is very interested in work that utilizes spaces outside its regular stages, particularly the forecourt. 20, 000 people access the Opera house on its open day, and Ann thinks it would be be great to see artists present work in unexpected spaces and ways during this event.

Latte with Chanelle Moss

WHO: Chanelle Moss

ROLE: Australia Museum Events Coordinator

OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 8m x 8m

The Australian Museum has been around since 1830’s it is the biggest collection in the Southern Hemisphere with over 18 million exhibits.

Chanelle’s observations of the Museums audience is that “they want to interact, they wanna touch they wanna feel they wanna climb all over stuff”, people respond to and return for the interactivity. She sees ‘Live Art’ and the catch-phrases of “music, art, new ideas” as a massive component to their iniative the  ‘Jurassic Lounge’ which includes zine making workshops, music, performance and and a series of public talks every Tuesday evening. Highlights from this have been a Geoscientist talking about how many earthquakes there have been in the past year and there is soon to be a google self diagnosis talk.The sexologist was the most popular talk they have had, who spoke about the chemical reactions of love, lust and attraction. The Australian Museum use ‘Live Art’ because its the only way to get 18-35 year olds in to the museum – they got 1400 through in season 1 (12 weeks) and 1100 season 2 (8 weeks).

Latte with Ralph Myers

WHO: Ralph Myers
ROLE: Artistic Director, Belvoir Street Theatre
OFFICE MEASUREMENTS: 4m x 4.3m

Ralph has a pragmatic attitude to whose needs the theatre is serving. Belvoir has as a particular covenant with it’s audience as an artistic Director he didn’t see his role as serving the needs of the artistic community, so much as supporting this covenant. He found it surprising  that content seemed to no longer shock audiences but breaking the conventions of the traditional theatre form does. Ralph said that there is a lack of political work at the moment and that perhaps this is a generational issue. Lara and Jason speculated that perhaps radicalism was now a formal concern?  Ralph would love people to propose more radical and political work.

Ralph is aware of the term live art but somewhat mystified by it’s meaning – he sees the demarcation between art forms as arbitrary as the border between NSW and Victoria. Occasionally the live art scene in Sydney has an aesthetic tendency to fetishise failure. It is not intriguing, not entertaining and not shocking. Just boring. He  indicated a  tendency for funding to go towards somewhat nascent art forms or projects that reflected a trend not a level of sophistication.

They spoke at length about the long history of performativity and Ralph commented that “people have been making theatre outside of theatres for longer than they have inside them” As a set designer, he gave them a tiny chair replica of the one Jason sat on which we are have put in out office.