Domestic Displays

I recently visited Redfern for the first time in several months and clocked the sharp gentrification evidenced by a quick influx of small bars and delicious coffee. Now a place just slightly cheaper to live than Surry Hills, it would be fair to say that perhaps the artistic community are partly the perpetrators of such gentrification, and as the rent rises, may soon to be of victims of it.  Nevertheless, HOUSE WORK – a curatorial project by Diana Smith, confirmed Redfern is currently crawling with artists.

For the project artist and curator Diana Smith invited her peers that live within walking distance of each other to open up their homes for one afternoon to the public. I left home expecting to visit several loungeroom cum- galleries, perhaps with sculptures on dining tables and some video art on the television. I was pleasantly surprised to encounter something more integrated with the daily workings of domestic life.

I began at Nick Coyle, Alice Gage and James Harneys sharehouse, greeted by the hungover flatmates who encouraged us to play 1970s boardgames. Naturally witty, Nick powered us through wheel of fortune while Jimmy made guacamole in the kitchen. We could have easily stayed for the afternoon, competing against whoever walked in the door, but were determined to visit every abode before sundown.

At first I thought Dara Gill had hired performers to undertake ‘tasks’ around his place, but quickly realised the situation when we were offered rubber gloves. Strangely compelled, I became focused on cleaning the windows while others scrubbed mould on their hands and knees. Surprisingly the house was filled with satisfied grins, leaving Dara with a whole vegetable garden and his DVD collection both alphabetised and genre-specific by the end of the day.

Perhaps less welcoming were Julia Holderness and Henry Kember who had skyped into their lounge room from a bed in a symmetrical flat down the hall. As they sipped tea and read Sunday Life we desperately tried to gain their attention, firstly by poking around their kitchen , and finally by grabbing watermelon from the fridge, and enjoying a slice. This left the invigilator a little on edge, who had clearly been briefed to allow participatory activity until things got stolen. He let us have one slice before wrapping the tropical fruit in glad wrap and asking us to think about how we would feel if strangers simply grabbed things out of our fridge. On later enquiry it was confirmed the artists were happy to see their almost slimy melon get eaten.

Keg De Souza offered us a couple of things from her fridge – home brewed beers and freshly baked cakes. Her boyfriend wasn’t around but he had recreated his sound installation which used cassettes tapes attached to balloons to make noise. This made it the most gallery-esque home and I think I would have preferred some of Lucas Abelas eccentric stories over a beer.

Our last stop was an appropriate finale. Shane Haseman, Ella Barclay and Rosealee Pearson had stayed up all night – the evidence was on the kitchen table. Upstairs we witnessed all flatmates in deep subconscious after popping sleeping pills, and in between spying their book collections, we eerily watched them breathing deeply. A sound recording of them drunk the night before confimed they weren’t acting, the snores were real, and after taking a couple of photos, we left feeling like creeps.

HOUSE WORK cleverly played with the intersection between routine, art and daily life, generating a sense of play without any frightening theatrical participation or a plonking of works made for gallery contexts. It was localised tourism on the most micro scale – made for those who take pleasure in checking out other peoples shopping trolleys and in investigating bathroom cabinets. With it also came a great sense of neighbourliness, a coming together of like-minded strangers walking around the street nodding at each other, eating, scrubbing and chatting, making for a satisfying way to spend a sunny afternoon. HOUSE WORK also showcased one element of a suburb at a time of flux, making me wonder if those share-houses will still be inhabited by artists in a few years time.

Lara Thoms

HOUSE WORK curated by Diana Smith for Perfromance Spaces WALK program Sat 10 December 2011. Photos by Alex Wisser.

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.

The Lattes Begin

In a corporate meeting the artist often feels like an imposter, in the studio the non-artist often feels unsure of what the rules are. Everyone feels like they have to drink too much coffee to keep up. Durational Lattes is a bridging exercise. Armed with disgusting wacky shirts Field Theory are RIGHT NOW upping the heart rates of Sydney’s LEADERS across many disciplines and providing comfortable modes to discuss all that is possible about this practice and where it can go in the future.
The notes from these meetings are then relayed back to members at Performance Space who interpret them through their own caffeinatttttttion.So the meeting notes that will follow this are not necessarily accurate representations of the complex, meaningful and diverse exchanges that these meetings are generating. They are espresso size reflections and as such probably echo the interesting difficulties of documenting this type of practice.

Some of the LEADERS Field Theory are meeting include Ralph Myer, Artistic Director of Belvoir; Chanele Moss, Director of Events at the Australian Museum; Sonny Dallas Law, Cultural Development Officer Redfern Community Centre ; Anne Mossop, Head of Public Programs Sydney Opera House ; Anne Reeves, National Parks Association; Simon Mordant, Chair of the MCA; Nancy Romano, Fox Studios Chief Executive.

The Australia Council granted Performance Space a Cultural Leadership Program Development grant to enable the artists of Field Theory to extend their skills as Live Art strategic leaders.

Durational Caffe Lattes

From Monday 31st October to Thursday 3rd November members of the Field Theory collective will be undertaking a four day meetings binge. They will engage members of the Sydney community in discussions around the meaning and relevance of Live Art.

The artists will drink one coffee for every meeting they have, to see the outcome of what caffeine overdosing can do to the body and also to hear the responses of Sydneysiders to this task, come to Performance Space on Thursday 3rd November at 8pm.

If you are outside of Sydney then you can follow the project online here at LALA as it happens with regular updates…

http://www.performancespace.com.au/2011/durational-cafe-lattes/

The Australia Council granted Performance Space a Cultural Leadership Program Development grant to enable the artists of Field Theory to extend their skills as Live Art strategic leaders.

Dear Audience,

Dear theatre audience,
This is it. I am standing backstage. Between me and you is a door, slightly ajar. When I hear my name announced I will walk through this door, across the stage and into the spotlight. I will strut and I will pose (as best as I can). I will meet your gaze and make you complicit in this product of
fiction. 
I have just extinguished my final cigarette. I think I could have timed it a little better as there are still a couple of moments before I am introduced and I am without a ritual to regulate myself. It only takes a moment for my fears to be incensed as to how silly this is and how it could all go so horribly wrong. To comfort this fear I pace back and forth in a straight line and sing a song under my breath, The Advertʼs One Chord Wonders. Like the expression of a territorial assemblage observed by Deluze and Guitarri, I take shelter in these actions and orient myself with them. 
I wonder what we’ll play for you tonight.
Something heavy or something light.
Something to set your soul alight.
I wonder how we’ll answer when you say.
“We don’t like you – go away”
“Come back when you’ve learned to play”
I wonder what we’ll do when things go wrong.
When we look up and the audience has gone.
Will we feel a little bit obscure.
Think “we’re not needed here”
The song helps. But I have just have just heard my name and your applause. The circle which the song drew around me has now opened and exposed its fragile centre. Me. I am to go out there.
Where you are now. If this does go wrong and it comes down to a fight, my colleagues and I donʼt stand a chance. You out number us about thirty-to-one. Frank could probably hold his own for a bit. Natalie too. Sime and Dara though can hide under the cloaks of their dramaturgical and design roles and avoid implication. Their work is done. As was ours, until this moment. Now a new job begins: the opening up of that same circle that these theatre rituals assemble and bring you into
the work. For you are important to us. It is for you. All of it. 
This will not be virtuous or pedagogical. This is about opening up spaces. It will expose the fragile centre of this moment. Where territories, identities and narratives collide. It could fail miserably. It could be awkward. But wont it be exciting finding out? 
This is not an investigation of x, an exploration of y or a fucking with of z. It is not about a subject. It is the subject. It is a form and a structure first. It is an event. Do not look for its meaning. Look for its function. 
Let us let go of virtuosity, stability and our compulsive modernity and just be together. For who we really are. Players of a game where we can all take control. We will let you know the rules. But feel free to break them. There will be no winners or losers in this game. Just players. 
Here I go. This is it. 
See you out there. Not from the stage, but on the stage.
Much love, peace and understanding,
Malcolm. x

Malcolm Whittaker is a young man from Sydney who works as an interdisciplinary artist. He does this in solo
pursuits, as a member of performance group Team MESS and in other collaborations with artists and non- artists. He canʼt be sure why he does this. But it feels right. Most of the time. http://malcolmwhittaker.com
This Is It is a performed press-conference by Team MESS for a non-existent new film. It will be presented at at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in July and Arts House, Melbourne in August this year.
http:// teammess.com.au

a lovers discourse

calling participants for an international art love project – a loverʼs discourse

To be loved is to be the object of concern. Our presence noted. Our identity understood. Our views are listened to. Our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs ministered to. In love we enjoy protection from the benevolent gaze of others. (Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety)

No time for love Dr. Jones (Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom)

a loverʼs discourse is a love letter writing project that began last year at
Performance Space, Sydney and has been picked up this year by Arts House,
Melbourne.

The project basically involves participants being paired together with a stranger
from somewhere in the world to send love letters to and fro throughout the year.
Itʼs about the thrill of receiving a personal handwritten letter in the mail. A letter from
a stranger who somehow knows and loves you. Itʼs about the place of language
and intimacy in a culture caught up in compulsive modernity. Itʼs about our ever-
evolving world and how the earth can alternately feel too large and too small a
place, and sometimes….just right.

If you are reading this I am asking you if you would like to be a participant in the
project. The commitment is simply a hand-written love letter to your partner at your
leisure throughout the year. We are hoping to start our love affairs as soon as
possible.

Current interest from Arts House is that the project culminates in some form of a
sharing of the experiences of the project towards the end of the year. But letʼs not
let that censor our love at this point in time.

Please write to me if participating is of interest and I will be in touch with more
information, including a lover and their address for the two of you to begin
correspondence.

Thanking you,

Malcolm. x

malcolm.whittaker(at)gmail.com

MALCOLM WHITTAKER is a young man from Sydney who works as an interdisciplinary
artist. He does this in solo pursuits, as a member of performance group Team MESS and in other collaborations with artists and non-artists.

Photos by Heidrun Lohr, courtesy of the artist

Being Pedestrian

Since Guy Debord and the situationists in the 1960′s, walking has been seen as a political act against urbanism or capitalism or as a more abstract poetic intervention into the rules and structure of the city environment.

Drawing together some walks by artists in the recent (and not so recent) past;

Performance Space’s 2011 series of ‘walks’ which you can see here includes Sarah Rodigari’s planned walk from Melbourne to Sydney. As she packs up her life and sells everything she owns, she will move to another city, by putting one foot in front of the other.

This is reminiscent of Marina Abromovic’s The Great Wall Walk (although without the drama of a partner walking the other way of course).

It is nice to see that some city governments are  seeing the cultural benefits of not only walking but having artists lead this process, Rodigari, Jess Olivieri and Jason Maling’s recently completed project under the auspices of the City of Melbourne, the League of Resonance conducted personalised intimate tours around the urban space (amongst other events).

And in Los Angeles which is a rampant car city is an interesting approach to this issue, literally showing people what is out there. Another side of LA is opened up by Will Self in a documentary called Obsessed with Walking, where he does some crazy things like walking from LAX airport to his city hotel.

And finally another one from Ms Rodigari – Excursion with Eels from Visible City 2010.

Strategies for Leaving and Arriving Home

Strategies for Leaving and Arriving Home

1. Find the longest way to leave
2. Announce your dramatic departure to be sure there’s no turning back.
3. Sell everything you’ve spent the last ten years collecting on eBay so that you can afford ultra-light, warm, waterproof hiking equipment that you will only use this once.
4. Source redundant road maps, scaled 1:2500 and pin them to the wall across from your bed. Spend hours planning the flattest and most direct route, and then acknowledge that it’s probably best to just follow the train line.
5. Romanticise solitude and anticipate loneliness, invite everyone to join you.

Dear Everyone,

I am writing this in the hope that you will read it and decide to join me on my walk at some point.

On Saturday June 4, I will be leaving Melbourne and moving home to Sydney, on foot. I will walk four hours a day, more or less and it will take me two months, more or less. Most times I will camp, sometimes I will have to stay in a motel or if I’m lucky enough, someone, like you or a friend of yours will take me in for the night (I like pets).

I will be following the train line so it is easy to meet me. You can walk for a day, you can stay the night, you can walk again the next day and longer. There is room in my tent but you’re better off bringing your own, as well as food (for me too, I’m vegetarian) and please dress for the weather.

To join me, email: strategies@strategiesforleavingandarrivinghome.com with the date or dates you are thinking of and we can arrange a place and time to meet. For further information please see strategiesforleavingandarrivinghome.com

I hope you can walk with me

Sarah Rodigari.

Roarawar Feartata Collective

At the recent LIVEWORKS at Performance Space, I interviewed Roarawar Feartata (Benjamin Cittadini and Craig Peade) from Melbourne, who were there developing a work I Luv Amanda Crowe 4 eva.

Here is a very small portion of that interview, covering a number of previous works that happened in Dandenong and Frankston, which are outer suburbs of Melbourne;

MC – Tell me about the works you did in the suburbs?

BC – In Dandenong , it was almost a year spent out there doing things

MC – Just off your own bat?

BC – No we got some money I was doing a masters…

MC – At VU (Victoria University, Melbourne)?

BC – No at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) in Public Art funnily enough but I already had…

MC – What’s that course like?

CP – Shite

BC – I didn’t even realise public art was visual art

CP – It’s ‘art in public spaces’

BC – Basically just design and architecture and visual artists who want to make money, they do art in public spaces, you know giant sculpture things, but I was amazed there was no performance art. I couldn’t believe it but um but I was going to do this stuff in Dandenong, anyway I started doing stuff out there,  We had done stuff in Frankston before that and we started using ‘surveying processes’ on the street – we had a complaints table , we just took complaints, well Craig did in Frankston on his own.

MC – Were they good complaints?

CP – Well you get good um

MC – Did people think it was part of the council?

CP – Some people did yeah, and then you get conspiratorial nutjobs you don’t know what their past is, who are absolutely paranoid , what was that guy? That guy was South American? We didn’t know what his relationship with government agencies was, he had a problem with everything, you know the cosmology of the universe….

MC-  hahahaha

CP – It’s a beautiful moment it starts getting…

BC – The point of engagement for the complaints is that we are taking complaints,  they are like “whats this for?” you go – “nothing, we are just taking complaints do you have a complaint?” And then the decision gets made (in their mind) do I want to or not?  And the majority of the time they are like ‘fuck it, I’m happy, any opportunity I get!’

MC – To have a complaint

BC – To have a complaint

MC- It’s a very Australian thing

BC – But then you also – it frees it , and then you might actually learn something but that’s something we did with our surveying as well , the design of surveys  – fairly passive questions you do a lot of research about the place, what the issues are there , you try and ask the next question that never gets asked on the survey, you know or you try and jump ahead and use the whole survey process…

Cp – It’s a totally open process…

MC – For the purpose of being there, for ‘opening a space for people to…’

BC – Purpose of engagement – whats this for? , just for us and you to talk and you do a survey and you create this space once or twice over a few days and you start creating your own thing and people get used to your traffic…

CP – even enjoy it,

BC – Then you set up a complaints table and they come back for more , you use these things, you know because we were working for the council and we made it quite clear we are not going to give you anything but still in the back of their mind they (the council) are thinking  – oh we might just get something because  we don’t know what the public think, we ask them a million surveys a year and we still don’t know what they think.

So you sift through the mountain of material and you can find questions like How often do you think about God? cos we had gone to a there was a interfaith meeting in Dandenong, there are a lot of cultures in Dandenong we went along it was quite tense we were quite struck about this thing so we only gave them a few choices on the survey

[polldaddy poll=4350720]

One person answered OFTEN almost every single other person unflinching, almost deriding looking at us going ALL THE TIME

You know by the end of the day right we are losers for one you know because in my mind there were four choices but there was never going to be four there was only ever really one choice ALL THE TIME  – everyone around you was thinking and talking about God

MC-  That’s amazing

BC – Pass that on to council and go ‘you want to know you want to provide for something, here you go – GOD!’

CP – Transcendental hub

BC – Yeah its not a transport hub the community needs it’s a Transcendental hub for fucks sake

MC – hahahaha

BC – Let’s think big here lets stop fucking around

CP – What was the other question? Tying into that about If you could be in anywhere now you could be in Dandenong, somewhere else (another city) or Heaven and the majority of ppl wanted to be in heaven. I found that deeply disturbing because that meant, kind of, dead.

MC – Hahahahhaa

CP – Not to say that was about Dandenong it was just about

MC – I would rather be dead than in Dandenong

CP – I want to be in heaven

BC – That was my moment, from that we took our point of departure ok well lets work from this point that everyone thinks about God all the time, thats where we went with our next thing. We did a book of prayer.  I just put suggestion boxes in the library with little dockets saying write a prayer down, donate  a prayer we are going to make a book, do it anonymously , I didn’t really know or think what was going to happen, but they were prayer machines! stuffing the box with very few jokes most of them were…

MC – From all faiths?

BC – Yeah of course some of them disturbingly honest which is what you were going to get – luckily they were anonymous.

MC – So you made a prayer book,

BC – Yes and we got them made and gave them away for free, put stacks of them in the library so people could take them with photos I had been taking everytime I went out there.

Dandenong was being flattened and rebuilt. Sorry – ‘renewed’. So I was trying to document all the shit that was there. Trying to give the council a picture of what Dandenong is – it may not be the kind of picture you want to see or have projected, but it is compelling as any other.

We also created a performance intervention where we wanted to do our own ritualised act of the place that had given us this opportunity and also just provoke it a bit putting ritual fair and square on the street even if it wasn’t a specific ritual it was alluding to something other – so we walked on our knees from Dandenong station to the plaza we had bells we were doing some things prostrating ourselves in order to show that the body creates space not just architecture all these things that are part of what which is what doing performance is all about, body creates space, you can lie down anywhere and it does that…

MC – What was the response?

BC – Well it was amazing, it wasn’t lots of people flocking to us but you had these few engagements where people were going what are you doing? So enthralled by it but wanting it to be for a specific faith “if this was Christian, I would call all of my friends now” that’s what one guy said which I was almost tempted to go “okay”

MC – hehehe

CP – Then there was also you know “what are you fucking doing? My dog shits on that footpath” because we were on our knees and had been for an hour and they were cut up and shredded…

BC – And also there were some boys on BMX’s who rode up and said “hey what are you doing”, “oh you know doing this stuff” and we had been going for an hour and we were on our knees and they were all torn and stuff and we were carrying bells and everything and they went  “ok cool, see you later” and that was sweet, I love that!  Just take it in, let it go, let it be what it is…

Roarawar Feartata are a collective operating in Melbourne.

It’s just an opinion not a criticism dude

Throughout Liveworks LALA have asked artists to comment on the works they see.  The writing  may take on any form,and is not necessarily critical or a review. This is our attempt to capture the conversations in bars and foyers after the shows and put them out there for discussion amongst our broader community. Here we go!

Nighttime spotlight Ladies and Gentlemen we are Floating in Space

Sunday 14th November 8pm

Opinion Writer: Megan Garrett-Jones

(be an audience participant for WRONGSOLO Brian Fuata and Agatha Goeth Snape)
Have you ever wondered what it is like to guide someone who is walking backwards in to the dark unknown with only your heart and your eyes?  They leave you in a spotlight and gradually melt into that very dark unknown. You wonder what to do with your eyes now that all you can see is the white light you are standing in and beyond that the very same dark unknown. You hope your heart is making up for your eyes’ inefficacy, but then, what did you hope your eyes would achieve by seeing your charge? You renew your eyes’ effort and try to gaze purposefully in to the dark unknown, someone after all has trusted you, and you trusted them. Ought you have trusted them?

(confront whether you have truly had a truly amazing year with Sarah Rodigari)
Have you had an amazing year? Perhaps this question should be approached by us via consideration of the title of Rodigari’s piece Perception is a reality filtered through the prism of your soul. Head inside a dada-esque prism, Rodigari tosses us arbitrary questions. Are you promiscuous, a homosexual, an artist? Do you often feel guilty? But this type of psychoanalysis is of less consequence than Rodigari’s self-affirmation. Well, this response is not criticism, it is the discussion we might have in the foyer/ pub. And since I have Camus’ The Fall in my bag permit me, dear friends, to read a passage. Yes please talk amongst yourselves. Now quiet I have found the page. I was wrong, after all, to tell you that the essential thing was to avoid judgement. The essential thing is to permit oneself everything […]. I permit myself everything all over again, and without the laughter this time. I haven’t changed my way of life; I continue to love myself and make use of others. The question is perhaps to love or loathe oneself. Camus asserts; the whole world is guilty, you cannot change your life for another.

(get vicariously dizzy through Brooke Stamp’s Orbit Score for Yoko)
Have you ever sympathised with the dancing girl in those jewellery boxes, condemned to twirl endlessly at a whim, always to the same tune? Or revelled in the power you have over her. You are bored with the music and the dance, but your anthropomorphism gets carried away and you imagine her fatigued, and dizzy, yet resolute in her lot as you make her keep twirling. I am tempted to do some research to find out what the haunting tune repeated in Stamp’s work was (but that might defeat the purpose of these informal responses). It sounded like a folk song, a naïve and childish voice singing about village life. Stamp twirls resolutely, time marked by the evolution of the movement of her arms and head. Finally she stops, and attempts gallantly to quell involuntary wobbles to stand still until her spotlight disappears.

Megan Garrett-Jones is an artist who writes stuff and blogs at www.bakesalefrart.blogspot.com

This Is It by Team Mess

Next performance, Saturday 8pm, Track 8

Opinion Writer: Teik-Kim Pok

If we can pinpoint a particular linguistic fad that today’s genre mash-up infected social media scribe tribes have helped revive, it is the prosaic custom of portmanteau journalism. I can blame Team Mess’ This Is It at Performance Space’s 2010 Liveworks Festival for encouraging me to gratuitously wield one of those:

Banal-ysis. facile or trite analysis that provides no insight (Wiktionary)

We are ushered into a set evoking a press conference for what appears to be the latest cinematic blockbuster, as we are quickly treated to an endless loop of movie trailers, featuring Team Mess players, Malcolm Whittaker, Natalie K Randall, and Frank P Mainoo, all while waiting the audience to settle in. Broadcast on two large plasma screens, the four trailers show off polished cinematography employed by a noticeably absent Dara Gill, a light parodic study into the art of the film trailer- the aim of which is create repeat business through carefully constructed visual and emotional ellipses.

As the trailers trail off, and the screens switch to a live feed, Version 1.0’s Stephen Klinder, steps in as conference moderator, inviting the three prinicipal ‘stars’ onstage to take their poses in this Comicon-esque event, where the ‘devoted paying crowd’ is meant to shed gallons of geek-drool over the subject matter tackled by this supposed new force of genre storytelling. Before we get to hear from the ‘stars’ themselves, we are initially treated to an extended sequence of posturing for the flashing camera where the paparazzi-friendly postures unpick themselves in a cyclical ritual of subtle, and undeserving but compelling self-congratulation. The trio manage to convey the artifice of celebrity ‘ease’ and automation of ‘superstar charm’ in this rhythmic sequence.

During the third act, the actual press conference is peppered with audience questions at the tail end to which the performers sans director (a fact of mild significance which half-heartedly assuming a running joke status) improvise banal-ytical descriptions of their imagined film work and process. At first, this comes across as a stealthy critique of film scholarship’s tendency to be lost in popularisation and co-opted into commercial marketing practices. This strategy of co-opting works for a section of the audience, who are egged on to act as enthusiastic amateur journalists (author included), each armed with ‘The Question’ to provoke ‘The Answer’, after the scripted series of questions aided by Klinder.  The impression that I am left with is of a heavily signalled premise that my 5 year old nephews and nieces would feel quite comfortable in by wielding deep-fried chicken drumsticks instead of professional wireless microphones to live out their celebrity fantasies.

While I applaud the effort of the early and raw attempt that Team Mess makes to confront society’s obsession with glorified minutiae, I do wonder, as I am writing this response, if I have willingly landed into this tug-of-war between panto-mimical commentary and weighty cultural analysis, hoping in vain for an extended cathartic reward from the performers’ obvious composure but underused skill and almost-determined line of conceptual interrogation.

By responding in this disorient-ed/ing posture as a knowing audience member myself, can we afford not to assign any transformative value to the rituals that entertainment, spectacle and celebrity generate for their own sake?

The Last Remaining Relative by Jiva Parthipan

Next performance,   Sat 14th,  5pm Bay 20

Opinion Writer: Jennifer Hamilton

I’m interested in the form of performance known as “Performance Lecture”.

I haven’t done any reading about it, so I don’t know how widely used this style
is. But, I have an academic background so have been to a lot of lectures and
seminars. I have a theatre/performance background and I’ve been to lots of plays
and performances. A particularly good example of this form is The Bougainville
Photoplay Project currently playing at Belvoir St.

To make a kind of trite comparison, it strikes me that a lecture is the educational
equivalent of traditional proscenium arch theatre. Where as a seminar/roundtable
discussion is more akin to contemporary performance. There is a set of reasons why I
think this, all of which are massive generalisations rather than universal truths.

Architectural:
• Lecture/Theatre usually clear divide between audience and performer/
students and teacher.
• Many spaces in schools and universities require the furniture to be
rearranged for a seminar in order to reshape the dynamics of the space,
change its architecturally intended use.
• Often performance is designed specifically to reuse space in a different
way, to change the dynamics of a space or to redefine functionality.
• Lecture Hall/Theatre are purpose-built for education/dissemination of
information and entertainment, respectively.
Textual:
• Lecture/Theatre have a text that is designed to be performed in a
theatre space/lecture hall and can be performed/read by others if proper
permissions are given by the author.
• Seminars are often guided by a leader but are open discussion between
all participants, are largely driven by the participants and cannot be
replicated.
• The performers generally devise the performance themselves, and rarely
written/transcribed for other performers to replicate.

Authoritative:
• Both the theatre and lecture hall have a certain state sanctioned authority.
The authority is given rather than earned, and the authority is recognised
by a general population.
• A Seminar or roundtable distributes the authority amongst all the
participants; the facilitator might retain some authority over the
participants, but this is not as pronounced as in a lecture.
• Performance plays with relations between performer/audience/space,
while the performer tends to retain authority, such authority is usually in
question.

Performance Lecture is, therefore, an interesting crossing of formal principles.

What I liked about Jiva’s work was that the content itself played with this formal

crossing. The performance was about a specific bureaucratic entanglement between
the law/politics/authority and body/self/identity. There was a nice affinity between
form and content. The work was about travel and getting visas, in particular “The
Last Remaining Relative” visa. He was wearing a suit, had lecture notes, a desk and
a whiteboard. And was telling a story about the way in which his travels for both
professional art practice and pleasure were thwarted by state authority and border
politics. He also involved alcohol in the piece (National Alcohols that matched the
countries he had trouble accessing – like Whiskey/Ireland and Tequila/Mexico,
Bundy&Coke/Australia), and wanted to share it with the audience, but drew our
attention to the bureaucratic/OH&S issues with regards to sharing alcohol with an
audience within the space. I’m really interested in the politics of this form, and I think
Jiva’s work is a really excellent example of how to best exploit a form in service of a
story. I also got a free nip of Whisky and Tequila.

The Comfort Zone: A Performance Lecture by Karen Therese

Next performance: Sat 13th, 9pm Bay 20

Opinion Writer: Jennifer Hamilton

By the time I attended The Comfort Zone everything I had been to had some degree
of audience participation. I guess in something called ‘The Comfort Zone’ one would
only expect that at least some of the audience would be dragged out of their comfort
zones. The Comfort Zone is a lecture that plays with textbook definitions of comfort.
What makes us comfortable and what makes us uncomfortable.

SPOILER ALERT.

The conclusion of this piece the entire front row is asked to stand and participate in a
dance to Beyonce’s Halo. I was sitting in the front row.

When I was 3 or 4, in what is probably my earliest actual memory (i.e. an event that
doesn’t have a photograph to remind me about it), I went to a pantomime version of
Little Red Riding Hood. I was selected to come up on stage and meet Red Riding
Hood and receive a flower or lolly from her. I was the smallest child selected, and
the slowest at getting up on stage. As such, while all the other kids had received their
lolly or flower and were making their way back to their seats, I was still walking
across the large stage to shake the nice lady’s hand and collect my lolly. At which
time the Big Bad Wolf music started to play. The device was simple, the music would
precede the entry of the Wolf and to that point in the pantomime we’d been trained
by music, the responses of those on stage, and possibly some prompting from our
parents, to fear what might unfold when the wolf arrives. My excitement at meeting
Red Riding Hood and getting a lolly quickly turned to abject terror, I bolted down
the stairs and sat in the first available seat in the auditorium, next to a girl much older
than myself. She was concerned about me and asked if I wanted a lolly. I did want a
lolly, I cried, so she turned to her mother to get me one. But it seemed like she was
turned away forever, while her back was turned I stood up and fled to the back of the
auditorium. Here the memory becomes foggy. I suppose I wailed and cried and my
dad took me outside to calm me down.

I guess each child would have a different response but no doubt the music was timed

to catch out the slow child and draw some kind of spectacle out of however they
might respond.

If The Comfort Zone is a measure of how an audience will respond when surprised
on stage, then it is difficult elicit an extreme response (like by Red Riding Hood
one) from an adult audience. We’re all too compliant. We’d all accept the lolly from
Red Riding Hood, and try to at least appear undisturbed by the Big Bad Wolf music.
Being asked to come up on stage for a mysterious reason and then asked to dance
to Beyonce in front of everyone is some people’s worst nightmare, for some people
its the Big Bad Wolf himself. No one ran away or sat back down, however, we all
awkwardly complied and we all probably looked decidedly uncomfortable. Which
was, no doubt, the point of the exercise.

For more about Jennifer see her blog bicycleuser.wordpress.com