coming up in realtime 115

the body in question

Skye Gellmann, Blindscape, Next Wave Festival 2012 photo Sarah Walker

When performance art works from the past are re-enacted by others, what can that mean? When live art creates intimate and visceral encounters, what precisely is the art involved? And when the audience becomes the subject of the work, where exactly is the artist in the equation? The nature of performance is changing and its parameters expanding.

RealTime 115 will focus on the body in contemporary performance, whether in the Kaldor Public Art Projects’ 13 Rooms, in circus, live art dance or burgeoning game playing theatre. Our subject can be the body of an artist, a performer or an audience member at a time when the lines between these roles are as permeable as those between artforms.

in the body in question:

two views of 13 rooms

Clark Beaumont, Coexisting, 2013, ommissioned and performed by the artists for Kaldor Public Art Project 27: ‘13 Rooms’ photo Jamie North/Kaldor Public Art Projects

Ilana Cohn approvingly reviews the hugely popular 13 Rooms’ “living sculpture” performances some of which are re-enactments of works created by artists to be performed by themselves under the banner of performance art. In Sydney’s performance scene responses ranged from enthusiastic to hostile, so we asked prominent Australian performance artist Barbara Campbell for her take on 13 Rooms.

yvonne rainer: re-enacted or transmitted?

Nicely timed, American dance artist Sarah Wookey appeared in Sydney around the time of 13 Rooms, recreating a seminal work by Yvonne Rainer. Meredith Morse writes, “Wookey is one of five people vested by Yvonne Rainer—certified, Wookey says—to perform and teach the four-and-a-half-minute Trio A. Re-engaging with Trio A is timely: the Judson Dance Theater’s 50th anniversary was celebrated this past year, and the question of re-performances of 1960s-70s works remains topical.”

put the body back into circus

Asking what is the standing of circus as art, Antonella Casella argues against “a prevailing opinion that circus skills should only be harnessed for performance when they reflect a narrative/contextual intent—implying that the display of circus skills, in and of themselves, is somehow gratuitous.”

close body encounters at spill

Martin O'Brien, Last(ing), Spill Festival London photo Guido Mencari

Cat Jones, Madelaine Hodge and Julie Vulcan report from London on strange encounters with bodies in the SPILL Festival of Live Art. Not for the nervous, Spill included blood spilling, mucous expectoration, a visit to the apparently dead and witnessing “glorious genitalia” experiments. But SPILL also offered hand-holding walks with strangers and watching a dress being made out of cake. There’s serious intent in these live art foregroundings of the body, that also challenge the very notion of art.

the audience as the body in the work

Playwright Robert Reid reports from his UK encounters with game playing theatre. He writes that works by the likes of Coney “allow for and respond to player agency within constructed narrative environments. They give participants the chance to practice ‘ways of being’ in ‘not for real’ spaces.”

Also in RealTime 115:

Robyn Archer invites us to the next stage of the Canberra 100 celebrations.

Benedict Andrews on thinking through Genet’s The Maids for his STC production featuring Isabelle Huppert and Cate Blanchett as the murderous sisters.

Festival reports: Castlemaine Festival, Vancouver’s PuSh, Tokyo’s Azumabashi Dance Crossing, Melbourne’s Light in Winter and Brisbane’s Exist-ence.

Regional arts: an interview with Vic McEwen of CAD Factory which presents innovative performance and installation work across the Riverina region. Kathryn Kelly reports on developments on the Gold Coast to nurture a challenged cultural scene.

Anatomy - Soul photo Devika Bilimoria

In film, Dan Edwards looks at Australian arts documentaries and Kirsten Krauth reviews Jane Campion’s much-debated Top of the Lake TV mini-series.

Dancer Rennie McDougall interviews dancer and choreographer Luke George; Jana Perkovic reviews Menagerie, the first production in the MTC’s NEON season; Matthew Lorenzon previews the 2013 Totally Huge Festival of New Music; and Polly Dance reviews Julie Gough’s Lost World [1] video installation in Hobart.

RealTime issue #114 April-May 2013 pg. web

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