Manifesto
i live, work, play and create on the unceded sovereign lands of First Nations Peoples.
right now: that is Boorloo on Whadjuk Noongar country (perth, western australia)
i grew up: on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country
for a little while: i was on Warlpiri countr
this is the point we begin from.
i am a stranger here, a very recent arrival
today’s date: wednesday third october
today’s marks, lines in the sand,
a list i hold to be of value (of value to me today, but hey - we are always changing),
what this work is and might mean in this complicated, bewildering, hilarious world
my practice is created and recreated, made and un-made, constructed and deconstructed by (some of) these things:
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i write and create and move and speak and collaborate in resistance to a colonialist-patriarchal-anthropocentric-heteronormative view of what language needs to be, sound and look like
------> deliberately and methodologically un-capitalising what has been capitalised
remember that:
“i am looking for a language that exists outside of patriarchal definition; of course, that is not possible, but who is any longer interested in the possible?” Kathy Acker
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my art and my life are not separate
the way i live my life is the way i practice as an artist and the way i practice as an artist is the way i live my life:
-in full openness and curiosity to each Moment, Space, Interaction, Being, State i Encounter
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talking to strangers: bus drivers, panel beaters, midwives, farmers, playground designers, brick layers, agricultural scientists, astronauts, teachers, op shop ladies, drag queens…
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talk to strangers: neighbours (next-door, back-door, opposite and both sides), long-lost family, dog walkers, balga (grass trees), magpies…(talk with those who might not speak back in a language you recognise)
remember that:
“Everybody speaks in their own kind of poetry and I’m always interested in listening to the particular poetry of how each person speaks.” Annie Baker
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all labels, genres, forms are simply territories of possibility.
remember that:
“inside artistic practice the possibilities open back up.
the space of making art is the freedom of being.” Lidia Yuknavitch
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i want to blur boundaries between disciplines – between artists and non-artists – between spaces accepted as ‘art’ those that are art but we’ve forgotten to call them that –
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to be able to sing and move and speak and be silent and still in one body of work and have people not know what to call it:
not dance or theatre or song or installation but a shared experience in space and time
Enjoy contradiction
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find out what happens when we make theatre in a theatre, then make theatre in an alleyway, in an attic, in car parks, in the clearing of a forest, in a neighbour’s garden, for only one other person, for thousands of people
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learn more about Clowns. become a clown. make jokes. remember that it’s just work and then in the same breath remember that it’s work that matters deeply. be absurd, hilarious, comical. Laughter is revolutionary. Don’t stop Laughing.
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being hopeful and optimistic and not know the reason why
remember that:
“The closer the world gets to the ‘end of ethics’ the more need there will be for radical performance activists who suffer from ‘pathologies of hope’.” Baz Kershaw
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our imaginations are infinite. fill performances with a sense of wonder and magic, that there is something just beyond our grasp of understanding floating in the substances in and around the performance space.
remember that:
we need “an imagination adequate to the possibilities and the strangeness and the dangers on this earth in this moment.” Rebecca Solnit
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use all tools at our disposition to tell a good story. shakespeare has good stories. so does my mum and the person who served me an apple juice on monday night. help others tell stories.
remember that:
“Acting can seem like the most egotistical thing in the world, but then it can also be the most Buddhistic thing in the world—this beautiful letting-go of identity, this embracing of the void.” Annie Baker
remember those that came before you and those that will come after you
come back to this list when making seems hard. edit and re-shape it. change it, delete it, ask questions.
learn learn learn.
make communities.
silence can be exciting.
remember that:
“Performance as an artistic ‘genre’ is in a constant state of crisis, and is therefore an ideal medium for articulating a time of permanent crisis such as ours. Performance is a disnarrative and symbolic chronicle of the instant which focuses mainly on the ‘now’ and the ‘here.’ Performance is about presence, not representation; it is not (as classical theories would suggest) a mirror, but the actual moment in which the mirror is shattered. The act of creating and presenting a performance carries a sense of urgency and immediacy that does not exist in other artistic fields. We experience life, therefore we perform – or rather, we perform as we live, love, travel and suffer, everything woven together into a complex, multi-hued tapestry.”
Guillermo Gomez-Pena
References:
Alex Desebrock. (2011). A Manifesto. Retrieved from: https://misstipsyteacup.wordpress.com/a-manifesto/
Annie Baker. (2011). Interview with Annie Baker. Retrieved from: https://howlround.com/interview-annie-baker
Gomez-Pena, G. (2000). Dangerous Border Crossers. Routledge, London: United Kingdom.
Kathy Acker. (2016). Power Ballad. Retrieved from: http://www.juliacroft.com/#/new-page-2/
Kershaw, B. (2007). Pathologies of Hope. Performance Paradigm, 3. Retrieved from
Lidia Yuknavitch. (2018). BIO. Retrieved from: https://lidiayuknavitch.net/biod/
Solnit, R. (2004). Hope in the dark. Canongate books, Edinburgh: United Kingdom.