Performature - Performateur 3 2021

03 May 2021 : STST.ARI 84 Bathurst Road, Katoomba, NSW Australia

In May 2021, just as new Covid-19 restrictions hit us, I joined the third iteration of WeiZen Ho’s collaborative working process/concept Performature : Performateur , working in our home town Katoomba, New South Wales. Katoomba is a village and we occupied a small shop turned into a temporary artists’ project space. This was an unfunded temporary artists’ collective project.

The project series Performature : Performateur was conceived by WeiZen Ho as a collaborative model for a performance making process. She proposed that the sharing process between artists would affect how both artists and audience perceive an event to unfold, taking into account the spatial relationships of works being created in a multi-disciplinary format.

The venue STST.ARI (formerly a modular synth and tea shop and experimental music venue called Steep St) in Katoomba offered us the opportunity to use the venue full-time for a week of exploration. From 3rd to 9th May 2021, a collective of installation, sound and performing artists explored ways of extending their visual and performance boundaries spatially and conceptually.

My own contributions comprised installations of two separate sets of revolving white translucent screens, powered by electric fans, mirrors, reflected light, and performances employing black and white sheets of A4 paper. I include mainly images of my own components here but the associated video gives an impression of the overall event.

We thank Nick Strike, Mark Leacy and the curatorial team of STST.ARI for the opportunity to work in the venue.

The project provided three days to set up and experiment followed by open studios on Thursday 6 , Friday 7, and Saturday 8 May 2021 from 2-5pm. Two different event evenings of installation activation, performance and action events were presented : on Friday 7 May from 8-10pm, and on Saturday 8 May from 10pm-midnight.

Background information: This was the third iteration of a concept proposed by WeiZen Ho. In this process artists work collectively to consider and reformulate the language/vocabulary that has been built up around their practices over time. The provocation is to identify and play with the concepts of performature and performateur, investigating how those terms can shift their approach towards performance devising. The exploration is also to consider aspects of each artist’s practice that expands the notion of what is “performative”.

Participating Blue Mountains artists : Chris Caines (local environmental sound and voice, installation) Damian Castaldi (audiovisual percussive interactive installation) WeiZen Ho (concept initiator, participatory installation, sound & movement) Naomi Oliver (video installation & performance) Michael Petchkovsky (live computer vision & performance) Alan Schacher (responsive spatial intervention)

Participating Sydney-based artists: (these artists had participated in previous iterations of Performature : Performateur at Articulate Project Space and at Tempe Jets, both in Sydney) Sue Callanan (architectural enactments) Margaret Roberts (Sophie Taeuber painting enactment) Laura Altman (clarinet & feedback objects)