By Audrey Pfister & Eleanor Zurowski — 13 December, 2019
We started writing this piece a month ago on the Gadigal land of the Eora Nation, in a week where over seventy fires burned across (so called) New South Wales. We would like to extend our gratitude and acknowledgement to the insects, animals, plant life, waters, people and bodies of knowledge that have cared for…
By Neha Kale — 15 November, 2019
1. A Saturday evening at Carriageworks. A trestle table topped with gin bottles. Friends huddle in neon jumpsuits. Their murmurs bounce off the walls of the old railway yard, recreating the push-pull anxiety of walking into a high-school disco before it starts. Chicks on Speed’s Alex Murray-Leslie appears on stage, cocooned in a cloud of…
By Claire Cao — 13 November, 2019
I. PANG Communicating with ghosts is simple in theory. Dying is like stepping off a tarmac and on to foreign soil, my parents said in Mandarin. You’ll be severed from your bed, the grocery shops you know best, the people you love—no landmark in sight, save the cloudy bulk of winter sky….
By Fiona McGregor — 8 November, 2019
I have to start with the best: Betty Grumble’s Unshame Machine, in which she did a record 1000 cunt prints on a machine resembling a lat pulldown, accompanied by three of the finest new performers in that ever-evolving organism we loosely term the Sydney queer underground. Stelly G, whom many know from hosting at the…
By Marcus Whale — 1 November, 2019
Partway through Body of Knowledge, Samara Hersch’s new performance for Liveworks, an attendee’s phone goes off. Except, it’s not exactly their phone, but one assigned to them—a smartphone. In fact, each of the dozen-or-so audience members has been assigned a device, and by the time it’s my turn to participate, almost everyone has a phone…
By Soo-Min Shim — 16 November, 2018
Walking into the last two hours of Daniel Kok and Miho Shimizu’s five-hour performance of xhe, I am overwhelmed by the kaleidoscopic playground of polychrome fabrics, foam block shapes, iridescent blankets, and printed cardboard cutouts. There are chairs arranged around the perimeters, but mostly these are empty. Instead, groups of people are gathered around a…
By Kathleen Linn — 9 November, 2018
In 2016, Taiwanese performance artist and choreographer Su Wen-Chi undertook a six-week residency at CERN (The European Centre for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland. She drew inspiration from this residency to create a suite of three works: Rainbow Trilogy, which includes Infinity Minus One. The Micro and the Macro The stage is bare, except for…
By Amelia Wallin — 26 October, 2018
Silicone breast-enhancing inserts, self-massage tools, flat screen televisions and their associated cables, cans of ‘Mother’ energy drink, and a boxy wind blower. These objects of artificial simulation constitute the set of Angela Goh’s Uncanny Valley Girl at Liveworks Festival, and generate many of Goh’s performative actions. Everything appears synthetic, down to her pleather footwear and…
By Susie Anderson — 7 November, 2017
My taxi driver said people aren’t meant to stay awake beyond 18-20 hours. ‘Humans can’t handle it.’ I said I couldn’t remember the last time I stayed awake that long. He started to tell me about the last time for him. It was a plane flight back to India, when his dad was dying. He…
By Naomi Riddle — 27 October, 2017
At the start of the premiere of her performance lecture Corponomy, Eisa Jocson stands with her back to the audience. She is facing a screen, onto which is projected a blank document and the familiar icons of the Mac desktop. Jocson is backlit so her body fills the screen, and her shadow, magnified and imposing,…