LIVE DREAMS: CLOISTERED (ON DEMAND)

LIVE DREAMS
Performance Space’s LIVE DREAMS is a platform for artists to share works-in-progress and ideas in development in a dynamic and responsive environment. LIVE DREAMS takes place both in-theatre at Carriageworks and digitally via our live streaming channel, Live On The Line. This platform offers us an exciting glimpse into current developments in experimental art, creating a crucible for experimentation and conversation.

This October, Performance Space presents the 5th season of LIVE DREAMS, inviting artists to present works-in-progress that imagine radical futures. Our three guest curators—Alex Wisser, Louana Sainsbury and River Lin —have themed each stream with a powerful forward-looking provocation, inviting us to interrogate the role of art in shaping and reshaping our collective future in an ever-shifting world. What agendas do we want to advance and how might art dispel myths, illuminate concerns or provoke radical visions?

Cloistered – by Alex Wisser

Synonyms:
reclusive, sheltered, confined, hidden, insulated, restricted, sequestered, shielded, withdrawn, hermetic, recluse, secluse, seclusive, shut off

Artists:

Oriana Panozzo, IMO
IMO written and performed by Oriana Panozzo, is an original symbolic performance piece that explores the explosion of vehement personal opinions online and in the public domain over the past 3 years of Australian bushfires, Covid and floods.
Who really is behind the mask and who agrees with me? Does isolation and fear breed rabbit holes?

Laring Kolektif, SVARA SVARI
This work raises the story of Pramesvari, a female character who was appointed king in the 8th century AD. She served as the queen of the ancient Mataram kingdom which is now called the island of Java. At that time, the queen who served as king was very rare and taboo, so that during Pramesvari's tenure there were many royal parties who did not like this and problematic kingdoms were raised to overthrow his power. Svara Pramesvari shows how women are ostracized and how a queen embraces various obstacles so that she can reconcile the kingdom.

Pramesvari became an important figure because she was one of the first female figures who dared and took a high position in a kingdom. We, as female creative actors, feel compelled to voice the position of women more loudly. The spirit and fighting power of women is embedded in this show.

Katrina E. Bastian, heartFELD
heartFeld is a queer, grating, uncomfortable movement moment, a chance to witness an artist, an athlete, a human being at the precipice of physicality. From the comfort of your screens, you are invited to witness the beating of a dancer's heart, in real-time, as it changes, fluctuates, and yearns towards the ultimate goal of the performance- reaching ‘peak performance’. The only sound you hear is the rhythmic/arrhythmic panting of Katrina's breath as they push their physical movement sequences, trying to reach +180 bpm. But what happens from 180 onwards? Death? The inevitable comedown? Catharsis? The act of hearing another heartbeat creates the same level of intimacy as eye contact...so yes, it'll be athletic as hell (!) but also, your mirror neurons will be going wild- a moment of empathy with a performer who has set an impossible task- to push their heart towards rupture, perhaps in the process, hinting at just a moment of authentic connection. It'll be worth it.

Jenny Brown and John Shipton with Richard Banati, The Allo-paradox Method
John Shipton and I draw upon the candle-in-the-pool scene from Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia, as a means to explore John’s ongoing advocacy work for his son Julian Assange, as well as Julian’s alternative practices that are also unreligious faithful performances of a not fully defined, coming from elsewhere and simultaneously attempting to gain traction in situations into which they come. The role Wikileaks has played in raising scrutiny that has led to positive results is contextualised in the allo-paradox method that describes dialectical thinking to balance, or synthesise the opposing forces of allodoxia, a catalyst for individual/societal recuperative processes, yet still harmful as an influence.

Allegra Ceccarelli, Ismene
Ismene is a performative ritual dance theatre solo/ monologue, a work-in-progress, by Allegra Ceccarelli and Iman Kerroua. It narrates the tragic fate of Ismene: Antigone's sister and Oedipus' daughter, after the death of all her family members. It is the continuation of Sophocles' renowned three Theban plays. What happened to the last surviving member of the Labdacid family? Trapped in her memories, Ismene transits between the world of the dead, and the world of the livings. Ismene is a political, social, eco-feminist performance and has a mystical aspect, addressing topics such as life, death, loneliness, ancestry and women ageing, with interaction with nature and its elements.

Juundaal Strang-Yettica, Bound: Sister GlitterNullius
We humans have created the multi-layered enmeshments and co-dependence of land, environment and our non-human kin with the capitalist world and the damage to the planet. Humans are the only species with the ability and responsibility to save and protect what is left of Nature. Sister GlitterNullius’ role as a nun of the Anthropocene, a bridge, calls for Indigenous cultural revitalisation, decolonisation and the urgency of alliances and collaborations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges and technologies. Numerous actions are urgently and simultaneously required, locally and globally. Sister GlitterNullius, is wise, a little confused, trashy, empathetic and punishing, ancient and afraid. She is a conduit for addressing complex, challenging issues, with a license to be a master of none. Through humour, irony, fragility, damnation, and a pinch of sarcasm, GlitterNullius stands with the in-betweeners, the failures and the lost, trying to navigate a greener decolonised path Home. Can someone give her directions or a map, please?