ADHOCRACY 2020
Supporting the development of new art and performance
Presented by Vitalstatistix
4 – 25 September
Throughout September, we have 28 new experimental and multidisciplinary projects joining us for a different kind of Adhocracy. Read more about what’s changed this year and why HERE and stay tuned for our new Adhocracy website launching in August.
AI vs Baby
Emele Ugavule, Emosi Ugavule, Amy Zhang and Jackson Garcia (WA & NSW)
An exploration of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, racial bias and memory, using pedagogy and movement to unpack responsive differences between a child and a virtual digital assistant.
Broth Bitch
Michele Lee, Jessica Bellamy, Ming Zhu Hii, Russell Goldsmith and Maia Thomas (VIC)
A podcast performance work about the wellness industrial complex and white women, set against conversations about women, labour and capitalism.
Capital and Darkness
Lauren Abineri and Virginia Barratt (SA)
An improvised sonic writing process, a song cycle and a deep listening, responding to labour, exiting the labour body, machines of production, automation and essentialism.
Cliffhanger
Angela Goh and Holly Childs (NSW & SA)
A multidisciplinary work across performance, installation and text, investigating the cliffhanger and the state of suspension as an omnipresent facet of contemporary anxiety.
Das Kind mit dem Bade auschutten
Ray Harris, Cynthia Schwertsik and Jesse Budel (SA)
An experimental exploration of commodified use of water in our daily lives, through sound, video and performance works made from the mundane to the sublime in suburban waterways.
Energy Fields
Lz Dunn, Amrita Hepi, Victoria Hunt and Zoe Scoglio (VIC)
An experimental, practice-based exploration of body-oriented, dialogical and decolonised ways of working towards future cultural ecologies.
Epoch Wars
Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemeyer/ Pony Express (NSW & TAS)
An artist-run alternative to the 36th International Geological Congress, where artists, thinkers and audiences debate and negotiate the name of the era we will die in.
Every Woman
Liesel Zink with Kate McDonald Baggerson (QLD)
A research process towards a large-scale public performance installation where women will collectively embody diverse and intersectional feminist movements.
Game of I-Lands
Sally Sussman, Valerie Berry, Annemaree Dalziel, Katia Molino and collaborators/ Australian Performance Exchange (NSW & SA)
An intercultural science-art performance project about the impact of the South China Sea conflict on the sentient creatures who inhabit the South China sea marine ecosystem.
Helpline
Bron Batten and Gary Abrahams (VIC)
A participatory live artwork that utilises the ubiquitous helpline and product assistance service to explore isolation, therapeutic outreach and community care.
Hot Body
Grace Marlow with Monte Masi (SA)
A poetic performance text exploring touch, intimacy, desire and embodied power in fictional and virtual spaces.
How Long Can This Last?
Jamila Main with Emma Valente (SA & VIC)
A performer with chronic illness pursues a pain-free space provided by live performance in a durational work interrogating the visibility of disability, medical gaslighting, and what it means to be sick.
Hundreds + Thousands
Luke George and Daniel Kok (VIC & Singapore)
A choreographic work that enlists plants as artistic collaborators, audience members and social mediators to explore the transformative powers of communality, fluidity and stillness.
Identify: What boxes do you tick?
Amala Groom with Willoh S.Weiland (NSW & TAS)
A video installation and solo live performance work exploring and problematising autobiography and identity through interpolation of a variety of people and personas in the artist’s history.
Immaculate
Casey Jenkins (VIC)
An intimate, durational artwork about transforming and reframing the conception of a child, through the lens of queer experience.
Mother’s Blood
Jacob Boehme with Keith Deverell and Isaac Drandic (VIC, QLD & TAS)
A contemporary urban drama played out online and IRL about three generations of an Aboriginal family, exploring political change across decades and the experiences of women living with HIV.
Nature is Healing
Emma McManus and Maria White/ Too Rude (NSW & VIC)
A performance work about the relationships between human and non-human animals sharing urban environments, based on the story of the gweela/Australian bush turkey.
Nevermore
Jennifer Greer Holmes with Teddy Dunn (AUS)
Two cross punks take aim at rapists with their dramaturgy guns – an exploration of how to incorporate comedy, fantasy and punk politics into an artistic response to rape and sexual violence.
Of Stubborn Songs and Unequal Wars
Nithya Nagarajan, Liv Satchell, Marco Cher-Gibard and Zainab Syed (NSW, VIC and WA)
An intercultural theatre work and living repository of research about domestic violence, the micro-personal and macro-political landscapes of female bodies, and women’s cultural resistance practices.
Plant Notes
Louise Flaherty and Laura Wills with Naomi Keyte and Belinda Gehlert (SA)
A sound, drawing and encountering/walking artwork about threatened flora on Kaurna Yerta/the Adelaide Plains, and specifically the Grey Mangrove Low Woodland of Yerta Bulti/Port Adelaide.
Scomodo
Cinzia Schincariol and Matt Shilcock (SA)
Scomodo is a durational performance work where two dance artists obsessively deconstruct and reconstruct a wheelchair, exploring the boundaries between humans and their machines.
Screen Me
Sapidah Kian, Georgina Naidu, Kelli Jean Drinkwater, Amos Gebhardt and Zena Cumpston (VIC)
A performance project exploring representation on screen, inspired by the lead artist’s experience as the only visible person of colour on an Australian police procedural in the late 90s.
Sincere Apologies
Dan Koop, Jamie Lewis, Roslyn Oades and David Williams (VIC)
A performance work constructed entirely from apologies – the famous, the obscure, the imagined, the speculative or forth-coming and those that begin every second email in our inboxes.
Takatāpui
Daley Rangi (WA)
A performance work unearthing the transgenerational and collective trauma of colonisation, and the relentless journey to reclaiming sovereignty of body, mind and soul.
The Lost and Found Office
Georgi Paech, Elizabeth Hay, Chris Petridis, Bianka Kennedy and team (SA)
A performance installation about loss, memory and the everyday experience of slippage, woven together from real-life interviews with South Australian communities.
We the Sick of It
Cat Jones with Kelli McCluskey (NSW & WA)
A series of participatory micro manifestos about the health of the social body, engaging with poetics, play and radical care practices.
What’s Eating Trestin Meacham?
Tristan Meecham with Jess Fairfax and Luke Smiles/ All the Queens Men (VIC)
A podcast about identity, faith and how people with divergent beliefs can find common ground, inspired by the artist’s real-life namesake, a Utah-based Mormon, and their journey to connect.
You Are Jeff
Dan Thorpe with Britt Plummer and Evan J Lawson (SA & VIC)
A composed theatre piece for pianist and orchestra, inspired by Siken’s Crush, evoking a portrait of queer discovery, self-reflection, rage and sensuality.
The publishing and public event program for Adhocracy 2020 will be announced in August. More info here.
Raft of the Medusa, Pony Express, 2018, Yerta Bulti / Port River. Image: Ian Sinclair.