Supporting the development of new art and performance
Presented by Vitalstatistix

ELEVEN PROJECTS ANNOUNCED FOR ADHOCRACY 2021

Adhocracy is Vitalstatistix’s annual national hothouse, supporting the creative development and critical discussion of experimental, multidisciplinary arts projects.

In 2021 we (fingers crossed!) return to our intensive lab and festival-style program. We are thrilled to announce the eleven projects and artistic teams selected for Adhocracy 2021.

Stay tuned for the full public program of showings, talks and other offerings which will be announced in early August.

NOTE: We are very aware of the COVID-19 situation facing Australia at the moment. We will work with all the selected artists to support the best participation in Adhocracy for them; and we will make adjustments to the delivery of the event as required.

Adhocracy is a unique offering in the arts calendar. Artists from around Australia, selected through a national call, spend four days and nights in a studio environment developing new work which spans theatre, live art, dance, sound, installation, social practice, and more; and experimenting with ideas and artforms, as well as how audiences experience their works.

Adhocracy’s public program is offered over three afternoon and evenings. Save the dates of 3-5 September!

ADHOCRACY 2021 PARTICIPATING ARTISTS AND PROJECTS

Deeply Hanging Out
Henry Wolff and Collaborators (SA)
An exploration into social and artistic practices that centre responsive care structures. Offering workshops across Adhocracy, the artist and their collaborators will construct an evolving community through moving image, photography and performance.
Artists: Henry Wolff and collaborators

8/8/8 (Work/Rest/Play)
Harriet Gillies and Marcus McKenzie (NSW and VIC)
An ambitious and durational live art trilogy about the limits and possibilities of work-life balance and care economies. For Adhocracy, the artists are experimenting with a participatory, one-on-one experience of para-fictional welfare bureaucracies.
Artists: Harriet Gillies and Marcus McKenzie, with Thom Smyth

Elegy of the Pale Lion
eDuard Helmbold and Motus Collective (SA)
A choreographic and sculptural ritual about remembering, forgetting and mourning. Performed on the stripped chassis of a Holden Commodore VF, the work reimagines the car as a uniquely evolved Australian species of feral lion, now facing extinction.
Artists: eDuard Helmbold, Motus Collective and Daniel Thorpe

Follies of GOD
Raghav Handa with James Brown (NSW)
A multidisciplinary performance that questions the contemporary ethics of violence, power and war. The work is centred around a provocative examination of the sacred Indian text of Bhagavad Gita and the seemingly contradictory calls to action it has inspired.
Artists: Raghav Handa, James Brown, Shashi Handa and Justine Shih Pearson

Goddess Ball’s Fun House
amira.h. and Monte Masi (SA and VIC)
An exploratory dive into online performative spaces, adult camming sites, chat windows, and cyber encounter. Using text, performance and endurance, the artists’ subjectivities and gaze are placed within the wider aesthetics and politics of online sex work.
Artists: amira.h. and Monte Masi

How to Build a Home
Fleur Kilpatrick and Collaborators (SA)
A collaborative performance utopia about building community and building a home. Part storytelling, part old-fashioned barn-raising, this is participatory theatre about how we find, hold and rebuild a foundation in the wake of loss and transience.
Artists: Fleur Kilpatrick, Meg Wilson and Nescha Jelk

Hypocrisy
Manal Younus and Collaborators (SA)
A spoken word and sound performance by young Australian migrant activists from Eritrean, Palestinian, Persian and Uyghur heritage, that wrestles with their complex experiences of duty and allegiance as members of transnational communities and a settler colony.
Artists: Manal Younus, Adila Yarmuhamad, Beljana Dally and Nelya Valamanesh

Porotēhi
Daley Rangi with Jacob Boehme (WA and SA)
A participatory research and performance project, unearthing contested histories of nonviolent resistance, inspired by a passive resistance movement at Parihaka, Aotearoa, in the late 1800s, and other rousing, discomforting tales of civil disobedience.
Artists: Daley Rangi and Jacob Boehme

‘Til Death
Astrid Pill and Collaborators (SA and VIC)
A devised theatre performance about the experience of the death of an intimate partner. Using film, sound, multiple narratives and sourced, real-life stories, the work explores the fragile subjects of grief, mortality, taboo, love, memory and liminality.
Artists: Astrid Pill, Ingrid Voorendt, Jason Sweeney and Zoë Barry

Us, The Most, The Many
Jay Gardener and Collaborators (NSW)
A joyous and speculative celebration of a world beyond binaries. Utilising experimental drag, digital performance media and body puppetry, this performance-workshop-ritual revels in self-transformation, queer community care and pleasure-as-activism.
Artists: Jay Gardener, George Wohlfiel and Jeff McCann

Zoology
Too Close to the Sun (WA)
A disrupted performance lecture about wildness, extinction and what counts as civilised, inspired by found slides taken at the Bronx Zoo in the 1980s and Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to transport a Panda to America on her first diplomatic trip to visit Ronald Reagan.
Artists: Talya Rubin, Nick James, Sam James and Hayley Forward