Performance Space has announced its 40-year anniversary program for Liveworks 2023 titled OF THE TIME – which will run at Carriageworks from 19 – 29 October.
Now in its ninth year, as an annual festival, Liveworks is the pinnacle event for Performance Space, Australia‘s leading organisation for the development and presentation of experimental art in Australasia.
Performance Space revisits its radical history and significant impact on art and culture for Liveworks 2023 with a curated program by Guest Co-Artistic Directors, and Performance Space alumni, Rosie Dennis and Daniel Mudie Cunningham whose statement reads:
“Performance Space is a living, breathing organism of performativity, having birthed and nurtured generations of experimental creativity since its inception,” they said.
“As PSpace turns 40 this year, we reactivate the time machine to consider a history of radical artists, practices and thinking. Liveworks 2023 unpacks the archive to consider the impact of time on art, actions, ideas and the bodies that carry and move culture forward.”
“Over 40 years PSpace has reflected and responded to the times, acting as a beacon of artistic risk and experimentation during a hurtling era of great cultural, political, social and technological change.”
“To celebrate and acknowledge the significant influence PSpace has had on the national cultural ecology, we have visioned a program that reflects an unwavering commitment to supporting work that has forged the future of contemporary practice.”
“By looking to the future through the lens of the recent past, our anniversary program, OF THE TIME, surveys the communities, collectives, shapeshifters and storytellers who form the beating heart of PSpace, through a curated mix of work, old and new.”
“OF THE TIME proudly presents bold new works by Rainbow Chan, Brooke Stamp, and Latai Taumoepeau and Rosanna Raymond.”
“Significant and well-loved umbrella programs of the past – Antistatic, cLUB bENT, and Nighttime, have been reborn in the present with a dynamic mix of legendary archival works remounted and revisioned alongside next-gen artists and ideas.”
“PSpace’s commitment to the moving image is honoured with a return of archival ReelDance works and a video art survey, Channels and Spells – taking cues from a popular exhibition series of the past called Video Spell.”
“Artist Elvis Richardson transforms the towering walls of the Carriageworks’ Public Space into a work that reviews, remixes and reimagines the PSpace archive as a backdrop for the grand reunion.”
“Other program highlights include Crime Writers featuring a cast of incredible performers, and Barbara Campbell’s Night 1001 – a revisitation of the final evening of her epic durational work 1001 nights cast (2005 – 08).”
“And while OF THE TIME reflects on the past 40 years of PSpace, we hope the program catalyses and ignites conversations about the next 40 years of this organisation so many artists and audiences have called home,” said Rosie Dennis and Daniel Mudie Cunningham.
Liveworks 2023: OF THE TIME takes place at Carriageworks from 19 – 29 October. For more information and to explore the program, visit: www.performancespace.com.au for details.
Images: Rainbow Chan – Still: Capsule 48 | Brooke Stamp – photo by Christian Nimri | Barbara Campbell – photo Heidrun Lo?hr
LIVEWORKS 2023: OF THE TIME
Liveworks 2023 includes creatives working across the multi-arts sphere for OF THE TIME showcasing old and new works to reflect 40 years of Performance Space.
Ticketed Events:
The Bridal Lament
19 – 22 October
Rainbow Chan premieres an ambitious new performance and music project The Bridal Lament. Featuring a suite of new songs from Chan exploring an obsolete Weitou ritual, The Bridal Lament is a sumptuous audiovisual experience and song cycle by the award-winning vocalist, producer and multi-disciplinary artist.
Mickey
19 – 22 October
Mickey by dance-artist Brooke Stamp, is a wild trip through the subconscious psychic waste of a dancer with more than two decades of practice. With a live score created by Daniel Jenatsch, Mickey speculates on the rehearsal studio as a place of experimentation and production usually not seen by the public. No two performances of Mickey are the same.
K’AINGA CommonWealth
19 & 21 October
Featuring artists Latai Taumoepeau and Rosanna Raymond, K’AINGA CommonWealth is a two-day event of ceremony, dancing and nourishing kai for the body and the mind. Our K’AINGA Whanau welcome you to hot oceanic Acti.VA.tions and mana-full Moana diplomacy in the heart of Gadigal. Ride our wave of live exchanges flowing from the saVAge to the faiVA. The K’AINGA whanau, Kilia Pahulu, Salvador Brown, and Sela Vai; led by Latai Taumoepeau and Rosanna Raymond.
Antistatic Redux
26 & 27 October
Reviving a landmark dance platform of the past, Antistatic returns in a new form as Antistatic Redux curated by Rosie Dennis and Martin Del Amo with a suite of works – new and from the archives. PSpace has championed and supported independent choreographic practice since the eighties. The 2023 Liveworks program presents a suite of new and archival works from some of Australia’s most well-respected and influential choreographers. Artists: Lucy Guerin, Branch Nebula, Victoria Hunt and Narelle & Marlo Benjamin.
Antistatic Redux: The real time it takes…
26 & 27 October
Voilà! The ‘Mick Jagger’ of Australian dance is back. Dance artist Rosalind Crisp brings us her version of the retrospective with Antistatic Redux: The real time it takes… curated by Rosie Dennis and Martin Del Amo. Still looking ‘wiry, scrappy and dangerously unpredictable’, this demon of contemporary dance has never stopped. One of Australia’s most rigorous and significant dance artists, celebrates 40 years of relentlessly undoing dance.
Crime Writers … criminal intent
26 & 27 October
Sharing a delight in the abstract, Crime Writers … criminal intent is an empowered notion of virtuosic bodies, voices and the profundity of space. Enjoy this exciting new performance work developed by a ground-breaking ensemble of PSpace alumni including artists Andrea Aloise, Kathy Cogill, Regina Heilmann, Nikki Heywood, Nigel Kellaway and Katia Molino.
Nighttime Righttime
28 & 29 October
Nighttime Righttime curated by Rosie Dennis and Lara Thoms reimagines Nighttime – a seminal platform that ran from 2007 – 2015 and supported hundreds of artists in the presentation of their short-works. For Liveworks 2023, see new and legendary work from iconic artists The Fondue Set, Post, Julie-Anne Long, Kaz Therese, Tei Kim Pok, Wart and Tina Havelock Stevens.
LIVE FUTURES
21, 22, 28 & 29 October
Every Saturday and Sunday afternoon of Liveworks dive into LIVE FUTURES – a series of curated public conversations exploring artists’ pivotal role in the Performance Space world. Reflecting on the last four decades of ground-breaking performances from PSpace artists, this anniversary edition of LIVE FUTURES will look to the future through the lens of the past. Conversations include explorations across Archive, Access, Dance and Queer narratives.
Performance Space’s 40th Birthday Party
Saturday 28 October – 6.00pm
Join the PSpace team as they celebrate four decades of boundary–pushing art, and the artists who’ve made their legacy possible. Whether you’ve been with them since 1983, or you’ve discovered them in recent years, there’s a place for you at this party. The party will include performances, music, food and drink to be announced.
cLUB bENT bACK uP!
Saturday 28 October – 9.00pm
For one night only, PSpace has called up a mix of original 90s and new performance provocateurs for a queer conversation across time. Together, we will devour the work of our prophets, priestesses, renegades and iconoclasts of today and yesteryear to divine what is ‘bENT‘ in 2023. Curated by cLUB bENT‘s original Euphoria Guardians, Victoria Spence, Groovii Biscuit and Daniel Mudie Cunningham, invite us back into the underworld of our embodied queerness.
Free Events
Liveworks 2023 Opening Night
Thursday 19 October – 6.00pm
The Opening Night welcomes the Performance Space community to Carriageworks Public Space as they celebrate the opening of the 2023 festival. Featuring DJ set by Stereogamous, food and drink. After the festivities, explore the rest of Carriageworks for your pick of the first round of Liveworks performances and installations.
PERFORMANCE ARTIST 4EVA
19 – 29 October
Elvis Richardson‘s PERFORMANCE ARTIST 4EVA is a major new installation commission curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham that unpacks and reassembles the rich repositories of the PSpace archive as a site-specific wall work celebrating and remembering the creative work of generations of artists it has supported over four decades.
ReelDance / Dance (Lens)
19 – 22 & 25 – 29 October
Co-presented with DanceHouse, ReelDance / Dance (Lens) showcases choreographers, dancers, and filmmakers through the screen. Founded in 2000 and running for over a decade until 2012, ReelDance was a ground-breaking festival of dance on screen. For Liveworks 2023, ReelDance, in partnership with Dance (Lens), returns with films from the archive in dialogue with new national and international films.
Channels and Spells
19 – 22 & 25 – 29 October
Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Channels and Spells is a survey of 15 videos from PSpace’s history, tracing diverse conceptual and technological approaches to the performative in video, casting an archival spell.
Night 1001
19 – 22 & 25 – 29 October
An installation and live re-voicing of the last night of Barbara Campbell‘s durational performance 1001 nights cast (2005 – 2008), Night 1001 honours all the story writers who kept Barbara and the project alive for its 1001 night duration.