Teens, cyberbullying and theatre as awareness raising : interim findings from research conducted on the audience of Phunktional Theatre Company's regional performances of 'who stole the sole?' (October 2015)

This report describes the effectiveness of Phunktional's regional theatre performance program

Creatrix: artist in residence performance at birthing the mother 14

Digitally projected improvised creative writing performance art.

Pragmatic dramaturgy: the creative management of limits in performance-making processes.

This thesis proposes the lens of pragmatic dramaturgy as a way of understanding the complex interactions between process and performance that define theatre practice, and investigates the ways in which performance making practice is shaped by encounters with a range of limits that impact the creative process.

Musical arts education in Africa : differentiation, integration and disassociation

By discussing the future challenges to musical arts education in Africa in which local cultural practices are valued, the differences of those historically marginalised by virtue of gender, race, ethnicity, and class, are celebrated. In Africa, musical arts education and culture are regarded as an integral part of our life, which not only embraces the spiritual, material and intellectual aspects of our society, but also contributes greatly toward our emotional development. This affirms the integrity and importance of various forms of 'Art' including literature, technology, design, dance, drama, music, visual art, media and communication.

This paper will discuss the future of African musical arts education programmes through the dynamic cycle of differentiation, integration and disassociation. The authors will consider the concept of ‘differentiation’, ‘integration’ and ‘disassociation’ within musical arts practice. An analysis of selected international arts education programmes provides a globally differentiated perspective through a discipline-based approach. In the African context, arts education programmes are located within an integrated approach. The structure of a Music Action Research Team (MAT cell) in Southern African Developing Community (SADC) countries will be highlighted as a means to address disassociation through the active engagement of professional development programmes offered by the Centre for Indigenous African Instrumental Music and Dance (CIIMDA).

Prophet and loss

Prophet and Loss is a contemporary music theatre performance presented in Wyselaskie Hall which tells the stories of those bereaved by a work-related death, and traumatised by the resulting complex legal processes.

Culture clash : artistic production and the school environment

Artists-in-schools programs involving contemporary art practices can be transformational for the participants when environmental considerations are integral to the planning and structure of the project and both the form and content of the program are reflected upon critically.

Hedge-mony

Hedge-mony was a site-specific visual performance involving the creation of a human maze involving 400+ performers including a large number of Deakin University students and alumni. The Red Cabbage Collective developed the work with the support of Next Wave for Festival 2006, the cultural festival of the Commonwealth Games. The Red Cabbage 'Hedges' were featured internationally in the Games advertising campaign 'See The Games We Play'.

Collapse

Collapse was a visual performance installation presented at the Old Port of Melbourne in 2008. The audience travelled by boat across Port Phillip Bay to witness the performance begins at Sciencework’s Spotswood Jetty, where the audience travelled by ferry across the Port Phillip Bay to a remote location, where society has “collapsed”. The performance then becomes a walking tour around this new location, encountering and experiencing the world that Red Cabbage has created.

“At that point…the collapse of their morale, their will power and their patience was so abrupt that they felt they would never be able to climb back out of their hole…Hence, floundering halfway between the abyss and the peak, they drifted rather than lived, given up to aimless days and sterile memories, wandering shadows who could have only found strength by resigning themselves to taking root in the soil of their distress.”- Albert Camus The Plague

Floundering halfway between the abyss and the peak…exist those that have not yet fallen…in a state of recurring collapse. The girl in the yellow dress, the man in the grey suit, the old man in the brown pants, the woman in the blue shirt and the man in the red hat are suspected carriers of the white sickness. They have been removed from their homes to the edge of the city for standard assessment. Here they meet the others, processed…waiting…isolated. By boat…they travel across the bay to their final destination. Not another Hollywood style apocalyptic melodrama in which our heroes find grace, hope and redemption in the utter destruction of modern civilization…in the collapse of lived time the ruins of humanity are exposed as already existent…the limits of our ability to be graceful were discovered long ago…the trauma of the end of time a given…the plague is now.

Tuning fork: Drill Hall

Collaborative (commissioned 40 minute work ) installation-performance work

Tuning fork: Shopfront

The audience of this performance got to view actions and installations building and evolving over time, and a projected time-lapse video.
In this iteration of Tuning Fork, James Cunningham & Joncli Keane continue the development of their two pronged approach to finding the watering hole of stillness and action, collabora tion and orientation.Originating from a showing in the Bell Tower II series, in the Judy's new Shopfrontspaoe, Tuning Fork will Fuks accentuate the durational aspect of movement through time-lapse video, heighten the trans formative potential of objects using three-metre long carbon rods as instruments of sense, sound and support and alter the space through the numerous tape measures which take on a life of their own. James Cunningham and Jondi Keane inhabit the Shopfront from Friday 7 November, eJqJioring, measuring, filming and projecting, in order to fine tune their interactions for the performance season commencing 19 November.

Separating shadows

A series of performance investigations that negotiate site, body and shadow.

Story vessels

Twelve sculptors were chosen to research and create a story vessel to represent the stories of the twelve wards of The City of Greater Geelong. I organised the community meetings for nine of the sculptors including myself.  This involved facilitating 27 meetngs.  I then documented and curated the exhibition of the twelve story vessels at three locations (Geelong City Hall, Johnstone Park and Federation Square).  This was part of the project called Connecting Identities in which other artists consulted with other communities to record stories, write and compose songs, poetry and performance art.

Understanding science

Understanding Science is about breakdown of meaning, breakdown of relationship, trying to exist in that space between meaninglessness and understanding, at its cusp, its node, its no-man's land.. It is a melting pot of more than just fragments of images, there are clusters of things, ideas, sounds, words, that swim in and out of your attention. I wanted this film to be a dense multidimensional collage of automatic writing, sound poetry and abstracting strings of images.

Program notes: Scratch Film Festival. UWA. Perth 1997