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.

Retrieval

Retrieval was a site-specific performance installation which transformed five floors of the National Library of Australia in Nov-Dec 2010. Devised in collaboration with a team of 30 young performers, the production lead the audience on a quest deep into the library to retrieve priceless cultural memories before all was lost. Louise Morris working in collaboration with co-designer Matthew Aberline and the artistic team created the installed environments for the production. The production won numerous awards including Best New Project- Express Media and Best Original Work- CAT awards.

Cafe urgency

The idea of Cafe urgency was to create a loose and social atmosphere in which performers, audience and everyone present explored the ideas of the evening together. What Urgency do we have in our lives? Which pressing ideas, compelling needs, burning desires fill a day? Which insistent thoughts, driving wishes, forceful longings span a lifetime? Our delectable menu of musings, meditations and magnificent imaginations will provide bite-sized morsels and overlapping slabs of creative sustenance to suit all tastes: song, sound, spoken word, dance, music, live art, installation.

Inspirited landscapes: the anthology project

 

Anthology

This research is a practice led investigation of large-scale site specific performance installation works that respond to local and historical trauma, place making, and belonging for communities and audiences. The research is part of an ongoing PhD which is primarily questioning how layers of history and lived experience manifest or ‘imprint’ upon natural landscapes and urban sites using the driving concepts of landscape, archaeology, and community immersion to inform the practice. The site of the primary research investigation was Anthology www.anthology.net.au- a major site-specific theatrical journey through Westlake, now known as Stirling Park – Ngunawal land, a traditional pathway and the site of one of the camps created to house the workers building the new city of Canberra. Tents and a hall were erected followed by 61 cottages built in 1923, for married tradesmen building the infrastructure for the new Federal Capital of Australia. These families lived at Westlake for 50 years until the 1960’s when the families were relocated, the houses sold and removed. A community demolished. Westlake is now parkland (and prime real estate), nestled between the lake and the Embassies of Yarralumla. The event took place between 26th November and the 6th December 2014. The performance installation was created and produced over a 3-year period with $45,000.00 in funding provided by ArtsACT and the Centenary of Canberra. Anthology alluded to the power of immersive, site-sympathetic performance as a regenerative force for communities right now. What lies in wait for artists in sites, in places…to be uncovered…with its final form revealed through careful excavation? Anthology centralised rituals of remembrance and the importance of place as vital to the restoration and regeneration of community through processing and transcending what has been lost, hidden, suppressed or in the case of Westlake or Stirling Park ‘vanished’.

River + stones

This artwork was commissioned to activate the spaces within the Immigration Museum through live interactive artwork and performance. An intergenerational project the project engaged children and adults in the stories of their own movements and migrations, and led conscious exploration of human relationship to the river, to walking, to telling stories, and creating art.

Forest of gestures : video installation and performance work

Invitation to contribute to Alexander Harrisions' program 'What's Coming' resulted in 'Forest of Gestures' a 3 channel video projection and installation with a live feed component

Strategies for improving the thermal performance and comfort levels of a kindergarten in the mountains of Nepal

Located on the Annapurna trekking trail in Nepal, Siurung is a remote mountain village where outside influences are almost non-existent. The thermal comfort levels of a recently-constructed kindergarten are well below international standards because of the climate and poor building envelope. A TRNSYS model of the kindergarten has been used to predict the current occupant comfort levels and subsequently determine the most effective way to alter the traditional construction methods to improve comfort levels. Improvements investigated were: reduced air infiltration, roof and wall insulation (separately and together), installation of a smokeless stove and a combination of all strategies.The model predicted that in the current building the PMV ranges from -1.94 in October to - 0.99 in July. It also predicted that the current PPD (%) ranges from 100 in January to 26 in July. With the combination of strategies, the predicted PMV values were all improved to between -1.08 and +0.34, and the PPD values of all months except January were reduced to below 10%. When improving the comfort levels of an existing school, reducing air infiltration, adding roof insulation and installing a smokeless stove are the most effective strategies. When constructing a new school, however, reducing air infiltration and adding insulation to the walls and roof are the most effective and feasible strategies. If a smokeless stove can be afforded and transported to the site, it is recommended that one be installed as it provides a more significant improvement than any other single strategy.