A Kind of Divination
participatory performance-installation 2019
Image of the beginning of A Kind of Divination, Coterie to Coterie exhibition. Photo by Vsevolod Vlaskine.
A Kind of Divination
The above image is the second iteration of a performance-installation duet with Alan Schacher titled A Kind of Divination, for Coterie to Coterie exhibition which was part of the Biennale of International Reductive and Non-Objective Art curated by Billy Gruner. This took place at the Stores Building Project, Parramatta. Alan is on a small school chair with two reams of black paper on either side, performing a durational shredding performance of 1000 pieces. I had 10 long pieces of red strings, one for each finger and thumb, and a red chair. I traversed in a squatting posture, across the grounds of the building, inside and outside. At some point, I returned back to the room where Alan was still shredding black paper, picked up the red chair and walked slowly towards the audience members. I placed the feet of the chair firmly on their chests and vibrated it.
Background
This theme was originally a response to the provocation The Tenacious Realm for the Willoughby Biennale, not only in terms of an earthly community, but also with a view to the immaterial and ethereal.
The tenacious realm may as readily be the domain between everyday reality and the spirit world whilst equally being a space of community support and resilience. We have witnessed this connection evidenced over many rituals and festivals in SE Asia.
Our performative response to the event The Moon Bar 2019, is to weave between ourselves and amongst the public. The separation and connection of social realities evidenced in the multicultural communities of Willoughby Municipality are reflected in our work together: a thinning and shifting veil between cosmologies, mortality, currents and connecting threads, and the unavoidable collision of realities come into play.
We approached this performance as A Kind of Divination seeking to uncover and make visible tracks and pathways to other layers of “reality”, seeking to shake visible images that persist.
The performance is themed from observing that the public will face the large surfaces of transparent glass walls of the Concourse Plaza courtyard. The transparent walls become a metaphor for the veils between worlds and dreams, realities, hopes and fears to which we tenaciously cleave. Within a shared existence we believe that misunderstanding and misinterpretation, conflict and negotiation provide a rich field of variety towards an harmonious existence.
The performative actions, motifs and materials we developed and employed in the performance included: red strings trailing and connecting footpaths, dripping different coloured food dyes into lit water bowls, large red cloths that move across glass walls and fold into puppet entities.
Below are sketches of the body-postures of how divination could occur using red threads:
Images from the Coterie to Coterie exhibition, Stores Building Project, Paramatta. Photos by Vsevolod Vlaskine.