Topeng Dikonstruksi

Public Space Performance Intervention

Lilianfels Park, Katoomba

19 Dec 2024

As part of a trial to create happenings at Katya Petetskaya’s garage studio on Cliff Drive…

I was also interested in the surrounding public space; the context of place in relation to our designated ‘anchor building’.

This part of Cliff Drive, is surrounded by the Echo Point Lookout, a foodcourt and Lilianfels Park. Through the process of walking several times from my home (also in Katoomba) to this area, I encountered light cardboard papers and plastic along the streets, and wedged between bushes along the edge of the bush trail.

I decided to focus on piecing together discarded cardboard, as the material for a possible performance action on the day.

…embodying my relationship with this endless packaging material which I wheel out in in a yellow bin, every fortnightly…

A note: I used this intricate image-through-material creation process to explore one of the many nuanced approaches utilized by Javanese dancers as they skillfully transform themselves in plain sight, particularly during the ritual of putting on a mask. I discovered a way of flattening my upper torso in a deliberate manner, which allowed me to lower my face closer to the ‘mask’. Then, by gritting my teeth firmly onto the wooden pegs that are affixed above, I complete the transformative image by ‘being the mask’ itself, embodying the search for its essence.

Thank you to Katya Petetskaya (featured below) for inviting me and initiating the promotion of contemporary performance art action in the Blue Mountains, as well as offering her garage studio as an anchoring space!

…some of our witnesses, including Billy Gruner, Daniel Lopez Lomeli, Lee Mitchell, Sarah Keighery, Victoria Marquez...