The Performance Arcade 2012

This week I have been working with Serene Lorimer and Elise Chan on their installation Circular Persuasions as part of The Performance Arcade 2012. This is the third time the event has been run by The Playground NZ and features artists of different mediums creating work in shipping containers on the Wellington Waterfront. It is also part of the NZ Fringe Festival.

Basically for Circular Persuasions we constructed (with the help of builder Liam !) a dividing wall within the container and put a clear Perspex front on it. The writer types stream of consciousness, taking in what they see on the waterfront and in the audience, and their words are projected into the dancer's side of the container. The dancer then moves or creates tableaus in response to the words.

Here is my very accurate impression of a crooked pole:

The Arcade runs from 10am-11pm each day so we do 2 hours shifts of either writing or dancing. It's quite exhausting improvising for that long without stopping but I really like it.

The audience can indirectly affect the dancer's actions if they want to. If they make the connection between the projected words and the writer, and/or the words and themselves. Which takes some people a surprisingly long time.

People also think we can't hear them inside the container. We can most definitely hear you.

We've been rained out, but it adds a nice kind of reflective sheen to the waterfront pavement and pretty droplets of rain on the Perspex. Also umbrellas look beautiful en masse, especially silhouetted. 

If you're in Wellington, come down tomorrow (Sunday 4th) 10am-11pm. The installations are all great, there's some very talented artists and most of the containers are interactive. 

Photographs all by Elise Chan except the daylight one which is by Sam Trubridge.