Experimental Practice with Performance Space x Elevator x ANR
In July 2024, Arts Northern Rivers and Elevator ARI collaborated with Performance Space (Gadigal Land, Sydney) to support and profile experimental performance practices in the Northern Rivers. This initiative featured a discussion with Kate Britton (Artistic Director, Performance Space) and Jane Fuller (Executive Director, Arts Northern Rivers) and a workshop led by internationally celebrated artist and storyteller, Justin Talplacido Shoulder, alongside a series of artist studio visits.
Hosted at Elevator ARI (Widjabul Wy-abul Land, Lismore), these events aimed to foster development for performers, interdisciplinary artists, and producers; focusing on how experimental performance can serve as a conduit for new ways of expression across visual, sound, digital, installation and sculptural arts.
The conversation invited discussion around the possibilities of experimental performance practice and queer programming, with Performance Space sharing what opportunities are available to artists through their program such as developments, residencies and Liveworks Festival.
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Justin Talplacido Shoulder’s Avatar LAB combined storytelling, movement, and conceptual devising, encouraging participants to explore their cultural languages and mythologies to create personal performance avatars. As a Filipino Australian artist, Shoulder’s work delves into eco-cosmology and queered ancestral myths; inviting collective dreaming.
This initiative forms part of an ongoing metro-regional relationship between Performance Space and the Northern Rivers, recognising the history of queer performance and longstanding artist networks between Gadigal and Bundjalung.
Partners –––––
Performance Space is the crucible for risk-taking artists. Emerging 40 years ago in response to artists’ articulated desire to explore and investigate new forms of art, Performance Space has consistently identified, nurtured and presented new directions in contemporary practice. They champion risk, experimentation, and new modes of creative expression. Performance Space continues to evolve and renew to meet the needs of the independent sector and explore new models for developing and presenting the most critical and important new work.
Elevator ARI is an emerging artist-run gallery and studio based on the lands of the Widjabul Wy-abul people, Lismore NSW. They work to promote experimental interdisciplinary practice through regular exhibitions, sound programming and community events.
Arts Northern Rivers is the peak arts body, working with individuals, organisations and government to generate, promote and advocate for the arts and creative industries in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. Arts Northern Rivers is supported by Create NSW and local Governments in our region who work with us to ensure access to arts and cultural activity for everyone.
Guest Facilitator –––––
Justin Talplacido Shoulder is a shape shifting artist and storyteller, working primarily in performance, sculpture, video and collective events. Also known as Phasmahammer, their practice is an eco-cosmology of alter personas based on queered ancestral myth. Creatures birthed are embodied through hand crafted costumes and prosthesis and animated by their own gestural languages. The artist uses their body and craft as an instrument of metaphysics towards a queer Filipinx Futurism. Shoulder believes in performance and shared ceremony as communal medicine for difficult times.
Shoulder’s theatre and visual art works have been presented across Australia and Internationally where they work between gallery, nightclub, and theatre contexts. Highlights include: La Manutention performance artist in residence at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2019, The Prague Quadrennial of Stage Design, 2019, Premiere of theatre work Carrion, Performance Space, Sydney (AUS) + subsequent tour to Artshouse, Melb (AUS), Fusebox Festival, Texas (USA), Museum Macan, Jakarta (IDN), Roskilde (DEN), Kampnagel, Hamburg (DE), Fierce Festival (UK), MAI, Montreal.
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