More Videos from EXIST-ENCE 5

to see my curator's statement on this festival - click here I've quoted from it below.

Lately, I have been editing videos of EXIST-ENCE 5 festival, which I co-directed with Rebecca Clunn. and would like to add a few stand-outs so far. Here's three videos, highlighting my main themes for the festival - provoking the hegemony; different experiences of existence; and spiritual inspiration

John G. Boehme marries business and sporting attitudes in acting out his super male character with his son. "Considered Compulsion Series" is an example of how "live art has an extensive history of grass roots provocation against the ruling industry and politics." The performance is measured, thoughtful and sensory, instigating more than just a rebel yeah from the crowd.

EXIST-ENCE 5 international festival live art performance art action art - John G Boehme from EXIST ARI on Vimeo.


Sari TM. Kivinen brings the words she overheard in our environment in the recent past, to us, sitting here in the same environment she sat in, to create a temporally phasing community, we are portalled partially into the past, through our connection with the site. "Herdwerds" is an example of how "Live art has relied on the experience of the body and mind that exists in front of you, but for centuries we have been playing with portalling from this existence." The unseen energy that Sari moves around us makes me think we are somewhere else...


EXIST-ENCE 5 international festival live art performance art action art - Sari T.M. Kivinen from EXIST ARI on Vimeo.

Jade Boyd evokes a spectre in the machine, a belief in the supernatural. "As live art has relied on the body, existence has relied on an inspired belief in a universal, metaphysical truth. Jade Boyd and Labanna Babalon are inspired by their technological mediums. Jade Boyd's 'VHxiSm' and Labanna Babalon's 'House of Muse' channel and project their beliefs in 'other beings' being trapped in our consumer technology. The signal spectres in Jade's VHS and the muse me muse in Labanna's 'tree of knowledge' internet embody the form of their works but their experience is other worldly." Jade traps our sentiments of nostalgia and turns them into a ghostly exploration.



EXIST-ENCE 5 international festival live art performance art action art - Jade Boyd from EXIST ARI on Vimeo.

Co-directing EXIST-ENCE 5: international festival live art action art performance art

http://existenceperformanceart.wordpress.com

Conversations and work that makes you think about what constitutes our existence, work that spiritually inspires you and anti-'work' are the three streams I see in the fifth actuation of existence. As Labanna Babalon says 'the time of the 5th dimension is coming' an indescribable sensation, but one which we can ALL experience. The mystical challenge of dimensional portalling is what drives me, the inspired, spontaneous work happens organically, it's all good for the soul.

Live art has relied on the experience of the body and mind that exists in front of you, but for centuries we have been playing with portalling from this existence. In the 21st Century we have emerging artists Alrey Batol's 'Aggregates'  and Holly Childs' 'tweet2exist' question the singular reality of our bodies and minds, augmenting our material existence by portraying digital bodies in perceptible and imperceptible realms.

As live art has relied on the body, existence has relied on an inspired belief in a universal, metaphysical truth. Jade Boyd and Labanna Babalon are inspired by their technological mediums. Jade Boyd's 'VHxiSm' and Labanna Babalon's 'House of Muse' channel and project their beliefs in 'other beings' being trapped in our consumer technology. The signal spectres in Jade's VHS and the muse me muse in Labanna's 'tree of knowledge' internet embody the form of their works but their experience is other worldly.

While we make work we protest against it, live art has an extensive history of grass roots provocation against the ruling industry and politics. Eric Rossi in 'I.T.2' exorcises his demons of working in the IT industry while Dhana Merritt  in 'Untitled (Marina & Ulay)' and 'Untitled (Gilbert & George)' provokes the art industry as while working at an Institution she could not obtain a loan of these works, so made them herself. Eric and Dhana humorously provoke the industries that employ them, pulling the viewer in to 'see' the effects and layers of the current hegemony.

Thinking, inspiring and provoking - the works in exist-ence 5 are for the viewer and for the soul.
-Nicola Morton

Our photographer volunteer Alan Warren took some great photos Click Here

Video of Labanna's Performance Here:
EXIST-ENCE 5 international festival live art performance art action art - Labanna Babalon from nicola morton on Vimeo.
 

Book Now for Love Hypnosis Exchange

Love Hypnosis Exchange is a group activity facilitated by Nicola Morton. It is all about what happens during a 4 second beep – stickers of different colours and radiuses are exchanged. In between beeps, the audience is involved in a trance activity – they spin left for 8 counts, the beep happens and they put a sticker on someone else, then spin right for 8 counts. This continues for over 10 minutes, to allow 100 stickers of each participant to be exchanged. The count is led by Nicola’s voice (in many different tongues), either in person, or through an instructional video. Performances in person also feature group breathing exercises before the activity to try and synchronize the participants’ pulses.

Synchronicity meets serendipity - this activity leads to a new economy of exchange. Redistributing the sticker currency, counting, breathing, spinning, under the guise of group trance, a micro exchange starts through touch and creative gesture. Love Hypnosis Exchange plays with the psyche of touch and physical representation within groups and is guided by the magic of numbers, repetition and the love emanating from its guru, Nicola.

Review from Labyrinth City

Nicola Morton is an inspired globe trotting-but-locally-based artist with, lately, an interest in time travel, hypnosis, physics, AI, memories, happiness (really hard to pin-point here) and an obsessive streak easily confused with an encounter with the Pink Light… Focusing on her live shows however, they (and like her installations/rituals) are entirely inviting & unpretentious with equal parts of injected confusion & humor, the complex undercurrent of truly inventive ideas set up against a celebratory, near-jubilant backdrop of manic-enthusiasm and the audience being as big of part of the performance as herself through mandatory group participation. From a writing & musical background too, mind, of very selected note a band back in the Euro states, journals and a daedalian arrangement & composition set against a multi-tiered set of rules, a la Cobra, in Life Is A Rubik’s Cube.

Impossible to capture with just a microphone, I’ll have to explain this one: Nicola’s presenting ‘Love Hypnosis Exchange’ – a group activity performance involving several hundred stickers, rules, a/v, breath, hypnosis, your heart. Although this performance was done last week at the Judith Wright Centre tonight’s the authoritative as she skipped a few segments last time: Nicola asks the audience to synchronize our heart beats and breathing so that we are all as one here, we yell ‘crack’ each time our heart beats whilst she does a short, quiet improvised piece with a bowed guitar. The third segment sees her request the audience take a handful of stickers each, about a hundred I think, and to listen to her instructions: She’s going to count to eight whilst you spin around toward people and then a loud beep will sound signifying that you have to swap stickers onto the closest person. There’s going to be a hundred eight-second spins, one taking one second to complete a revolution so yes as it was pointed out eight hundred revolutions. On the ceiling there’s projected visuals and a timer, noise too but I’m focused on the exchanges on the floor. Nicola spins around and through the audience with a keyboard & microphone until the end.

The thing I took from this performance is happiness; I couldn’t stop smiling. The manipulation: Breathing, your heart beat in synchronicity with the people around you there’s a sense of belonging (who doesn’t want that?) and swapping stickers, or anything, coupled with the confusion of the show itself (bonding together trying to figure it out) you’re bound to the room’s collective effervescence forcing you to realize that there’s really nothing between us at all – any barriers once created by our stupid preconceptions, opinions of one another can be quashed by simply exchanging a smile & a silly little sticker. I don’t know what you thought of it or was though.

During love hypnosis exchange - Judith wright centre

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Photos pre love hypnosis exchange - Judith wright centre

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Performance at Exist-ence 15th Jan, White Canvas, 26 Church St

Exist-ence Live Art Festival
Friday Jan 15th from 7pm
White Canvas Gallery
26 Church St Fortitude Valley

I am a clumsy superhero that wants to inspire social change (rescue life, love and art). Spyders is a Live Art Performance which produces creative thinking; mythic musical artefacts; and a love for the wild.

Spyders fights the boundaries of linear time and boring linear thinking with mythic structures, spirits in space and time travel. Thinking not only outside the box but in a million different directions at once, we are going on a mission to find Ariadne’s thread in deep space.Wild landscape, wild music, wild times. By creating improvised mythical structures and generating alternative methods of notation, participants sustain the wild music and the wild life in our active landscape.

What is music and art doing? Love change. Love love. Radical experimentation for a radical future