Unknown gifts. An evening of performance.
Quinoa / Chris Kirk, Louie Neale, Band Sensations & Joanne Hobern
23/11/19

A performance evening in celebration of the art of the unknown, the small findings, the spontaneous and the curiosity of live happenings.

-Each artist was given a gift to a fellow artist to use in their performance.

-Each artist had 20 minutes to perform.

In the vein of experimentation and collaboration, this is what emerged.

—-

-Quinoa / Chris Kirk is a performer and writer with ecelctic experience and practice. His expression is based on theatre, spoken word, dance, spontaneity, channelling of archetypes and animal spirits, laziness and inability to collaborate and the deep epigenetic memory of being a faggot. In the breaking down of social and theatrical conventions his hope is to break down the barriers that isolate us from experience and from each other.

** The artist chooses the term "Faggot" personally in solidarity with his ancient lineage of queer poets, shamans and subversives.

Louie Neale makes performance art based around carefully crafted costumes. They often submerge the audience in interactive performances, offering a shared embodiment of their own queer experience. Since returning to Aotearoa from Berlin, Louie’s work featured at Performance Art Week Aotearoa and Shared Lines: Kaikōura Arts Festival, and was presented at MEANWHILE as an immersive, experimental workshop.

-Band Sensations (Sian Torrington, Amos Mann, Creek Waddington)

Wellington-based Band Sensations is an experimental art sound glitterbang band. Amos Mann, Sian Torrington, and Creek Waddington create diverse mini-atmospheres with ecologies of sound, action and words. They typically devise their works by notating only those actions, settings, starting points and phrases that will allow them to approximate sonic sensations through improvisation. These notes are the précis maps for sound expeditions.

-Joanne Hobern is a trained contemporary dancer but is interested in expanding and tearing down the boundaries between dance, performance and participation. She has held multiple workshops, performed with internationally acclaimed dance companies and created her own work.

Joanne says:

“There's a tension to be nurtured between wanting and desiring, detesting and dispairing. I've been fine tuning my hand wands and finger receptors to transmute, transfigure, trust the tension. The Body knows, the surface forgets (I'll be dancing tonight, tonight)”

Note from the curator:

The traditions of performance art practises have long been born out of a desire for spontaneity and responsiveness, for actions that are felt and needed; not planned. I believe in our current climate it is rare for artists to be trusted to do this kind of work. When intellectual writing and conceptualisation has become a prerequisite for work to even be considered, I believe we are missing out on truly profound shared experiences. This night celebrates the skills and audacity it takes to work with the present moment. I hope this can invigorate artists and audiences to take risks and appreciate the inherent opportunity that exists within each moment.

Photography and Videography by Yuval Zalk-Neale
Curated by Sara Cowdell.