International Festival of Contemporary Theatre
Programme
School of MONUMENTAL (working title)
01.–06.09. Festival Centre | Free
‘MONUMENTAL (working title)’ is an awkward name for a project. Referring to a draft document, the phrase ‘working title’ scaffolds the word ‘monumental’, affecting its semantic image as one under construction, a place of process. Such is the politics of our curatorial subject: performance as a material of space.
Australian artists of Samoan and Tongan heritage, Brian Fuata and Latai Taumoepeau, originally curated the weekend event of local multidisciplinary performance works and live activations at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, situated on Gadigal land, Australia in April 2022.
Drawing from the Oceanian philosophy of Vā, an indigenous Pacific philosophy of space and time, ‘MONUMENTAL (working title)’ encompasses bodies and objects, sound and stillness, rapid starts and sprawling endings, and time in continuum.
Through performative action and dramaturgy, participants of the festival school, together with artists, investigate local materials and landscapes, including the festival programme as contested space where performance becomes both an object and subject of liveness – viscous transfers of energy. Join Latai and Brian in the Vā.
About artists
Latai Taumoepeau (AU/TO) makes live-art-work. Her faivā (body-centred practice) is from her homelands, the Island Kingdom of Tonga and her birthplace Sydney, land of the Gadigal people. She mimicked, trained and un-learned dance, in multiple institutions of learning, beginning with her village, a suburban church hall, the club and a university. Her faivā (performing art) centres Tongan philosophies of relational vā (space) and tā (time); cross-pollinating ancient and everyday temporal practice to make visible the impact of climate crisis in the Pacific. She conducts urgent environmental movements and actions to assist transformation in Oceania.
Brian Fuata (AU/WS) works across the fields of improvisational visual and performance art. He employs the properties and concepts of post dramatic theatre for his live works, physical environments, objects, and visual ephemera.
01.–06.09.