Point – You Are Here

Next Wave Festival 2014 Magazine : New Grand Narrative

Pg. 32

Oral Histories of the Revolution,  Tania El Khoury

Over three days in August 2007 Cardiff-based performance artist André Stitt undertook a major ‘akshun’ work at Artspace. Utilizing Joseph Beuys’ famous “I Like America and America Likes Me (or ‘Coyote’)” performance of 1974 as a template through which a performative engagement with acts of arrival and the attendant trauma of colonialism could be developed, Stitt shared a caged-in area of the gallery with a dingo, exploring forms of possible connection between the human figure and dog. This book provides extensive documentation and critical reflection upon one of the most significant and sustained performance works undertaken in Sydney in recent years.

All appointment negatives and notes from the first year of the Vorticist project (Oct 2007 – Dec 2008) printed in a cloth bound and embossed book.

Signed and numbered edition of 100 (77/100).

Includes original footage of The American Moon (1960) and Flower (1963), a recent performance of Prune Flat (1965), and Ghost, Whitman’s recent theater work, as well as short documentaries about the works. 

Passion takes up the theme of sacrifice that plays through all the work of the company, leading its audience into a re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross. 

In the glass cabinet. 

Against the background of the disembodied voice a visceral and sado-masochistic exchange between bodies makes voyeurs of its audience.  In the glass cabinet. 

Presents images of a theatre struggling to move beyond the exchange of desires, beyond even the carnal itself. The performers attempt to break the endless cycle of impersonation and to submit themselves to the supreme gaze. In the glass cabinet. 

Exhibition catalogue. Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, June-July 1994; Institute of Modern Art, August 1994, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, November-December 1995, Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, February-March 1995, ACCA, April May 1995.

The audience mingle with the performers on the performance floor, which might be a kind of soirée or Don Giovanni’s ball. In the glass cabinet. 

The audience is divided. Those who can afford it are escorted to their private viewing area, to be served champagne and smoked salmon throughout the show. The rest risk the edges of the performance space, clad only in black lingerie. In the glass cabinet. 

Pulls together rich elements of music, physical space, visual arts, text and movement; contemplates violence, without relying on sensational anecdote.

A frenzied meditation on theatrical obsession, a festive overture of histrionic suffering and flapping genitalia. In the glass cabinet.