Vitalstatistix acknowledges that we, and our home Waterside, are on Kaurna Country, its sovereignty never ceded. We acknowledge Kaurna people as the continuing custodians of the Adelaide Plains who have a spiritual relationship with this land. We respect their cultural authority. We pay our respect to Kaurna Elders, past, present and emerging, and through them to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Game of I-Lands
Sally Sussman, Valerie Berry, Annemaree Dalziel, Katia Molino & collaborators (NSW & SA)
Game of I-Lands is an intercultural science-art performance project about the impact of the South China Sea conflict on the sentient creatures who inhabit the South China sea marine ecosystem.
Australian Performance Exchange (APE) creates new intercultural performance work, which responds to current and historic concerns of social justice, cultural identity, diversity, diplomacy and the climate emergency. Led by Artistic Director Sally Sussman and Artistic Associate, Annemaree Dalziel, APE aims to develop collaborations with Australian and international artists to co-create new performances that engage with the pressing issues of our times.
This new collaboration brings together APE artists, who have worked together for nearly three decades, with others artists and a scientist, as well as the Taiwanese performance company Performosa, to make a new work which speaks to the geopolitical crisis in the South China Sea and gives marine creatures a voice in this conflict.
Creative Team: Director – Sally Sussman; Designer – Annemaree Dalziel; Performer – Katia Molino; Performer – Valerie Berry; Videographer – Ali Mousawi; Scientist – Cat Dorey
This project is supported by the Australia Council for the Arts Resilience Fund, with rehearsal space and technical support provided by Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
Image: Ali Mousawi
Published on
18 September
Live+Local
Adhocracy In Conversation panel: Humans and the non-human: representation, collaboration and disobedience
Friday September 4 at 8pm
Artists-in-conversation (with Of Stubborn Songs and Unequal Wars)
Friday September 11 at 7pm
Residency Outcome
We had planned to work in Taiwan in November with our Taiwanese collaborators Performosa but COVID restrictions meant we had to work separately and connect on-line.
Instead, we came together for a day’s seminar at the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney with 4 Marine Biologists (Professor Elaine Baker, Associate Professor Will Figuero, Professor Maria Byrnes and Associate Professor Nathan Hart) and 2 political scientists (Associate Professor Jingdong Yuan and Professor Justin Hastings) to learn about the reef biology, marine behaviour and human activity – geopolitics – of the South China Sea.
We then spent 3 days at the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre where we focused on mapping the space, played games that would reveal the geopolitical dynamics of the region and working with creating watery beings and imagining the opinions of fishes (multiple species).
The work we made is a video document of an early/embryonic process.
Ali Mousawi edited 4 days footage into a 12-minute video. We felt it was important to begin with footage of the marine biologists at the seminar because their lively take on the material and the questions we asked them informed our approach.
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