Synopsis:

DO YOU HAVE POWER OVER YOUR IDENTITY?

A Live Art performance on how individuals exercise power, experience what it is like to decide who you are, and who someone else can be. Two different environments of power are presented to you for your choosing – for the rest of the performance you have autonomy over everything else. Or at least, that is what it seems. Endless potential or countless limitations await your participation.

Method Hominid 2019 focusses on exploring power and how people exercise it. It extends to also focus on promoting discussion on Live Art as a genre of art making, and how it can be used as a tool for social change and inspiring personal agency.

The performance-experiment was originally created by Liz Kow in 2017 as part of the TAP Out Festival. The Festival was a showcase of works by that year's graduating cohort of students from the BA(hons) Drama and Theatre Arts course, administered by Goldsmiths College, University of London. The performance responds to the aspect of the Live Art genre where the audience is active in contributing to the artistic value of the work, relying on various concepts and opinions regarding audience participation in, and validation of, Live Art from other artists. Even if audiences are passive observers within the performance space, their bodies are responding to the work, illustrating a facet of the work's social and symbolic impact on those witnessing it. Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 0 and her Method for enduring long durational performances, Yoko Ono's Cut Piece and her signature style of accompanying her works with instructions, were Live Art practices and performance structures that informed the creation of this performance-experiment. The performance was also inspired by psychology theories and experiments of Alfred Bandura (Social Learning Theory), Stanley Milgram (Obedience and Authority), and John Locke (Blank Slate Theory).

In this year's performance, the Substation gallery will be divided into two rooms - one is the Experiment Room, and the other is the Control Room. In the Experiment Room, the artist will stand in the middle of the room surrounded by various object. These object represent the following aspect of human life - Childhood and infancy, body image, sexuality, politics and worldview, violence, and food. In the Control Room a desk will be set up with 2 TV screens, each screen displaying a different angle of a live video feed from the Experiment Room. There will also be a microphone on the table for the audience to speak into, and the microphone will be connected wirelessly to an earpiece that the artist is wearing.

Dates and Times

26th April 2019 (Friday)
Performance 1: 7pm - 10pm ($5/day ticket. Multiple entries)

27th April 2019 (Saturday)
Performance 2: 7pm - 10pm ($5/day ticket. Multiple entries)

28th April 2019 (Sunday)
Performance 3: 2pm - 5pm ($5/day ticket. Multiple entries)

Post performance presentation and dialogue: 5.30pm - 7pm (free)

Tickets can be bought via https://methodhominid2019.peatix.com/ or at the door (cash only)