Machine War
Item
- Sub Type
- Performance
- Title
- Machine War
- Splinters production
-
Cathedral of Flesh
- Description
-
Artist statement:
This documentation was redirected into a video work as an abstract element from a larger set of performances. The video becomes emblematic, in a form of catharsis that builds through the show’s journey, culminating in a grand finale of participants.
The editing references the twin influences of contemporary, international spectacle performance art and traditional Indonesian folk trance performances. The radical Spanish collective, La Fura Dels Baus, incorporated an awareness of European practices in their show Suz/O/Suz, Sydney, 1989, that would later go on to influence the group’s work for the opening of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Similar influences are seen in work of Dutch collective, Dog Troep, with their outdoor spectacle show on Potsadammer Platz, Berlin, 1990. This shared influence displays a performance style which moves beyond the confines of the traditional proscenium arch and engages directly with the audience, influencing the beginnings of relational aesthetics in the arts.
The video piece is edited to a music track combining ambient sounds from the main performance at the Old Adelaide Gaol during the 1992 Adelaide Fringe Festival, a live improvised drumming ensemble piece from a performance at the Canberra School of Art and a soundtrack of Turkish folk jazz by Okay Temiz. As promotional material, Machine War became a signature of the Splinters large scale shows, despite its reference to the outdoors spectacles, the video as a teaser suggested an unpredictable and evolving energy that was manifested through the group’s incorporation of creative contributions from practitioners of visual, performance and installation art.
- Date
- 2013
- Format
- H264 from SVHS tape
- Videographer or editor
-
Luhsun Tan
- Date Created
- 1993
- Rights
- Copyright Luhsun Tan