Vitalstatistix is thrilled to announce the appointment of nationally respected programmer and producer Jennifer Greer Holmes as its new Artistic Director.

Jenn’s relationship with Vitalstatistix spans more than 15 years across several roles, and she is currently acting as the organisation’s Creative Producer. Jenn was appointed to the role following a competitive recruitment process that attracted local, national and international applicants.

Jennifer started her professional engagement with Vitals in 2009, as General Manager / CEO, leaving the company in 2011. She maintained a close relationship with Vitals as a videographer, artist and curator, until returning to a part time role as Executive Producer in 2021 during which she produced our Adelaide Festival hit The Photo Box by Emma Beech. Alongside her roles with Vitals, Jenn worked part time with Sydney’s Branch Nebula since 2019, with Zephyr Quartet from 2012 – 2020, as well as a range of companies and independent artists across the country including Theatre Network Australia, Karul Projects, Sydney WorldPride, Blacktown Arts, TheatreWorks, Darwin Festival, Brink Productions, ActNow, Carclew, Tina Stefanou, Teddy Dunn, Jason Sweeney, and more.

Jennifer returned to Vitals in April of this year in the role of Creative Producer and from August will begin the role as Vitalstatistix’s eighth Artistic Director.

“On behalf of the board, I am thrilled to welcome Jenn into the role of Artistic Director/Co-CEO,” says Deputy Chair, Stephanie Lyall. “Over the course of her career and throughout her hard-working independent practice, Jenn has cultivated an impressive network of artists and industry colleagues. Her reputation as a strong creative collaborator, excellent communicator and calm leader is evidenced through both her previous work at Vitals, and through her many local and interstate collaborations and leadership roles. Jenn is well-poised to follow in the fearless tradition of Vitalstatistix’s groundbreaking artistic leadership and co-lead the organisation through its 40^th birthday celebrations later this year and into its bright fifth decade. Congratulations Jenn!”

Jenn’s first annual program will commence in 2025, coinciding with Vitals’ first year in receipt of Four-Year Investment from Creative Australia.

“It is an honour to walk through the doors of Waterside, as it is a place holding deep significance in my family who have gathered there for cultural and milestone events since they were teenagers. In the 1960s, my mother’s high school graduation ceremonies took place in the hall and my father attended SoundVilla dances, then in the 1970s he worked at the Port Adelaide Haulage Company which was located next door to what they called “Wharfie’s Hall” (Waterside). Since the first time I visited Waterside, I’ve imagined the possibilities for the artists I love to work here and to be able to share the significance of the venue and place of Yartapuulti (Port Adelaide) where I had the privilege to be raised and spend many years of my working life.

”It will be a gift to share the leadership of Vitalstatistix, a company whose values are also my own, and to be embedded daily within the community that I remain deeply connected to. My great grandparents, grandparents and parents were all born, and made a life within, a 2km radius of Waterside Workers Hall, so I feel very connected to this place.

“I’m looking forward to growing the connections that Vitals has with artists and arts organisations around the country and to building our profile in the international community of aligned organisations. My vision is for the company to reflect the arts and wider communities by making space for a variety of voices and perspectives that are structurally disadvantaged. Vitals occupies a unique space in the arts ecology, and it’s our responsibility to make the most of our resources to celebrate, advance, contribute to, and amplify a range of causes and voices in the communities we are part of.

“I am committed to progressing the incredible work of all the artistic directors before me and acknowledge the daily ongoing feminist work in which we strive for equity. And I am reminded that we are able do this because of the vision of the founders, Margie Fischer, Roxxy Bent and Ollie Black, who created the company 40 years ago.”

Jenn commences in the role of Artistic Director from 1st August 2024, working alongside Executive Director/Co-CEO Cassie Magin.

This year marks the 15th Anniversary of Vitalstatistix’s Adhocracy!

Co-curated by Jason Sweeney and Jennifer Greer Holmes, this year’s program has shifted from the usual open call process, and instead, the participating artists have been selected from the cohort of previous participants. Vitals values deep relationships with artists, nurtured over years, and this program is a celebration of that ethos. 2024 presents us with the opportunity to revisit some of the connections that Adhocracy has enabled our communities of artists and audiences to establish over the last decade and a half by bringing familiar faces back to Port Adelaide, allowing audiences to experience interactions with artists whose work they know and love. 

There will be a combination of new works in development, showings from artists who participated in Adhocracy remotely during the pandemic but didn’t have the live audience transaction, as well as open studios, parties and fireside conversations. This year, we are delighted to expand the two week Hart’s Mill residency historically offered to one local group by adding a weeklong Shopfront residency for interstate artists as well. 

To mark this important milestone, we have also commissioned a new work that celebrates the pubic value of experimental art by working with our signifiant archive of Adhocracy documentation – its programs, video, photography and publications. This will be launched to mark the opening event of The Gathering, a national sector meeting of invited experimental artists, organisations, presenters and affiliates on Thursday 5th September. 

Working across four uniquely stunning Port Adelaide venues, all in close proximity to one another, we have expanded the audience experience of the public program to allow for more exposure to our community that we are proud to be part of. 

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Adhocracy 2024 is a celebration of the enduring importance of strange art for strange times. We hope to see you there. 

Vitalstatistix’s board is thrilled to announce that the organisation has been funded through Creative Australia’s Four Year Investment for Organisations (FYIO) program for 2025–2028.

Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council) made the announcement of its investment into 159 small-to-medium arts organisations on Wednesday. Further details can be viewed HERE.

Provided through the Emerging and Experimental Art section of Creative Australia, the multi-year funding recognises and supports Vitalstatistix’s championing of contemporary arts practice, public dialogue, and progressive change through culture.

“Vitalstatistix is extremely pleased to secure this four year investment in what represents a significant achievement for the organisation, and an acknowledgment of the important national role we play. We welcome the stability, focus and opportunity that this funding affords us – our team, our partners and most importantly, the artists we work with,” said Vitalstatistix’s Chair, Angela Flynn.

“We are also buoyed by the overall acknowledgement of the emerging and experimental arts sector in this funding round, confirming the value of a strong and thriving arts ecology at all levels. We look forward to continuing to collaborate closely with our brilliant peers and partners, right across the country.”

Vitalstatistix’s Artistic Director/Co-CEO, Emma Webb OAM, said “This support will make a transformative difference to Vitals and the artistic, cultural and social practices we support. It enables us to plan ahead and include more artists and publics in our programs of performances, residencies, laboratories, events, collaborative projects, and professional development opportunities for artists.”

Vitalstatistix’s Executive Director/Co-CEO, Cassie Magin, said “In 2024, we will celebrate our 40th anniversary. This new funding will mean we can celebrate this milestone, knowing we are then entering our fifth decade in 2025 with stable support for our work with artists and our commitment to elevating experimental, progressive art and culture.”

Vitalstatistix’s 2024 artistic program is focused on feminist and queer performance practices that have been at the foundation of the organisation for four decades. We begin with the world premiere of I Hide in Bathrooms, by Astrid Pill and Collaborators, with Adelaide Festival and Insite Arts.

2024 is also the 15th anniversary of our experimental art lab Adhocracy and will include a bumper addition of this national initiative. Our full program will be announced in February 2024 with all events presented from our home, Waterside Workers Hall, Yartapuulti, Port Adelaide.

“In 2024 we also begin development on a range of new works and projects which will feature across our Four Year Investment for Organisations-funded programs from 2025. We are working with artists and artist-run collectives to support experimental and social practice-based art and culture, including artworks that speak directly to the intersectional feminism, labour rights, climate change and mutual aid, decolonisation and demilitarisation, and, of course, the public value of expansive, experimental art making to contemporary culture and community life,” said Webb.

Roman Berry will be bringing his solo performance work Not Very Berry to Waterside for Adhocracy 2023. We caught up with him to discuss memories, creativity, and much more.

Firstly, tell us about Not Very Berry – what’s the core concept of the project and how did you conceive it?

The idea for Not Very Berry was conceived as a response to have more diverse narratives, that platforms the intersection of culture, identity, and personal growth. The concept emerged from the desire to shed light on my personal challenges, my journey of self-discovery, growing up and living in Australia, especially coming out as a Filipino gay man, in Adelaide. I got very excited when the expression of interest from Vitalstatistix on Adhocracy was posted, as I have been sitting on this idea since the middle of the pandemic, and this initiative prompted me to take action.

Part of the process will be retracing personal odyssey, capturing struggle and triumphs, walking down memory lane through images, and focusing on pivotal moments, to ignite a spark towards a narrative, structure, and form towards my first ever solo ‘hybrid’ performance.

This project very specifically utilises a Filipino folk dance called ‘Tinikling’ as part of its process. What led to your fascination with this practice, and how have you adapted it for the work?

I’m fascinated of the rhythmic and vibrant movements of TINIKLING. This is a traditional Filipino folk dance, that uses two bamboo poles tapping and beating on the ground, with dancers stepping in, hopping, jumping and turning in between them, as they dance gracefully. It requires enormous concentration to do the movement. These movements are integral to the development of Not Very Berry. I’m utilising them as tools, powerful metaphors, symbolising the challenges of life, weaving through complexities of identity, acceptance, and cultural integration. Through this lens, Tinikling dance becomes an important backdrop to the story of self-discovery, steering a fusion of cultures, while finding oneself amidst the diaspora.

You refer to the work as ‘semi-autobiographical’. What is the intersection between fiction and biography here?

I’ve coined it ‘semi-autobiographical’ because, in a way, Not Very Berry is a work that is inspired by real-life experiences. Part of the challenge of the development is to find ways to introduce and merge fictional elements. The intersection between fiction and biography lies in the fact that, while the core themes, emotions, and some events in the story might draw from my own life and experiences, there’s also room for creative imagination and narrative exploration. And that’s why I’m so thankful for programs like Vitalstatistix’s Adhocracy, because it champions creatives, theatre makers and artists to experiment, to make mistakes, to test and collaborate. The semi-autobiographical approach of the work helps me to navigate the delicate balance between personal authenticity and creative storytelling. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction and letting the creative process to grow.

Where does Not Very Berry go after Adhocracy?

Having had a few days of researching, collecting images, anecdotes from friends and family, I am hoping to get Not Very Berry developed further by engaging the Filipino Australian community more. From the process so far, I have had a lot of further provocation to explore within the context of balancing cultural stigmas and biases, of being part of the LGBTQI family, within the Filipino Australian community. Hoping to also have other creatives and collaborators to further craft a narrative, structure and form, as mentioned earlier, towards the first ever solo ‘hybrid’ performance. Hoping to then take to festivals, independent theatres ands regional theatres.

Anything else audiences should know?

In the intimate presentation and sharing of my discoveries and findings from the development, I would really appreciate people’s feedback on the process. There will also be a chance to participate and try the Tinikling Dance.

Find out more about Not Very Berry at the Adhocracy Website.

Before Solomon Frank appears at Adhocracy 2023 to expand our definitions of musical genre, we sat down to talk all things The MacroPlastic Workout.

First of all, tell us about The MacroPlastic Workout – what’s the core concept that you’re exploring, and what inspired it?

We’ve been inspired by the horror and farce of the everyday, entanglements between human and more-than-human. A hermit crab using a plastic doll head as a shell, drifting marine plastics as new ecological habitats for microbial communities, newly discovered bacteria that can digest plastic, microplastics as an unavoidable component of 21st century human diets; how can we see ourselves as integrated into this new petrochemical plastic ecology and more specifically, how will we maintain ‘good health’ and ‘wellbeing’ in bodies and worlds riddled with invasive plastic? We also have various references from across nature and culture: sage grouse males’ inflatable chest sacs, frigate birds’ bright red balloon sacs underneath their beaks, Jacques Tati, John Cage on 1950s TV and cormorants. We also have a shared love of workout videos that developed when we were living together in Sydney lockdown. Having Chris Hemsworth lead us through “feel the fire lower body crunch” and that structure of repeated obtuse and difficult actions has heavily informed the structure of the show.

This piece utilises ‘inflatable-percussive-wearable musical instruments’, which is a wonderful phrase. How did you come to this particular mode of constructable instrumentation? 

The time at Adhocracy will be spent figuring out this exact question. We have Rachael Guinness on board to design prototype these costumes that integrate into the installation of balloons and tubes we’ve created.

You’ve stated an intent to create ‘aesthetic and genre dissonance’ in this piece. How are you hoping that this will manifest?

Drawing on expanded forms of clarinet and percussion practice, we’ve established an elaborate plastic gymnasium activated using sound and movement. Our muses are cheap mass-produced plastic clarinets and percussion instruments, household objects recontextualised as instruments (tubes, balloons, latex condoms and nylon). We are experimenting with a refined junk aesthetic to create electroacoustic audio components that integrate into our acoustic practice and allow for compelling new forms of genre dissonance. For example, diegetic sound art suddenly transforms into campy gay pop and pounding techno.

Anything else audiences should know?

The show straddles the fine line between sacred and silly. You might laugh or you might cry.

Find out more about The MacroPlastic Workout at the Adhocracy Website.

Ahead of her appearance at Adhocracy 2023, Isobel Marmion dropped past to have quiet conversations about her project Streetlights and Long Nights.

Adhocracy – Vitalstatistix’s renowned annual arts hothouse – supports the development of new art and performance.  It runs September 1-3. Full details, including program, HERE.

Firstly, tell us about Streetlights and Long Nights – what’s the core concept that you’re exploring, and what inspired it?

Ahead of their upcoming dual-project residency The Paranormal is Personal, we caught up with artists Jason Sweeney and Fiona Sprott to talk ghosts, haunting, and paranormal audio investigation tools.

The Paranormal is Personal comprises two distinct, separate, but deeply interconnected projects. Where did the two concepts come from?

Jason: The project Corporeal has been with me for almost a decade now. It was meant to be a follow up to my first feature film, The Dead Speak Back, which deals with a character using paranormal methods to try and access her personal ghosts. Before that Fiona and I had also worked on a podcast project called Download the Dead which was about a number of characters ‘speaking back’ from the grave. So, you know, that interest has been there for a very long time. But Corporeal eventually transformed into what it is now – a deeper and very personal exploration into my own queer personal hauntings. As both Fiona and I had an interest in paranormal investigation – as well as our own 30 year artistic collaboration being marked in 2023 – it made sense to celebrate that with a joint residency project.

Fiona: I suppose my own interest in the paranormal and strangeness began back in childhood. My book collection was dedicated to amateur sleuths, ghost stories and unsolved mysteries. It was a local unsolved mystery of a girl abducted from her bedroom in the 1980s that formed the basis of about a decade in total studying predatory crimes and homicide – both the factual and fictional representations in popular culture. I became fascinated with the notion that traumatic events create a lingering energy in spaces and people’s lives – often in the guise of an absence that is so present it is palpable. What is the nature of a haunting, and what is a ghost? This question led me to explore paranormal investigation, initially to understand how people were attempting to communicate with the dead. 

Over time I have become convinced that ghosts are far more complex. As someone deeply motivated by research as the entry point to my creative work, I had a question to ponder and wrangle with. I also had a poltergeist living with me and I wanted to try and communicate with it – which is to say that a personally traumatic event unfolding in my house was creating a sensation of feeling an unseen presence that was moving things, turning electrical items on and off. I was curious to see if I could communicate with, essentially, the energy of my own trauma, my own personal ‘ghost’ haunting me. It was this point of connection between us – a desire to connect with and explore the personal ghosts using the technology, that made for a natural compatibility between us creatively. It’s like entering a world of its own, and having two people in it, was helpful for navigating and seeking feedback on the specifics of that world impacting on each of us artistically. 

Jason, you’re using ‘paranormal audio investigation tools’ to generate music and text-based materials that are used in Corporeal – what spurred this interest in the intersection of the paranormal and contemporary technology?

Jason: I’ve always loved the idea of tapping into the ‘unknown’ through sound and audio technology. As a child I used to obsess over number stations using shortwave radio and recorded hours of this to cassette to listen back to. When I listened to that I felt like I was hearing ghosts of the past, reaching out over the airwaves – even though apparently there is a more covert intention to them! And so now, with devices such as a Spirit Box (which scans at various speeds over radio frequencies as a way to potentially detect intelligent responses through words that might appear), I feel as if the world of paranormal research is made for sound artists! 

The incredible SA-based team of Amy’s Crypt designed a series of apps called GhostTube that generate spoken words from a vast dictionary triggered by a magnetometer, it can scan internet radio like a Spirit Box and can now also create AI imaging responses integrating white noise. Again, such great creative fodder for a composer like me. It’s almost like the cut-up technique used by the Dadaists and later by William S Burroughs using actual recorded tapes whereby random word associations could be made. 

I’ve been particularly interested in the complexity of multiple channels of input of materials (text, audio, tech, film etc) and how to piece it all together in separate compositions. There is, of course, also Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) – a term popularised by the Latvian parapsychologist Konstantīns Raudive in the 70s – which has been used to detect voices on audio recordings. This technique takes patience and doesn’t necessarily produce much for my own research. I also used my own recordings pressed to vinyl to remix using filters and mixers to produce much of the soundscapes for the compositions as I really liked how ghostly these processed sounds became. So, audio technology is a perfect tool for paranormal enthusiasts such as I!

Fiona, you’re using a combination of writing and audio storytelling for Ghost? How do you utilise what’s written in your Journal of Hauntings to inform the audio component?

Fiona: The background to my dedicating myself to the pursuit of an audio based storytelling is rooted in the early days and years of the pandemic. I was granted funding by Arts SA to explore how to create in isolation – how could I reinvent my practice, which had largely been from the tradition of theatre and live performance. I was technologically challenged, to say the least, but I had a microphone, a computer, and Audacity software. I also had Jason as my mentor. The text in my Journal of Hauntings (which are stories inspired by the findings/specific words and results of the paranormal investigations), is the baseline for a layering process I enter into. 

I focus on creating what I refer to as ‘theatre for the ears’. Instead of lights or props and costumes, I am using the delicacy of sounds filtering in and out, the moments of music, the quality of, in this case, a ‘dirty audio’ reflecting a kind of raw documentary of my experiences, as layers to be fed in. I am constantly in headphones and fine detailing edits, re-recording, and using this listening process as my authoring process to ascertain how I can make the experience for the listener as interesting as possible. As affecting as possible. I didn’t want to just do a recorded reading from the Journal because audio is, and certainly can be, its own performance artform and I love the challenge as a storyteller of having to figure it out as I go – and I’m hoping our audiences will be able to offer valuable feedback and engage in a dialogue about the methodology itself. 

What led to you choosing to develop these separate projects together?

Jason: I think there really was more power in developing both projects alongside each other as we share the 30 year artistic collaboration and also the passion for the paranormal. Each of our projects has helped inform the other – plus we were able to initially create a series of Youtube paranormal investigations that can be found here: Abnormal Paranormal – this video series specifically allowed both Fiona and I to visit sites where we had trained or made performances together, as well as places in the southern suburbs where we both grew up. I think it’s interesting also that our approaches take very different lenses to them, which has always been a fascinating aspect to the collaborations Fiona and I have done. For me one of my central questions was: is there something inherently queer about an interest in spirits? So my view on the research was through this queer lens and how, as an ageing gay cis man, I can mess with what I perceive to be a very ‘straight’ approach in the paranormal investigative world.

Fiona: I agree. For an audience too, there is such a richness in the methodologies used by each of us, and the array of creative offerings coming out of the direct and indirect collaborations. At the heart is a shared interest in, and use of the paranormal technologies and mythologies and lore for that matter. Early on we determined that the paranormal is very personal. On an emotional level, our long standing friendship was very helpful for mutual support – as fun as the paranormal can be, the ghosts of the past do turn up… To be honest, at times I think we entered an eight month long exorcism together to confront and send off some of the more troubling memories arising for both, or either of us. But too, I absolutely trusted that we would create a fantastic synergy between us whereby ideas could find full flight and not be restrained by the need to find a singular outcome representing us both. 

What will the process of making this sort of work look like? Anything you are hoping to achieve throughout your residency?

Jason: I’m making a live music performance based on the 18 compositions that I’ve created. The residency will allow me to inhabit Waterside and revisit my own haunted past as a performer, curator and maker in the hall. I want to draw upon past performances I’ve presented there (Hall Monitor, Emission, Masc Confessional, Sentients) and ‘remix’ specific aesthetics and approaches I used in these works – to basically re-inhabit the ghosts of my performance past at Vitals! At the end of the residency I’m going to present a 60 minute performance-in-progress on the grand old hall stage, red curtains drawn and footlights on!

Fiona: I am returning to Waterside after a very long absence but it’s a fitting finale to the project, to be based there and explore the memories and “ghosts” that linger there. I’m focused on presenting a listening experience which encapsulates all the textures of the eight months of investigation and writing I/we have been immersed in. I’d like to create the sensation of entering a haunted house, where the disembodied voice lingers there, trying to speak to those who might be willing to hear. My goal with the residency is to explore how audio storytelling, a body-less performance experience, non-visual at heart, might translate into a live event. Is anything gained by listening ‘together’ in a shared space? I’d especially value understanding more about how to make this a comfortable, and enjoyable live experience for people who are vision impaired or without any vision at all. 

What are you hoping that audiences will take away from The Paranormal is Personal?

Jason: Hopefully to be inspired by the use of paranormal tools as a way to create art. I’m a healthy skeptic when it comes to the investigation of the ‘spirit world’ but I’m also absolutely invested in the creative potentials of the technology that is available as a way to experiment and ‘dialogue’ with entities or energies that may, or may not, exist. Some of the results that can be found using GhostTube, for example, are incredibly uncanny and spookily accurate at times as to make me wonder if, indeed, I have made contact with the ghosts of my life.

Fiona: First of all, I really hope to introduce audiences to the work of Amy’s Crypt! Amy and Jarrad are Adelaide creators, and have been a source of great inspiration for the project. They developed all the app technology themselves so, I’m very proud of them, and that they’re local to South Australia. Overall, I really hope the audience enjoy an evening of thought provoking material, find the methodologies employed by us both to be interesting, and to enjoy the material presented. We both experienced some genuinely intriguing responses and results using the paranormal tools.These are in-progress projects. I’m really keen to have the focus on the process I’ve undertaken for crafting audio storytelling and to generate some interest in further dialogue about alternative ways to create performance ‘texts’. 

Any final words or thoughts to add?

Jason: In presenting the in-progress performance I’m hoping that I can have conversations with (living) humans about the future of the work: Where might it be performed? What kinds of spaces would be good for such a work to be presented? How could it tour? I’d also be interested in conducting workshops for performance/sound using paranormal audio tools! Hit me up!

Fiona: I’m keen to have my audio work/s listened to via being hosted by anybody who feels that ‘theatre for the ears’ might be an interesting addition to a program, especially as it can be situated online. I’m an occasional academic so anybody in the university or education sector that would like to learn more about the making process, to talk about workshops on creating work using a basic program like Audacity, any writer-focused folks that want to hear more about the creative approach… I’d love to talk!

Work-in-progress showings of The Paranormal is Personal will be presented on May 26 & 27 at Waterside Workers Hall.

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The board of Yerta-Bulti/Port Adelaide-based not-for-profit arts organisation Vitalstatistix is pleased to announce the appointment of Cassie Magin to the role of Executive Director/Co-CEO.

From its home in the heritage-listed Waterside Workers Hall, Vitalstatistix plays a significant role in the Australian arts ecology by championing Australian artists who are creating transformative, multidisciplinary art and progressive public dialogue.

As a fundraising, finance and governance leader, Magin joined Vitalstatistix in the role of General Manager in May 2022, and made an immediate and significant impact on the organisation. The new role establishes a dual-leadership model alongside longstanding Artistic Director/Co-CEO Emma Webb OAM. The strategic appointment will support the further development and ongoing operations of the organisation, as it emerges from the pandemic and looks ahead towards celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2024.

“Like all of our colleagues across small to medium arts sector, Vitalstatistix has been under immense pressure over the past few years,” says Chair, Angela Flynn. “While navigating both the economic and emotional tumult of the pandemic, we have found ourselves under increasing pressure to do more with less. By establishing this role and appointing Cassie, we are bolstering our organisational leadership and capacity, and ensuring the continued success and longevity of the organisation. The appointment is a direct and tangible application of the core values of sustainability and care that are driving our strategic vision in 2023 and beyond,” says Flynn.

Artistic Director/Co-CEO Emma Webb OAM welcomed Magin’s appointment as an important step for the organisation.

“I am absolutely thrilled to be working alongside Cassie, as Vitalstatistix soon reaches the milestone of forty years and moves into our fifth decade of progressive artistic and cultural work, contributing to our community here on Kaurna Country and to the South Australian and national arts sector. I am delighted to welcome her expertise and comradeship to this new dual-leadership role. As well as her impressive leadership, fundraising and not-for-profit sector skills Cass brings such passion, dedication and care to Vitals, the artists we work with, our home the Waterside Workers Hall and helping create a strong future for our organisation. It’s a wonderful partnership and I’m excited for our future,” says Webb.

Says Magin: “I am delighted to be elevated into the role of Executive Director / Co-CEO for Vitalstatistix, enabling me to bring all of my skills to this incredibly important organisation. I possess an immense passion for the Yerta Bulti (Port Adelaide) community and the artists for which we exist. I look forward to focusing heavily on the diversification of revenue streams, showcasing the beauty and versatility of our wonderful Waterside Workers Hall, and being a driving force behind the survival of experimental arts and culture post-pandemic. It is a true honour to work alongside the highly-awarded Emma Webb OAM; together we anticipate exceptional things for the organisation as we take it into its fifth decade.”

Vitalstatistix was founded in 1984 by Margie Fischer, Ollie Black and Roxxy Bent – a radical and ambitious act by three women determined to make a difference to the opportunities for and workplace experiences of women artists in Australia. This determination to make change still lies at the heart of the organisation. Valuing experimentation and public engagement, Vitalstatistix works across theatre, dance, performance art, sound, social practice and more, offering artists and audiences a vibrant  site for important ideas and outstanding arts experiences.

In the lead up to our final presentation for 2022 – Sightings, a new performance and portrait of place – creator, director, and choreographer Gabrielle Nankivell dropped past to talk about heat on the road, points in time, and Grandma’s shortbread…

Firstly, tell us about Sightings. I know that much is unknown right now, but what should audiences expect?

Sightings is a strange and lovely project. It’s an evolving map that charts the travel of getting to know a place – on foot, through debris, in conversation and across all the messiness of witnessing and composing reality-based fiction. As a performance it’s something like a cabinet of curiosities, a backyard cinema, and a collective ritual rolled into one. Audiences should expect an invitation to explore – to wander, look, touch, read, sit, try, make, watch…

Weirdly, it contains all the things I use to make dance performances, but which don’t usually end up in the performance. I guess I’m usually more associated with epically physical contemporary dance outcomes – I’ve performed in plenty of work like this and most of the commissions I receive are with intensely virtuosic contemporary dance companies – Sightings sits a long way outside of this world.

You’ve been developing this piece for several years now – what has changed along the way? What’s been surprising about the process?

Figuring out how to work on this project has been quite a process, we’ve tried lots of approaches that have totally failed! Finding the right medium/s-language/s with which to manifest it has also been a story of trial and error. One of the things I realised changed along the way was that we were creating the blueprint for a site-specific performance making model rather than making a standalone performance – i.e.: the performance can’t exist without the residency. This was a huge surprise for me as prior to that I had mostly used the opportunity of residencies as seeding grounds for future works and as a time to take stock of where my practice was at.

Learning a lot more about time has been a surprising side-effect of the Sightings process, especially since I come from the very labour/time intensive world of choreography. In a residency situation it’s tricky to balance the lead-time required to implement an encounter or adventure with the time required to actually fulfil it. Some ideas require a lot of comms, and therefore time, to secure access to a site and/or people. Because we are working with people, individual personalities, ways, routines, and relationship with time need to be respected – this can be a bit of an intangible thing until you are in it. Some mediums are more labour intensive – working with analogue film for example, processing and conversion time has to be considered and then there’s time for editing… It’s been an invigorating experience to work in a paradox – intensely planned and organised but also meandering and offering time to the abyss.

What does it mean to be bringing this piece specifically to Yerta Bulti-Port Adelaide? What do you hope to discover about the Port?

Yerta Bulti-Port Adelaide holds a lot of mystery for me. It’s absorbing and reflective at the same time, like heat on the road or fog on the river, mirage-like perhaps. The yarns, myths, and tales – held and told by earth, walls, people – make it dusty and shifty and full of life. I feel like it’s a natural environment for tuning and receiving. If we do that well, hopefully the performance will reflect a very real-feeling fiction or imprint of place.

We hope to discover the Port exactly as it reveals itself in this particular point of time.

The work utilises both mixed-media and crowd-sourced stories/locations – how do you and your team wind that all together into a performance piece? What should people do if they want to get involved?

Collectively our occupation is some kind of imagination fabrication, we’re all quite into getting our hands dirty, figuring out how things work and general tinkering. Any chance to try something we’re not particularly familiar with is exciting, therefore it’s pretty easy for us to get on board with the eclectic range of enthusiasts we meet along the way. These encounters tend to generate a variety of material – found or made objects, photos, videos, written material, physical skills.

 

Sightings is a process of following – guided by what we’re offered and what we find, rather than just something we impose. The ‘enthusiast’ spirit really seems to suit the project, it allows for a different kind of finesse in the content we are producing – one where warmth, care and effort are perhaps privileged over glossy, high-end noise. Think the difference between a handmade photo album and a ‘For You’ memory compilation made by your phone, or Grandma’s shortbread versus Arnott’s Shortbread Creams… I think it’s a project where you really feel the alchemy of the people and the place involved.

If people want to get involved they can provide us with some breadcrumbs via the ‘Participate’ link on the Sightings website, https://sightings.cargo.site

Anything else audiences should know?

The Sightings team are artists who work across dance, sound, writing and visual design. We spend a lot of time making live performances but are equally invested in developing research projects where we can learn more about the places and people we meet through the itinerant nature of our work. We welcome reflections on the performance so if any audience members feel inclined to leave us a handwritten note, have a chat or drop us an email following the season – we would love to hear from them.

BOOK TICKETS

CONTRIBUTE TO SIGHTINGS

Daley Rangi stopped by to wax poetic with us on all things I Don’t Owe You. This is the resultant dialogue.

 Firstly, tell us about ‘I Don’t Owe You’ – what’s the project all about and what inspired it?

To preface, I struggle to talk about my work, so please take the following with a grain of salt, or your preferred mineral compound. This work feels like just one of many access points to a vital, ongoing conversation about bodily integrity. Everything I explore has been explored before, by many ancestors and kin. But while it still needs to be said, I’ll say it. Nothing inspires this bodywork better than being harassed, threatened, and attacked for having facial hair whilst dressing or appearing otherwise ‘feminine’, breeding a discomforting feeling of owing, of debt, of extraction.

Perhaps the work may act as a gentle reminder that gender is still an endless game of survival for many, an intangible paradox of joy and rage, violence and freedom. Perhaps the work is about the semiotics and rituals of gender, and perhaps the signed systems and labour that comes with it. Perhaps it turns the lens of ‘gender’ away from the colonial, in search of something more beautiful, more human, more ancient. Perhaps, despite the violent overtones, it’s a work about care, connection, and community. I’m not interested in hyper-individualism. That’s not the answer.

The piece is described as being ‘endurance-based’ – what does this mean for an audience, and how does it evoke the overarching themes?

To be utterly transparent, I’m still working that out. I feel a sense of endurance just existing, many days of the week, as do many of my kin, as do many humans, probably. I think endurance works, which most often involve the body, are, or should be, less about the ‘shock’ factor of what the artist might be doing, and more about the chance to slow down and examine ourselves and each other, maybe change or adapt our collective behaviours towards the kind. We each have a body we can share, or show, or use to shock, I’m more interested in what lies beneath the skin.

Humans are instinctively born to engage with other beings, I suppose I’m just providing a framework for some deeper engagement. An ideas trampoline, impossible futures made possible by action. Sure, yeah, I wanna push people off a fence. Choose a side, either side, but just feel something, do something, anything. It’s less about making audiences uncomfortable, but rather about using my own body and stories and battles as the archaeological site to dig up some truths that relate to everybody.

As this is a long form piece, what will you be presenting at Adhocracy, and how will it differ from the final form?

It definitely won’t be anything extended at Adhocracy, rather a testing ground, an experiment. After reading this, grab a writing tool, and throw down a few sentences starting with ‘I don’t owe you…’. The ‘you’ can be whoever you want, maybe even yourself. It’s quite freeing to exercise the release from expectation and embrace boundaries. For example, “I don’t owe you, the audience, a carefully-crafted, well-executed showing of a curious new live performance work at Adhocracy”, but I’ll do my damned best to share one with you. Side by side my projects wax and wane in what they’re responding to, and what forms they crave, but there’s a soft thread you can pull on. Resistance, and resilience, and how complex these two things are and continue to be.

Where does ‘I Don’t Owe You’ go after its appearance at Adhocracy?

It would be pleasant if I knew. Maybe one day we’ll all sit together and watch the sun rise on a better world, and maybe a word or two I once wrote (or a 24-hour endurance bodywork I once performed) is warm dust on that morning breeze.

Anything else audiences should know?

Don’t be afraid. Come say hi. Pluck a beard hair or two. Share the labour.