Vitalstatistix spoke with Paul Gazzola, Adhocracy co-curator and Artistic Director of OSCA – Open Space Contemporary Arts (South Australia); and Willoh S.Weiland, Artistic Director of Aphids (Victoria) and co-creator of Crawl Me Blood, a new work in development with Vitalstatistix.

V: Both of you lead small, under-resourced, experimental, artist-run organisations. It’s a tough environment at the moment. Tell us about your organisations and what makes you proud about how they work in the current context of Australian arts?

PG: In January of this year I began in my new role as Artistic Director of the South Australian-based organisation, OSCA – Open Space Contemporary Arts. OSCA is a platform and conduit for artists to extend their practice in a supportive and collegial environment; it’s the brainchild of Dario Vacirca who took the chance to re-establish KneeHIGH Puppeteers as a contemporary arts-based company. OSCA’s mission is to provide artists and non-artists with opportunities to dream, develop and create contemporary art works that explore new models of participation and practice in urban and regional contexts. OSCA explores contemporary notions of being Australian through community engagement, collaboration and exchange.

Three years and fifteen-plus projects into its new life, OSCA is finding its momentum as it defines its place within the local ecology of South Australia and the realm of artists and individuals that it collaborates with on a local, national and international scene.

WSW: Aphids is Melbourne-based company that has been making interdisciplinary art for twenty one years. I work with an incredible group of artists, including Artistic Associates Lz Dunn and Lara Thoms, who work as artists and managers of the Aphids supermassive program. What’s amazing about Aphids is its ethos of being artist-led, working collaboratively and working across disciplines, which has not changed across its long history.

V: Each of you have been part of Vitalstatistix’s national experimental arts hothouse, Adhocracy. Paul, you have co-curated Adhocracy with Emma and Jason for the past four years. Willoh, you have developed two works through Adhocracy’s residency program, where a national project undergoes creative development with a team of South Australian collaborating artists. What are your thoughts about the value of Adhocracy and the kind of opportunity it presents for artists?

PG: Adhocracy is a highly unique event in the experimental and interdisciplinary arts calendar of Australia. Its open call-out offers national and local artists space, time and technical support to develop and explore new ideas and formats of presentation across a diversity of sites, over four days within the Waterside Workers Hall – the home of Vitalstatistix.

As a former participating artist in 2012 and current co-curator since 2013, I have seen Adhocracy evolve as a highly engaging event that continues to open up new models of audience accessibility and participation within the SA contemporary arts scene as it focuses on stimulating and supporting emerging and experimental arts practice within Australia.

WSW: Yes, we have developed two works through the residency program, Forever Now and Crawl Me Blood, both of which have been incredible, fruitful opportunities that have had huge impacts on the way the projects have unfolded. The unique thing about Adhocracy for us has been working with local SA artists. This allows a different kind of experimentation to take place. In both residencies these artists have taken on a variety of roles becoming collaborators, writers, performers, researchers, audience members – allowing us to test the breadth of the idea in a much broader way than we would if it was just us in a room.

V: What advice would you give to artists interested in applying to Adhocracy this year?

PG: Make your application simple, clear and precise in what you want to do. Don’t get too lost in heavy concepts but make sure you think about how an intense residency can allow you to explore your ideas and further your project.

Also remember that to make work, means being able to speak about how you make work. Part of the curatorial focus of Adhocracy is to facilitate the public’s engagement across the event so you will be expected to present your work through a series of showings or talks.

WSW: DO IT. It’s an incredible chance to work on a project at the really vital stage of its development, the point when all the wild ideas coalesce into decisions! If you are interested in collaborative models for art-making and experimental practice then it’s an ideal place to learn.

V: Willoh, last year you won the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art; Paul, you also regularly work in a live art context. How do you describe what live art is?

PG: It’s always an interesting question to frame parameters for live art. I just made a new work for the Festival of Live Art (FOLA) called the FOLA GIFT SHOP by OSCA that precariously placed a commercial venture within a heavily subsidised arena. So live art, from my perspective, plays with form and experiments with possibilities. It centres on the moment of encounter in real time between the artist and the spectator. The slippages in its difficulty to be defined, is its liberty and its confusion. The aspect of liveness in its title reminds one of the immediacy of a practice that works within the experience of engaging directly with the public in action.

Overall, I actually prefer to leave the defining of the term as an open-ended one. Especially as its historical emergence, in the mid 1980’s in the UK, was exactly about trying to locate an expanded genre of work that didn’t fit the current categories and classifications of dance, theatre or performance. So maybe its better that a statement on what live art is goes out to the audience as their complicity in the form is paramount to its’ coming to be.

WSW: It’s like Kate Bush. It’s mysterious and weird and rarely seen. It’s for the people, by the people and it challenges the people to re-define how they view performance.

Actually I usually direct them to the incredible video by UK live art hero Joshua Sofaer.

V: How important is social practice and sense of politics to you? What makes art contemporary and/or radical?

PG: My interest is to how art practice offers a space for new ideas and viewpoints that challenge the normative notions of society and the way things are. Hence, the interweaving of a social dimension is fundamental in the work I create. And by default, its politics lie in how I negotiate processes when working with others. This means I aim to work from a strong ethical position that is conscious of the relationships that develop and unfold over time.

That being said, I don’t believe art is always about the provision of a democratic space and this may be where notions of art being contemporary or radical are of use to discuss. If I address what I normally see associated with these terms, I am usually reading a promo line.

WSW: I think making art is radical in itself. To choose to be an artist is by its nature to live on the outside and I think this applies across form from landscape painters to contemporary art makers like ourselves. The political necessity of art is something that has always driven me, I think the ability of a society to celebrate and support its artists – and voices that are often outside mainstream opinion- speaks to the heart of democracy and our capacity to value and encourage debate.

V: Tell us about a project you are working on in 2016?

PG: Currently, OSCA is working on a number of Associate Artist projects including a new work from Dario Vacirca called 2Beaches: Future Island Nation, a collaboration with four Aboriginal women artists, the Bound/Unbound Collective, plus the ongoing commissioning program PROJECTS OF THE EVERYDAY, which asks: what does it means to be living on the edge of the city and at the start of the suburbia? This year’s South Australian artists – Mona Khizam, Ben Leslie and Laura Wills  – have been invited to actively engage with a local community in the making of new work that investigates and celebrates ‘the ordinary’

I am also in the process of developing two new projects in regional Australia. The first, Collectors/Collections, is in collaboration with artist Nadia Cusimano and the community of local collectors in Waikerie. It focuses on the preservation and presentation of their collection of super 8 films that form an integral part of the historical memory of the town and the river. And secondly, I’m working on a new work for Cementa 17 that explores the relationship between art, economics and life.

WSW: We just finished our major work for this year, Howl, a parade of controversial artworks, which premiered at the Festival of Live Art (FOLA) in Melbourne. In August I’m moving to the wilds of Finland for three months where I am premiering a new work commissioned from the ANTI Festival live art prize.

V: You both have strong associate relationships with Vitalstatistix. What value does these types of long-term relationships between artists and organisations hold?

PG: Long-term relationships with institutions and organisations generate possibilities. They offer a healthy and supportive environment to develop projects and initiatives through the ongoing understanding of each other’s interests and evolving agendas. They also become a facet in how one can survive and maintain an arts practice.

Vitalstatistix’s history of working with a pool of liked minded makers and presenters clearly shows how it understands the way community is formed and maintained. That it also holds a unique space in Australia as a feminist organisation with a continuing tradition of supporting women artists is key to its ongoing importance. Vitalstatistix’s ability to champion and generate a space for the diversity of voices and ideas that challenge the mainstream and experiment with changing the world is as the name says ‘vital’.

WSW: I think this current environment demands that everyone, from major organisations to independent artists, be vocal advocates for the value of interdependence. We shouldn’t be silo’ing ourselves but seeing the obvious lineages between independent practice and bigger companies. However because organisations have more infrastructure, they need to be the ones to reach out, to create structures that will support this idea, like Vitals does so well. Basically all organisations should take a leaf out of Vitals book, make a program small or large that does something to support independent art making.

V: How are you feeling about the future of Australian arts?

PG: Whilst I do have great concerns about the dwindling economies of the various local and national funding bodies, I am never too worried about the future of Australian arts practice. One can never underestimate the power of individuals to produce and create works of great importance and nourishment for the cultural life of our nation at any time or under any condition. So whilst successive governments continue to financially decimate the frameworks that offer and support diversity, artists will always continue to make things happen where it seems impossible.

WSW: About the art itself I feel privileged to be working in a community of people who are so visionary, who are making world-class work, who are literally at the forefront of creative experimentation in the whole universe. A few days out from the dreaded Australian Council decision for small-to-medium organisations, I feel distressed, as what I know is that the manifest unfairness that we saw exhibited in the politically motivated and insanely managed decision-making of the Abbott government in the last year, will on May 9th have an incredibly harmful impact on artists and organisations. No one is going to win. It’s everyone’s responsibility to take action towards the arts not being in this position again. End rant.

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Vitalstatistix spoke with Emma Valente, co-Artistic Director of Victorian-based theatre company THE RABBLE, and South Australian-based visual artist and theatre designer Meg Wilson, who has joined THE RABBLE as lead artist intern in 2016.

V: Emma, tell us about THE RABBLE.

EV: THE RABBLE is a group of artists who have been making theatre for ten years together. We produce experimental theatre that interrogates the human condition through a combination of surreal and visceral aesthetics, feminist sensibility, and the application of deeply research.  Kate Davis and I are the Artistic Directors of the company. We are also the creators, directors and designers of all the work.

We are attracted to subterranean feminist concepts in iconic stories from folklore and literature. Our productions are realised through sweeping design and intense theatricality. We have abandoned male-dominated play scripts and replaced them with an improvisational methodology using poetry, prose, image, tableaus and gesture. We have made radical adaptations of many well know stories and novels including: Frankenstein, Story of O, Orlando, Cain and Abel, Picture of Dorian Grey, Joan of Arc and Ulysses.

V: You undertook a residency with Vitalstatistix late last year towards the development of your new work Ulysses. Tell us about this work and the value of a residency in the early stages of developing a new performance.

EV: THE RABBLE is working on a ten-hour durational event that is a radical feminist adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Taking our cues from Joyce’s novel the piece is a series of nine experiments that investigate the act of performing, intellectualism, femininity, the extremes of the body and death. The performance is broken up into eight Acts across the ten hours.

This project is extremely ambitious and the residency at Vitals was imperative in moving the project beyond being just an idea, to something that seemed achievable.

Kate and I knew that to make this project we needed time and space, we needed to be able to immerse ourselves in the book and in the project to map out how we would make it and what it would be. We got to do this at Vitals last year in November. It was such a rare opportunity to be given space to work on a project of such ambition, right at its early stages. I can think of very few companies who would offer this kind of support for such a huge project.

The outcome from that fortnight was so fruitful. Kate and I devised a schema for the whole work, which we are now working from. We really cracked open the whole idea, we decided that the piece would be a series of performance experiments that would take place over ten hours. We started to work out what those experiments would be, and even got to testing a few of them. We were also able to wrestled with the fact that we were doing the book at all, this huge part of the modernist canon, which has little to do with our own experience. This fortnight gave us the chance to work through this problem and has deeply influenced the format and the content of the piece.

V: How important is it to work nationally and what do you think is the fit between THE RABBLE and Vitalstatistix?

EV: It is imperative for us to work nationally. The industry is so small and the market for our work is niche, we can’t possibly expect to work only in Melbourne. We also want to make sure that we can reach as many people as possible; we love having the opportunity to perform for new audiences and make connections with new people.

Our relationship with Vitals has been a very fruitful and exciting one. Vitals emphasises process, development and experimentation, which is our focus as well. It is so excellent working in an environment that privileges these ideas, rather than being completely product driven. Being given space and time to develop and experiment with ideas undoubtedly makes our work better.

V: Why does THE RABBLE offer internships and what’s the exchange like?

EV: THE RABBLE has always worked with secondments and interns. Kate and I have made a huge effort to respond to most people that approach us. At the end of last year we got so many requests that we just decided to formalise the process, try and choose the best person, not just the person who sent us a well-timed email. We also realised that it was probably more beneficial if we offered a program that was longer than just one show or development. So this is our first year of offering yearlong internships.

We hope the exchange is an exciting one.

We have designed the program so that our interns not only get to observe and contribute to our work but also have time to chat about their own work. For me it’s important to understand stay in touch with what emerging artists are doing, how their approaches are different to my own and what are the subjects they are preoccupied with.

This program has been a great way to get to know more emerging artists and their work.

V: Tell us about what you are working on in 2016?

EV: THE RABBLE is developing quite a few projects in 2016. We have already completed two developments this year – one for Joan with Malthouse and one for Ulysses, this time based at The Substation in Melbourne. We will be remounting our version of Cain and Abel in July this year again at The Substation. I’m pretty excited to revisit this project, we performed it at Belvoir St two years ago and I found the subject matter fascinating. In this production we are asking ourselves, what if the first murder was committed by a woman? How would this affect our iconography and our history? There is a chasm in historical representations of women who are violent and it was so interesting to find this black hole in feminist research.  I’m pretty keen to delve back into that world.

V: How are you feeling about the future of Australian arts?

EV: Pretty queasy. Like everyone, I’m waiting white knuckled for the next round of funding announcements. I’m worried that many of the companies that THE RABBLE could potentially partner with will be cut. I’m worried that the cuts are going to mean that the presenters who get funding are going to take fewer risks. And I feel sad. In Melbourne we’d been through a really exciting movement in the independent scene, just before the funding cuts were announced and now that movement has been cut off at the knees. I feel like there’s been a great opportunity lost.

On the other hand, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many artists who are just beginning their careers. I’m inspired and energised by their enthusiasm and creative drive. There is such an incredible next generation of artists coming up at the moment, particularly many female artists who are making gutsy and inspiring work. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next.

V: Meg, tell us about your artistic practice.

MW: I am an interdisciplinary artist who works predominantly with large-scale and often site-specific installation and performance. In recent years I have broadened my practice to encompass design for theatre and events. My visual art and theatre design practices are now mutually influential and often overlap.

A common theme explored within my work is the performativity of space, the surreal and abstract within familiar everyday spaces, and the audience encounter with the ordinary, set within the context of the out-of-the-ordinary.

V: Tell us about your connection with Vitalstatistix and the kinds of projects you have worked on with us.

MW: My first encounter with Vitals was in 2012 when I worked with Gaelle Mellis on Take Up Thy Bed & Walk. I spent a lot of time observing and embroidering handkerchiefs in what was my first encounter with theatre behind the scenes. Gaelle and Vitalstatistix took me under their wings and it is here that I found my creative home.

In 2014, undertaking a residency with Rosie Dennis of Urban Theatre Projects at Vitalstatistix, I was exposed to a new way of working. A way that is not solitary, where no idea is precious, where bigger and better ideas are built through the sharing of ideas. A place where it’s ok to mess things up, and ok to be vulnerable. Coming from a largely solo practice, this was totally new to me. This is also where I met Ashton Malcolm and Josie Were, with whom I have recently formed a performance collective.

I’ve gone onto work with Vitals in the role of collaborating artist/designer on some of the most exciting and experimental projects of my career so far, working with artists such as Mish Grigor on Man O Man and Willoh S.Weiland and Halcyon Macleod on Crawl Me Blood.

V: Why did you decide to apply for the internship with THE RABBLE?

MW: I see working with THE RABBLE as the next step in discovering how and where I can push my skills and ambitions at this point of juncture between visual arts and theatre in my practice. Where abstract installations may become the set for theatre, and where an installation in a gallery can be the site for performance and audience interaction. Where boundaries are pushed and ideas are challenged.

I wanted to become immersed in theatre devised through the manipulation and play with objects in an environment. This is what THE RABBLE do, and do so well. I only knew of their work through word of mouth and from what I could gather from images and short videos online. Unfortunately I was overseas when they were here working with Vitals last year, so I missed out on meeting Emma and Kate then. I think I saw their callout for internship positions on Vitals’ Facebook feed, and I jumped at the opportunity!

V: You kicked off the internship recently, spending some time with THE RABBLE in Melbourne – how was that?

MW: One word: EXCELLENT! So far I have only spent four days at The Substation with THE RABBLE and I have already learnt so much. Emma and Kate are very generous and welcoming individuals who have taken significant chunks of time out of their days to answer the many questions that I have.

Most of my time thus far has been spent observing the way they work in a room with their main ensemble members, Dana and Mary Helen. They’ve been working on another development of Ulysses, for which they did a residency at Vitals last year. It’s nice to begin with a project that has that familiar link between us.

V: What will you be working on with THE RABBLE in 2016? And what is your role?

MW: I was selected for the role of Internship for Lead Artist – for an artist seeking experience in performance making through a devised process. I will be working on five projects throughout the year that are in various stages of development. There are some projects that I will be able to observe from beginning to outcome, such as In the Bleak Mid Winter, an event curated by THE RABBLE at Malthouse. Then there are others, such as Cain and Abel, which are projects already at production stage.

I think that the role will vary hugely dependent on the project. At times it will be a chance to observe rehearsals and performance works at various stages of development, as well as to be able to participate in creative meetings and design concept meetings across the year. There will also be times when all hands will be required on deck…and I’m totally ready to jump in when I can!

V: What’s valuable about this type of opportunity?

MW: THE RABBLE work with real objects and create abstract worlds that show the truth of the materials used in their creation.

Content is created through improvisation and trial and error, then gradually shaped and refined through process. I am interested in the way that they blur the roles in theatrical practice.

The roles of director, designer, performer are all as collaborators present from the very beginning to shape all parts of a work. There are currently very few opportunities to work in this way in Adelaide, so I’m very excited to be jetting to Melbourne throughout the year to work with and learn from THE RABBLE. I have already spent a lot of time excitedly reporting back to Josie and Ashton about how this unique experience could be instrumental in informing the way we hope to work together as a collective back in Adelaide.

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Welcome to Vitalstatistix’s new blog. On the first Friday of each month, we will be publishing a new conversation with artists who we work with.

The articles will pair together artists whose practices overlap in some way – from tangible collaborations, to an interest in similar fields of inquiry, to sharing particular modes of making art.

The articles will give an insight into the diverse practice of Australian and South Australian artists, the place that South Australian experimental art occupies nationally, and the month-to month activity of Vitalstatistix.

We look forward to sharing these stories with you each month.

Our first article interviews Emma Valente from Victorian-based theatre company THE RABBLE; and Meg Wilson, South Australian-based visual artist and theatre designer.

Then we will hit the regular monthly first-Friday cycle from May 6, with an interview with Paul Gazzola, Adhocracy co-curator and Artistic Director of Open Space Contemporary Arts, based in South Australia; and Willoh S. Weiland, Artistic Director of Aphids in Victoria and co-creator of Crawl Me Blood, a new work in development with Vitalstatistix.