Australian Performance Exchange – PERFORMING MOBILITIES http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net Tue, 05 Jul 2016 10:39:39 +0000 en-AU hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.2 http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net/wp-content/uploads/webFiles/cropped-PM_ico_02-32x32.jpg Australian Performance Exchange – PERFORMING MOBILITIES http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net 32 32 O-T-D#2 ORIGIN-TRANSIT-DESTINATION http://performingmobilities.mickdouglas.net/symposium/traces_gallery/o-t-d2-origin-transit-destination/ Wed, 22 Jul 2015 05:46:35 +0000 http://2015.performingmobilities.net/?post_type=traces_gallery&p=710 Why do people risk their lives on perilous boat trips and take extreme actions when faced with being turned back? Referring poetically to the physical, emotional, and spiritual journeys made by asylum seekers, Origin-Transit-Destination (OTD) developed organically into a mobile performance work that generates a series of unsettling experiences for audiences, while simultaneously offering them intimate encounters with asylum-seeking artists and the places along their journey.

Always active, never passive, these artists are in control of their representations at all times. First staged in Western Sydney in March 2015, OTD developed a process that is a template for site-specific, community-engaged performance that works anywhere asylum seekers or refugees live.

‘Who are we? Who is ‘one of us’? What codes must we live by? Who are we part of? Whose humanity do we recognise as akin to ours? And a further terrible question: What do we owe those whose humanity we fail to recognize?’ (Sevendrini Perara, 1968). With 60 million displaced humans on the move today seeking havens (UNHCR), how can the rest of the world, particularly those privileged to live in peace and relative justice, respond ethically? In OTD we invite, inveigle, and coerce audiences into a space of identification, recognition, curiosity.

OTD is an activist work, driven by a refusal to be silent and a determination to engage in uncomfortable conversations. It deals with our societal complicity in government policy and community collusion in the dehumanising discourses passing as debate in media representations of people seeking asylum. OTD insists on the audience taking steps to walk in another’s shoes. It builds layers of experience, shared dilemmas, laughing and singing. It simultaneously introduces small discomforts – relinquishing a mobile phone, entering a blue light space alone, being assigned a name or number. It is at all times an invitation to speak.

]]> Why do people risk their lives on perilous boat trips and take extreme actions when faced with being turned back? Referring poetically to the physical, emotional, and spiritual journeys made by asylum seekers, Origin-Transit-Destination (OTD) developed organically into a mobile performance work that generates a series of unsettling experiences for audiences, while simultaneously offering them intimate encounters with asylum-seeking artists and the places along their journey.

Always active, never passive, these artists are in control of their representations at all times. First staged in Western Sydney in March 2015, OTD developed a process that is a template for site-specific, community-engaged performance that works anywhere asylum seekers or refugees live.

‘Who are we? Who is ‘one of us’? What codes must we live by? Who are we part of? Whose humanity do we recognise as akin to ours? And a further terrible question: What do we owe those whose humanity we fail to recognize?’ (Sevendrini Perara, 1968). With 60 million displaced humans on the move today seeking havens (UNHCR), how can the rest of the world, particularly those privileged to live in peace and relative justice, respond ethically? In OTD we invite, inveigle, and coerce audiences into a space of identification, recognition, curiosity.

OTD is an activist work, driven by a refusal to be silent and a determination to engage in uncomfortable conversations. It deals with our societal complicity in government policy and community collusion in the dehumanising discourses passing as debate in media representations of people seeking asylum. OTD insists on the audience taking steps to walk in another’s shoes. It builds layers of experience, shared dilemmas, laughing and singing. It simultaneously introduces small discomforts – relinquishing a mobile phone, entering a blue light space alone, being assigned a name or number. It is at all times an invitation to speak.

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