2007 » Pacific Islands » National section

Woven Flesh

Inside me the dead woven into my flesh like the music of bone flutes Woven Flesh describes how to unveil and perform the ancestral-self in the space of contemporary theatre. It poses that all theatre is an articulation of the ancestral-self: (‘woven into my flesh like the music of bone flutes’). The role of performance therefore is to return this ancestral-self to the world by weaving it through the flesh of the performer, illuminate it with the work of design and throw it towards the world. It is posited here that the role of scenography in illuminating the ancestral-self is like that of a well-kept garden ready to bloom which must convey a feeling of anticipation, of a revelation, of an explosive tension ready to return again and again in the future. The return of the suppressive regime of the Empire after 9/11 has seen a new millennial subjectivity that is searching for new forms and modalities of resistance. Pacific theatre has a history of performance that deploys the body and the environment as a political force that opens up a space where resistance and dissention can occur. The Woven Flesh exhibition proposes to define a space that will allow dissenting voices to be heard.