Illuminous comprises Indigo Perry, writer, author of Midnight Water: A Memoir (shortlisted for the National Biography award), and senior lecturer in creative writing, Deakin University; and Andrew Darling, musician and poet, front man of acoustic troubadours The Anecdote and music educator and conductor.
Illuminous exists outside of genre and largely outside of form, or rather, within its own unique form. It was born as a pathway to survival though the expression of deeper aspects of our inner lives than one is usually able to reveal in a superficial, breakneck-speeding world. We intend to create a performance space where an audience can feel into deeper feelings than what’s at the surface, and have a sense of them living and unfolding in a public environment.
Speaking the Anthropocene
Speaking the Anthropocene saw Illuminous asking how the public responds to attempts to create new emotional languages through their work. Andrew Darling improvised on trumpet and Indigo Perry improvised poetic text that is projected over the artists and a wall. The work explored deep emotional responses to living within the Anthropocene.
The artist’s most significant learnings were around space and environment. Illuminous in performance requires intimacy, which can lead to the potential for emotional opening - they learnt the CBD’s chaos does not easily lend itself to this.
As the artists tested more, they received audience responses suggesting the emotional power of the work was being received at a deep level. They experimented with the projection, positioning it partly on the sculpture’s surface, partly allowing it to fall on the buildings opposite and, on passing trams. This had a magical effect that the artists would consider using again as they continue to develop the projection aspect.