ROARAWAR FEARTATA has created text-based performances, including the award winning ‘Bunny’, performance interventions in galleries and curated art spaces and has conducted site-specific performance exploration residencies in Frankston, Dandenong, Footscray, Collingwood, Bendigo, New York and Prato, Italy.
In 2009 they were involved in the 'Interventionist Guide to Melbourne' at Platform Artspace, Flinders Street Station and performed with Jill Orr, Stelarc and Domenico DiClario at Federation Square as part of Karen Casey’s ‘Global Mind Project’. They presented ‘I luv Amanda Crowe 4 eva’ as part of LiveWorks at Performance Space in 2010. In 2016 they collaborated with Triage Live Art Collective on ‘Hotel Obscura’ and with Punctum Inc. on ‘Complete Smut: Art Auction’ for the Melbourne Festival of Live Art. They are currently developing new work through Punctum Inc’s ‘What If…’ residency program.
The Crossing
Through Test Sites, The Crossing explored the potential for performance as a practice for advening, rather than intervening, in the everyday practice and production of public space.
Drawing on the figure of the ferryman from Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, as well Henri Lefebvre’s concept of Rhythmanalysis, this project sought to occupy the everyday practice of the pedestrian crossing, utilising the position of the artist within this everyday practice to develop a methodology for conducting a rhythmanalysis of public space.
Through the process of performative adventure and the reading of rhythms, the project aimed to strategise a process for art to participate in the practice of the everyday, whilst maintaining the tension of the question: “How will we know what it is that we are doing?”
Using Art to provoke an accident in the everyday rhythms of public space, this project enacted an open conversation on the resistance to formulations of everyday public space.
The rhythmanalytical data collected will form the basis for further performative adventures. Rather than addressing some socio-spatial problem, the aim is to develop strategies of continued artistic production that advenes with the everyday production of space.