Public Space Performance Intervention

Lilianfels Park, Katoomba

19 Dec 2024

 

As part of a trial to create happenings at Katya Petetskaya’s garage studio on Cliff Drive…

I was also interested in the surrounding public space; the context of place in relation to our designated ‘anchor building’.

This part of Cliff Drive, is surrounded by the Echo Point Lookout, a foodcourt and Lilianfels Park. Through the process of walking several times from my home (also in Katoomba) to this area, I encountered light cardboard papers and plastic along the streets, and wedged between bushes along the edge of the bush trail.

I decided to focus on piecing together discarded cardboard, as the material for a possible performance action on the day.

…embodying my relationship with this endless packaging material which I wheel out in in a yellow bin, every fortnightly…

 
 

A note: I used this material creation process to attempt one of the many approaches Javanese dancers use to transform themselves in plain sight, when putting on a mask. I found a way of flattening my upper torso in order to lower my face to the ‘mask’. Then, by gritting my teeth onto the wooden pegs affixed above, I complete the image by ‘being the mask’.

Thank you to Katya Petetskaya for inviting me and initiating the promotion of contemporary performance art action in the Blue Mountains, as well as offering her garage studio as an anchoring space!