An experimental exhibition exploring liveness through performance, video and material.

CAPTURING THE REAL was a multi-artform project exploring ideas of liveness across performance, video and material. The exhibition engaged in experimental processes, making room for contingency, randomness, accidents and failure.

Collaborating with acclaimed cross-disciplinary performance artist Nat Randall, Tantrum’s Trajectory Ensemble considered what it is to be ‘live’ and the trace it leaves through a range of performance modes including participatory, task-based, site–specific and durational. Distinct yet connected enquiries stemmed from this process for the eight Ensemble members: online stranger intimacies; shifting identity through cosplay; art’s role in political action; customer service, complaints and microaggressions; women’s resistance / resilience through self-defense; women’s revolutionary power through song; and the transformative quality of movement.

This resulted in the creation of seven new performance-based works;

• Dead Men Don’t Rape – Alana McGaughey
• Turn To Each Other – Thomas Lonsdale and Phoebe Turnbull
• Writing Till They Are Free – Meg O’Hara and Farhad Bandesh
• In the right place at the right time – Stephanie Rochet Cuevas
• The Liveness in the Lie – Keltan O’Shea
• Human Resources and Emotional Labour – Daynah Simmons
• Behind the Cosplayer – Kirra Zieleman

During the opening weekend, the exhibition was activated by the presence and performances of the Ensemble, with visitors then able to contemplate the remnants left behind throughout the following week.

Trajectory Ensemble 2020:
Thomas Lonsdale, Alana McGaughey, Meg O’Hara, Keltan O’Shea,
Stephanie Rochet, Daynah Simmons, Phoebe Turnbull, Kirra Zieleman.
Project Facilitator: Nat Randall
Ensemble Support: Chris Dunstan
Exhibition Design: Future Method Studio
Exhibition Build: Grant Hall
Video Production: EO Gill
Exhibition Graphic Design: Charlie Cummings
Install Technician: Wanjun Carpenter
Production Support: Alexandra Rose
Marketing Graphic Design: Eryn Leggatt
Publicity: Holly Farrell and Eryn Leggatt

Trajectory Ensemble is proudly supported by City of Newcastle.