PERFORMANCE
REQUIEM FOR BUSHFIRES
Festival of Sydney, Paddington Reservoir,
January 2020
Dirt Witches performed the closing ceremony to ‘Bush Requiem’, Janet Laurence’s month-long event in the Paddington Reservoir, for the Festival of Sydney. Requiem was a cross-disciplinary program of art, talks, and performances that lament the loss of native ecologies during the 2020 bushfire crisis. Poets, visual artists, scientists, and environmental advocates retrieved the memory of this loss. Held within the ethereal inner chamber of the Paddington Reservoir, the Dirt Witches performed a final lament moving through sculptural installations of burnt branches to the haunting baritone sounds of Benoit Deney.
Laurence explains, “I believe we need to make our landscape sacred again; we need to re-enchant it. The bushfires have amplified the specificity of this landscape that we live within. We need to enter into it deeply through knowledge sharing between scientists, artists, and Indigenous peoples. … Part of my vision is that the space will not be used as a neutral space but will be entered into as a sacred space that cultivates a renewed engagement with nature.”
This project collectively created an immersive environment and a memorial space that is contemporary in its acknowledgment of the fragility and transience of our existence and of our total interconnection with the living world. Collaborators included the Sydney Environment Institute and Groundswell,
EUCALYPTUSDOM
A Performance of Spells for Seeds
Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences,
August, 2022
A merging of a performative poetry installation and a pagan ritual
Spelling seeds was performed at the Powerhouse Museum Ultimo as part of the Eucalyptusdom program.
With the procession as a lament, the artistic performance created beauty, love, and wonder for the trees.
Dealing with our relationship to trees is an urgent matter. This work is underpinned by an interweaving of nature and science. Immersing us in the ritual of care and using a language and aesthetics of empathy, love, and respect. The work is something between a performative poetry installation and an ancient pagan ritual; it relies on the sacred practice of spelling.
As spell-poems are vehicles of change that take us beyond the borders of the rational into a place where the right words and gestures can influence the universe.
The procession will become a kind of incantation that lures people into caring for and healing our ailing world and precious forests.
The work was conceived by Janet Laurence, choreographed by Lizzie Thomson, and performed by Dirt Witches and Tree Venerators.
SPELLS FOR WEATHER
Bunadon Art Gallery
January 2023
Spells for Weather was performed at Bundanon Art Gallery as part of its ‘Weather Station’ program initiated by Artangel. The performance drew on Janet Laurence’s Antarctic research at Casey Station.
Weather observing is conducted through instruments which sense the environment. Though some weather forecasting has been automated, the remoteness of Antarctica still leads to releasing weather balloons, reading instruments which manually record conditions, and communicating findings through a shared symbology.
Combining the performers’ connections to nature and the site of Bundanon, movements based on these forecasting gestures are created as spells. Rituals and processions bring us in touch with elemental forces of nature, they tie into contemporary environmental and relational thought while also drawing upon ancient knowledges and connections. Spells are cosmological and ecological - putting us into conversation with each other and the universe.
This work was agitated, disrupted, and formed by a tempestarius, Dimitri Kleioris.