The Liveworks Art Festival, Australia delves into the dynamics of gender, aiming to break expectations and stereotypes with its performances.
The three week festival that began on October 22 was launched by a female punk rock three-piece outfit, Hissy Fit. This year, they intend to explore how movement is not just the way our bodies traverse through space, also somethingΒ formulates and challenges our gender identity. Using a female punk rock performance, their bodies on stage performedΒ to tickle brains and enhance understanding of gender.
“We’re really interested in new perspectives on gender and sexuality,”Β Jeff Khan, the director of venue ‘Sydney’s Performance Space’ said.Β “Artists who push the boundaries, who think about new ways to create queer and feminist performance practice, and, performance around masculinity.Β For me it was really important to have a strong thread of those works represented in the festival, alongside the indigenous works and artists engaging with technology, works by culturally diverse artists.”
The performance is mainly inspired by the phenomenon of ‘hysteria’, which was used as a method to control and discredit women in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They used expressions and bodily poses taken fromΒ old photographs of people trapped in fits of hysteria. Inspired by Charcot’s four phases of hysteria β epileptoid, hallucinations, grand movements and delirium or return to normalcy β “I Might Blow Up Someday” went throughΒ four distinct tones that move between the “statesΒ of control and release” before concluding with a “head-banging battle of endurance”.
