The Performance Arcade 2016

THE PERFORMANCE ARCADE 2016
presented by THE PLAYGROUND NZ LTD and The Arcade NZ Live Art Trust

“A beautifully curated programme of performing and visual art works”
- Mark Amery, Radio NZ National

The Performance Arcade returns to the Wellington Waterfront next year from 2 - 6 March.

Artistic Director Sam Trubridge announced a line-up of 29 exciting new works at the Programme Launch at the Bolton Hotel on Monday night.

The Performance Arcade 2016 will be presented in the same location as previous years on the Waterfront, behind Te Papa and FREE to the Wellington public. The Arcade programme breaks down into three sections:

• THE CONTAINER SERIES: works housed in individual containers on Wellington Waterfront.

• THE CITY SERIES: works that travel, or occupy spaces along Wellington Waterfront and City.

• THE LIVE MUSIC SERIES: live music and bands from afternoon to evening.

Presented over 5 days by international, local and national artists, designers and musicians, from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds.

Performance Artist Sally J Morgan collaborates with Jess Richards, a well-published novelist, to create The Drowning, a video installation from a work made in The Bahamas earlier this year.

Estonian theatre company NO99, present a special screening of Ash and Money which documents NO75 Unified Estonia. A work that theatricalised the whole Estonian society in the formation of a new political party, winning the Golden Triga at the Prague Quadrennial this year.

Returning for his fourth arcade, Tongan artist Kalisolaite Uhila will present Ongo Mei Loto, a movement piece informed by a soundscape of Wellington waterfront.

Andrew Simpson and Meg Rollandi present their new work - Soapboxes which features speakers that are installed around the city next to existing sites that have often provoked public discussion.

Josephine Garcia Jowett will construct Parabox, a dense intricate cave inside a container, made entirely from torn cardboard.

A group of young Massey University spatial design students will install Aphelion, an interactive kinetic sculpture of spinning orbs that swell and shrink before the eye; purpose built for the container, featuring projection and light in the evenings.

The design of the Arcade reflects the history of Wellington waterfront as a port processing shipping containers. It recognises the development of the waterfront into a public playground and audience space in the late 1980’s: now housing Te Papa, Museum of Wellington, and the NZ Festival.

“We are conscious of the event as a city within a city” said Sam Trubridge at the launch. “Our works connect these spaces, spilling out from our usual place on the waterfront to dialogue with environments across the city, transforming the city into a place of potential for arts encounters.”

“This year’s programme looks at this notion of politics in many ways; sometimes through the gentle act of just placing art, with all its beauty, revulsion, wonder, and uncertainty in these live spaces or at other times by looking at burning questions in our collective psyche.”

“With Friday’s events in Paris we are reminded of how cities can be turned into places of fear by gratuitous and seemingly random acts of violence. I hope that with art we can find some way of sharing values that work against the effects of this brutality.”

The public ´Art Talk series´ running weekly from January at the Bolton Hotel, will delve behind the meaning and artists intention for each work and discuss how the audience can experience and perceive the different works.

The Performance Arcade brings together visual arts and performance in a specially curated event on Wellington Waterfront. An arrangement of shipping containers provides a temporary architecture for live music and new performance installations by NZ and International artists. Offering new encounters between artists and the public, creating a vibrant hub that activates the city and our community. Open 13 hours a day, this event is free to the Wellington public.

The Performance Arcade 2016 is supported by Creative New Zealand, with International artist support from Bolton Hotel.

The Performance Arcade 2016 - March 2 - 6 - FREE, Wellington Waterfront, Chaffers end of Te Papa.

More information: www.theperformancearcade.com

ENDS

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