Naomi Oliver, exist-ence 5, Sydney photo Tija Lodins |
Across the evening, in Self Generating Tranquility Pod, Naomi Oliver sits in a bright pool of light just inside the entrance to the PACT performance space. Clothed in an encompassing white satin, headphones and boots that evoke, perhaps, someone preparing quite domestically for space travel—more inner space than outer—Oliver knits silver thread into a netted layer with which to further cover herself, like a caterpillar encasing itself prior to transformation. The performer’s stillness and concentration yield pleasant contemplation of the values of slow being, making and survival.
John G Boehme & Beauregard photo Tija Lodins |
Things turn more bizarre as the coach spouts platitudes from a self-improvement book (“Success is a marathon, not a sprint”) and, naked from the waist down save for a jock strap and protective cup, places two slabs of butter on his bald head and over them a porcelain helmet-like bowl while, gasping, he sucks oxygen from a tube. Initially the boy skips about (demonstrating balletic tendencies) until it’s indicated that he has to knock a ball off the top of his father’s head with a mini-baseball bat. But the odds against the ball remaining stable are enormous as butter and sweat run down the man’s face. Finally the bowl is abandoned and the ball whacked off his head. The end. Clearly Boeme has some issues with sport—about power relationships, parenting, ego and ludicrous goals. With expressionless ease father and son enact this memorable performance with a detachment that yields both suspense and the laughter of recognition.
Exist-ence 5, PACT Centre for Emerging Artists, Sydney, 19-20 July
RealTime issue #116 Aug-Sept 2013 pg. web
© Keith Gallasch; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]