Theatre of Ocean: Stories of Performance Between Us

Theatre of Ocean: Stories of performance between Us - says ‘There is nothing wrong with I. The I sometimes speaks of “we” better.’ (Chapter 10, “A Letter to Grandma”).

Theatre of Ocean is a memoir of out takes from a performance artist moving backwards and forwards in space and time; it is a series of stories of art and experience that interweave performance, love, art, culture, gender and politics. An established international performance and video artist, New Zealand choreographer Alexa Wilson based in Berlin, guides the reader through fragmented musings that traverse the spaces between cultures and identities at a digitally, politically and environmentally escalating time in the early 21st Century.

The writing in Theatre of Ocean ranges from hyper-emotional prose-poem to film script to academic feminist critique to humour piece. Written largely in Berlin, the book expresses a feminism through a theatre of words; juxtaposing real stories with art works and musings performed, scripted, staged, or improvised, Theatre of Ocean reveals an artist clawing at the possibilities for socio-political change in the fabric of our world, in a dynamic triumvirate of settings: New York, Berlin, New Zealand.

Theatre of Ocean uses its central metaphor to connect everyone and everything through a relentless ocean of performances within frameworks of experience, often violent, offering the reader opportunities for engagement. Ultimately, it is the opposite of an autobiography about an individual – it is stories of performance between an individual and her audience as well as those in her world, the collective forces that both affect and are affected by an individual, and what an individual can do to transform these forces.

Theatre of Ocean is 70,000 words and was edited by Lauren Oyler in Berlin. 

Photo: Superbreath, Berlin 2017

How to talk about a work? A work that is hard to talk about...

Facebook post: The things we cannot speak about we make art about. (Then we are made to speak about it lol).  I just keep making art with the tension, confusion, truth and dignity that brings, sometimes that art has words too. 

Final & Solo Project of The Resistant Body Series: 999: The Alchemist Trauma Centre / Power Centre

999 is a “feminist meditation, poetic activist activation”, shaking the foundations of belief systems at the intersection of East and West in a way that has been described as “punk”. It offers humour and insight into the struggling, chaotic global conditions of our time from a subjective perspective, by provocatively questioning our shifting foundations in this capitalist/neo-liberal era transnationally and finding a new way to be present amidst the confused, but generative tension within inter-sectionality. It was born in India, on a residency I curated in the Himalayas and is a work in progress. This work will have an accompanying creative text in a the form of a small book, and also be written about in Contemporary Hum this year. 

I have spent much time in the past few years moving between collaborative projects (Berlin/NY/NZ), residencies (India/China/Germany), commissioned group works (e.g NZ's Footnote Dance Company) and a trilogy of interactive solo works (Europe, US, NZ) prior to this project. This project would be considering different ways in which solo work is influenced by collaborative processes and group projects, which are also facilitated. It will therefore in process involve conversations with others as a developing solo.

"Himalayan Fem Trash Activation: Alexa Wilson
a.k.a. The Angry Version

Similar to the “trigger warnings” said before some performances in certain “socially progressive” scenes in the past few years, New Zealand-born Alexa Wilson begins her bold, funny, and insightful piece by asking the audience, “Do you want the angry version or the reflective version?” 

We said angry." -Jorge Rodolfo De Hoyos, Critique 

This is a work in progress during 2018 to present in Berlin, London and New Zealand.

WAITING FOR A STRAY DOG : THE INDIA ALBUM

(by The Stolen Alchemist Trauma Clinic)

WAITING FOR A STRAY DOG : THE INDIA ALBUM

(with a bias toward animals especially monkeys)

Feat epic hidden tracks by dj luna c feat Red

Side One

A Side

1. (Too many) Names for an exhibition

2. Eye of the Tiger

3. Stolen monkey skull, performed naked just for you

4. Lost property

5. Der Motherland

6. What is an edge to you?

7. No Internet

8. Stolen call

9. Lost (animal) call

10. Stolen culture

11. (In search of) Kali (within)

12. human being “art / human doing “art”

13. So much generosity

14. Broken cactus in my room

15. Dead puppy at the airport

16. Ram in a Temple

17. Stolen Swastika

18. Happy puppies

19. Silence

20. 4 dreams about my mother, 2 about my father

Side Two

B Side

21. Person orders / Person(ality) DISorders / play on words

22. Playing chess / doing chess / being chess

23. Lipstick in the mountains

24. Meow

25. The mountains are mocking my silence

26. I am mocking the mountains

27. Open Improv in Radical practice for the mountains

28. Shall i show you my best moves to the mountains?

29. What are my best moves?

30. What are my worst moves?

31. What is a movement?

32. Vulnerability

33. Why did/do you get naked?

34. The monkeys are mocking my silence

35. Too much food

36. Too many nice people in one space at one time

37. Jazmine porn star rap

38. Many kinds of Bell / 444

39. Life is immersive theatre ('thats why you're the curator')

40. Lost Monkey

Side Three

A Side

41. ENOUGH!

42. So beautiful

43. 'Perverted eyes'

44. This train of thought will wreck

45. Unhinged Rant

46. Unwritten sky

47. Nude =+ Zero

48. Failure success

49. human “Art” = monkey skull

50. Between conversations

51. Motorbiking in the Himalayas toward no Kali figurines left in the shop

52. Photos of monkeys

53. Kalu the dog

54. Happy and Japati

55. Mother Tongue feat. Spooky house

56. Multiple Snake dreams

57. Wake up to your fucking power

58. The Bees will love this

59. Why do I spit on myself?

60. You think you know me but you don't know anything about me

Side Four

B Side

61. Suck the hegemony

62. Lady Constellation

63. Stolen Alchemist Trauma Center / Power Center

64. Fuck the hegemony

65. Lost thoughts

66. Interrupted promise

67. Is this transformation?

68. I love you

69. Imaginary morning class in gyration

70. Chopping an apple obsessively microphoned, explaining my life

71. SEX

72. Queens will pay

73. 'Trash Queen'

74. 'You ran away from the Queen'

75. Mother India

76. Rose coloured plastic

77. Benezir – daughter of the east

78. Bandit Queen

79. I ran away from nothing

80. Smash rape culture

Epic hidden tracks by Dj Luna feat Red (without bias on animals/monkeys)

81. Take my art seriously

82. Maam, your voice is slow, soft and sweet and your handwriting is beautiful

83. Showing my best/worst moves/thoughts to the mountains

84. So much joy in the cold

85. 999 written on the cliff face

86. Face to face

87. Too charming

88. Posing with a cactus and toilet rolls for a portrait

89. Lost and found

90. A dream is a poem

91. Reinacting the first time I saw the band Fundamental performing in balaclavas at Western Springs Park

92. Electrified

93. Electricity cut / creates intimacy

94. Dream in german means Traum as in trauma

95. Seminal moments on your timeline

96. Fuck healing

97. Fire, sparks

98. Can i laugh now?

99. Has anyone here done prostrations?

100. Pain and poverty / starving children

101. Dalmations (couldnt help it)

102. Capitalism

103. When can i laugh?

104. Wiping off dirt

105. Throwing a toilet roll into the forest in an open improv felt liberating

106. Power, chaos. Creation.

107. What is beyond Community?

108. Destruction

109. The body, something to do with the body

110. And something else I forgot

111. Bodies of water and text e/merging

112. We are all products of Colonization

113. Is talk cheap?

114. Let silence weep

115. Waiting for a tiger

116. So many stray dogs

117. Do something that fails / to remember

118. Alive to RAGE

119. Crying in my dreams

120. Monkey tears (ok only monkey reference in these hidden tracks)

121. No fear

122. 'I only fear heartbreak'

123. Let your heart break until it opens (Stolen from Rumi the sufi – poet)

124: I never intended to get into the Ganges, but it happened and it changed my life

Response to Kali: Kali's Response

I wrote this to artist Hélène Lefebvre who attended the residency I curated in India on New Year's Day arriving back from India to Berlin who had written me the nicest email as an inspiring artist:

My experience of FORMLESSNESS / NOTHINGNESS albeit SURRENDER / LETTING GO / of KNOWLEDGE / UNDERSTANDING and therefore embracing ILLUMINATION / POTENTIAL in my 2 performance experiences (NAKED/BLACK) in the beginning of the residency on the roof and also toward the end on the Ganges River in Rishikesh, as illuminated by some of these words about KALI. And beyond this. Not at all created from this text, or from Kali, but this text very much contextualises these experiences of meditating/musing on both (nudity/black) for me in India during these performances. Just deepening into things I perceive already. Perhaps a renewal on how WE in the WEST can perceive both NUDITY and BLACK as a colour / conceptually / spiritually. 

I read this link only upon arriving back into Berlin on New Year's Eve as I was not in any way working from this in India but found it coincidental:

"Kali's nudity has a similar meaning. In many instances she is described as garbed in space or sky clad. In her absolute, primordial nakedness she is free from all covering of illusion. She is Nature (Prakriti in Sanskrit), stripped of 'clothes'. It symbolizes that she is completely beyond name and form, completely beyond the effects of maya (illusion). Her nudity is said to represent totally illumined consciousness, unaffected by maya. Kali is the bright fire of truth, which cannot be hidden by the clothes of ignorance. Such truth simply burns them away."

"The Goddess Kali is represented as black in color. Black in the ancient Hindu language of Sanskrit is kaala. The feminine form is kali. So she is Kali, the black one. Black is a symbol of The Infinite and the seed stage of all colors. The Goddess Kali remains in a state of inconceivable darkness that transcends words and mind. Within her blackness is the dazzling brilliance of illumination. Kali's blackness symbolizes her all-embracing, comprehensive nature, because black is the color in which all the colors merge; black absorbs and dissolves them.""Just as all colours disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her"

-- Mahanirvana Tantra

Disabled Theatre by Jerome Bel: A Critique for PhD & Post-Graduate Applications

Having read about Jerome Bel's live performance work for over 10 years mainly in the critical performance writing of Andre Lepecki, I fnally got to witness live a piece of this famous contemporary dance choreographer of our epoch at Hau Theater 1 in Berlin in 2013, called Disabled Theater. To be honest I was quite skeptical about Bel's work because I am not particularly interested in minimalism especially in live performance and dance, but this was one of the most compelling live performances I have seen at this high level of performance.

What I found most compelling was not only the work presented, but the activation it created within the audience because provocative work touching socio-politically taboo subjects was masterfully broached. What was most afecting however about Bel's work Disabled Theater was not only how starkly it presented the performers within their innate qualities as 'disabled theater' i.e bodies, theatricality, subjectivity, the theatre of life and identity, but how as a such a politically correct or non-correct subject such as the subjectivity and expression of mentally disabled people, the work maintained a subtlety and activated complex feelings in the audience as a mirror to society's conceits.

It stands out for me in recent years in performance at this level, because it achieved what minimalist work at its best cl/aims to achieve, which is that within its simplicity much like a haiku poem, it eluded to and activated so much complexity in both representation and the experiences of both performers and audience alike.

Simply what it did, as a description, was introduce 13 intellectually disabled performers all sitting in a semi circle of chairs facing the audience sequentially, in a series of simple introductions. Firstly each performer one by one stood in the centre and introduced their name and told us that 'the director Jerome Bel has asked me to stand for a minute' and stood for how long a minute was to them, which varied very much in length (1-10 mins), then in order each told us what disability they have, then in order what they do as a profession, all of whom said 'schauspieler/in' (actor/ess) each time saying 'the director Jerome Bel asked us to...'. 

Then 10 out of 13 were asked to perform a dance to music of their choice, which they did. 1 of the 3 who did not dance had a written speech, which he read about how his family are embarrassed about the performance, that they seem exploited, but that he feels good about it, and that he was angry with the director that he was not asked to make a dance. It ended with the 3 who had originally been excluded from presenting a dance also performing their own dance, to music of their choice.

Whether one 'likes' this work or not, because it is clearly aiming at provocation, and being very transparent about questions of exploitation in regard to the spectacle of disabled expression, the work for me so powerfully activated a large range of complex responses within audience members one only have admire the bravery of this work as one might also in theme with Lar Von Trier's flm The Idiots, which remains my favourite of his flms.

The history for the disabled is outlined in many theoretical texts, such as Foucault's Madness and Civilisation and we often see the disabled as a marker for what society wants to hide, reveal, protect, or delete throughout history, such as

when the Nazis eradicated the disabled as one of society's impurities. The fascism of that action is much clearer, to decide whether a socio-political group is worthy of existence by its use, but less clear is society's complex relationship to disability in contemporary society.

In putting Disabled Theater on show literally as 'theater' in a very self refexive title, the work refers to 'side show' or 'freak show' platforms from 100 years ago, and also the 'child-like' introductions and 'dances' we see in school performances, but more pertinently in the sense of daily life being treated as spectacle or child or marginalised within flm roles.

What is most powerful about the work is its self-refexive manner of inviting questions of subjectivity and who makes decisions for intellectually disabled people. Equally powerful is the refection or question of who has more of problem with them, the disabled theater performers or the audience? In the awkward and complex synergy created between audience and performers, each introduction by the performers invite both an awe and a questioning, not just of the director or society, but of ones own response, one's own spectalisation or romanticism of the disabled.

This is what distinguishes between the power of flm and the power of live performance in my view and why this work in its immediacy and embodiment of real subjectivities spoke more directly to audiences than the similarly conceptual frame of Lar Von Trier's work, which audiences were equally divided by. 'They are so free and child-like', 'so authentic, and we are not' are some comments I overheard. The fact that one of the performers mentioned that his family cried

and felt embarrassed and that he was exploited, was a powerful moment (not to mention one of respect between director and performer), similar to the ending of The Idiots, in which the realness of the seemingly most timid character, taking her 'inner idiot' home to her family unlike any other character, revealed so much courage and realness. This is not just theatre, but something extending into the fabric of people's lives and indeed society.

Work which goes to the heart of personal and political is for me incredibly compelling, where it is very difcult to remove oneself from the implications of the provocations in question. I aspire to make such work, and many times I do, but mostly through audience activity can it be easily accessed. Conceptually and philosophically the work appealed to me and went beyond the personal and political, or perhaps included all of the above in mirroring existential questions.

A Poem: Poetic response to New York (First time)

A Poem

Love letters to my love
Fast forward to Berlin—
No, to New York. I present my series of nose bleeds, crushed up used condoms with
eaten eggshells and underwear stuck to ATM machines in Berlin with a note and pen to leave a note, to whom I don't know, to a tired and bemused group of students and tutors, claiming it to be part of my expression of the sacred in daily life for the average female body in relation to money—attempting to bypass or transgress/transmute the clichéd relationship between—no big deal—how do they relate? Transaction, sharing, exchange, protection, just let the body bleed. Why stop the flow?
RE-late.
These ships are late. These relations are strained. I hear their brains straining.
It’s a body brain drain.
As they place money on my meditating naked body as an invite 'to open your hearts,
open your wallets and...' flock around me. 'Make a wish', I say to someone and then grab her hand like a beggar.
Rewind
to a gravel road. In New Zealand. Surreal expansive dusty rocky -scape. He put his hand over my mouth and screamed my name. He put dust in my hair and called me his baby, said I was wild, he was crazy for me, would I marry him?
Everyone likes a good story.
What's the true story?
The first time I made love I got carpet burns. You can use your imagination there—be
as heteronormative or not about it.
The big reveal is out. There are no secrets left to shout.

Listen to the big silence, the wise crone told me.

‘There's a woman trying to talk to you’, he said. ‘Should I listen to her?’ I asked. He shrugged.
Rewind.
Then I got a bloody nose from being smashed in the face by a rugby ball, and my brother deliberately ground me into the dirt to make me bleed. It was one time I really got really hurt—I liked playing sport with my family.
Fast forward.
‘Perhaps it’s too personal’, said one tutor. ‘Have you thought of taking yourself out of the picture and working with other people's bodies?’
Good point, Mr. Mister.
Mist.
Missed
the point.
Fast forward.
I miss my baby, when they ripped her from my arms. Don't say it’s useless, don't say
forget it, don't send me roses on your behalf. Love is mean, love hurts. I will love you til the end of time, I would wait a million years.
Not my words.
Rewind.
I was the only one who wouldn't sleep with someone else's boyfriend, so I didn't have
sex for a good five years. Present > gift.
Oh, this is WAY too personal.
Give me more pornography. The world needs more fake sex, more fake boobs, more

lies, more cancer, more plastic bags, more non-committal dismissive encounters. When the goat finally rode into the foyer it was like an epiphany for all. Rewind/made up.
I asked a Maori carving in a marae what I was and the answer was 'delivered'. Fast forward.
A visa appointment set, health insurance, a date with the KSK woman. A whole new world, a dance—is/it charades? I'm OK as long as it’s smooth...not Kafkaesque. Not KGB. Like before.
I hold out my hands for inspection.
I hold out.
Dreamt of both my deceased grandmothers in one dream and had a dream within a
dream, recalling the dream to a stranger. One said, 'French is important.' But then Paris was her favourite city.
Then he writes to me, ‘Je t'embrasse.’
Several performances in the past weeks, some of which I found tiresome but some very interesting moments—some brilliant moments, actually—squeezed through a keyhole. Yes, I am in the right place, a morphing of performance memories fading or collapsing together now into snow dust, fast, which will only evaporate before my eyes, fast. Oh, and these tiny little snowflakes on my clothing. I have never really noticed them before, but they are so perfect. A new friend, very sensitive, pointed them out. Allowing the moment to pass, we capture nothing. When we have the illusion of it, bliss. Always excellence from the street, too much, I have to close my eyes. I am inspired—life touches me, I am so grateful for my life. Even the ugliness inspires me. Fertile decay. Berlin is paradise, compared.
I hold out my hand.
I am an ambassador, I got told last week, for my country. Hahahahahaha.

Then there's your flood. What the hell? I want to know all about it!!! New York is really getting it too; I recall a whale washed up on the shore when I arrived after the hurricane... nature spewing up onto the dystopic metropolis. On the climate change front in New Zealand a famous filmmaker was swimming off the shore of a wild but popular west coast Auckland beach last week and got bitten by a shark, then when trying to alert someone, completely eaten by five in front of everyone. No one ever gets attacked by sharks in New Zealand, ever. I have in the past five or so years intuitively felt sharks very close in the water and got out, saw one jump in a very safe beach... and saw aerial shots to confirm my suspicion. They are coming closer!
Inside my hungry brain, there is so much space for new learning and experience, growing pains, growing hurts. Something will deliver—I feel like I am a mad woman, nattering to myself, birthing my own letters—see how insular? I am from New Zealand.
I say to him: Life is performative and poetic, in generalisation and detail... things are in motion. Life is life—lived. Shared. Known, unknown. Lost, found, dropped, held, cared for. Remembered, connected, fragmented. Allowed. Created. Believed. Questioned. Felt, heard. loved. Vulnerable. Alive. Precious.
Truth is only for us to know. It slips from sight, it’s OK. We breathe. We move. We touch.
liebe .x ale.x.a.wxyz. liebe zurück
He was swimming in the Mediterranean and suddenly saw these dark spots rising from beneath and yelled to his friends to SWIM. Deadly jellyfish were coming to the surface; only one of his friends was stung and had to go to hospital.
Rewind.
What are these scars on your wrists? I asked her. My boyfriend cut my hands off, with swords. She was the woman who saved her friend by protecting her with her arms and managed somehow to put her hands back onto the bones of her wrists before the

ambulance arrived. That is amazing. THAT is amazing.
Present/Past/Future/In the line of the sun, which looks like the path to GOD on the
water, one day I saw a question. This depression-soaked culture, repressed English hangover, could not crush the mystery I felt so deeply in my bones.
I was told by a healer once that I am an untameable horse with untrammeled creativity, indomitable; as much as people will, do and have tried to stop me.

"Theory is Practice" Suck my Üfoe: An Album from Berlin (unedited)

Alexa Wilson (B.I.T.C.H- aka Babe in Total Control of Herself)'s Triple LP- World Reunited- Triptych Trilogy Analogy (Plus epic hidden tracks)

Proposed Songs Frm Berlin '10- flowing from the river and love of truth

Feel free to put beats or lyrics to any of these songs anyone...

List of Tracks ('Life is performative')

A Side: 1

1.Meet you at Hermannplatz

2.Is this a dance Performance now?

3.In the shadow of Australia

4.I want crutches on the ubahn too

5.NZ- such a nice place to visit

6.What make you here?

7.Anymore Questions?

8.Ich Liebe Dich, Ich Liebe Dich auch Nicht

9. Its a crisis (within a crisis within)

10. Ghosts in your eyes

11. Don't lie, its just the drugs or alcohol talking

12. How many times do we have to go through or over this?

13. I have no limbs eyes

14. Don't beg off me, I know you're on welfare

15. Forced tips

16. I am not a tourist- I have no job either

17. Why should i tip you? you're rude and forgot my order

18. Zurück Bleiben Bitte

19. This train is going to terminate there!

20. Don't trip on the cobbles now

21. What's my name?

22. What day is it?

Hidden tracks A side 1

23. Let's all roll our eyes together now Europa

24. Hast du Lust? Kommst du mit?

25. Serial Killer lust stare

26. Foot massage in the park in vienna

27. In bed with tv

28. Dig up your heart and let's celebrate!

29. Second hand family photos

30. Don't mention the wall

31. You think i'm hot but you don't know me

32. You wouldn't like me when i'm angry :) (or maybe you would)

B Side 1

33. I sense much anger in you

34. You should know better you meditate

35. Bad dates/ judgment day

36. Chill out Frau Wilson

37. You aren't from the EU are you?

38. Not from round here are you?

39. Come here often to stand in the snow?

40. If you're from Italy or spain maybe, but Russia definitely not!

41. Text break up tips

42. Internet make ups x10

43. Another positions please

44. Eat life Peas

45. You must miss the ocean

46. Minimal techno is my lunch

47. Sticking plasters are falling off my nude wounds

48. You could make it – miracles do happen!

49. Man in white coming for me (yes he's a doctor)

50. Lady with the bloodshot eyes behind me

51. No i'm not a student, I wish

52. Just say yes or fuck off

53. I am sorry I am a jerk

54. Who's your community? Who?

55. Oh life

56. Can i wait in a queue for 3 more hours?

57. Sex, sex and more sexy sex

58. Open heart surgery

59. Crows circling in my eyes out the window

60. Soften the anus i mean the arms- freudian slip

61. I love my body do you love yours?

62. Whose more nude than you?

63. Whose more nude than who?

64. I like you but I feel sick

65. Never never land Berlin 10

66. Go home foreigners, stop genetrifying our city

Hidden tracks B side 1

67. 'Everyone wants to be an artist in Berlin'

68. Don't plant sacred plants in the gay cruising spot

69. I've taken everything

70. Drug dealers, frisbee and badminton in the park on sunday

71. African boys running from the cops past me meditating

72. Don't take my photo bitch

73. Girl with the lazy eyes

74. Balloon kids

A side 2

75. Call MY name, i've been waiting hours now!

76. Luck dragon's in my bed

77. Paying to use nature

78. I love your style especially your calm brown pants

79. Back home all the girls loved me

80. Want to take a trip to the lake with me and my dog on the full moon

81. Pash with no name

82. Butterflies

83. Slipping on dirty ice: still no crutches

84. Google english translator

85. Berlin ist verrückt !

86. Fahrschein 'ticket' please

87. Dance for us, actually no don't

88. Dances with axes and ladders

89. Was ist your point?

90. It must be so hard for you

91. Uncontrollable giggling, uncontrollably laughing at other people

92. Shadenfreude

93. I don't understand (anything)

94. So was machst du heute?

95. Tiger and half a butterfly

96. Poisoned by facepainting when you're trying to make a buck

97. Paint my picture (and get it right)

98. Sick and nude

99. Telling it like it is

100. Invalid city

101. City of opportunity and none

102. That's just governments

103. Millionaire Prime Minister

104. Steal my heart and my ideas- don't worry i am a 'source' person

105. Cheers to politics and art and a meeting of minds

106. Here today gone tomorrow: I wish i'd done Landmark forum

107. Are you in the schlange? (snake/queue)

108. Better watch your boyfriend bro

Hidden tracks B side 2

109. What's the score?

110. Raining on my foxes

111. The trees tell me i'm a liar

112. The trees are telling me you're a dickhead

113. Eyes are looking your way

114. I'm feeling sexy and creative

115. Maybe you should lower your standards

A side 3

116. Brainstorm like its an electric storm

117. Caught in the pouring rain (again)

118. Let's get nude and sing songs round the fire- no seriously

119. Extreme noise employed

120. All orifices are sensitive

121. Psychedelic fool

122. More rash cream yeah

123. Don't crush my dreams like a paper cup

124. Nuclear wedding

125. I'm not depressed i'm thoughtful

126. No more photos please!

127. Do you want my bottle? No i should keep it

128. Why are we not more evolved than this?

129. 2 kinds of Frau behind the desk

130. Hey Mickey... (wave from behind the karaoke mic)!

131. Keep your spirits up- like reflux

132. Oh shit I thought you were someone (else)

133. The street is my theatre

134. The trees are alive

135. Public Private thoughts divide

136. Don't take sides, it'll make you rich neutral

137. The war's not over, peace is near by though

138. Doves in my dreams only (in 'only the lonely' style)

139. Figure 8 of animal and human body parts dream

140. Stop the laughter, its hurting

141. Hot guy asleep at the doctor

142. When is it my turn?

143. Humility is humiliating

144. We are so affected by the weather eh?

145. We are all in this together, how's the cold?

146. Putting your head through this wall, put a helmet on

147. The pillow talks to me

148. No pain no game naturally

149. Superstadt (super city)

150. Heart tattoo on the forehead (just in the very corner)

Hidden Tracks A side 3

151. Man picking your nose i love you

152. Zug nach Hermannstrasse (Not)

153. Chased by BVG

154. They can't touch you

155. I wish they would touch me

156. Revolution inside this recession

157. Irony taken to the next level must be like heaven

B side 3

158. Over the handlebars again a bit like like over the rainbow

159. No sympathy is good for me

160. Blind date- syphilis is that you?

161. Caught in the train doors once more

162. Have you slipped into a coma yet?

163. Flags in my eyes its nationalism rising

164. They love helium balloons here

165. Staring at that space, brother you're fine

166. Yes no maybe happy romance

167. Schlecker in my lecker on the ecke

168. Oh my god oh my god

169. There's colours on my face

170. Ghost in your machine- wow you're NOT a lesbian?

171. Where can i find you?

172. Um, hallo. Click

173. Mental note

174. Falling over my face again, loving you

175. Have confidence in your courage

176. love is wicked!

177. Be the effect and the cause will follow

178. Life is a garden, rose and thorn are one

179. Love is courage

180. You evil bitch you are an evil ugly person

181. Only too much is good enough

182. Be realistic-plan for a miracle

183. Untitled

184. Untitled 2

185. Trust

186. How about giving my camera back?

187. Live, Love and Laugh

188. I love myself, hope you do too

Hidden Tracks B side 3

189. Sorry if sometimes i say wack shit

190. All apologies (cover of Nirvana)

191. No apologies

192. Take responsibility for your own shit

193. I bleed (a cover of Pixies)

194. Gold (not a cover of Pixies)

195. Priceless (Ballad)

196. Afterlife (not a cover of Tricky)

197. Hell's bells (Haiku)

198. We love smoke machines and poetry rising

199. 'Fuck you' 5 times a day helps clear the throat (quote zen osho)

200. I heart dance and music forever- its my fire... 

201. Love each other

A Rainbow Warrior: Inside a performance

LOVE ME

So and so everyone. An utterance, a gesture. She's taken the mic after having crawled to it, having fallen through Perspex; she's painted her body with a bright, 70s- looking rainbow; her face is half-painted black like a warrior. Rainbow warrior. With half her face painted black the reference is open. She's rotated to each side of the room like a ballet figurine in a jewellery box behind Perspex held up by two friends acting as bodyguards, completing a slow-motion Tai Chi routine to each wall—side of the box—like a preserved colonised-colonising, hyper-sexualised relic behind a museum case. Two other friends in wetsuits toss objects at the Perspex: a helmet, bandages, plastic, jeans, a book on dreams, another called Being Pakeha; nothing is extraneous. Wetsuits? Why?
Rainbow warrior.
When a New Zealand Greenpeace boat was bombed by French spies in the mid- 1980s during an anti-nuclear testing protest, someone was killed.
History.
Love me.
I remember seeing the Rainbow Warrior moored half-sunk for years beside the draw-
bridge down by the Central Auckland Viaduct Harbour—now where multi-million-dollar apartments and a boat city reside—as my mother drove me to swimming lessons at the Tepid Baths. I couldn't work out as a 10-year-old why my parents' friend, my best ballet friend's father, was the lawyer for the two French spies often referred to in New Zealand as terrorists at that time. Why is he defending them? I would ask. 'Someone has to', was the reply. 'He is the top of the top, and they don't stand a chance'. New Zealand is still ostracised by the United States in particular for its anti-nuclear stance, but as a 10 year old

child I was proud of my country. Love Me.
So they climbed in wetsuits beneath the boat and planted a bomb. And their punishment was? Exiled on an island. No prison.
We are already exiled on an island.
And so there she is, naked rainbow warrior/dance terrorist. The body paint only covers the front, so when her backside is revealed she is white with red hair, like so many classical paintings the nude, auburn-haired muse with alabaster skin. The two friends in wetsuits they climb through and massage her body, feed her bananas, and dress her in red lacy underpants, a silver skirt, a gold sequin top bought for cheap from the Turkish markets in Berlin last year, and a khaki green military shoulder pack; all the while she completes her Tai Chi configuration to the sound of aeroplanes taking off and landing and sporadic sci-fi screeches. She is unscathed and the eye of the storm. Pedestal, ambiguous, protected? Preserved? Pampered? Revered? Hated? Is this serious or do I laugh—it’s ridiculous, right? There's spaghetti stuck to the bottom of my feet from a piece earlier in the show.
Rainbow Warrior. I have a vivid memory of how sad it was to see the Greenpeace boat half-sunk, this green boat with a white dove holding an olive branch in its beak on the stern. Little rainbow, too.
She and I fall on our face through the barrier. The small piece of Perspex left after it had accidentally snapped inches from her face on opening night without a single performer flinching. What's up with the sad vibe? Why are people so serious about nudity? I have a rainbow painted on me!
Snap. She asks the lighting technician to put on the red light and points to it at the back and gestures for the music to be turned up as well as the mic. She has total control and has broken the illusion of a performance. Or has she? No one really knows whether

this is part of the performance or an accident, not even the technician. For her it’s a win- win.
‘So, everyone’, she says.
Garble, garble, garble. Words, nothing, nothing, something, blah, blah through the mic. Looking into eyes who say to her: 'um'. The eyes read: 'are you taking the piss out of us?' or 'it’s a bit scary for this naked woman to be staring into our eyes and talking nonsensically into a mic; what are you up to, exactly?' This is the most fun, right here, this moment.
Then as the mic goes down the dubstep goes up—loud. I, she, the beast does a backwards roll into screaming and dancing. Urban nightmare, dubstep, primal rhythm, dark, grounding and powerful, club night out? Yep, I dance like this out, too, and people also freak—minus the screaming. Give me space, people.
In the studio, this section was always transformative for me because the moment you start moving your precious body around and dancing to rhythmic music and voicing a range of guttural sounds that come out of months of explorations—'what is this thing?'— basically finding and moving through a variety of emotional states and images through the history of humanity (sometimes accompanied with movements to match), you actually go into a trance. It’s impossible not to... and, woah, where did the hours go, and what is THIS?
How it reads is actually pretty insignificant, really. This was always going to be the case because in every rehearsal what comes out is unique to that moment— which is nothing new, but what it even is is always a big question mark.
Yes, the point is that love is inexpressible in words and that it has all the shades of the rainbow and more. It is not easy or simple; it is dense and complex, and it can be ugly and painful as well as light and fun and sexy and gorgeous and absolutely uncontrollable.... Love is wild. It is gentle inside the play. Who dares come near it? What

do we even know of it, really? Power and vulnerability exposed, nothing left to hide. Shattering even in the grace. Most powerful moment. And some people can't stand this, I know. That's totally fine, and I include that. I acknowledge that.
When you really push an art form, you lose people and you really gain people. It’s a balance. Some people get heaps of pingers. I get to experiment.
Yep yep yep—I had to use words to explain myself here, which is the opposite of the point. But, hey. It’s just more explorations... right? Can I 'get it right'?
I've been asked to produce a short work (15 minutes, though I snuck up to 16, of course, being maximalist) for a live series for a sponsored 'producing project' for new and emerging producers to explore ways to produce. So as an experimental choreographer (self-producer) with ten years of experience who had returned to New Zealand from Berlin not so long ago and whose work, despite winning multiple awards, etc, tends to fall outside the arts administration funding comfort zone, I had an idea: I wanted to make it without producing it myself. Here I am in the ‘Love Me’ show for the live series—it was the final after ‘Taste Me and ‘Hear Me’. Keeping up the practice and deepening investigations, still part of an upcoming community. A strategic move for my career? Lol. Lol. You decide.
I don't know what other people's experiences or understandings of love ARE, but mine is not limited to romantic or sexual love. This work is about humanity for me; it’s about consciousness and awareness. It’s about where are we going, humans? What have we come from? Do we even know what love is or how to handle it? Naturally, I am generalising humanity, which is instantly flawed and ridiculous, but actually I am interested in speaking across bridges. Naturally. Attempts, offerings, actually. Call it naïve or bold. Arrogant—you name it.
'Love Me' although I am a fucking messy, crazed, power-mongering, foolish, suicidal, terrifying, whimpering, controlling, ridiculous, FRIGGIN’ HILARIOUS (like who are we fooling here?), actually pretty lovable and entertaining being, inherently capable of power

without power over. Powerfool>Powerful.
Hang on, Elephant in the Room. Who’s looking? Not me.
If you can't love without taking it all into account, your love is shallow. It’s not love if it’s ownerSHIP, relationSHIP, motherSHIP, friendSHIP.
I am crossing the divide, I am wanting a genuine exchange here, which is uncomfortable, between audience and performer. I am not dictating what you should feel or think. This is totally up for discussion.
Okay. So I pretend to have sex, and I stumble around looking fully traumatised (which I guess I largely am in this oversaturated, pretty insensitive, and competitive world in which I tend to give a lot and earn very little money, which this world says is a priority while selling fabricated notions of what love is to us as consumers). I pretend to give birth after having sex, my function as a woman warrior, and everyone is laughing at me. The trauma is obviously funny. It’s 'over the top'. But is it really?
It's actually quite natural. A lot of the work I make is natural but gets positioned as somehow radical. This shows how far removed from the natural world—including our own bodies and their processes—we are.
How inaccurate is this over-the-topness for daily living in even the most boring places on this planet? HOW ARE YOU FEELING AT THIS POINT IN HISTORY? Fear is sold to us and we pay for it. Drama is our programming and our entertainment. How we brush our teeth is rainbow-coloured violation.
Don't people want to scream and laugh and woop and shout and roll around like a freak and bark and fold in uncanny ways and shake and cry and vomit and wretch and curl and twirl and laugh again and celebrate being alive? With humour and no shame. Without holding back and being small so as not to upset others or some prescribed psychic social power balance?

Blah, she says with respect and love. This is Freud's unconscious naturally, pushing aside what we 'repress' and unconsciously 'desire' to be functional in the symbolic adult world, etc. A language we speak to find power.
A friend says afterwards that they feel the whole space transform when the voice starts up. It cuts through the imaginary space of fourth-wall dancers; they 'don't yell'! They don't generally even speak. Nice, objectified fetish bodies for eyes to enjoy.
But, hey, the voice is part of the body; the body is part of the mind; and the body is heart and soul and thoughts and feelings and the barrier and interface between inside and outside—communication.
The work is about communication. Lacan. Mr Psychoanalysis Pants. She pants. Give me a French kiss. It’s the pre-symbolic stage.
I hate psychoanalysis. It’s fully sexist. And so useful. Thanks, Lacan. Mark says afterwards in the panel discussion that Lacan says that we can never really love, that we only project our desire onto the other. Interesting. Very unholistic academic theory, but yep, that's in there, too, coz this is the way the Western world is largely indoctrinated to think.
So, yay, writhing around radical feminist again, crazy friggin’ incarnated nutface goddess from wherever, unapologetic paganistic ritualistic release in your face. 2011 galatos love me. Live series. Auckland. Last two days of August. Rugby World Cup just ‘round the corner.
Yup. 'Going off'.
'Who’s with me?'
Inexpressible... I jump on the stage in red lighting. Maybe gonna do something
different? Nope, same shiz; now she's framed on the stage doing a guttural and kinda mocking dance about our control of the body and women and all that, our voice can't be heard and all that, language is more of a barrier than Perspex, the false divide to being

understood and loved. Can love in all its shades transcend words? Can it, Lacan?
Am I sexy? Am I desirable?
Irigaray would say yes. Our lips speak as one. (Vaginal references, French feminist philosophy here.)
I search the audience. They look a bit more invigorated than last time I looked at them. Curious. They, I. Entertained rather than traumatised by objects that could bounce off the Perspex and hit them.
I choose the right guy, someone I know will be up for it. An actor friend or dancer, someone I collaborate with, can work with. I had planned people I might choose. Yes, it’s a man. It has to be. (I'm not a lesbian, right?)
I sit in his lap; he's sweet with it. Looks slightly startled; both of them say both nights, 'How are you going?' and I say, 'Oh, fine'. Reminds me of when I'm living in Berlin and to pleasantries like, 'How are you?' they all say, bemusedly, 'I'm fine.’ Who cares? It’s so English.
Big smile.
No one can hear; it’s just between me and them and the one next to them, both nights a woman. 'You up for some yelling?' I say, having tested this out in rehearsal. I'd done some more gibberish at them, and it hadn't worked to get them up, but still interested. What is communicating so body language can work alone?
Second night I grab the guy's hand and dragged him onto the stage and started yelling, so he followed suit; he screams through the mic and pulls up my skirt and yells into the mic, 'Damn you!' More cheering from the crowd, especially the break-dancer boy crew sitting up 'front' (there's no front in this dance; I face the back a lot), who were shaking their heads at him at first and laughing at me naked.
Anyway, moving on. Token audience participation moment after having already done

a full solo work exploring audience interaction earlier in the year. I grab the mic back ask for someone to sing me a song and then just sing one myself out of time over dubstep. Leonard Cohen’s ‘I'm your man’. I yell, 'Where's my man?' afterwards.
I turn away and sing, 'Ain't no sunshine', which trails into (and I turnaround) 'Turnaround... every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you're never coming ‘round...' So now those who really didn't know what I was up to, who sat with their arms folded
and asked each other if this was still the same piece ('The lights go out when its over', said one) can finally relax into laughter because they know: okay, she's joking. We get it now.
But am I?
Sitting hunched on the floor I whisper, 'And I need you now tonight. And I need you more than ever. If you only hold me tight, we'll be holding on forever...'
The track cuts out.
'And we'll only be making it right’.... Audience laughter. Is it funny? I feel real serious. I stand and smile. The music shifts to soft, loving New Age-sounding music... stolen. 'Now I'd like to invite my friends to translate for me into Japanese and German', I say,
arms up. So enter two of my gorgeous and ridiculously dressed (‘80s) friends/performers, who take the mic and huddle to translate what I’m saying. I walk to and crawl onto the stage under a spotlight.
Very earnest moment. But also not something ever done in New Zealand culture, except perhaps on a Marae or in a therapy group; we do not like to express emotions publicly, except in movies.
I explain a list of ways 'I feel' translated into Japanese and German over music. 'I feel:
My body
is all I have.
I feel

expectations and
eyes looking at me.
I can feel
my brain in my skull.
I can feel the words vibrating in my throat as they come out.’ (I touch my body in
these places.)
‘I can feel my heart beating behind my boob.’ (No laughter—damn, failed joke. Or did
they not hear me?)
‘I can feel the light blasting down on me, the darkness.’ (gesturing with hands) I climb off the stage and walk forward.
‘I feel
hungry.’ (giggles)
‘I feel like chicken tonight.’ (laughter, always, KFC ad)
‘The roof protecting us from the weather.’ (They think I'm serious at this point—
maybe.)
‘I feel understanding’ (eyeballing and gesturing one side of the room, very serious) ‘and misunderstanding.’ (same, other side, super serious)
‘I feel connection
and I feel
disconnection.’ (Are they taking it personally?)
I feel
the love. (Is she sarcastic?)
‘I feel
fear,
and I can feel sadness.’
Yes, I'm being serious.

I turn to face the back and scream, 'I can feel the laughter!' and turn back to give the audience a big cheesy grin. Usually laughter.
Scream again, 'I can feel the earth MOVE!' Laughter. I can feel the change!
I climb back onto the stage.
I can feel (turn so people can hear) the suspension!
I pause with one arm forward and one arm behind like I’m suspended in a desert storm holding the pose for as long as I feel a New Zealand audience will wait. In Berlin a whole dance of this would be fine, but ten seconds is too long here—good—so I turn very slowly, and, oh, there's laughter—they get 'suspension' followed by a stillness too long and not facing them. Suspense. Second night, I hold it way too long.
I want the piece to hit them in this moment, to 'sink in', allowing the power of chaos, followed by silence and stillness. Slowly turning energy transferred from one hand to the other, I pause exactly the same way but facing them. I then slowly wave and say, 'ciao', which means hello and goodbye in Italian. Why is the body language as awkward as verbal language? Back to controlled and slowed—is she joking or serious? Backing out into the darkness. The translators, who have at moments moved closer to hear, are both watching as I pull my hand (also a gesture referencing the end of the Tai Chi routine) up like, ‘HI! BYE!’ I walk down the stairs at the back of the stage into the dark. Transcendence/descendence. I've done enough.
Translators are left staring at an empty stage.
Finale. Applause. Reappear for group bow. End of show.
And what's all that about?
Who can say?
How many languages does it take to be heard? And if you’re heard, are you even
understood? Even if you intend one thing, the interpreter can take it another way.

Why use two strong, gorgeous female friends to translate into the languages of the two WWII aggressors?
All a coincidence, perhaps?
Why not into French? Beyond the French spies, France and England fought to colonise New Zealand.
I introduce French with a third performer in the next incarnation of the work, held outside in a local bar with local central city drinkers.
English.
'Universal language', or so I was told living in Europe. Transcending difference. So I'm told.
Where do I come from? Who am I? Where am I going?
White girl born in Aotearoa. I belong here. Mostly Irish by blood; English colonised me, too.
I make ART. Real art that discomforts and uproots and questions and teases, and at moments pleases, just enough. 'Honesty in New Zealand is a no-no', says a journalist in an interview.
It creates SPACE. I am not pandering and am told I 'don't compromise'. That I 'don't play the game'. But I do.
I am told there is space inside this work and yet is it very dense with possibility. Afterward it seems to appeal to academics and general public alike, and no one can articulate why—brilliant.
The panel fumbles to speak about it. How do we talk about something inexpressible in words? Elephant in the Room is fat and spinning.
What is real love? In our disconnection and misunderstanding we draw closer to what is slipping. We are drawn to know it, to find it. To sometimes control it? We cannot bind it or know it. We can never know ourselves, says Lacan.

We are speechless and blind to love. We let it sit wrecked on the harbour by a draw- bridge for children to see as a reminder of the passion of the heart for the love of it. Our ocean. Our world, our people. We defend what? We devolve and when we evolve we are told we are mad and the growing pains meet resistance. When we try to cross the bridge. To speak hurts unspeakable, to heal past wrongs. In cultures, to empower ourselves to be truthful even if this gets us nowhere. It evolves our souls and affects those who cross our paths.
The unutterable slips through and we feel moved and we don't know why. The intention is heart.
Wake up. Rise up. From the deep.
Hallo. Goodbye. Hallo. We are slaves to a love we cannot handle.
The birthday suit is still a shockwave in the deep space, interpreted as deep sea. The
heart of our longing, a treasure chest spinning. Unearths and as much as we attempt to speak of it. Address it. It folds away and hides inside the next movement and sheds and births into something new. And when we face it and are there for it like the Rainbow Warrior, defending the very basics of it, there is an elephant in the room like the panel unable to speak directly about the work in an open discussion.
We bomb it and we criticise and wreck and sink it. We sing heartbroken songs in odes to our own loss of it. We project ourselves onto the openness of it, the liberation, the ambiguity. Are we still lovable?
Yes.
Come passion.
Express and search yourself, deep in the ocean of evolution.
Love me/you.
Rainbow Warrior. Arising in the collective consciousness, let it go. Honour it. Humanity on the brink of truly embracing itself in its entirety, no more hiding or denial

or power trips.
Peace and freedom fighter.
It is a dance, which is a speech without words.
And even in me uttering these lines, it is more because it is a feeling only those
rooms of people can share and know. The culture of that room on those evenings, what is 'mind blowing' to a friend's sociologist friend? I can never know. I don't know what he experienced, but thank you. They felt what I felt and I will never know what that is.
I can only feel what I feel. But I feel.
I can see reflections of myself all around: in the Perspex, in mammoth shadows of my naked body on the wall, in video projections of the live feed through the Perspex into the top corner of the room, in the eyes of the audience member I randomly see. They see themselves in me?
Someone afterwards says it’s funny, that they laughed all the way through. Someone else says it’s so heartfelt and beautiful. It’s more simple. No, it’s very dense—no one got it? Describing words. Someone cried. I see shock in their eyes. I am a 'dakini'—female Buddha, wild and fiery. I am deconstructing language and communication. It’s brilliant.
I feel exhausted, like I’ve been dying for a week. I don't even know what it is, this thing, that's the beauty.
How many people can say they blew someone's mind?
A slave to adrenaline, but the slave is the master.
No roles are fixed in this shifting world; get used to it, humans. Bananas.
'I can feel the change.’ However few are there, it’s into the ether.
The solo is never alone. It has friends and support and is not a solo. We deserve love and support, and all is exchange. All is an artifice yet it has some luscious,
unfathomable truth lurking.
I share to move further, toward and away. Ciao.