not yet it's difficult : performance events and cross-artform projects : melbourne australia
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Established in 1995 in Melbourne, Australia, not yet it's difficult (NYID) is a group of artists
who produce public performance events and cross-artform projects.
news
In 2007, NYID's founding members have been on the road.
Artistic Director David Pledger
Artistic Director David Pledger received a grant from IETM to attend the organisation's Plenary Meeting in Montreal in May. The company recently became a member of the organisation.
In October, at the invitation of the Australia Council he joined a delegation to the Performing Arts Market Seoul (PAMS) and the Korean IETM Satellite Meeting, held to coincide with PAMS. The delegation also visited the site of the Asia Culture Hub City in Kwangju and the Arum and Oulim Artsplexes in Ilsan, an hour out of Seoul. David represented the Australia Council at PAMS in 2005 and 2006.
In November, he was invited by the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to deliver two public lectures on How To Make Art In the 21st C and a workshop on writing for interdisciplinary performance and media art projects.
In December, David attended the first Directors' Meeting of a proposed internet-based project produced by the UK's artsadmin for Station House Opera. The Meeting was held in Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro in Brazil where it was hosted by the project's Brazilian Partner, Phila7.
Dramaturg Peter Eckersall
Peter Eckersall took a sabbatical from his position as Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Culture and Communications, University of Melbourne.
In the following he describes his activities as he comes to the end of his 2007 journey.
In August, I spoke at the Zurich Theatre Spectakel on the topic of 'Australia/not Australia: pathologies of hope in contemporary Australian performance.' In this presentation, i spoke about NYID and other companies working in the contemporary Australian performance scene and considered how these companies display prescient critiques of Australian culture and politics. I also wrote the catalogue essay for the Australian groups at the festival.
In September, I was based in Copenhagen where I held meetings with theatre artists including Trevor Davis from Copenhagen International Theatre (KIT) and Sanne Bjerg from PLEX Musikteater.
At the end of September, I spoke at a plenary session of the European Dramaturgy in C21 conference in Frankfurt, Germany, on the topic of intercultural and trans-cultural experiences of dramaturgy. Here, I discussed NYID's collaborative projects including the NYID-Gekidan Kaitaisha project and the Seoul Performing Arts Festival's Korean production of K as way of exploring dramaturgy as a form of negotiation and flow in creative processes. This was contrast with some of the more mainstream and systematic perspectives on dramaturgy in Europe, mainly associated with State theatre houses. A dramaturgy of collaboration, that is evident in these performances by NYID, became a key talking point at the conference.
In November, I presented a paper at the Performance Studies international conference at New York University titled 'Australia's Japanese avant-garde theatre: habitus and differentiated hybridity'. I had a wide-ranging discussion of the history and context of theatre exchange in Australia and Japan and I discussed NYID's recent production of 'apoliticaldance' as a case study is rethinking hybridity in contemporary performance.
Finally, in December, and in Tokyo, I gave three lectures focusing on contemporary Australian performance, cultural exchange and dramaturgy. I discussed NYID works extensively in these presentations and presented examples of works on DVD. The lectures were at Waseda University, Keio University and the University of Tokyo.
Peter Eckersall
20/12/2007
research, industry and education
research
Prior to the inception of not yet it's difficult as a company, a research group under the direction of David Pledger, operated out of the old Danceworks space at the Wesleyan Church in Albert Park, Melbourne. This group presented three training laboratories to invited audiences during two years' research.
This research philosophy has remained integral to the company's activities with research projects including NYID TV (1996), the company's investigation of the place of multimedia in live performance, The Desert Project (1998), the company's application of physical training practices in Central Australian landscapes and The Body Listening Project (2001), a development of the sensory potential of the body as a 'discriminating ear', a faculty for receiving, processing and responding to information transmitted by the body.
The company considers performance research to be an integral part of its dramaturgy.
NYID TV (1996)
The company's early performances were agit-prop, physical theatre/dance-theatre explorations. The desire to be responsive to contemporary culture led the company to train itself in the production of audio and visual techniques associated with television and film production. This project was an attempt to learn those techniques and discover how they might have a performative mode within the company's evolving dramaturgy.
The Desert Project (1998)
NYID's investigation into, and on, the body remain central to its identity as a performance-making group. Initially influenced by sports practices, the work of Meyerhold and the training methodology of Japanese theatre director Tadashi Suzuki, the company's methodology is profoundly linked to theoretical questions of landscape and Australian 'space'. In undertaking The Desert Project in the Central Australian deserts, the company wished to explore what concrete relationships there were between the training exercises and the environment which initially inspired their application to the company's dramaturgy.
21CK (2000)
In 2000, the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) approached not yet it's difficult to develop a project without any obligation to outcome. The MTC is one of Australia's largest state-based theatre companies specialising in the presentation of text-based dramas. The agreed text was Franz Kafka's The Trial and a 3-week development period ensued in which links between the novel, Steven Berkoff's theatrical adaptation and Orson Welles' film version were made to the agency of the body and voice in the performing space. Whilst the MTC did not pursue the project further, this development stage initiated the process by which not yet it's difficult began the process of making K which eventually was presented as a multimedia performance in Australia, Europe and Asia.
The Body Listening Project (2001, 2003)
The refinement of the physical and vocal training practices over ten years led the company to a specific area of research: the development of the sensory potential of the body as a 'discriminating ear', a faculty for receiving, processing and responding to information transmitted by the body. The Body Listening Projects enabled the application of exercises in a more scientific, hypothesis-driven research environment involving company members including spatial-acoustic expert, Lawrence Harvey.
Future Projects (2006-
The company's practice remains driven by research imperatives. Current projects are driven by investigations into the function of drama, film, dance, new technologies and architecture in relation to dedicated theatre environments and site-specific public spaces, in the context of live performance and installation.
industry
not yet it's difficult is committed to industry initiatives which assist and develop the interests of contemporary performance-makers and their relationship to social and cultural practice. In 1996, David Pledger initiated, produced and managed R and D Cubed, an annual program roster giving project-based companies the opportunities to experiment with and develop their performance practice. In 1997, founding member and Technical Manager Paul Jackson initiated Independent Performance Forums, a series of public forums and publications on issues affecting independent performance including reconciliation, new arts practice and globalisation. Both programs ran until 1999 and were funded by Arts Victoria and Sidney Myer Fund respectively.
In 1999, the company participated in the Performing Arts MultiMedia Library Pilot Project (PAML). The PAML Pilot project was produced by cinemedia and the Federal Communications Department (DOCITA), after a program proposed by David Pledger to Arts Victoria and cinemedia to fund live recordings of contemporary performance. For the program, the company produced the television documentary-drama, The UnMaking Of.
In 2001, not yet it'sdifficult inaugurated The Social Capital Fund that historically donates a percentage of the proceeds of its annual workshop program to an independent social welfare agency or program. Recipients have included the Galliamble Recovery Centre for Indigenous Men and the Port Philip Specialist School for Children.
not yet it's difficult continues to be a key lobbyist for the interests of independent arts practice across government.
education
In 2001, the Director of the Centre for Ideas at the Victorian College of the Arts, Nikos Papastergiadis, approached the company to contribute to the life of the college by developing a whole-of-college program around inter-disciplinary arts practice.
The company devised the program, Collaboration Laboratory, in which participants from the College's six vocational schools would participate in mixed workshops, lectures and seminars designed to stimulate students' interest and expertise in the developing of works across art-forms.
The philosophy governing Collaboration Laboratory is that artistic practice cannot simply be organised into a small set of distinct mediums and that this kind of organisation does not reflect the actual functioning of culture.
Collaboration Laboratory seeks to identify for the participants a mode of working, a dramaturgy which recognises the function of hybridisation in artistic practice both within and between art-forms.
The educational focus is on assisting the participants to discover, or discover more about, their own dramaturgy. Therefore, the program endeavours to place the pedagogical responsibility on the participant. That is, the program leadership propose ideas and encourages activity that allows the participant to inquire into their own practice, and then the relationship of their practice to other art-forms. The emphasis will be on revealing the interconnectedness of things in favour of isolation.
The mainframe of the participant's involvement is governed by propositions that are meant to be self-inquiring, and designed to disturb the industrial imperative present in much vocational arts training. The social idea of the artist as a cultural agent will counter the current positioning of the artist as an industrial unit.
In this way, Collaboration Laboratory is as much about the way the artist perceives their work, as it is about the work itself. The idea is to look in the spaces between discrete art-forms, to identify and experience the folds of their interconnectedness. The objectives are not to make works of art but to discover the process of seeing.
Collaboration Laboratory was led by NYID company members Mark Atkin, Lawrence Harvey, Paul Jackson, David Pledger, Tamara Saulwick and Louise Taube.
mission
mission
not yet it's difficult has a unique presence in Australia's contemporary arts culture as a research unit, a producer of industry development programs and a maker of contemporary artworks and events.
Our mission is to make critically engaged artworks of high artistic and discursive quality that arise out of ideas that reflect contemporary life.
Our objective has been to develop artworks that incite narratives of enquiry in the minds of our spectators. The desire has been to engage the spectator viscerally, intellectually and humorously about ideas, politics, art and the human condition
history
Prior to the inception of not yet it's difficult as a company, a research group under the direction of David Pledger, operated out of the Wesleyan Church in Albert Park, Melbourne. This group presented three training laboratories to invited audiences during two years' research. The basis of the training was the development of a physical approach to performance utilising aspects of sports practices, the Suzuki Acting Method and biomechanics.
In 1995, not yet it's difficult was founded by Artistic Director David Pledger with Dramaturg Peter Eckersall and Technical Manager Paul Jackson as an ideas-based group of artists to collaborate on the production of cross-media projects. A group of performers, artists and production personnel was established with founding members including Paul Bongiovanni, Kha Tran Viet, Maude Davey, Greg Ulfan, Tamara Saulwick, Danielle Long, Shane Grant and Angela Pamic.
The company's inaugural work was the performance of the adaptation of Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, a Peking Opera Model Play.
Since then the company has expanded its activities to producing a broad range of artworks across disciplines including performance events, public space projects, play productions, video-art, interactive installation, television, and, in association with other companies, workshops, forums, research and development programs.
process
not yet it's difficult is an ideas-based company. The company's works are made cumulatively and collaboratively linking research and performance to presentation and analysis.
Projects arise from the formulation of ideas and extensive discussion concerning their value and potential application to a discrete or multi-artform context. Ultimately, it is the idea that determines the medium by which it is best communicated. If we find ourselves without the skills to communicate the idea in the most appropriate medium, we commit to acquiring the skills over time and applying them to the idea.
In terms of the creation of work, the development practice of not yet it's difficult is based on the process of accumulation and disposal. The creation of each work lays the foundation for the next work. Experiments that are successful and are considered to have potential in the making of one performance are explored more deeply in the subsequent process. Motifs, modes of work or dramaturgical strategies that are no longer considered progressive are discarded or rested. This process of layering the successes of each new work onto the next has enabled the company to deliberately, and thoughtfully build a new language of arts practice over time.
Dramaturgical devices of presentation, representation and mediation have been experimented with, developed and expanded. These devices include: performative forms such as direct address, chorus and the Brechtian concept of alienation; spatial design 'actions' such as spectator-performer interaction and the exploitation of each venue's architecture; theatrical forms such as drama, dance-theatre and opera, and technological interventions in the form of film, video and interactive media.
The company is considered to have made significant contributions to the agency of the body in live performance, to the integration of media in live performance and the development of performance tropes in technology-based installations. not yet it's difficult's recent projects signify an interest in merging various genres with 'media' to elevate media from the existing role as a simple form of enjoyment to a stimulant that is integrated into the structure and theme of the artwork.
awards
1995 Independent Theatre
Victorian Green Room Awards
Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy Outstanding Event, Winner
Nil, Cat and Buried Outstanding Event, Nomination
Nil, Cat and Buried Best Performer, Winner Shane Connor
1996 Independent Theatre
Victorian Green Room Awards
WS:HDQ Outstanding Event, Nomination
1997 Independent Theatre
Victorian Green Room Awards
The Austral/Asian Post-cartoon: sports edition New Form Award, Winner NYID
The Austral/Asian Post-cartoon: sports edition Best Performer, Winner Paul Bongiovanni
2001 Independent Theatre
Victorian Green Room Awards
scenes of the beginning from the end Outstanding Event, Nomination
2002 Drama
Victorian Green Room Awards
K
Best Supporting Actress, Nomination, Vivienne Walshe
2004 Opera
Victorian Green Room Awards
Cosmonaut*
Best Direction Nomination, David Pledger
Best Design Nomination, David Pledger/Paul Jackson
Best Lighting Design Nomination, Paul Jackson
*Cosmonaut was produced by Danceworks and WaxMedia. NYID was the principal supporter of the production.
2004 Drama
Victorian Premier's Literary Awards 2004
Blowback
Louis Esson Prize for Drama Short-listed, David Pledger
2004 New Media
Australian Writer's Guild Awards 2004
Eavesdrop
Inaugural New Media Award for Writing Nomination, David Pledger