In March 2026, PAWA and TINY join forces to bring artists on an INTERxCHANGE between Ōtautahi and Tāmaki Makaurau in a series of performative experiments called ELECTRIC BODIES.
With the provocations of sound as body and body as sound, the artists are invited to experiment with the intersections between sound and body as a driving force. When sound is not the outcome, but the instigator of an action, in what ways can sound provoke new patterns of embodiment, attention, or resistance?
Evening of performance art and sound art.
All events will take place at Cloisters Studio within The Art Centre Christchurch.
https://www.artscentre.org.nz/visit/getting-here/
All events in Ōtautahi are koha (donation-pay as you feel) but please give generously within your means, so we can cover our base line costs (recommendation if you have a full time job is $30).
7:10pm-7:50pm Sarah Elsworth & Anita Clark (MOTTE) — VIOLIN MANTIS
7:50pm-8:20pm Antonia Barnett-McIntosh — Soft Mouths | The language of fffflowers
8:20pm-9:00pm Alan Schacher — Cataclysmic Catalyst
GO TO OUR WEBSITE FOR TICKETS & MORE INFO.
Violin Mantis by Sarah Elsworth and Anita Clark
Welcome to the science-fiction room; A violin mantis sways, gesture becomes data, a biological catalogue is composed on the fly. This performance is not observed so much as entered. Fresh from recent collaborations in India, interdisciplinary artists Sarah Elsworth and Anita Clark open a speculative sensory laboratory of sound, movement and image.
Soft Mouths | The language of fffflowers by Antonia Barnett-McIntosh
We were kinda talking about this the other day, like-, where it’s like-, resist the subject, push the composition. A solo performance-installation, ‘Soft Mouths | The language of fffflowers’ draws lines between sound art, handcrafts, and experimental theatre. Engaging habits of speech—of conversation, of composition—poiesis and transit, pronunciation and drift, the performance sounds out new and tricky ways of hearing, in a manner of speaking, of relating to deep and careful listening. Playfully combining rigour and whimsy, ‘Soft Mouths’ employs chit-chat, musings, overheard snippets, field recordings, found sounds, and makeshift instruments. onya, on your way, even if you tripped over the chair or something and you d-, oh damn it I’ve got-, gotta (yeah, yeah) push the chair back. you lose something else. that’s gonna-, yeah you have to think about something else. that’s gonna send some stuff out.
Cataclysmic Catalyst by Alan Schacher
Chasing the sound that came before me, sound that penetrates and emanates, responding before hearing.
A gushing silence, the impossibility of moving to and within a cacophony.
In 2006 I performed a rehearsed solo improvisation to a difficult soundtrack created for me by Rik Rue, titled Twisted Mantras and (some) Misguided Words.
A friend later told me that another friend had commented “what an insult”. I always wondered what that meant.
