make-shift

“When I was growing up and something important got sucked up the hoover, my mum could be persuaded to get a piece of newspaper, unfold it on the floor and empty the cloth bag to try and find the missing thing. I don’t do that. Barbie shoes, fuzzy felt animals, bits of lego that are really important parts of a helicopter, multi-coloured beads from broken bracelets.
I don’t care. Up into the hoover it goes and away with it. To somewhere else. Outside my home. To where I can’t see it anymore.”

make-shift is a unique and intimate networked performance that speaks about the fragile connectivity of human and ecological relationships. The performance takes place simultaneously in two separate houses that are connected through a specially designed online interface. Paula and Helen (one in each house) stage their part of the work with the help of local audience members. Scripted and visually poetic performance is interspersed with webcam videography, avatar puppetry and audience interaction in the format of a performative salon. Everything that happens in the houses is streamed to online audiences who can also contribute text chat visible on the interface to everyone throughout the event.

Online audiences click on a live link at the make-shift web site shortly before the start time of the performance to enter a web interface. All that is needed is a domestic broadband connection and a standard browser (with the Flash player plug-in).

This performance will be presented from a house in Pescara, Italy and a house in Dunedin, New Zealand; audiences will watch online from all over the world, and also at a screening at Magfest Pescara.