Cahoots Lab 2022

Yes. Belco Arts is an accessible venue, and we’re happy to chat about any specific accessibility requirements you have. We always set aside a portion of our funding to meet accessibility requirements, so don’t be shy to ask for what you need. You can use the registration form, or email us at producers@youareherecanberra.com.au

Each performance will have a variety of seating/standing options, with chairs provided, options to sit on the floor or stand, and space for people who use a wheelchair.

If you are someone who enjoys sitting on the floor, you might like to bring a cushion with you.

Come chat with us! The You Are Here producers will be at the Cahoots Lab ready to answer any questions you have! You can also learn more about the Cahoots program here.

The afternoon is action packed but the event is designed for you to pick and choose. When you register you can flag your interest in specific program pieces.

Recently, Natsuko’s first development of ‘Achiragawa’ was performed at Carriageworks as part of Vivid Sydney, produced by Performance Space. We are stoked to offer Canberra audiences a chance to see this very early phase of development.

‘Achiragawa’ explores how our self-identity interacts and conflicts with the identity that society has given us. It is a performance work inspired by Butoh, contemporary dance and martial arts.

The concept of this performance is the notion of ‘the other side’. ‘The other side’ is not a physical place. It is a place where one who has been freed from the constraints of society exists. There is a barrier that separates it from ‘this side’; the impositions of society.

‘The other side’ makes itself felt in everyday moments, frozen in the world of others. You feel the need to escape to a place without time and expectation. On ‘this side’, society considers your identity as an element to be reckoned with, making sure you live a life according to the rules of others, individuality erased. You wonder; what would happen if you decided to live in a world that was just yours?

“This is the very first in-progress iteration for a work that will be a full-length work in the future. I am not sure how to achieve this yet and the narrative, structure, ideas and aesthetics are bound to change. I’m aiming to incorporate interactive technologies, lighting and set design so I’d love to receive feedback and ideas from the audience as well as industry professionals.”

Follow the progress of this work @itazura_co

Natsuko is currently a participant in You Are Here’s Cahoots program.

A solo drum work (with text) co-composed with Sia Ahmad. Really gentle free imrpov drums with self-help, fake zen flavour. Inspiration from Shazad Ismaily.

“But if you reject yourself, you are rejecting the agent of realization. So you must make friends with yourself. Enjoy yourself. Take comfort in yourself. Smile at yourself. You are developing confidence.”

Sam was a Cahoots resident in 2020.

‘Sacrificial Fascination’ is a performance of live sound collage and noise music, a testing of Lynden’s performing body and performance apparatus in space, within a larger context of interrogating the idea of spiritual technology vs colonialism.

Ties between the spiritual technology of the hegemon and acts of colonisation, and the implications of positioning our colonial, Enlightenment-rationalist, Christian episteme as an arbiter of human sacrifice are explored through samples, quoted pitch material, and the form of the work.

‘Through 2021 I worked to develop a model for solo noise music performance, and this performance is the first test of this model in a live setting. I’m seeking to test how the model feels in relation to my body, how I move inside it. How audiences respond to it, how it intersects with the poetics of a given project, and how this relationship is felt by audiences.’

Lynden was a Cahoots resident in 2021, and this is the first time ‘Sacrificial Fascination’ will be performed publicly.

Zora was in Cahoots 2020 and her development was focused on creative producing skill set. After Cahoots 2020, she further experimented with how to understand producing as a part of her creative practice and how to make a joyful process. At the same time, she was experiencing and pondering about the conflicts one often experiences in collective and collaborative work in the creative industry. Combining “joyful” and “conflict” and thinking how that could become an inspiration for work and life.

Tom was in the 2021 Cahoots cohort, focusing on interrogating how creative communities come together to make spaces for performance and exhibition. A development goal was exploring creative collaboration in ways which are generative and sustainable. In particular, he was interested in what conversations, principles, values and practices are decided upon by collectives when shaping the spaces they want to be part of, alongside an interest in noticing when communities functioned well, or fell into tense patches.

The two realised their shared interests and decided to develop a project together.

To Clamor with Charm: Addressing Disagreements is a work-in-progress showing of an early-stage project by Tom Campbell and Zora Pang. This project explores how communities in creative and collaborative contexts engage with disagreements and interpersonal conflicts. How do we work and live together? How might we navigate our tenser situations? The artists are interested in seeing and hearing your responses to the conversations we have had so far. For fans of: collaboration, conflict, gossip, self-and-community-help, listening and a warm blanket.

Absurdist, pseudo- (and often anti-) historical feminist comedy-drama, HOW DID WE F*CK THIS UP? is an in-development, half hour TV show by Linda Chen.

Cahoots Lab will feature the ‘immensely early, total hot mess of a draft, casual reading in your living room’ version of the show.

Margot is a modern-day, ‘hypermarginalised’ and deeply malcontent designer who just wants to make costumes and to be left the f*ck alone. Stuck at her dead-end job frying fish for her casually sexist, racist boss, one day Margot is thrown into memories of her past life as a suffragette, where she must face up to her past to work out why she’s been experiencing symptoms of PTSD, and to find out what progress truly means to her in a world that feels stubborn, stuck and often f*cked up.

HDWFTU? is an exercise in recognition and reclamation of longstanding frustrations and stories from historically excluded groups, an exploration of sociocultural residue and the trickle down of systemic and intergenerational trauma, and a glorious, probably very sweary romp through the present and the past. 

“I’m trying to enjoy the process of making the work what it wants to be before I have to worry about getting it made, and all the stakeholders involved in that process…exploring a less stressful, more restful, more playful mode of making… finding comfort and value in earlier, rawer, more casual showings of work. Not complete, not ‘good’ – sometimes not even comprehensible.

I’m looking to drawing personal and active audience opinion into early iterations of work… letting them discover what they want and enjoy, and for input into what this work needs to be in light and in spite of those wants, outside of the data driven approaches sometimes favoured by larger levels of screen production.”

HDWFTU? has been previously supported through Australians in Film’s UNTAPPED development lab.

Linda was a Cahoots resident in 2021.

The ‘breather sessions’ are a blank canvas experience for the moment one enters its stately sonic embrace and allows time to detach themselves from the outside world. A concept first brought to the world during the claustrophobic height of lockdown, the Breather performances and Breather Loops series allowed viewers and listeners to congregate together in isolation and set their minds for cleansing and renewed clarity during their engagement with these audio morsels.

The Breather Loops will be played at specific moments throughout the day when we are inviting audience reflection and feedback.

Sia was a Cahoots resident in 2019.