“Crouch. Bind. Set.” The referee’s command heard on rugby fields all over the world. And, after a one-off performance at the Auckland Town Hall this weekend, a phrase that might never seem the same again.
Still Lives, by art duo Daniel Kok from Singapore and Melbournian Luke George, is billed as a site-specific performance installation series aiming to showcase the connections between art and sport.
The work uses ropes to capture players in one half of an interlocking scrum, transforming them into a living sculpture.
Over two and a half hours, the artists weave ropes around the players, gradually binding them into a single entity, creating a frozen moment in a normally fast-moving game, inviting the audience and the players themselves to explore ideas around connection, social bonds and personal attachments.
The pair have been working together since 2014 exploring ways to collaborate through their practiced medium of dance and choreography.
Through their collaboration grew a desire to work with rope.
“I like working with rope because it intersects with our dancing and our working with bodies – it’s about communication,” George explained in a 2019 interview at the Venice Biennale. “The rope is quite live, soft and responsive. It’s almost like a body itself. It’s almost like skin.”
They developed skills working with the medium through a shibari [tying/binding] rope dojo with a teacher inspired by the Japanese art form in Sydney, exploring the nature of bondage and what it means to be tied up or to tie people up.
“She called the person tying a ‘rigger’ and the person being tied a ‘bunny’. A rope bunny. This is the nickname. We laughed and said, ‘This is such a camp, silly name for something that has such an intense sexuality’. It seems such a playful cute name, and we decided to call our first piece Bunny,” George said.
Kok continued, “What if everyone in the theatre were all bunnies? Because we were thinking about: ‘What’s in it for the audience’. So instead of tying one person, we looked at the idea of tying everybody.”
The idea for Still Lives grew into a series of projects.
Their first at the Venice Biennale in 2019 involved tying performers to a gondola, an iconic emblem of the canal city and something that connects residents and visitors alike.
“When we started learning ropes and bondage, we thought it was very serious,” Kok said. “Usually, it’s performed with very low lighting, dark music and candles … we wanted to explore what it would mean to ‘queer’ something and [for there to not be] a simple relationship of who is defined as dominant and who is defined as submissive, and whether this can be a lot more fluid. So, we decided to mess it up a little bit.”
Their installation Still Lives: Melbourne scaled new heights in recreating Andrew Krakouer’s 2011 AFL Mark of the Year. Playing for Collingwood, Krakouer spectacularly leapt above Adelaide’s Luke Thompson in round nine of the 2010 season.
A huge audience packed the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne to watch the spectacle unfold as the artists brought their concept to life.
The performance at the Town Hall on Saturday promises to be no less spellbinding.
The audience is encouraged to either come and go or sit and watch the whole event in what promises to be a unique and challenging experience for many.
George realises bondage and tying people up can be a bit confronting.
“Quite often, I tie people that haven’t been tied before, and sometimes there is a preconception that bondage is about violence. From the outside, it can look that way,” he said.
“Quite often there is a question – does it hurt? Or, should it hurt?
“The more you relax, the more the rope takes care of you. Care is a really important part of this project for us.”
Still Lives is on at the Auckland Town Hall Concert Chamber from 5.30pm on March 30. Entry is free but tickets must be booked in advance. See more at www.aucklandlive.co.nz/show/still-lives.
When division threatens to engulf us, Easter calls us to embrace our enemies – Justin Duckworth