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The Performance Arcade

Wellington, 22 - 26 February 2023

Excavating relational agency through site-specific performative intervention.

Porous Alterities is an immersive digital projection that reveals more-than-human encounters with Te Whanganui-a-Tara waterfront. Through three Acts, this site-specific intervention uses data-materials to examine alternate landscapes present at the border between the city and sea. The opening act uncovers a performance of socio-spatial interactions; a live comparison to an ‘inert’ urban habitat. From the murky depths, the tangled landscape of the seabed emerges to take over the jetty with fragments of the manmade structure transformed by molluscs, starfish, and kina. The final act digs into the sediments of the reclaimed land of the waterfront to reconstruct the journey of the earth from the Bolton Street Cemetery which was excavated in the development of the urban motorway, to its resting place in the foundations of the waterfront. Porous Alterities offers a moment to pause and reflect on the presence and capacity of more-than-human matter and entities in the public places we inhabit.