Slow Making in Five Short Blasts

Abstract

At the tipping point of increasing demands for depleting finite resources intersecting with climate crisis, the push to slow down is paradoxically urgent. This paper is a creative response to the 2019 Perth Festival performance Five Short Blasts drawing on ideas of contemplation, care, empathy and collectivity to argue for an artistic process of slow making.

Keywords:

• slow making
• care
• empathy
• contemporary performance
• slow movement

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Anna Reece and Amy McKie from Perth Festival 2019 for the use of images by Cam Campbell and Toni Wilkinson.

Notes

1 A Welcome to Country is a ritual conducted by an individual who identifies as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and who is a custodian of that particular area of Australia – the ritual asks for permission of the ancestors for their blessing for all in attendance to pass through ‘country’ safely. A Welcome to Country commonly precedes formal events in Australia, and holds cultural significance for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.

2 The Waugal is the mythical original creator of the rivers, oceans, land and subsequently all other things, and represented as a rainbow serpent in Noongar language, story, song, dance and culture.

3 Environmental arts scholar Stacy Alaimo understands ‘the literal contact zone between human and more-than-human nature’ as transcorporeality (as cited in Neimanis 2013: 25).