The Live Lab was conceived as a space for works of a shorter duration than the surrounding projects, where a new performance work is presented each day by a range of invited artists. As such it brought a different energy, a daily change, to the constancy of other actions in the Arcade. Audiences returned to see new works each day, and were thus able to appreciate how the other works evolved over the nine days. As a laboratory space it also supported the testing of ideas, the generation of new works, and an ongoing inquiry into the nature of live art and practises in the interactive space of the arcade.

(A)Rousing Body, Anita Barry
This work was shown at the 2011 Prague Quadrennial and the 2010 Live Repeat Playback exhibition at St Paul St Gallery, Auckland. A series of clear plastic harnesses held the performer’s body in a position of conditioned acceptability. Video footage documented this arrangement and allowed the participant to assume the same pose in between performances.

Still Life (I) Ian Hammond
An ice bust of the artist on a plinth, with projected light reflecting onto the walls of the space. This simple arrangement shifts as the ice begins to melt, with the features disappearing, and the light casting through melted holes to reveal a projected portrait of the artist. Ian Hammond’s work examines nostalgia and identity through poetic relationships such as this between projection and raw materials. His 2009 work Digger was a featured in the 2011 Prague Quadrennial and the 2010 Live Repeat Playback exhibition at St Paul St Gallery. He also directed one of the four films in the film project Quarters (NZ International Film Festival 2010).

The Object of Labour – Amber Pearson
An assortment of strange shapes upholstered with bright fabrics make up this installation. A figure in a large costume inhabits the space, operating the objects with an inexplicable sense of purpose. This work evokes the familiar aesthetic of children’s TV programmes with a melancholy or surreal strangeness. The work has been featured in the St Paul St Gallery exhibition Live.Repeat.Playback (2010) and the 2011 Prague Quadrennial.
Tuesday 18th – Lydia Zanetti
Lydia is the director of Sweaty Heart Productions and producer for The Live Series. She works primarily as a choreographer and dancer with shows like Joan of Hearts and I Heart. She was assistant producer on the New National Contemporary Dance Initiative and has spearheaded projects like First Flight for Bats in 2007.

Becca Wood
A PhD candidate in dance at Auckland University, Becca has worked with choreographer Carol Brown and produced her own performance art for exhibitions at St Paul St Gallery and the Prague Quadrennial 2011. Her work examines the relationship between dance and the screen, often featuring portable technology that augments the dance form or adds new dimensions to the performance.

Body of Work: Athena – Josephine O’Sullivan and Ban Abdul
Body of Work is a series of studies into the construction of female identities through performance cultures and media. The first Body of Work: Venus was presented in The Performance Arcade 2011 on Wellington Waterfront: a live fashion studio attempted to sculpt a range of individuals into idealized feminine forms. In Athena the notion of ‘embodiment’ is examined, where the woman’s body is affected in order to tie her to a particular culture. As a prelude to a full exhibition at Toi Poneke later in the month, O’Sullivan will work with Auckland performer Ban Abdul to examine her embodiment of Eastern femininity.

Value Pack, Matt Gruiters
Performance in present tense; are actions limited to a time and space, immobile by the universal laws of physics? This video installation explore this question by controlling the performance of objects and actions within a static space. Imagination collides with reality. Playful action creates the conditions for this new dialogue of space.

Architectural Dialogues, Nick Kapica
The German choreographer Sasha Waltz makes intensive encounters between musicians, artists, and dancers in very specific locations making the architecture an important protagonist in the resulting performance. Six stations offer a glimpse at ‘Dialoges’ that took place between 1999 and 2009 in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Neues Museum in Berlin and the MAXXI National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome.