Animal-Human Performance
14min 6 channel video, Beijing , China
Large Scale performance , experimental project collaborating with Chinese artist Shen Shaomin.
Over a two year period, Artists Lisa Roet and Shen Shaomin worked together in a project based on experimentation and exploration into the Animal_Human psyche. Exploring primal language and our shared animal instincts exposed through a group hypnosis. The experimental performance resulted in video work plus live performance piece where participants became audience as the hypnotised performers came out of a state of hypnosis. I am Ape and I am Animal are two projects supported by The Australia Council visual Arts Program. I am Ape explored Primal sared language while I am Animal had Chinese Beat Poet Qi Guo created Poetry form the Mouth of a Baby Rabbit and a Rooster under the state of Hypnosis.
Artists Lisa Roet and Shen Shaomin combined their mutual interest in the human /animal condition in a project facilitated in. Beijing over a period of two years. Based on an experiment using hypnosis and group of volunteers were enlisted to reach primal language through hypnosis. Animal Farms were released amongst the human animals and a chaotic performance was born. As participants came out of hypnosis they were removed to be the audience. A 6 camera crew filmed the outcome of this bazaar yet pertinent ("Animal Farmesque" project highlighting the cahnging politics of the moment.
We are all apes, is artist Lisa Roet’s clarion call in I am Ape, a new monograph of her three decade career.
