Performance Screening of Live Recording made in 2017
What does it mean to be human, in an era when our destructive influence over the planet is rapidly redefining the laws of nature? This solo performance by Justin Shoulder introduces the figure of Carrion: a post-human spectre that has the ability to shapeshift into multiple forms and speak multiple languages.
With an ego driven by nostalgia, Carrion wanders an archaeological site uncovering objects. Material investigations reveal deep learning about simulation, consumption and worship.
Drawing on queer and bicultural ancestral mythologies, Carrion transports us into a place where the distant past collides with the far future, alerting us to the changes that already lie within ourselves.
“Mesmerising and tender, elemental and fantastical, Carrion is a rite, a birth, a speculation – morphing the ‘natural’ in a unique vision of physical performance possibilities.” Australian Arts Review
Credits:
Lead Artist: Justin Shoulder
Composer: Corin Ileto
Mentor and Artistic Collaborator: Victoria Hunt
Producer/Insite Arts: Jason Cross
Costume and Set Design: Matthew Stegh and Justin Shoulder
Costume and Set Design Assistance: Anthony Aitch and Marty Jay
Lighting and Visual Design: Benjamin Cisterne
Sound Mastering: Bob Scott
About Justin Shoulder:
PHASMAHAMMER is the pseudonym of shape-shifting artist Justin Talplacido Shoulder. Working primarily in performance, sculpture, video and collective events Phasmahammer is an eco-cosmology of alter personas based on queered ancestral myth. Creatures birthed are embodied through hand crafted costumes and prosthesis and animated by their own gestural languages. The artist uses their body and craft as an instrument of metaphysics towards a queer Filipinx futurism. P.H. believes in performance and shared ceremony as communal medicine for difficult times.
P.H. is a founding member of queer artist collective The Glitter Militia (Monsta Gras, Pink Bubble) with partner and key collaborator Matthew Stegh and Club Ate with collaborator Bhenji Ra. Their works have been presented across Australia and Internationally where they work between gallery, nightclub, theatre and cinema contexts. Recent performance highlights include: La Manutention performance artist in residence at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2019, The Prague Quadrennial of Stage Design, 2019, Premiere of theatre work Carrion, Performance Space, Sydney (AUS) + subsequent tour to Artshouse, Melb (AUS), Fusebox Festival, Texas (USA), Museum Macan, Jakarta (IDN), Roskilde (DEN), M+ (HK), Singapore Art Museum (SGD). Asia Pacfic Triennial 8 GOMA (AUS).
Carrion is a science fiction live performance work that elaborates a figure of multiplicity.
Shoulder’s body and its collaboration with costume, light, sound and space is used to animate a series of ancestral creatures. These creatures are born from queer diasporic histories and imagined genealogies.
The space is an archaeological site scattered with clues to a speculative future. The space itself becomes a figure in the work as Shoulder sifts through the detritus to become different creatures inhabiting their native realms. There are a number of realms which are traversed: Western Romance, Skeleton of Buddha, Nature Simulation, Belching Glacier, Prehistoric Bird, and more, including liminal stages transforming from one creature to another.
The performative figures which act as the text of the work are informed by a sea of ideas/feelings. Some current reflections and investigations include: the Anthropocene and Capitalocene, hope, future making possibilities, the fall/fragility of the West, and the Filipino mythic skyworld and its mythical creatures as a parallel to queer/hybrid bodies and potentiality.
Carrion is the culmination of Shoulder’s histories of performance making, combining presentational club spectacle with dramaturgy from Victoria Hunt focusing on transformation through the raw material of the body.
www.insitearts.com.au/projects/carrion
http://phasmahammer.com
Instagram: @Phasmahammer
Performance Screening of Live Recording made in 2017
What does it mean to be human, in an era when our destructive influence over the planet is rapidly redefining the laws of nature? This solo performance by Justin Shoulder introduces the figure of Carrion: a post-human spectre that has the ability to shapeshift into multiple forms and speak multiple languages.
With an ego driven by nostalgia, Carrion wanders an archaeological site uncovering objects. Material investigations reveal deep learning about simulation, consumption and worship.
Drawing on queer and bicultural ancestral mythologies, Carrion transports us into a place where the distant past collides with the far future, alerting us to the changes that already lie within ourselves.
“Mesmerising and tender, elemental and fantastical, Carrion is a rite, a birth, a speculation – morphing the ‘natural’ in a unique vision of physical performance possibilities.” Australian Arts Review
Credits:
Lead Artist: Justin Shoulder
Composer: Corin Ileto
Mentor and Artistic Collaborator: Victoria Hunt
Producer/Insite Arts: Jason Cross
Costume and Set Design: Matthew Stegh and Justin Shoulder
Costume and Set Design Assistance: Anthony Aitch and Marty Jay
Lighting and Visual Design: Benjamin Cisterne
Sound Mastering: Bob Scott
Carrion is a science fiction live performance work that elaborates a figure of multiplicity.
Shoulder’s body and its collaboration with costume, light, sound and space is used to animate a series of ancestral creatures. These creatures are born from queer diasporic histories and imagined genealogies.
The space is an archaeological site scattered with clues to a speculative future. The space itself becomes a figure in the work as Shoulder sifts through the detritus to become different creatures inhabiting their native realms. There are a number of realms which are traversed: Western Romance, Skeleton of Buddha, Nature Simulation, Belching Glacier, Prehistoric Bird, and more, including liminal stages transforming from one creature to another.
The performative figures which act as the text of the work are informed by a sea of ideas/feelings. Some current reflections and investigations include: the Anthropocene and Capitalocene, hope, future making possibilities, the fall/fragility of the West, and the Filipino mythic skyworld and its mythical creatures as a parallel to queer/hybrid bodies and potentiality.
Carrion is the culmination of Shoulder’s histories of performance making, combining presentational club spectacle with dramaturgy from Victoria Hunt focusing on transformation through the raw material of the body.
www.insitearts.com.au/projects/carrion
http://phasmahammer.com
Instagram: @Phasmahammer