Want to see Spreading the Love films?

If you want to see last years films look to your right and scroll down to the heading 'Spreading the Love Films'. Each film is documented here - simply click on the film you want to see.

This years films will be ready in early 2012!
So stay tuned
Stay very, very ready.....

And hold tight.

Spreading the Love Press

Here's an article about Spreading the Love: The Bed Tour when we went to Goolwa for the Alexandrina Council

And here's us in Finger magazine, talking about The Bed Tour across Adelaide in 2011

Spreading the Love: The Bed Tour has begun!

The bed has begun it's tour!

Wanna jump on??

Come and jump in my bed and be part of short films exploring how diverse rAdelaideans LOVE.

Only 2 more to go: 

Sat 26th 9-10am @ Fullarton Market, Fullarton rd

Sat 26th 12:30-1:30pm @ Marion Cultural Centre

This is my girlfriend on the radio

Here's my girlfriend talking about the Feast Festival this year. Plenty of thought-provoking shows, wild parties, and great times in the middle of the city! Join us for a Coopers?

See you in Light Square from 12th-27th November

http://radioadelaidebreakfast.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/feast-festival.mp3

This is Why I Like Participatory Performance

Che Guevera said ‘solidarity means running the same risks’

Spreading the Love will be Back in 2011!

Curious about what your love future holds?
My Spreading the Love bed will be roaming Adelaide again in 2011!
Jump in my bed, eat chocolate, read cards, tell love secrets.
More coming soon....

Letting it All Out: Performance as Catharsis

Theories of catharsis offer ways to examine how performance considers and influences the emotions of spectators. Aristotle developed the concept of catharsis through his analysis of classical theatre. While interpretations of Aristotle’s catharsis vary, performance theorist Phillip Auslander understands it as the ability of art to enable ‘a safe discharge of emotional reactions’ (Auslander, 1997, p. 13). Catharsis is a way to train ourselves in the correct use of our emotions, allowing them to rise, and then fall, within a contained and safe environment.

Is Catharsis Feminist?

In looking through a feminist lens, Diamond conceives of catharsis as a shudder rather than an attempt to retain order. Diamond views catharsis as a dynamic state, rather than one that acts to regulate spectator emotions. While theatre maker Bertolt Brecht (1964) claims that traditional uses of catharsis overpowers the emotions and in doing so dulls the intellect, Diamond explores ways that feeling aroused through performances may instead provoke critical responses. Catharsis then, is a disturbance rather than a harmonic interchange between seeing and feeling.

Karen Finley with Egg on Her Face

Diamond describes the work of performance artist Karen Finley as a form of anamorphic catharsis. Through the late 1980’s and early 1990’s Finley’s solo performances explored issues of sexuality, desire, abjection, trauma and disgust. Finley’s catharsis is an immersion in the traumatic material; she is the cathartic subject, both ‘victim of and witness to’, a constant ‘oscillation between seeing and feeling’ (Diamond, 1995, p. 166; p. 153).

This oscillation creates a perpetual disequilibrium, one that works to jolt spectator emotions into recognising the pain of gender and sexual oppression. In performances Finley often appears as if in a trance, regularly covering her body with symbols of defilement. Finley works to arouse and disturb the act of seeing, her shocking performances a counterbalance to constant media images that numb spectators to suffering. She is the permanently objectified woman, an unceasingly shuddering body, threatening to implicate spectators in her pain (Diamond, 1995).