CAC Presents | Epoch Wars
Date:2022.10.01 (Sat.)
Time:1:00pm – 4:30pm
Co-Lead Artists:Pony Express (Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer)
Language:English
Produced by Performing Lines
Presented by Chronus Art Center (CAC)
What should we call a future worth fighting for?
Epoch Wars is a seismic, anarchic, immersive adventure camouflaged as a conference; a festival of Deep-Time Ideas where you get to decide on the name for our geological era.
Earth’s history is divided into massive slabs of time called ‘epochs’. Right now, a contest is raging over our slice, to re-label it the “Anthropocene”- the age of human impact.
But the “Anthropocene” blames all of us for Earth’s dire circumstances rather than the corporations, CEOs, and top dogs in charge.
Infiltrating Newcastle City Hall, Epoch Wars enlists you and a Live Art army of Australia’s most exciting artists and speakers to battle it out over the naming rights of our shared future.
The Geological just got Personal.
< BACKGROUND >
Live art duo Pony Express challenge the naming of the “anthropocene” to explore who is really responsible for the state of our planet.
Earth’s history is divided into massive slices of time called ‘epochs’. The Anthropocene Working Group, a team of 34 pale, stale and mostly male geological scientists, are responsible for advancing the name “Anthropocene”, which means human era, the era defined by human impact on the planet.
“Anthropocene” blames all of humanity for Earth’s circumstances, obscuring the fact that it was specific people with specific power and specific names and addresses that are actually responsible for the worst ecological crimes.
Who is really at fault, and what epoch name will help us create a future worth fighting for? Are we living in the capitalocene, or the manthropocene, or machinocene, the orgasmacene, or the pyrocene?
Epoch Wars commissions contributions and propaganda campaigns from international and local Newcastle artists, scientists, and visionaries, asking them to imagine alternative worlds to the “Anthropocene”. These counternarratives are built into a speculative symposium, featuring keynotes, panel talks and interactive breakout sessions with the goal to radicalise you to become an epoch warrior.
Epoch Wars is a deep-time deconstruction, using the tropes of every conference you’ve ever had to survive…including networking opportunities, panels, breakout sessions, lanyards, tote bags, and catering.
< ABOUT PONY EXPRESS >
Pony Express is an experimental, Live Art duo led by Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer. Through their pandrogynous collaborative process, Pony Express work across platforms of media art, performance, video and transdisciplinary research. Creating immersive alternate realities that reflect themes of adaptation, global weirding and the slow apocalypse.
Presenting in a diverse array of traditional and non-traditional venues and cooperating with communities, organisations and subcultures at the forefront of environmental futures.The duo focus on queer ecologies and nonhuman politics to build worlds that trouble the ethical landscape of the present day.
< ABOUT PERFORMING LINES > Performing Lines produces provocative contemporary performance by Australia’s most audacious independent artists.
They curate a portfolio of work that is propelled by pressing questions and new ways of seeing the world. We champion the unconventional, the marginal, the rebellious and the new.Their purpose is to champion risk and to ensure that the breadth and plurality of Australia’s creative potential is represented and celebrated.Performing Lines is led by Executive Producer Marion Potts, and manages teams in Sydney, Perth and Hobart, with a network of producers and presenters around the country and the world.
performinglines.org.au
< ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS > Epoch Wars is produced by Performing Lines and supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body; the NSW Government through Create NSW; and the Tasmanian Government through Arts Tasmania. It has been developed with the support of New Annual, Asia Topa, Chronus Arts Centre, Shanghai, and Arts House.
Co-Lead Artist and Conference Facilitators Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer
Collaborating Artist / Epoch Warriors BLECK and Tallulah Brown
Keynote Speakers Emma-Maye Gibson, Gringai Worimai Elder Luke Russell
Multimedia and Sound Design Donovan Miller
Scenography Associate Rachael Guinness
Stage Manager Sophie Ambler
Interactive Website Designer Xavier Burrows
Produced by Performing Lines
< SPECIAL MEDIA PARTNERS >
MANA is a platform for Professional media and resource docking Committed to establishing an ecosystem of collaborative innovation of art, design and technology. MANA is committed to building a comprehensive global “community of artists, designers and science and technology cross-border cooperation.” Promote exchanges and mutual encouragement among artists, designers and science and technology personnel worldwide, spread and promote outstanding works more widely, and increase the influence of Chinese original art, design and science and technology innovation At the same time, MANA also builds a bridge between creators and enterprises to promote mutual cooperation and help excellent companies better connect with outstanding creators.
www.manamana.net
