SOCIAL, a collaboration between Ali McCann & Mat Watson, was performed for one night only at correspondences, Merri-bek (Brunswick) on November 24th, 2022
SOCIAL, a collaboration between Ali McCann & Mat Watson, was performed for one night only at correspondences, Merri-bek (Brunswick) on November 24th, 2022
SOCIAL evokes the socio-gravitational struggles of adolescent friendship, courtship and creative experimentation within the milieu of high school art classes, theatre productions and annual discos. The work is at once a nostalgic tableau vivant, installation and performance, exploring the experience of adolescent energy mired within the cosmic forces of dark matter – the mysterious element thought to bind galaxies together.
Conceived by childhood friends, Ali McCann and Mat Watson, SOCIAL responds to their shared adolescent experience in Stawell, their sleepy hometown in regional Victoria, which is now the site of an underground physics laboratory. Located in the subterranean depths of a gold mine, this new facility searches for proof of dark matter in our universe.
In part, the choreography and props are recreated from found Super 8 footage shot by a group of teenage school boys. Filmed in Stawell in the late 1970s, the boys seem to emulate the slapstick, goofball comedy of The Goodies and Monty Python, with absurdist gestures and bodily movements. Along with this, the choreography and soundscape also allude to the annual discos held in high school gymnasiums – where teenage seduction and synchronised dancing draw an analogy to the enigmatic nature of dark matter, whose gravitational undertow pulls celestial bodies together into vast, galactic spirals.
SOCIAL is an appendage to McCann’s ongoing interest in the convergence between nostalgia and the aesthetics of pedagogy. Here she branches out into the more experiential and phenomenological realm of sound and performance. Watson’s hypnotic composition, invoking NASA’s deep space sound recordings and early sci-fi cinematic sound effects, forms the sonic bedrock to her stripped back choreography.
SOCIAL was performed for one night only at correspondences, Naarm/ Birrarung-ga / Melbourne, Victoria, AU as part of my residency project, Campus: A study of educational, domestic, and deep dark space (In perpetual flux), 2022
Art direction - Ali McCann
Sound design - Mat Watson
Performed by - Pearl Gross, Hanako Müller and Sascha Müller
Choreography - Ali McCann, Pearl Gross, Hanako Müller and Sascha Müller
Creative Production - correspondences
Photographic documentation - Annika Kafcaloudis
Videography - Tim Hillier