New World, New Writing

New Works New Worlds features writers, performance and visual artists who explore the relationship between perception, dreams and practice within global and political contexts. “The festival programme will open a dialogue with change,” explains Suzi Simpson, Artistic Director, “asking where and who we are now, in relation to gender and identity politics, commercialism, ecological crisis and international conflicts.”

The festival opens with activist artist Richard DeDomenici; his installation performance Place Food Café comments on environmentally destructive air travel. Year of the Horse, Tam Dean Burn’s darkly humorous critique of New Labour combines Sunday Herald newspaper images with a soundtrack created by Keith McIvor aka Twitch of Optimo. Tam’s work-in-progress, Black’s the New Pink, looks into the Anti-Pinkerton Act 1893 forbidding US government agencies hiring mercenaries.

Political imagery, ‘extreme’ pop culture, gender constructs and racially orientated language highlight Naomi Shoba’s The Sustainability of Sweetness. Peter McMaster explores human impact on environment in We Share Air. Photographs, diary entries, letters contruct Kieran Hurley’s installation on his journey to the Italian G8 summit in L’Aquila. For Miasma, Canadian visual artist Lindsay Perth reflects on the kinds of ‘spaces’ that exist as thresholds, or heightened states.

Apart from these provocative performances, New Works New Words will also present a series of new works-in-progress, new plays, participatory events as well as two second phase developments from New Works New Worlds 2008, A Woman in Berlin and The Yellowing. Thought-provoking and unconventional, the festival will capture performance's prevailing winds and future trajectories. [Agata Maslowska]