Set in a car, that will literally be driven around a block in Fitzroy, images of this imagined alternate world are projected outside of the vehicle onto the laneway walls, while inside Feros-Fooke and Burns will play characters and interact between themselves and the tiny audience of three the car can contain. “The work is basically a commute home that goes on a detour in this other world that is run by a monopoly and we are workers in this world but we go through a transformation. What you will see on the journey are what make us transform and make us have these realisations about this world that we are witnessing,” she says
“I’m interested in car projection, drive-by projection, and projection inside cars and out of cars and this is a development of that idea,” she continues of The Detour, which is a part of the Gertrude Street Projection Festival’s Mentorship Program. Following the success of last year’s inaugural Mentorship Program, this year the Festival is presenting three new site-specific projects and explores the application of projection art through live performance, sculpture and holographic techniques.
“It’s based around a commute on the way home so playing with that idea of what a car actually is, the physical construct of the car and the familiarity that the car has to a lot of us and the time we’ve spent sitting in a car,” she says. “Then it developed into an actual performance work, so there’s quite a lot of elements to it: performance, projection and there’s audio, like the car radio, so we’re utilising everything,” she says of the idea that she and Burns first hatched at last year’s festival.
As a street based performance, The Detour is also inspired by street art. “Chase has had a real interest in the graffiti art of Nost for quite a while and also how controversial he’s been in Melbourne, so Nost plays quite a big part in this alternate world. So graffiti culture has been a bit of an influence in this work. We’re interested in this idea of what, in our current world we’re so plastered with advertising all the time, but graffiti and that kind of culture is seen as being a real eyesore but advertising is allowed to get away with [it]… It’s kind of like a visual eyesore and what is OK and what isn’t? And what do we allow to be ok and what do we allow to not? That plays a big part of this alternate world”.
While Feros-Fooke has been busy conjuring up this alternate world, she’s also been participating in another event for the Gertrude Street Projection Festival which is tackling real-world stories, inspired by the lives of the young people from Dandenong and Werribee who’ve created the piece. She’s been doing the video work for Uprising Youth Theatre’s second installment of Wheel Of Fate, a choose-your-own adventure style performance which utilizes cutting edge mobile LED projector technology, allowing stories to be played out in non-traditionally used spaces. “You pick a contestant and then get taken on a journey in the ACU block and they take you on their story,” she says. “It’s an amazing interactive performance”.
BY JOANNE BROOKFIELD
