Inner Sanctum - Tina Stefanou - Dance the War of Proximity

Dance the War of Proximity, 2024, is a performance action and live filmic event featuring 10 young performers, as part of the 18th Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Inner Sanctum. Through embodying a metaphorical nervous system and enacting certain functions, these performers integrate singing, speaking, vocalisation, and movement, drawing inspiration from nature, art, science, and popular culture.

The action serves as a self-organising system, resembling a form of poetic automaton, that moves through different sites of exhibition in Adelaide city, shedding light on various facets of coming-of-age politics. Whether delving into themes of valuation, social class, the sun, puberty, resource distribution, elderhood, or symbiosis, Dance the War of Proximity aims to forge strange solidarities within sites of collection and surveillance (including botanic gardens, zoos, and summits), questioning their historical contexts, the politics of acquisition and the gaze, using the body-voice as an instrument to explore more-than-human and more-than-bourgeoisie modes of making-sensing, which are always commoning through collective labour formations and technologies of improvisation.

This work is an extension of Hym(e)nals, a four channel video and sound work that features the artist's long engagement with a herd of elderly horses and their teenage female horse riders, currently showing in the Adelaide Biennial at AGSA.

The live performances take place across Adelaide at Mount Lofty, Adelaide Botanic Garden, Adelaide Zoo and the Art Gallery of South Australia. Entry is free at all locations except Adelaide Zoo with a 2 for 1 ticket offer* after midday on 27 April using the code word 'BIENNIAL' at the main entrance.

*Valid for entry ticket of equal or lesser value.

Performance details

Wed 24 Apr, 12-1.30pm

Mount Lofty Lookout

Fri 26 Apr, 1-2.30pm

Adelaide Botanic Garden at the Amazon Water Lily Pavilion, Palm House and the Bicentennial Conservatory

Sat 27 Apr, 2-3.30pm

Adelaide Zoo

Sun 28 Apr, 3-4pm

Art Gallery of South Australia in Gallery 13

Credits

Lead artist

Tina Stefanou

Creative producer

Jennifer Greer Holmes

Co-choreography and performers

Lily Potger, Alice Heyward and Celina Hage

Youth ensemble and co-choreography

Victoria Mackay, Kaz Rogers, Cooper Faull, Scarlett Jankowiak, Jade Porter, Maree Fong, Sahara Soliman, Jazmine Deng and Indigo Fossey

Live film documentation

Andrew Kaineder and Wil Normyle

Live sound documentation

Nick Steele

Poster design

Rose Williams

This work was made and witnessed on Kaurna Country.