The Eighth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

LR More importantly, performance is being used as a form of activism, and sometimes this is site-specific and therefore outside traditional museum spaces. As a new generation of artists emerge, some question the relevance of the ‘white cube’ and prefer to locate their practice outside these zones. For Māori and Pacific people with little money but a wealthy oratory tradition, storytelling provides an outlet. Spoken-word poetry is growing in diversity and popularity, challenging education statistics and giving voice to those who have been stereotyped because of their Polynesian accents. Rosanna Raymond actively incorporates spoken word into her SaVAge K’lub performances, which allow a space for the many. This communal notion can be found in other artists’ work, such as Lonnie Hutchinson’s Star Mound 2015, which became a space for others, including John Ioane and Siliga David Setoga, to activate. D.A.N.C.E. Art Club puts the fun and the funk back into the art world. Distinguished All Night Community Entertainers are Linda T Tanoai, Ahilapalapa Rands, Vaimaila Urale and Chris Fitzgerald. Since 2008 they have staged self-curated and self-funded events, using themed music, DJs, entertainment and refreshments to bring audiences together. Their socially driven practice broadens conversations about art. Kalisolaite (Ite) ’Uhila has made many experiential and endurance works. His performance Mo’ui Tukuhausia used his knowledge of urban survival to live ‘rough’ on the streets as a homeless person. This piece is both public and largely invisible, making audiences question what performance art is. During his days — sometimes months — living on the street or in a container, Ite deeply considers the public realm, social politics and cultural histories. BC In China specifically, performance was a very strong medium during the 1990s that disappeared, together with artist-organised exhibitions, around the mid 2000s (particularly 2006–08) thanks to the art market. Through my curatorial interest in performativity, I have been trying to establish space and time for discussion related to live-based art and the discourse around it. The one-year exhibition ‘Taking the Stage OVER’, which I initiated during 2010, involved local and international artists and a number of organisations frommuseums to theatre spaces, while at the same time creating audiences for performance. This was an important attempt to situate live works within institutional structures that rarely showed these works. 214—215 APT8 ROUND TABLE