Celebrating 10 years of Readymade Works with a 10 hour dance marathon. 40 dancers, 12 minutes each.

In a parallel world dreaming of merging between species, a new creature is discovered. Plucked out of its natural habitat, it feels the curious gaze of the scientist closely examining a specimen.

Video artwork by Lian Loke and Paul Warren.
Live performance by Lian Loke and Michaela Davies.
FEM-me exhibition, Bankstown Arts Centre

Excited to be an artist in FEM-Me: Feminine Mechanics and Other Kinetic Systems, curated by Dr Deborah Turnbull Tillman and Rachael Kiang at Bankstown Arts Centre. Opening 28th September.

Collaborators: Dagmar Reinhardt, Paul Warren.
Technical assistance: Marc Katzef, Lynn Masuda.
Fabrication: Chris Carroll, Ryan van Dyk, Tim Osborne, Marty Jay, Susana Alarcon.

The Exotic Fruits Lab is a collaboration between Lian Loke and Kristina Mah. Through this week-long immersion, the artists explore and experiment with movement, the body, and image to question identity and transformation. The lab will incubate the development of “Exotic Fruits”, a durational performance taking place at Melaka Arts and Performances Festival in Malaysia, on August 31, 2024. 
 
As Westernised children of South-East Asian migrants, we are caught between worlds. Our parents sought to assimilate into their adopted country, rejecting Asian traditions and superstitions for new found freedoms. Yet we long for deeper connection with our lost cultural heritage, beyond an obsession with the exotic. In this performance we create our own rituals of acceptance and integration, drawing on nostalgic childhood memories of food and festivals. We notice and listen to our embodied narratives and uninitiated understandings of cross-cultural identities, language and meaning. 
 
We question and converse through playful rituals drawing on the absurd as ways to reconnect and converse with our broken lineages, with broken language. Asking ourselves the perplexing question, am I a banana or an egg, or something in between?
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Supported by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
4a.com.au/events/the-exotic-fruits-residency

Super excited and honoured to be one of five artists in the inaugural Experimental Choreographic Lab, supported by Performance Space and Critical Path Choreographic Research Centre.
Five days of deep diving into process and creative development, culminating in a public showing at Critical Path.
I'll be exploring the notion of hybrid bodies, cross-species amalgamations of human/animal/machine. The project begins with an investigation into kinetic body extensions that can engender new movement languages grounded in metamorphic embodiment.

Repeat After Me
I often wished for a third arm, to make my life easier. Getting up in the morning, grooming and getting ready for the day … surely more efficient with the help of a robotic arm. But I forgot about the training!

Using improvised performance as a research methodology, I enquire into future worlds, where humans and robots live with, learn from, and adapt to each other. Raising questions as to who is becoming-human, or indeed, who or what is becoming-robot.

12th February, 2024 SHErobots Exhibition Launch, TU Delft Library, The Netherlands
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Credits: 
Concept, choreography and performance: Lian Loke
Kuka Iiwa robot courtesy of Micah Prendergast, Cognitive Robotics Lab (TUD)
Robot programming: Charlotte Firth (UNSW), Lynn Masuda (USYD), Yi Zhao (USYD)
Music: Lindsay Webb
Vocals: Bronwyn Turnbull
Performance consultants: Lee-Anne Litton, Bronwyn Turnbull

Excited to be delivering a course with two of the pioneering HCI researchers in somaesthetics, Thecla Schiphorst and Kia Hook.
CHI2021 Course 1044 - Designing for Sensory Appreciation: Cultivating Somatic Approaches to Experience Design
May 8-13, 2021
Online Virtual Conference (originally Yokohama, Japan)
https://chi2021.acm.org/

Making art with one of my fave collaborators, the extraordinary Garth Knight. A photographic series called Ebi Metamorph to be exhibited in Elena Knox's Volcana Brainstorm as part of the Yokohama Triennale in Japan.