Image: Tom Cramond

Epoch Wars

Pony Express & Performing Lines

Epoch Wars is a large-scale, immersive, participatory artwork merging a symposium-style event with interactive & sensory installations & performances. Radicalising audiences into the urgent conflict over what to name Earth’s current geological era? A Live Art reaction to the growing debate over the legitimacy of the proposed name “Anthropocene”. Pony Express conceptually arm artistic, community & non-human voices to weigh in on this existentially significant scientific & cultural dispute as it unfolds across real & deep time.

    ABOUT THE PROJECT

    In response to 36th & 37th  International Geological Congress, a scientific delegation voting to formalise the ‘Anthropocene’ into the fossil record; Epoch Wars is a queered, artist-driven, alternative congress, where audiences can experience this geo-illogical battle via a public speakers’ program, non-human interrogations/negotiations & new ‘epoch name’ artworks from commissioned international & national creatives & diverse community groups.

    Epoch Wars asks who is or isn’t invited to the table when it comes to planetary decision making?

    ABOUT THE ARTISTS

    Pony Express is an experimental, Live Art duo led by Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer. Through their pandrogynous collaborative process, Pony Express work across platforms of media art, performance, video and transdisciplinary research. Creating immersive alternate realities that reflect themes of adaptation, global weirding and the slow apocalypse. Presenting in a diverse array of traditional and non-traditional venues and cooperating with communities, organisations and subcultures at the forefront of environmental futures.

    The duo focus on queer ecologies and nonhuman politics to build worlds that trouble the ethical landscape of the present day.

    Pony Express are seasonal lecturers at the Iceland University of the Arts, Listaháskóli Íslands and have exhibited or toured nationally and internationally including Fórum do Futuro Porto; Santarcangelo Festival; DARK MOFO; Underbelly Festival; Fringe World; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts; Climate Century and Adhocracy – Vital Statistix; LiveWorks Festival of Experimental Art; Next Wave Festival; NIDA Art Colony – Vilnius Academy of Arts; Westspace Gallery; OktoLab Artback NT; Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies; Constance ARI; CP Projects Space; New York School of Visual Arts and the Australian Centre for Photography.

    Pony Express have been profiled in Vice; The Guardian; ABC Arts; Vouge; i-D Magazine; The Creators Project; Queerty; GQ; Out magazine; IceHole; Broadly; Elephant; Asia Pacific Arts; Artlink; The Christian Post; Quadrant; The Spectator & HUSTLER.

    Performing Lines produces provocative contemporary performance by Australia’s most audacious independent artists. We curate a portfolio of work that is propelled by pressing questions and new ways of seeing the world. We champion the unconventional, the marginal, the rebellious and the new. Our purpose is to champion risk and to ensure that the breadth and plurality of Australia’s creative potential is represented and celebrated. Performing Lines is led by Executive Producer Marion Potts, with teams in Sydney, Perth and Hobart and a network of producers and presenters around the country and the world. In everything we do, we acknowledge that we live on Aboriginal land and constantly learn from the wisdom of our First Peoples. Where we are and the history that precedes us informs how we work and how we move forward.

    CONTACT
    Annette Vieusseux
    Producer, Performing Lines