ELECTRIC BODIES - TĀMAKI MAKAURAU

In March 2026, PAWA and TINY join forces to bring artists on an INTERxCHANGE between Ōtautahi and Tāmaki Makaurau in a series of performative experiments called ELECTRIC BODIES.

With the provocations of sound as body and body as sound, the artists are invited to experiment with the intersections between sound and body as a driving force. When sound is not the outcome, but the instigator of an action, in what ways can sound provoke new patterns of embodiment, attention, or resistance?

Powerful, magnetic, dynamic, rousing, voltaic, CHAOTIC, CONSUMING, CALLING YOU.

Friday 6 March — 8pm onwards:

Ivan Lupi — UNTIMELY: Threshold

Sarah Elsworth & Anita Clark — VIOLIN MANTIS

Jazmine Rose-Phillips — a body and a body of water

Cindy Yunha Jang & Sung Hwan Bobby Park — Toad Hole

Saturday 7 March — 8pm onwards

Adam Ben-Dror & Uncredited Performer — Capacitive Touch

Rachel Ruckstuhl-Mann & Clare Luiten — Roto / Matter / Tū / Gather

Antonia Barnett-McIntosh — Soft Mouth | The language of fffflowers

Adhoc live collective performance by (some) artists - Surprise!

Sunday 8 March — Workshops

11:00am–1:30pm GREEN SITES with Sarah Elsworth

3:00pm–5:00pm ECHOES IN THE PRESENT with Ivan Lupi

*For more information on our artists and accessibility information go to our website.

Performance + Workshop Descriptions:

UNTIMELY: Threshold by Ivan Lupi

This work explores anticipation as something shaped by time and sound within performance. Instead of moving from preparation to performance, the piece stays entirely in the moment of getting ready, making preparation itself the full duration of the work.

The sound environment is formed by incidental noises of readiness—bodies, objects, and technologies coming into alignment before a performance begins. These sounds, usually hidden or ignored, are treated as essential parts of the work rather than as something that comes before it. By remaining in this in-between state, the piece suggests that preparation has its own substance and sense of time. The work ends through an arbitrary interruption, pointing to the external forces that decide when artistic labor is recognized as “performance.”

Violin Mantis by Sarah Elsworth and Anita Clark

Welcome to the science-fiction room; A violin mantis sways, gesture becomes data, a biological catalogue is composed on the fly. This performance is not observed so much as entered. Fresh from recent collaborations in India, interdisciplinary artists Sarah Elsworth and Anita Clark open a speculative sensory laboratory of sound, movement and image.

a body and a body of water by Jazmine Rose Phillips

a body and a body of water is a live performance where water acts as a living archive, it explores vulnerability, and reciprocity between the human body and water. Using movement, and immersion, the artist generates sound through the interaction of skin, breath, and water—listening to the body as an instrument and the water as both collaborator and archive.

Toad Hole by Cindy Yunha Jang + Sung Hwan Bobby Park

Moving in and out of the spell-casting shape of a 두꺼비 (toad), the body folds into makeshift homes and sites of safety, echoing the chant “두껍아 두껍아.”

Like children forming a 두꺼비 집 (toad’s house) in the sand, we are constantly searching for new ways to build our lives from what we have. Through creating moulds and hollows from our physical selves, Cindy Yunha and Sunghwan trace the remnants left behind. *This might even end with a karaoke party.

Capacitive Touch by Adam Ben Dror and Uncredited Performer

Adam Ben-Dror and Uncredited Performer have had an ongoing artistic conversation for a number of years now in which collaboration, experimentation, and improvisation have been pulled open to reveal parts neglected in sound, movement, and physical materials.

Performing experiments from their most recent collaboration they play with obsolete smartphones, iPads, and Bluetooth speakers, treating them less like dead tech and more like stubborn, misbehaving instruments.Once abandoned, these devices are coaxed back into life through interference and touch, creatively misused until sound leaks out.

Roto/Matter/Tū/Gather by Rachel Ruckstuhl-Mann and Clare Luiten

An improvised performance: Lives, vibes, sensations, triggers, love, junk, pattern. Forces, scales, language, breath, too many/not enough - fast, faster, Fuck. [Kids want me back, longing for... ?, without them is kinda dull]. Is NZ a dessert? Deep landscapes of sea swell, seaweed, smashing. Trying to embrace all. Go to sleep already. M/other. Ground. Centre.

Stay present and alive; the space is singing. What can we pull from the dark when we dream together?

We are dancing with wholes; inner/outer, micro/macro, not/and/yes. We are dancing the pause and the spiral out. We are dancing these moments of ourselves, with each other, with you.

Soft Mouth | The language of fffflowers by Antonia Barnett-McIntosh

We were kinda talking about this the other day, like-, where it’s like-, resist the subject, push the composition. A solo performance-installation, ‘Soft Mouth | The language of fffflowers’ draws lines between sound art, handcrafts, and experimental theatre. Engaging habits of speech—of conversation, of composition—poiesis and transit, pronunciation and drift, the performance sounds out new and tricky ways of hearing, in a manner of speaking, of relating to deep and careful listening. Playfully combining rigour and whimsy, ‘Soft Mouth’ employs chit-chat, musings, overheard snippets, field recordings, found sounds, and makeshift instruments. onya, on your way, even if you tripped over the chair or something and you d-, oh damn it I’ve got-, gotta (yeah, yeah) push the chair back. you lose something else. that’s gonna-, yeah you have to think about something else. that’s gonna send some stuff out.

WORKSHOP: Sarah Elsworth — GREEN SITES

This workshop offers practical ways to explore how movement, environment, memory and community can inform site-responsive performance. Participants will engage with the park as a creative site, through simple scores, improvisation and experimental performance encounters, to create short “microscapes” together.

The session introduces tools and tasks from Green Silence, an evolving site-specific performance project by Sarah Elsworth and Anita Clark. Open to movers and performers from all artistic disciplines who are curious about collaboration, working with the environment and making performance collectively.

Weather permitting: Part of the workshop will take place both in Albert Park & Audio foundation.

* Green Silence is a site-specific research project exploring our human connection to outdoor green spaces; through the collision of choreography, poetry, story & sound.

WORKSHOP: Ivan Lupi — ECHOES IN THE PRESENT

A two hour long workshop on the potential applications of memory in relation to Live Art practice. The activities are a selection from Lupi’s immersive 3 day long workshop exploring the notion of memory and other correlated topics as resourceful and inspiring tools for live art.

Taking a step away from the realm of ‘ideas’ as they are usually approached and more commonly understood, Lupi focuses instead on embodied manifestations of mnemonic inputs and their surrounding challenges.

How do we approach and handle a memory in order to sublimate it into a coherent and powerful action in live art? What are other useful notions that can work in conjunction with memory and their application in live art?

No matter the nature of individual memories, traumatic, blissful, alienating, fabricated or spontaneous, they all take shape in our very own present moment and they carry the physical power to affect it.

All the activities offered in the workshop target the participants' outlook to memory, enabling new perspectives through which to experiment future live actions of individual or collaborative kind.

Participants from all backgrounds and experience are welcome to attend, all you need is an interest in performance and live art practise.