American artist Nick Cave is in Sydney this week for the premiere of his public art performance HEARD•SYD, presented by Carriageworks and City of Sydney's public art program Art & About.
In three performances across two venues – Pitt St Mall in the CBD and Carriageworks – 30 colourful horses (manned by two dancers apiece) will parade through 'public space' to the sounds of tribal drumming, climaxing in what can quite frankly only be described as a wild rumpus.
The dancers 'uncouple', and two separate fantastic creatures are revealed where before there was one dancing horse.
Photograph: Daniel Boud
The horse costumes themselves, made from synthetic raffia, make their own noise as they move – more subtle than the drumming, but impossible to miss. In fact, Cave calls them 'soundsuits'.
Photograph: Daniel Boud
At a dress rehearsal at Carriageworks featuring 60 local dancers and the Matavai Pacific Cultural Arts drumming crew, the artist talked about the inspiration behind HEARD, which appeared in its first iteration at New York's Grand Central Station in 2013.
"Grand Central is a place of transition, from one train to another, and I wanted to create something to stop people in their tracks – even for three seconds," says Cave. "But I was also thinking about our daily routine: we get up, we go to work, we get on the train – it's really quite a frustrating condition. I was thinking about what can we do with that transition time between one point and another point, how can we use it?"
The answer for Cave was to use it as a time, or space, for imagination.
Cave trained as a dancer through Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and has a Masters in textile design. He made his first 'soundsuit' in response to the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles in 1991. It was made from twigs, and conceived as a form of body armour; its sound-making qualities were something Cave discovered by accident, when he put it on. "And when I made that sound, it moved me into a role of protest. In order to be heard you have to speak louder," he explained in a 2013 interview.
Over the ensuing decades, Cave has made – and become famous for – his soundsuits, in different site-specific iterations and materials.
See and hear HEARD•SYD Thu Nov 10 at 5pm (Pitt Street Mall) and Sat Nov 12 at 10am and noon (Carriageworks).