Description
Produced by Insite Arts
Target Audience: for 12+ ages
Duration: 55 minutes
Synopsis
A vast, breathing membrane rises overhead. Beneath it, a solitary shape-shifting presence strides through an otherworldly environment where ritual and spectacle meet, and where the familiar gives way to the uncanny. As signs of a fragile ecosystem emerge from detritus and decomposition, Carrion uncovers strange new possibilities within decay, bringing audiences into a surreal encounter with a habitat that is at once post-historic, unsettling and eerily alive. The stage becomes an archaeological site from an unknown future that asks what new forms of life might emerge when old orders fall away and new ones begin to take shape. Equal parts scavenger, trickster and harbinger, the performer conjures a creature suspended between species, between past and future, between collapse and adaptation. This haunting yet playful speculative vision imagines transformation as life is only certainty and a necessary condition of survival.
Blurb:
Beneath a vast, breathing membrane, a solitary shape-shifting presence moves through a post historic landscape where ritual and spectacle meet. As signs of a fragile ecosystem emerge from detritus and decomposition, Carrion transforms the stage into an archaeological site from an unknown future, conjuring strange new possibilities from collapse and decay.
Hook:
Beneath a vast, breathing membrane, a shape-shifting creature moves through a post-historic world where ritual and spectacle meet—and strange new life emerges from decay.
The tour of Carrion is assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Artistic & Production Credits
Concept by, Artistic Director & Performer: Justin Talplacido Shoulder
Composer: Corin Ileto
Mentor & Co-choreographer: Victoria Hunt
Costume & Set Design: Matthew Stegh & Justin Shoulder
Design Assistance: Anthony Aitch, Marty Jay, Nick Wishart
Original Lighting Design: Benjamin Cisterne
Sound Mastering: Bob Scott
Adaptation of Lighting Design: Niccolo Gallio
Live Sound & Operation: Corin Ileto
Tech Crew: Fausto Brusamolino
Producer: Jason Cross for Insite Arts
Artist Profile
Justin Talplacido Shoulder is a shape shifting artist and storyteller, working primarily in performance, sculpture, video and collective events. Also known as Phasmahammer, their practice is an eco-cosmology of alter personas based on queered ancestral myth. Creatures birthed are embodied through hand crafted costumes and prosthesis and animated by their own gestural languages. The artist uses their body and craft as an instrument of metaphysics towards a queer Filipinx Futurism. Shoulder believes in performance and shared ceremony as communal medicine for difficult times.
Shoulder is a founding member of queer artist collective The Glitter Militia with partner and key collaborator Matthew Stegh. Over 12 years they co-created a series of events including Monsta Gras with Penelope Benton, an annual artist ball that aimed to reinvigorate the artistic and political intentions of the 78ers. A politicised avant-garde community led incubator for performance, music, visual art and dance for local and international LGBTQIA+ artists 2008-2020. Shoulder is also co-director of collective Club Ate with artist Bhenji Ra. Inspired by their shared Filipinx heritage and interest to create new narratives of motherhood and sisterhood, the pair created a series of fundraisers, balls, and variety nights inviting and celebrating their local Asia-Pacific queer and trans family. This work extended into the film series Ex Nilalang Episodes 1-4:2014-2017, and Ang Idol Ko: 2022 (highlights include Asia Pacific Triennial 2015, GOMA, screening at the Barbican, London, a finalist for Singapore Art Museum Prize and large scale projected and liveactivated work In Muva We Trust on the façade of the NGA, Canberra 2020).
Shoulder’s theatre and visual art works have been presented across Australia and Internationally where they work between gallery, nightclub, and theatre contexts. Highlights include: La Manutention performance artist in residence at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris 2019, The Prague Quadrennial of Stage Design, 2019, Premiere of theatre work Carrion, Performance Space, Sydney (AUS) + subsequent tour to Artshouse, Melbourne (AUS), Fusebox Festival, Texas (USA), Museum Macan, Jakarta (IDN), Roskilde (DEN), Kampnagel, Hamburg (DE), Fierce Festival (UK), MAI, Montreal.
New work was commissioned by NIRIN Sydney Biennale 2020, The National, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2021 and film work Ang Idol Ko, for MCA, Sydney / UCCA DUNE, Beidaihe, China 2022.
Phasmahammer recently completed the Australian tour of their in-theatre (version) of Anito, a co-commission between Rising Festival, Melb, Sydney Festival and MONA premiering in 2024 which is touring to Europe/UK in 2025. Anito is a hybrid body of work for theatre, gallery and nightclub. Phasmahammer is presenting a club version of Carrion at Asia TOPA in February 2025 and at Bangkok International Arts market in March 2025 and in residency at the DDD Festival in Portugal in April 2025. In 2024 Shoulder’s collective Club Ate were the recipient of the Creative Australia: Inspire Award.
