Theatre and Performance

About Seedpod

RESIDENCY OPPORTUNITY FOR LIVE ARTS PRACTITIONERS WHO LIVE, WORK OR STUDY IN THE CITY OF BALLARAT

Following the success of Punctum’s inaugural Ballarat 2023 Seedpod program, Punctum and the City of Ballarat are pleased to announce the successful live arts and contemporary performance artists for the 2024 Seedpod residency

Seedpod is a renowned residency program created and produced by award-winning, regionally based live arts company - Punctum. It is research led and artist centred. By ‘live arts’, Punctum means innovative or experimental performances or events that disrupt traditional ways of working together or propose new ways of interacting with audiences.

A 2024 Seedpod residency offers the successful artists time, funding, resources, and space to test ideas, push the boundaries of their creative practice, and understand how their work makes meaning with members of the public. Artists seeking to grow their practice in a responsive, rigorous setting of enquiry, experimentation and collaboration are invited to apply.

2024 seedpod candidates

john kachoyan

John is an award-winning queer Armenian-Australian artist and a multi-artform writer, director, developer and educator who began his career in the theatre. He holds an MA in Theatre from the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, studied script-editing at AFTRS and originally trained as a playwright at NIDA. John writes about his Seedpod proposal:

“‘Naming Rites’ or ‘Pomegranate’ seeks to explore the fragments and whispers of the presence of Armenian immigrants on the Goldfields and reconstitutes their existence in live performance through my own performing body, as a queer Armenian-Australian. This history, such as it exists, is incomplete, fleeting, and sparse – and the ghosts of Armenia are dotted throughout contested sights in Ballarat and beyond.

“The investigation delves the contested histories of immigrants (known and imagined) who fled persecution in their homelands. The Armenian Genocide is the historical ghost in all Armenian’s lives – a history still denied in official acknowledgement – parsed off as ‘civil unrest’. Names have power – especially ‘GENOCIDE’ right now.

“There are explicit Armenian links to the region; Mt Ararat in historical Armenia: the resting place of Noah’s Ark or Armenian Reef near St Arnaud, named after a local ‘Anastasia’, a tattooed Armenian man called John arriving in the port of Melbourne in 1854 and then disappearing and Armenian priest’s assistant Johannes Gregorius part in the Eureka rebellion - all strands of anchoring ‘fact’. Johannes was born Հովհաննես Գրիգորյան (Hovannes Gregorian) Hovannes means ‘John’. Names shift and morph, losing and gaining meaning.

“My process is one of research, experiential play, text and image collection and refining, moving into a process of response and devising in site-specific ways. This is a new old way of working as it were – a generative, iterative process, without formal production outcomes, but always steering towards the public sharing. I aim to develop a durational performance that embodies, reincarnates and resurrects these forgotten voices to share with an audience their absence and to tease the crumbs of their lives into a fuller remembering.”

Work In Progress Performances -Saturday 4th of May: 2pm & 6pm & Sunday 5th of May: 4pm
Ballarat Trades Hall at Union Square, 24 Camp Street, Ballarat Central - FREE but bookings are essential due to limited space.

alexandra ann minchin doherty

Sandra Minchin-Delohery is a visual artist, academic and disability advocate. Having worked internationally and performed throughout the world, Sandra now defines herself as a “re-emerging artist” after a rare chronic illness diagnosis. Today Sandra channels her creative energy into articulating the stories of illness and wellness, abled and disabled. Sandra writes of her original Seedpod proposal:

“As an able-bodied person, I never really gave my body much thought until one day something changed. Five years ago, I started to feel very unwell. I was diagnosed with a mixed autoimmune disorder with Scleroderma, Interstitial lung disease, and overlap syndrome polymyositis. My white cells are attacking my red cells. I am now considered disabled and have an invisible chronically ill non-ideal body.

“My art practice presents my body as both a site and a material and includes live art, video, photography, objects, and live art/experimental theatre. I consider myself an emerging artist in Australia due to having to take time out of my art practice. My work investigates the representation of the non-ideal sick female body and examines how illness/pain can be framed as beauty. Through my work, I challenge common representations of illness and disability.

“For the Seedpod Residency, I would like to interrogate what it means to live with a chronically ill/ disabled body daily. I would potentially like to develop two works that are in the early production stages. I would like to present a sample of the first performance as a live art piece and present the concepts, structure, talk through ideas, samples through a PowerPoint presentation for feedback. This would also include inviting some of Ballarat's disabled community in to chat with me to discuss what it means to live with a disruptive body.

“The first performance I would like to develop is a live art piece that has a repetitive/ endurance action over three days, (this would be the resolved performance to be shown within a gallery setting) I would start the performance with a white table and chair and the above pills (that are red and white referring to my red cells attacking my white cells). There would be hundreds of pills on the table. The action would be, me sitting at the table in a white hospital gown filling multiple pill organisers with the above tablets, repeating this action repeatedly, till there is a huge build-up of the pill organisers, this performance alludes to the daily and ongoing regimented regime of chronic illness that is required to subdue an unruly body.”

the outcomes for 2023:

MEGAN J RIEDL - UNSPOKEN: THE BALLARAT POETESS

Megan J Riedl's Seedpod proposal, set out to explore the connection between Megan’s spoken word practice and the history of Australian women's censorship, with a focus on the work of Ellen Young a published 19th century ‘Ballarat Poetess’.

Megan proposed to investigate Young's voice compared to contemporary spoken word, and spoken word's role in women's agency and social change. The timeline of development proposed for the work coincides with the 170th anniversary of the Eureka Stockade, and examines women's involvement in the rebellion, tracing the legacy of women's agency in Australia's political history.

Through the Seedpod residency, Megan sought to challenge herself professionally, and shift her emphasis from writer to performer, combining world-building, playwriting, and spoken word to create a unique performance style.

Megan requested artistic support and mentoring, assistance securing venues and delivering a public presentation during the residency, and support to build connections towards a premiere and potential tour of the work in 2024/2025.

rae howell - the piano: hook, line & tinker

Rae Howell proposed "The Piano: Hook, Line and Tinker" as an exploration of waste, recycling, and repurposing, focusing on unserviceable and abandoned pianos. Through her practice as a piano technician, Rae deals with an increasing number of unusable pianos, and as a composer and multi instrumentalist, she seeks to address this waste problem by transforming unwanted pianos into new works of art.

Through the Seedpod residency, Rae sought to develop an exhibition, talk, and live reconstruction using reclaimed piano components, highlighting what can be recycled or repurposed. The proposal's connection to 'contested sites' related to waste management, the need for better recycling and repurposing practices, and aligns with Ballarat City Council's plan to become a 100% circular economy by 2050.

Rae sought support to build connections with council waste collection agencies and to access a studio space to disassemble and reconstruct a piano during the residency. Through the presentation, she hoped to understand how a live audience engages with the work, towards further development of an interactive exhibit of unique musical instruments and kinetic sound sculptures.

Further background:

Seedpod was established in 2008 to provide artists, producers, and audiences with access to regionally based arts professionals, resources, presentation spaces, and opportunities for the investigation, development, and presentation of live arts. Through Seedpod residencies, Punctum shares knowledge, networks and assistance in the funding, research, development, and profiling of experiments in live arts.

Seedpod provides live arts creators with the right conditions to delve into their research and production within a regional context of open critique and honest dialogue with colleagues, technicians, audiences, reviewers, and producers. In this way, Punctum opens doors to works and creators seeking a testing phase in order to engender dialogue with ‘expert audiences’ creating the stimulus needed for deepening practice, innovation, and understanding ‘next steps’.

Punctum provides artists across live arts disciplines with the opportunity and resources to:

• experiment, develop, and present stages of new work in an accessible, vibrant, professional environment

• enable artists to engage meaningfully with the environment, communities, culture, and audiences in which our Seedpod studio spaces are situated

• further dialogue about the role of art in local through to global contexts by developing opportunities for exchange and innovation with a broad cross section of arts practitioners, audience members, and communities.

the THEME:

Ballarat Seedpod residencies offered an opportunity to live arts artists seeking to investigate and develop new work in the field of ‘contested sites’.

Artists can nominate their own site within the City of Ballarat as one they recognise as ‘contested’.

A contested site can be one which one which is historically known as conflicted, or currently ‘holds’ contestation, or one that through a future lens may well become contested.

The fissures, fault lines and tensions of these contested sites might be cultural, social, historical and/or environmental. 

Public access will be an important consideration.

‘Contested sites’ remains a theme for 2024.

 What RESIDENCIES WILL RECEIVE IN 2024:

The two Seedpod residencies each include:

• $3,000 for artist fee, project materials, accommodation, travel

• $2,000 in-kind producing, production management and technical support

• $500 in-kind professional marketing and box office coordination

• $500 in-kind dramaturgical/mentoring support

• $1000 in-kind documentation/review writing

• Two weeks in-kind use of a studio space in the City of Ballarat equipped for research, development, rehearsal, meetings and access to presentation sites.

 Seedpod artists/organisations are expected to offer a public sharing of their exploration.