Container Island Walk

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Building upon the 2013 Wellington, New Zealand work 'Container Walk', this 2017 work 'Container Island Walk' is a context-responsive durational performance installation that was commissioned by the internationally renowned Museum of New and Old Art (MONA) Festival of Music and Art (FOMA), or MOFO, held at the MONA site in Hobart, Tasmania. It was conceived and directed by Mick Douglas and performed by artist Ben Landau. The project tests and advances the 'open score' performance choreography used in both works - a man walking on a bed of sea salt in an open shipping container for every hour of a festival over multiple days generating an emergent embodied dance and language game with interactors. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: The work demonstrates Douglas' research interest in new forms of hybrid art performances concerned with performing mobilities. It contributes to allied fields of 'socially engaged art' that actively involves public participation, 'live art' that privileges the performative presence of artist and witness, 'walking art' based in the kinaesthetic of the human body in environments, and 'performance' in art galleries, with the use of an open score that generates the emergent performance of audience social behaviours, and an enquiry of context-specific language-based dialogical co-creation. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The significance of this work is evidenced by its inclusion in the MOFO program, curated by Brian Ritchie (Violent Femmes). MOFO is renowned internationally for high caliber and diverse programming prioritising experimentation and collaboration across various platforms, and MONA was recognised as the best contemporary art museum worldwide by Lonely Planet in 2015.