Hidden River

BACKGROUND Live video has become a regular part of performance events over the last twenty years and is usually drawn from pre-recorded material and often fixed cameras. Hidden River was a live performance work created for the Spatial Dialogues ARC linkage project. Spatial Dialogues investigates the environmental and cultural significance of water in three Asia-Pacific cities: Melbourne, Shanghai and Tokyo. The video, sound, site-specific installation and online gaming works draw attention to cross-cultural dialogues about water, its relationship to climate change and how these impact on urban and regional ecologies. Tokyo is a port and river city, in which most of the rivers are now hidden from view; covered over, diverted, and channelled into culverts. CONTRIBUTION Redfern spent time in the days prior to the performance collecting material along the covered-over Shibuya River. He then videoed the material live as researchers Philip Samartzis and Christophe Charles improvised a sound track from location recordings and the sounds around the site in Shibuya. The work was intended as a gesture of acknowledgement to the hidden rivers of Tokyo, extending the genre of performance practice specifically by use of a single shot that, over the course of the performance, articulates its dynamics through lens and camera movement as well as the manipulation of the material before the camera. By presenting this work in Japan the artists created a space for dialogue with collaborators and the Japanese audience around how we, as large economies in the region, live with and upon water. SIGNIFICANCE The selection of the project by the ARC for funding is demonstration of its excellence. The project drew a large and ever changing audience to its site in a public park between Cat Street and Shibuya Station in central Tokyo. Redfern's video installations evince the careful attention the artist brought to the vital role of rivers in the region.