pvi collective (Steve Bull and Kelli McCluskey) (WA)

Steve Bull and Kelli McCluskey are the Creative Directors and two of the six artists comprising pvi collective, an independent new media arts ensemble based in Perth. Preferring to work collectively and collaboratively, each artist in the collective brings their own artistic experience and knowledge to the group, which produces interdisciplinary artwork combining elements of performance, video and installation alongside public acts of intervention. Preoccupied with notions of ‘life mediated by technology’, their work over the past four years has ranged from new media performance and live art to gallery-based installations. Their recent work has invited active participation and interventions from the local community, and includes their work Panopticon: Scanning the Big Slab, a new media event incorporating performance (live and remote/virtual), acts of surveillance and an on-line component, presented at PICA as part of the 2002 Perth International Arts Festival. pvi collective have also produced work for the WA Fringe Festival, Putting On An Act Festival, Murdoch University, Cheltenham Art Gallery (UK) and Gloucester Festival (UK). They have undertaken residencies at Performance Space, Jacksue Gallery and the Brisbane Powerhouse (ANAT Alchemy masterclass). The group has received various grants and awards from state and national funding bodies and festivals.

Steve Bull has lectured in time-based media (Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education) and currently works as a web artist and video producer for pvi web & pvi media. Kelli McCluskey has lectured in performance at Murdoch and Curtin universities in Perth and currently works as a new media artist for pvi web and pvi media.

Jason Sweeney (VIC)

Jason Sweeney is a contemporary artist working across various disciplines, particularly in the fields of music (with a large body of international releases), performance-making, sound art and internet media production. Since 1995, Jason has developed a strong body of work which he has since presented overseas and nationally as part of international thematic residencies, solo performances and co-productions at spaces and festivals including Multi-media Art Asia Pacific, Canada's Banff Centre for the Arts (two new media residencies), Adelaide Festival (2002 and 1998), Artspace (Sydney), ISEA (UK, 1998), Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival, and the Museum of Image and Sound (Sao Paulo), amongst others. He has undertaken research and professional development projects with exchange programs and remote conferences in Europe and Canada, working and communicating with some of the world's most innovative arts, cultural and community workers. He has also produced sound tracks for short films and animations.

Jason recently won the Audio/Net Radio Website Award from the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. In 2002 and 2003, he participated in several collaborative projects and residencies, including a new media/performance residency with Para//elo (Doppio Teatro) in Adelaide, a performance/sound residency (with Victoria Spence) at Performance Space (Sydney), and collaborated with Darwin Theatre Company on the production House.

Karen Therese (VIC)

Karen Therese is an emerging performer with an interdisciplinary practice, working with improvisation, text, movement, sound and visual forms. She has trained in Butoh and Bodyweather methods with artists such as Nikki Heywood, Tess de Quincey, Yumi Unimare and Tony Yap. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Animateuring (1st Class Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts, has studied Indigenous Studies at the University of NSW and is a graduate of The Journey at The Actors Centre (Sydney).
Karen has directed, devised, production managed and performed in works in a range of events and contexts, including the Moomba Festival, Black Box Theatre (Melbourne), Unbecomings at Performance Space (Sydney), the Triple Alice laboratories (Alice Springs), Brisbane Powerhouse,

Melbourne International Festival and PACT Youth Theatre (Sydney).
She has also curated a visual art and performance exhibition/event and performed in various video works. She has been awarded grants from Playworks (Sydney) and Nextwave (Melbourne), and in 2000 won the Best Outdoor Performance category in the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Her current work explores her cultural heritage and involves a collaboration with visual artist Abi Temby and site-specific research in Hungary.

Ivan Thorley (VIC)

Ivan Thorley is an emerging dancer/performer/choreographer. He holds a Bachelor of Dance from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, graduating in 2000. Since 2001, he has been a company member of Strange Fruit, performing and touring extensively. He has performed in, and collaborated on, a range of contemporary dance works presented at La Mama Theatre, Dance House and Catalytic Dance Theatre in Melbourne, as well as at the Adelaide International Arts Festival and Ballet Mulla in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In 2002, Ivan wrote, choreographed and directed the dance work Unleash My Baby Beretta for the 2002 Next Wave Festival in Melbourne, and presented Eisteddfod II in Newtown Theatre’s 2002 Bodies program, a re-working (incorporating pre-recorded performance video) of the work Eisteddfod which he presented in Dance House’s 2001 Great Escapes program.

Ivan has undertaken performance/choreographic workshops through the Victorian College of the Arts with Joe Scolio, Shonia Erskine, Anna Smith, Sandra Parker, Jonathan Taylor, Robert Ray, Adrian Bennett, Steph Lake and Simmone Clifford.

Chi Vu (VIC)

Chi Vu is a writer, director and community theatre maker and holds a Bachelor of Arts and Commerce from the University of Melbourne. She has written short stories, worked for a time writing for short films, and now writes for theatre in both Vietnamese and English.

She has been writer/facilitator/director of various performance and spoken word events including African Girl Power, for young women from the African-Australian community, One Nation – A Play Against Racism, involving 40 young people from west Melbourne, and The Rush at Mongrel Theatre. She has worked on Young People’s Performance Projects (Y3P) in Melbourne and SCRAYP – Youth Arts with an Edge at Footscray Community Arts Centre since 1996. In 2000 she spent four months in Vietnam on an Asialink residency.

Chi Vu won the Playbox Asialink Special Initiative Award for her work A Story of Soil, which will be performed as part of the 2002 Carnivale festival program, Sydney. Her short stories have been published in anthologies such as Meanjin, refo, Picador New Writing 4 and Blur – Stories by Young Australian Writers, amongst others. She is currently developing a multi-media production of her work The Psychic Guide with Director Sandra Long and multi-media/digital artist Ruth Fleishman.

Julie Vulcan (NSW)

Julie Vulcan began practicing as a visual artist in 1989 after completing a BA and Graduate Diploma Visual Art at the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW, working with sound, photography, video, digital imagery and interactive interfaces, and installation. She has exhibited work across Australia, at Artspace (Sydney), Lawrence Wilson Gallery (Perth), the 7th Australian International Video Festival, Linden Gallery (Melbourne), Arhaus, (Sydney) Performance Space and Ivan Dougherty Gallery (Sydney).

Julie has since combined her visual arts practice with performance, becoming increasingly involved in cross-medium collaborations and performance making. In 1993, she joined the Icarus Performance Troupe, devising, producing and performing work in contexts such as the Sydney and Adelaide Festivals, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Performance Space, Ice Street Theatre Festival (Brisbane) and theatre festivals throughout Northern Europe, finally leaving the group in 2001. Since 1996, she has been an intermittent member of Frumpus, an all girl Sydney-based performance group exploring ‘the theatre of the frump’. Frumpus have presented work at Performance Space, Sydney Fringe Festival, Sidetrack Theatre (Sydney), the Big Day Out and as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival.

Julie has had training in various performance methods, including improvisation (with Andrew Morrish), choreographic theatre and dance (Enrique Pardo), Butoh (Cheryl Hazelwood) and the Suzuki method (Deborah Pollard/Joel Markham).

David Williams (NSW)

David Williams is a performer, technician and director making performance via collaborative processes. He has developed and performed work in a wide range of different contexts – railway stations, the street, theatre, film and television. He holds a BA (Theatre, Honours) from the University of Western Sydney and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of NSW, exploring the possibilities that collaboration as a mode of performance making opens up in the creation of live work. His has trained in the Tadashi Suzuki method with Meme Thorne and Yukihiro Goto (US), Bodyweather with Martin del Amo (Germany) and Kubuki with Lawrence Kominz (US). In 1998 he was awarded the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for Acting which saw him travel to the US, Canada, Italy and Denmark. He attended the National Performance Studio in Alice Springs, working with practitioners such as Meryl Tankard, and was invited to participate in the 12th International School of Theatre Anthropology.

In 1998, David co-founded version1.0, a performance collective whose process and public outcomes road test the possibilities of performance as a site for the expression of difference (aesthetic, political, cultural, bodily). Their work has been performed at PACT Youth Theatre, Performance Space and Omeo Dance Studio (all Sydney). Version 1.0 recently showed the work in progress Questions to Ask Yourself in the Face of Others at Performance Space after a period of creative residency.

Rebecca Youdell (QLD)

Rebecca Youdell is a performer working collaboratively across disciplines, with sound, visual and performance artists. She holds an MA (Visual/Performing Arts) from Charles Sturt University and a BFA (Dance - Cum Laude High Honours) from Butler University in the US, and has studied at The Royal Ballet School (UK) and Jordan College of Fine Arts (US). She has performed and participated in a wide range of events, including collaborative performance projects, workshops, exhibitions, residencies and interdisciplinary collaborations, and has undertaken Body Weather workshops in Japan. She is one half of Bonemap, a creative partnership with Russell Milledge.

In 2001, Bonemap undertook a four-month interdisciplinary residency at The Substation in Singapore, supported by Asialink. Their 2000 project, The Wild Edge, incorporating dance, sound, screen and objects, toured to Cairns, Townsville, Magnetic Island, Brisbane and Tokyo, and was presented during their Asialink residency at the Australian High Commission in Singapore. In 2000, Rebecca attended the ANAT-initiated Alchemy hybrid performance/new media masterclass in Brisbane. Since 1996, she has been one of the key artists involved in the on-going Baggage ‘Transfer/Tranship’ project – performances and installations on airport carousels – which has been presented in Cairns and Townsville, and as part of the 2000 Adelaide Festival. Rebecca was a founding member of Arts Nexus and has been on committees/boards including Kick Arts Collective, Cairns City Council Arts/Cultural Reference Group, Ausdance Qld and Cairns Ballet Theatre.

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