tiny revolutions

Company/Presenter Profile

Founded in 1998 and based on Whadjuck Noongar Boodja, Western Australia, pvi collective is a tactical media art group who create participatory artworks intent on the creative disruption of everyday life. pvi use gameplay alongside emerging, familiar and DIY technology to explore creative solutions for living in an unstable 21^st century.

pvi believe in the potential for art to create systemic change. their work critically investigates contentious issues from privacy, disaster capitalism, climate crisis, corporate power, political corruption and the slow creep of alternative facts in our daily lives.

Over the past decade pvi have played to over 250,000 people; devised and performed 38 major works; instigated over 60 tactical interventions; featured in 15 national and international exhibitions; have toured to over 75 renowned venues and festivals and collaborated with extraordinary local artists and makers on the ground along the way. pvi’s work is taught as part of contemporary performance studies in universities across Australia. The pvi team have backgrounds in intervention, visual art, activism, performance, live art, video, sound art, movement, performance and programming. Each contribute their diverse skills towards creating artworks with their audiences at the heart of each experience.

Sound design for this edition of tiny revolutions is by pvi collective’s regular collaborator and comrade, South Australian-based artist JASON SWEENEY. Born on stolen Kaurna Country in 1971, Jason has undertaken a multidisciplinary approach to life and art. Existing on the tenuous and queer edge of sound art, experimental music, live performance and electronic composition, he has worked with artists, companies and collectives from around the world. He currently releases music under the name Panoptique Electrical and Sweeney. Jason has collaborated with pvi collective on a range of projects since their formation.

For tiny revolutions at Vitalstatistix, pvi collective will collaborate with five South Australian multidisciplinary artists.

ALEXIS WEST is a Birra Gubba, Wakka Wakka, South Sea Islander and Anglo Australian woman. She is a writer, director, collaborator and performer in film, theatre, poetry, dance and events. She has worked as an artistic director, writer, and facilitator, for a diverse range of organisations including the Karrikarrinya Theatre Collective, Writers SA, Spirit Festival, Our Mob, the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide Fringe, No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability, Act Now Theatre, Vitalstatistix and State Theatre Company South Australia. In 2017 Alexis was the Co-Curator of the 2017 Australian Theatre Forum, with colleague Steve Mayhew. Alexis has written and directed three 12-minute documentaries and a 5-minute documentary for NITV. She was a co-writer for the award-winning feature length documentary Kings Seal. Her poetry has been published in Mindshare, Ora Nui, Our Mob and Spirit Festival catalogues and translated into Polish for Poetiks. In 2020, Alexis helped lead Act Now Theatre and State Theatre Company South Australia’s The Decameron 2.0 project, as a writer, director and First Nations dramaturg.

FLEUR KILPATRICK is an award-winning playwright, a director and educator. She holds a postgraduate diploma of directing and a Masters in playwriting from the VCAM. Fleur’s plays have won the 2019 Helen Noonan Award (Whale), 2018 Max Afford Playwrights Award (Whale), 2016 Jill Blewett Award (Blessed, Poppy Seed Festival) and 2015 Melbourne Fringe’s Emerging Playwright Award (The City They Burned, Melbourne Fringe, Brisbane Festival). In 2021 her new work, Rebel, will premiere with Lab Kelpie in both digital and staged versions. Fleur was a lecturer and producer/programmer at Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance for five years. In 2020, her efforts teaching during lockdown won her the Monash Student Association’s Arts Faculty Teaching Excellence award and saw her short-listed for the university-wide Above and Beyond Award. In her academic work, she researches how we teach care to emerging theatre makers, the new field of staging theatre of climate crisis and how to build and maintain sustainable artistic careers.

JAMES DODD is an artist who works across a range of mediums and contexts. His work traverses and collapses the boundaries between visual street culture, alternative uses of urban space and existing gallery conventions. Since completing his Masters in Visual Arts at the University of South Australia, James has gone on to create an extensive body of work that he has exhibited widely in artist run, publicly funded and commercial spaces. His work challenges the traditional notions of genre, fitting comfortably into a traditional setting whilst also exploring new frontiers in visual street culture and the creative use of urban spaces. He is interested in the splashes of creativity that can be found in public spaces, especially suburbia. Painting has always been a core part of his practice. However, his impressive body of work also encompasses built structures, DIY technologies and contraptions, murals and a diverse catalogue of public art. James teaches at the Adelaide Central School of Art, leads community projects and exhibits regularly across Australia.

MANAL YOUNUS is an Australian-based storyteller from Eritrea. She is a published poet, accomplished public speaker and workshop facilitator, and a leading youth empowerment and intercultural awareness activist. Using her writing and performance, Manal creates experiences that encourage audiences to join her in asking questions of themselves and the world around them. Since making the Australian Poetry Slam National Finals in 2013, Manal has gone on to perform around the country and the world including at the Jaipur Literary Festival and Georgetown Literary festival. Manal frequently collaborates with Act Now Theatre to write and produce educational theatre pieces for schools. This includes the award-winning play, Responding to Racism, which has toured South Australia for seven consecutive years. In 2020 she wrote two monologues that featured in The Decameron 2.0 project by Act Now Theatre and State Theatre Company South Australia. She is now working on her first feature length play incorporating spoken word, hip hop and physical theatre.