DEAD RICH

DEAD RICH, 2023, is a two-part performance lecture by APHIDS co-directors Mish Grigor and Lara Thoms. In two discrete and interlinked segments, DEAD RICH explores how lived experience infiltrates art practice in strange and unexpected ways. The lecture takes its cues from autoethnographer and performance scholar Tami Spry’s concept of the ‘textualising body’ – or what Spry describes as an unhierarchical ‘collaboration between body, page and stage’. Here, the work of research flows through a series of manifestations that equally produce knowledge. Through this lens, DEAD RICH attempts to use liveness, image, words and bodies to portray and unpack the performance of class and death in present-day Australia.

The piece will be segmented into two discrete halves. In the first half, Lara Thoms examines a life spent making art about death. In the second half, Mish Grigor takes on class consciousness. Throughout the four performances of DEAD RICH, Grigor will, over time begin to replace herself with another actor, dancer Sarah Aiken, to contribute to this performance of abstraction.

CREDITS