APHIDS Co-Artistic Director, Lara Thoms joins forces with artists and performers Sammaneh Pourshafighi and Eden Falk to return to Arts House with the premiere of EDGING.
EDGING is a performance piece that interrogates how queerness, popular culture and border control intersect in a way that is both brutal and absurd.
One area of inquiry in EDGING looks at the problems faced by queer refugees as they are asked a range of questions about Western popular culture to secure a visa into Australia.
“The questions are invasive and culturally specific. We want to cross-examine these injustices with a sense of criticality and play. The result in an aesthetic that may be more at home in a nightclub than the airport,” says Thoms.
Pourshafighi is a queer gender-fluid Muslim who arrived in Australia as a refugee after the Iranian revolution.
Throughout EDGING, Pourshafighi blends the atmospheres of a pub trivia night and an international customs area. Falk is asked questions about movie stars, gossip and fashion and is interrogated on a number of issues in the style of Australia’s longest-running reality show, Border Security.
Although EDGING may begin as fun and flippant, it becomes apparent that this cross-examination aligns to the real border control practices that deter asylum seekers from entering Australia
Arts House Acting Artistic Director, Olivia Anderson, says EDGING is playful, dark and fun.
“It’s wonderful to have APHIDS back at the North Melbourne Town Hall, alongside Sammaneh and Eden. Together, they have made an urgent work that exposes and challenges institutional power,” said Anderson.
November 27 – December 1
