Transact (Flesh/Skin/Bone) showcased the outcomes of a six-month research and development grant funded by the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council. The project aimed to develop a new media installation form that would be experienced by interactors as evolving through an active, participative exchange. These interacting participants within the work would be located at a number of worldwide venues and on-line. Project 'Transact' sought to do this through applying knowledges drawn from both philosophical and scientific ecologies, new media and new performance practices. It was the precursor to the Intimate Transactions project.

Lisa O'Neill's Documentation Videos

Transact (Flesh/Skin/Bone)

The work comprises the amalgamation of three solos created over a period of 5 years, following the journey of the Yeti, a small curious woman with heavy feet on an exploration through time and space. Each solo was created in response to the walls and architecture of a particular performance space, with physical explorations through these varied environments determining the transition of moods and movement vocabulary. Dressed in a long garment and fluffy bowed slippers, the Yeti stomps ferociously around the perimeter of the space in a ritual dance, marking out her territory. With every stomp of her small fury slippered feet, the sweet yeti stamps her way around new spaces leaving imprints of past places.

Sweet Yeti 2

Performance installation at the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Queensland. Used live performance and peppers ghost video effects.

Ghosting

#14 (Project1 14) was a multimedia performance work, presented in Spring Hill Baths, Brisbane for the 1996 Brisbane Festival of the Arts. The work was presented in the winter-empty pool shell and enveloped and involved audience interaction in a unique cross-artform multimedia event that drew on elements of the pool's history to explore notions of space, boundaries, personal barriers, gender, display and observation. Large scale computer projections on the pool floor, an audience situated high above in the balconies, shadow inspired movement and imagery, and state of the art visual and aural technology were some of the elements that immersed and confronted the viewers as they were drawn into a complex blend of sporadic, virtual interactive experiences and environments.

Project 14

Through a sweetly macabre ritual of song and dance, a songstress and her accompanist are catapulted into an unexpected nasty little whirly-gig! Very quietly, just between us, the tall one says there’s something very familiar about the small one… and can’t help but notice a little more at play… play softly. It’s all fun and games until someone loses their marbles! Well known for her birdcalls and architectural warblings. Pianissimo thrusts Christine Johnston into a world where Laurie Anderson meets the Prodigy. Highly acclaimed for her individual works as well as her extensive performance repertoire with the prolific and renowned company Frank Theatre, Lisa O’Neill joins Christine in a meeting made in twisted heaven.

Pianissimo

A woman enters an ice exhibition and allows herself to be drawn into the enigmatic appeal of the male figured seen in Auguste Rodin’s sculpture, ‘The Kiss’. His seductive appeal satisfies her need to be romanticized and pushes her to delve into unexplored feelings, which challenge her perceptions of what is real and what is imagined. Rodin’s Kiss’ is about allowing the emotionality and physicality of the performance delivery to be an internalising experience, as dealt with by the performer. Hence the narrative movement lends an impassioned gaze on the feelings and perceptions of a woman caught in the grip of first love, illuminating our view into the human spirit. It is a performance piece that evokes our sense of the journeying soul.

Rodin's Kiss

All Tomorrow's Parties marked the first of many collaborations to come between Lisa and Christine Johnston. The work was inspired by the music of The Velvet Underground and the dramatic height difference between these two ladies!

All Tomorrow's Parties

Electric Herring was performed at the Arena Nightclub, situated in Fortitude Valley, the live music district of Brisbane. The piece was inspired by the music of local band 'Squelch' who accompanied the performance live on stage.

Electric Herring

Sweet Yeti I was the first solo dance work created and performed by O'Neill. The performance took place at The Crab Room - an artist run performance space located in Brisbane in the year 1995.

Sweet Yeti 1

Come in, sit down and relax and follow the fantastic voyages of 'Ling Change', our youthful heroine, as she journeys through a complex maze of alternate outcomes caused by you, the audience within the installation space. transit_lounge, a multimedia installation opened onMay 26, 1998 in the new foyer space of Metro Art. It was later shown at Artspace in Sydney. Lisa performed all of the nine cartoon-like characters in the show, which were digitally composited into dynamic, computer-generated landscapes. The way in which all of these characters relate to one another was designed to adapt and change in real time, based upon different participant activity and changing atmospheric conditions within the exhibition space (detected by sensors).

Transit Lounge

Yeti in E Minor was inspired by the room in which it was created. The room was situated at The Cherring Herring (an independent Brisbane dance space run by artists in 1996/97). The room was initially white with four walls. In preparation for this work, the interior walls were removed, leaving only the steel bracing. The floor, ceiling and two remainder stone walls were painted black. The room took on the appearance of a cage and inspired the next reinvention of the Yeti character, trapped, caught and confined to a cage.

Yeti in E-Minor

Alternately haunting and playful, the performance leads us on a journey of moods which traces the physical story of shared space. In the absence of text, the unspoken/unspeakable is heightened.. This exploration originated in the performance of the collaborative short work 'The Soup Waltz' by O'Neill and Christina Koch in 1995 at The Crab Room Performance Space, Brisbane.

Marble

Teardrop Explodes was a site-specific work created in response to the ground floor foyer space of a high rise building in the Central Business District of Brisbane. Performances took place during and outside office hours.

Teardrop Explodes

Fugu San creates a powerful territory where time and space is tangible. Fugu San is not alone but in partnership with her environment, compressing the space between performer and spectator. With intense body focus, energy and gaze, she creates atmospheric cameos that serve to manipulate time and space with intriguing nuances. Drawing the audience deep into her internal world, with her secret narrative hidden under unwavering composure, she embarks on a mysterious journey enticing the audience into a transcendent space that makes us aware of each unfolding moment and physical transformation.

Fugu San

Lisa O’Neill is a freelance performer, choreographer, movement directror and teacher working extensively in the areas of dance, theatre, performance and new-media. She has received numerous performance commissions, touring her original and collaborative works nationally and internationally In Europe and Asia. Lisa has worked as an actor with Brisbane’s FRANK THEATRE since 1995, touring Nationally and internationally through Europe and Asia. Lisa is a founding and core member of the internationally recognized TRANSMUTE COLLECTIVE (new-media) and THE BRIDES OF FRANK (performance) groups.

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Lisa O'Neill's Documentation Videos

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