Using only materials found at three contrasting sites on the island of Rarotonga, Richard Downing creates three installations - or 'ecologies' - of impermanence for the Oceanic Performance Biennial, 2015. (Sea-Change: Performing a Fluid Continent. Fluid States PSI#21) Supported by Wales Arts International

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The famous ‘Welsh’ slate of my homeland originates, in fact, from 300 miles south of the equator. We are not so much standing, as surfing. Both microscopic and macroscopic optics confirm the illusory implication of ‘stasis’ in ‘state’. Fluidity appears not so much a possibility of ‘state’ as a defining characteristic. Therein may lie the tragedy and comedy, but also the opening for the defining human activity of influence – positive or negative. If all is fluid – materially, spatially and temporally – then, in a sense, everything is music. The invitation is clearly to listen but also, happily, to play.

Using only the materials belonging to the locations, the constructions of ‘It worked yesterday….’ draw upon and celebrate the fluid characteristic of ‘state’, including the state of ‘knowing’. These playful labours of making and sharing are fully conscious of their ephemerality; indeed, their value lies more in the poetics of falling than the manner of rising.

Getting it ‘wrong’ is generally anathema. Embodied in the proposed works, offered within the context of the symposium, is the notion of creative change’s ecological and evolutionary requirement of failure.

There’s a real question behind this frippery. How do we perform, and interpret our performance, upon the stage of the natural world? In this case, we have to understand that the stage is neither static, nor at our command, though its illusion may seem so. In fact, our stage is not a stage, but also a performance. More than simply a revolve, it is a system. Perhaps a scenography. So the question is how to dance, not upon a floor, but within a greater dance? The play’s really not the thing. It’s the footwork.