Can we re-wind?
Have we gone too far?
Oh-a-aho oh
Oh-a-aho oh
COIL by re:group, is a lament for the death of the video-store which culturally and creatively has empowered communities.
It is a new, live cinema work in development where a single performer creates a movie live in front of an audience in the ancient realms of a theatre space. Throughout COIL, re:group present original AV techniques in order for the soloist to play each part in the film. In doing so, they outsource their own labour to technological replacements and grapple with goodbyes.
COIL is a gathering in an ancient space of live performance, commemorating disappearing, and endangered places of cultural gathering. It is an attempt to mark time to ‘feel the love’ and celebrate the video shop as a place of inspiration that continued to operate against all technological odds.
COIL artists live and work on Dharawal and Gadigal land, and Naarm and nipaluna, and are excited to finally be able to meet up on Dja Dja Wurrung country.
Creating COIL coincided with the closing of one of the artist’s local video stores last year. They noted Castlemaine’s own award-winning Family VideoLand had closed too.
For Punctum’s WEIRD SANCTUARY, COIL met with local artists, members of the community and former Castlemaine video shop employees to inform their work. They pieced together how their screenplay and storyboard would play out on the floor, live with an audience on Saturday 24 April 2021.
Audiences were invited to bring feedback, rewinds to an inventive idea and fast forwards into possibility.
