Wednesday 18 June
12.45 – 1.30pm
Cell Block Theatre

Dr Melinda Reid ingested fairy floss (yum!), sock fibres (yuck!), and tattoo ink (ouch!) while in Helsinki to research and participate in the premiere of Teo Ala-Ruona’s Parachorale (2024). In this lecture, Melinda will describe the layered choreography of Parachorale as performed during the 2024 Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival. She will also share her research-in-progress into the dynamics of artist-audience cooperation, performance art traces, and why the term ​‘ingester’ may be the most accurate way to describe the role of some performance art audiences. Melinda’s research was supported by the National Art School Professional Practice Grant Program.

Dr Melinda Reid is an Australian educator, researcher, and writer. She currently teaches at the National Art School, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Technology, Sydney. She is preparing forthcoming publications about grieving as a performance art history methodology, the pedagogical potential of guilty pleasures, and the dynamics of ingestion and artist-audience cooperation in the performance art of Teo Ala-Ruona.