I had an oppotunity to perform vjing for the event "Riverbeats Live" organized by the Parramatta City Council in Australia. "Riverbeats" is Parramatta's unique signature event which is an innovative and inspirational celebration of water and the city's relationship to it.

This performance was very different from any other performances I had done in many ways.

First, this was my first outdoor performance. A day before the performance it was raining and windy. Yep, that's right. Which meant that the event could be canceled and there was absolutely nothing you could do about it. Doing all the set-up thinking that the event could be canceled and also wiring all the cables on the wet ground was stressful and I cannot imagine how stress it could be to staff... Now I see why outdoor concerts are so difficult to pull off.

Second, this was a cultural event for the community and its audience could be teenagers, under age children, Moms, Dads, Grand Pas and City Mayor. When Geoff, the curator from the event first contacted me he told me that he really liked the darkness in my work (his favorite among my work was The Knife's video) but at the same time he wanted to find a way to provide suitable experience to the type of audience. So what we decided to do was to make it more collaborative work where I work with a musician (Stray Theories from New Zealand) closely to create an original music track and visual contents for the performance.

Third, the scale of the event. I got to work with lighting crew, pyro crews, musician, Mc, projection techinicians etc. The finale was put together to be very dramatic (thanks to all the staffs) where they were shooting pyros into sky, candles were floating on the river and Flinn (a cool didge player) joined for jamming session in the last 5 minutes.

After all I think I learned a lot from this event about performaning art and I came to appreciate and enjoy Vjing in a different level. I would like to thank Geoff Miller for curating and organizing this inceredible event and a big appreciation to Stray Theories and Flinn for collaborating with me. You guys rock!!

Center of the city(I think...)

Center stage

The view of the stage and inflatble screens

The center screen and the stage

Micah from Stray Thories and me

Finale where Flinn came in to jam

Happy audience with happy character

Finale with pyros, candles floating in the river and the laser beams. The amazing thing is that even though I was in the middle of the center stage I didn't see a thing since I was so focused on the performance. A week after the performance when I was already back in New York they sent me these photos and I finally understood what they were talking about after the performance...