BIGHEAD GARBAGEFACE GUARDS GHOST DERR SONATA

With its make-do aesthetic, grainy video and distorted sound, Justene Williams’ five-channel video installation revisits the anarchic spirit of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, where Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber and Marcel Janco helped forge Dada through absurdist performances that transformed twentieth-century art. A former cabaret performer herself, Williams channels this rebellious energy in videos shot nearly a century later in a Boston basement, using scrap paper, cardboard, newspapers and pizza boxes to create improvised costumes and sets. Through stiff, robotic choreography that evokes both mechanised labour and Dada’s rejection of conventional language, BIGHEAD GARBAGEFACE GUARDS GHOST DERR SONATA reimagines the radical, irreverent legacy of the Cabaret Voltaire for the present day.

BIGHEAD GARBAGEFACE GUARDS GHOST DERR SONATA was commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales as a Level 2 AGNSW Contemporary Projects exhibition.