Token Armies 2019
The first work created by Antony Hamilton after taking the helm of Chunky Move, Token Armies premiered at the 2019 Melbourne International Arts Festival.
Through a perpetual and turbulent negotiation of thought and action, sentience and automata, Token Armies gestures to the fundamental shifts in the passing of time, the carriage of culture, and the labour of continuing the work of living. A horde of varied lifeforms—some blurring the boundaries between human, animal and machine—move interminably onwards through a cavernous arena, completing actions and rituals that appear simultaneously alien and uncannily familiar as they strive collectively towards some unknown goal.
Creative Team
Concept, Direction & Choreography Antony Hamilton
Sculpture, Wearable Sculpture Design & Fabrication Creature Technology Company
Assistant Choreographer & Rehearsal Director Melanie Lane
Costume Design Paula Levis
Costume Consultant Andrew Treloar
Wardrobe Intern Leah Mazzone-Brown
Lighting Design Bosco Shaw/ADDITIVE
Sound Design Aviva Endean
Sound Consultant Madeleine Flynn
Additional Object Design & Fabrication Blair Hart, Antony Hamilton
Concept Art Peter Gregory, Paula Levis, Antony Hamilton
Original Performers Jade Dickinson, Alice Dixon, Joshua Faleatua, Christina Guieb, Antony Hamilton, Samuel Hammat, Mitchell Harvey, Melanie Lane, Cody Lavery, Phillip Leitch, Gregory Lorenzutti, Kathleen Lott, Tiana Lung, Talitha Maslin, Amber McCartney, Damian Meredith, Callum Mooney, Josh Mu, Jessie Oshodi, Jack Riley, Harrison Ritchie-Jones, Kyall Shanks, Michaela Tancheff
Artistic Director Antony Hamilton
Executive Director Kristy Ayre
Senior Producer Freya Waterson
Production Manager Blair Hart
Stage Manager Lyndie Li Wan Po
Mechanist Michael Burnell
World Premiere
16 October 2019 Melbourne
Presented by Chunky Move and Arts House in association with Creature Technology Company
Commissioned by Melbourne International Arts Festival
Awards
2020 Green Room Award For Visual Design For Creature Technology Company, Antony Hamilton, Blair Hart, Paula Levis, Andrew Treloar and Bosco Shaw (Objects/Costume/Light)
2020 Green Room Award Music Composition and Sound Design For Aviva Endean with Madeleine Flynn
“A courageous choice for an artist of great integrity” The Age. Read more
“Even when his movement language is at its most mechanistic, Hamilton has a gift for evoking what makes us living, breathing, thinking animals and our need of one another for survival” The Australian
“The world it presents seems scarred by conflict or cataclysm but is also defined by collaboration and co-operation. The work explains nothing on a literal level; at the same time it all makes perfect sense.” The Age. Read more
A note from Antony Hamilton
In making Token Armies, I sought to create a work that brings together varied lifeforms in a collective action. Informed by and in negotiation with a constructed world built around them, the work seeks a common language between forms, and a sense of unified, focussed cooperation. Through this symphony of action, I wanted to illustrate how important the idea of participation in a common endeavour is to the success of all life, and ask questions about our sense of individual freedom amongst the collective.
The scale of the built environment within Token Armies has been a key consideration, reflecting a phenomenon we see in the natural world where larger forms become functional hosts, refuges or modes of transportation for smaller forms. Think of a whale surrounded by tiny schools of fish, or an elephant with avian passengers on its back. These symbiotic relationships are a functional means for survival and a reflection of the complex relationship systems that exist across species. Humans and animals interact in countless ways, but we rarely credit other species as valued partners in the ‘success’ of humanity. This supposed idea of human primacy has advantages and disadvantages and is something I wanted to explore within the world of Token Armies. What is gained and lost in our thinking and attitudes toward inter-species relations? Or indeed between the living and inanimate world?
I’m also curious about what drives humans to seek better versions of themselves through technological augmentation. In exploring the relationships between lifeforms, the question arises of what we even mean when we speak of lifeforms in such a technologically complex world. This question becomes more challenging with each passing year, as robots, avatars and online entities gain prominence in the collective consciousness. Machines are made to serve our needs, but they also produce systems that control our actions. So much of our world now demands cooperation between biological and technological systems in order for humans to survive. Our relentless drive to progress, manifested in the pursuit of accumulative technological knowledge and industrial development, is a kind of metaphoric armour that protects a belief in human distinction and primacy, above and beyond the dominion of ‘nature’. I often ask myself what it would mean to shed this armour as a species, rejecting the idea of a technologically dependant world that gives us such a deep sense of purpose, meaning and a belief in progress.
Token Armies is an artwork that brings together many themes that have resonated in my previous works; ideas that continue to stimulate curiosity. The work explores the complicated connection between humans and the worlds we make, and underscores the cooperation and negotiation required to make these worlds function. It examines the conditions we place on living things, in a world largely defined by the troubled association between humans and technology. It looks at what is gained and lost in the pursuit of the body’s material augmentation, and questions the potentiality of our species’ use of tools and technology.
Through a perpetual and turbulent negotiation of thought and action, sentience and automata, Token Armies gestures to the fundamental shifts in the passing of time, the carriage of culture, and the labour of continuing the work of living. The creation of Token Armies was achieved in a way that mirrors some of the themes of the work itself. Many talented and passionate people have contributed so much to this project over a number of years. It has required immense ambition, dedication and trust to produce, and I thank each individual who has played a part in bringing it to life. I would like to especially thank Freya Waterson for sticking with this project through thick and thin over the years, Kristy Ayre for her unparalleled overseeing of the big picture, the Chunky Move team, and the Board of Chunky Move for championing this moment.
Image: James Wright
Image: Zan Wimberley
Image: Zan Wimberley
Image: James Wright
Image: James Wright
