pvi collective members James McCluskey and Ofa Fotu prepare to battle for an Australian Bill of Rights. Photo: Steve Bull.  

Founded in 1998, and based in Perth, the capital-letter eschewing artists’ group known as pvi collective employ collaboration, humour and politics in equal measure to explore life in the 21st century.

Utilising a range of artforms, including performance, visual art and multi-media, their works are often highly participatory, encouraging audiences to reconsider their assumptions about everyday urban life, as well as physically demanding, site responsive and politically charged.

“We come at it from a social perspective. We feel that we’re members of the public and artists as well, and we want to respond to how the political landscape or certain laws affect our daily lives,” explains pvi’s co-founder, visual artist Steve Bull.

Security, surveillance and personal freedoms are recurrent themes explored by the collective in previous projects such as reform and agency for collective action, which have seen the collective’s core and associate members – led by Kelli McCluskey, Bull and Ofa Fotu – mount vigilante patrols through busy city streets, investigate the relevance of people power in contemporary culture, and encourage members of the public to sing love songs to passers-by or send anonymous letters to former adversaries.

For their latest work, resist: the right to revolution – presented as part of the 2009 AWESOME International Arts Festival for Bright Young Things – the collective have resurrected the ancient art of tug-of-war in order to battle for an Australian Bill of Rights.

“This is a split-site performance, part intervention, part performance in a black box space; and it’s something we haven’t done for a while. Our work has been mainly centred outdoors, on the street, and for this work we thought we’d work in a black box space but find a way of connecting with an intervention outdoors. And what we’re dealing with is the fact that Australia doesn’t have a Bill of Rights, and is the only Anglophone country that doesn’t have one,” Steve Bull explains.

According to the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, even though Australia has signed all five international treaties that make up the International Bill of Human Rights, none such treaties are legally binding in Australia. Nor is there is a Bill of Rights in the Australian Constitution, meaning that the fundamental rights and freedoms of everyone living in Australia are not protected by the law. For example, Australian law, as it currently stands, does not protect even the most fundamental rights that most Australians assume they have. For example, there is no legal protection of such basic rights as freedom of religion or freedom of speech, let alone the right to overthrow the government.

“Through our research, we hit upon the right to revolution, which is the duty and right of the people if they deem their government to not be doing a good job; and if it is a majority decision by the people, then it is their duty to overthrow and replace that government.

“We were quite fascinated by that, but then we thought it seemed not very relevant to today. Then we did a bit more research and discovered that in 2008 there was a people’s revolution in Iceland, and they overthrew the government and replaced it with another government. We thought that that’s a really interesting thing to maybe propose in a work, and that this should be part of a Bill of Rights for Australia.”

The performance aspect of resist will take the form of a tug-of-war, with audience members invited to don a ‘champion cape’, bearing the name of such people’s champions as Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, William Wallace and Rosa Luxemburg. Thereafter they will be divided into two teams based on whether or not they support the right to revolution, with the decision as to whether or not to include the right to revolution in a Bill of Rights determined by whichever team wins the tug-of-war.

Simultaneously, a pvi performer will roam Perth’s streets, mounting a guerrilla campaign designed to test the New World Order. Hooked up via video link, their efforts to advance the revolutionary cause will be screened live into the performance space, to be viewed by the assembled audience.

“At the beginning of the work a performer will introduce the piece and then leave the space, and their task is to go to one of seven state leaders’ work places and deliver the result of the tug-of-war contest, placing the emphasis on them to do something with the verdict, handing over the mantle of champion of the people.”

Bull is excited by not knowing what the outcome of such actions will be.

“We’re always very excited by that risk element, of not knowing what will happen. We have these big risk analysis sessions where we write down things that might go wrong and what we will do; but you can never fully prepare for what might happen.”

The sense of risk which surrounds pvi collective’s work has not put off the AWESOME International Arts Festival’s CEO Jenny Simpson, who describes their work as a perfect fit for the festival.

“Much of the work we program is not specifically created for young people. It’s about programming works that are accessible for young people. And obviously we want to inspire and delight our audience, but we also want to encourage conversations and thinking and provoke some thought around issues. And I think that pvi and the work that they are doing really encourages young people in community thinking and to engage, and that’s very much where AWESOME positions itself,” she tells Arts Hub.

“I’m certainly not concerned about any risks, because pvi manage that risk really well. In writing their works they do factor in almost all outcomes into the performance; so I’m really confident that whatever they encounter during that live video element, they’ll deal with in a way that is professional and fits in with the play.

“I went to a rehearsal the other day and they simulated an outcome where it would have been a very difficult thing for the actor to manage, and he had that managed and covered really well. So I’m not concerned about the risk. What I think what they’re doing is actually walking out there on the streets and dealing with real life, and that’s what we’re all doing, so I think it’s really interesting for young people to experience that, to look at different ways of managing situations. And what I really, really like about the work is that once again it encourages participation and thinking, and not just settling for what we’re told.”

pvi collective’s resist: the right to revolution, Perth, November 23 - 28. www.pvicollective.com

AWESOME International Arts Festival for Bright Young Things, Perth, November 22 - 29. www.awesomearts.com