Introduction to the project

In the performance 'Scalpland', presented at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and the University of Queensland department of Art History, the aim was to incorporate discussions pertaining to the visualisation of colonisation as dealt with in the Visiting Scholar programme and to contextualize this material with issues that are of research interest in other areas. The key areas for discussion are as follows:

1. To explore the contemporary implications of Australia's colonial (myth)story as exemplified by the reality of the urban sprawl.

2. To subtly reference Australia's colonial past as a penal colony as one of the various discursive operations surrounding the act clippering of my hair.

3. To deal contextually and physically with the colonisation of the body and mind with specific reference to the female body.

4. To use the pseudoscience of Phrenology as the colonial model to challenge the authority of such modalities of thought.

5. To specifically address Paul Carter's discussions on mimesis, and blindness via the performative aspect of the presentation.

6. To present the performance as an anti-performance or anti-theatre. The ways that physically present these issues are crucial to my statement regarding colonisation.

7. To unify all aspects of this piece, not as a clear demarcation, but rather to assure the relativity contextually via an overlapping of ideas and metaphors.