An audience of 4,000 people gathered at Hobart’s Regatta Grounds in Hobart on Saturday night to witness Brazilian artist Paula Garcia’s confronting ‘Crash Body’ performance for Dark Mofo.
The performance, which took place for the first time with a live audience, featured Garcia and professional stunt drivers Anderson and Cesar deliberately crashing vehicles into each other at 50km/h.
“My whole work comes from putting the body in these kind of limits,” Garcia said following the performance.
The high-impact collision created what Garcia described as the equivalent of hitting a wall at 100 kilometres per hour, with the artist explaining that the Tasmanian performance featured newer vehicles than a previous iteration.
“The carriage is more flexible. So it takes a lot of the impact and keeps us a little bit safer. Just a little bit,” she said.
The performance piece, which took eight years to develop in Brazil before its first execution during the COVID pandemic, explores themes of violence, resilience and the human body’s limits.
Garcia’s previous work includes ‘Noise Body’, where she wears a body armour covered in magnets while audience members throw nails at her.
“When I talk about violence in my work, it’s not like just talking about violence,” Garcia explained.
“There is a lot of how resilient we are, how really strong we are in terms of mentally, physically, as a community, as a country, as a world.”
The Dark Mofo performance featured a collaboration with Brazilian multi-artist André Abujamra, who created the sound design for the piece.
“When Chris [the Dark Mofo curator] sent me an email … he understood that we did the piece in Sao Paulo without the public. So he said, let’s do it with the public.”
Garcia said Saturday night’s crash performance was conducted with professional stunt drivers and extensive safety considerations.
“It’s a very hard piece to do. [It involves] risk, body preparation, concentration, you know, a lot of things,” she said.
The crashed cars have been relocated to Dark Park, where they’ll be on display for the rest of the festival.
