“Now in its fourth year, Ideas in Residence invites artists to work on the very seed of an idea with a dedicated collaborator, dramaturg or mentor over four months. This residency is all about the idea that nags at you in the middle of the night, pops up at inappropriate moments during family dinner, or chases you down a deserted alleyway. The small one, the big one, the one that slips and runs or keeps avoiding you. These are the ideas that sit, arms folded right in front of you and refuse to go away. We're here to move these ideas into actions - toward real life, real world, live artworks.” - Nisha Madhan, Basement Theatre Programmer
Our 2022 Ideas in Residence artists are…
Pelenakeke Brown (Interdisciplinary)
Presley Ziogas (Contemporary Dance)
Oliva Luki aka Spewer (Music)
Gemishka Chetty & Aiwa Pooamorn (Spoken Word)
Ankita Singh (Theatre)
Pat Kraus (Sound Art)
Anders Falstie-Jensen (Public Performance)
Pelenakeke Brown(she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist. Her practice spans art, writing, and performance. Recently she returned to Aotearoa after being based in NYC for six and a half years. She has worked with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Gibney Dance Center, The Goethe Institute and more. In 2020 she was an Eyebeam Artist-in-Residence and one of four choreographers for AXIS Dance Company’s Choreo-Lab.
Her project enter/return is an exploration of how these concepts of enter and return can relate to technology and be explored in the body. That we face the future moving back into the past. That we are our ancestors' wildest dreams. That some of us believe to be ancestors re-incarnated, or, like myself named after one. That this indigenous idea is just sitting in the everyday keyboard.
Pelenakeke is working with Anapela Polata'ivao throughout her residency. Samoan-born and South Auckland raised, Anapela Polataivao began acting at age eight. After graduating from Toi Whakaari she launched multimedia group Kila Kokonut Krew in 2002, with Vela Manusaute; they were prime movers behind community TV show KTV and musical The Factory, which became a 2014 web series. Polataivao is one of Aotearoa’s most loved arts leaders, having influenced the lives of many young Pasifika artists through her years teaching at PIPA (Pacific Institute of Performing Arts).
Presley Ziogas (she/her) is a dance artist and choreographer based in Titirangi, Tāmaki Makaurau. Presley studied contemporary dance and began forging her choreographic interests at UNITEC school of Performing and Screen Arts. Presley is a freelance creator and has choreographed two short award-winning works featuring in the Short + Sweet Dance festival. She was selected as a 2021 Basement Matariki Resident, where she began the development of Moon in Cancer - a deeply aesthetic duet work with Hannah Raimon and Jessie McCall, drawing on her own nostalgic interactions with everyday beauty and grief.
Presley will be working on Softly Breaking, a work that unfolds her transfixation on the idea of dying. She will be investigating the processes of becoming ‘soft’ and 'breaking down’ slowly, mentally, cellulalary. Softly Breaking signifies the slow, small, and sometimes unnoticed losses we experience as humans, and the indistinct but vital impacts of these mundane grievances upon the way that we move through the world.
She will be working with Rose Tapsell throughout his residency who grew up in Kingsland, Auckland. Her tupuna hail from Te Arawa and Tainui waka and her European ancestors came to New Zealand from Denmark, England and Scotland. After completing her contemporary dance training at Unitec in 2016, Rosie was stoked to be a part of creating DANCE PLANT Collective with five of her best friends and delighted to co-create their first original work, Desire Line(s), in April 2017. Since then Rosie has been fortunate to work with some of New Zealand’s leading choreographers including Michael Parmenter, Kelly Nash, Louise Potiki-Bryant, Claire O’Neil and Alexa Wilson.
Oliva Luki aka Spewer (he/him) is an MC, beat maker, audio engineer, and producer. He’s been in the music game since 2007-2008, has a degree in Recording Arts from SAE and runs the record label From Outside. He has produced, recorded & mixed and mastered 8 solo releases (mixtapes and EPs), and 12 collaborations (mixtapes and Eps). He was recently part of the Welcome Out lineup on The Slab, celebrating and paying tribute to hip hop in Aotearoa.
He will be working on The Power of Collaboration pt. 2. Based on a project where he created an album from scratch over 7 days, where a community of artists came together in the studio resulting in track after track.
He will be working with Auckland based poet, author and playwright Dominic Hoey throughout his residency. Dominic’s debut novel Iceland was a New Zealand bestseller, long-listed for the 2018 Ockham Book Award and his short story 1986 won the 2021 Sunday Star Times Short Story Award. His latest poetry collection I Thought We’d Be Famous was released in October 2019. Dominic has written and performed two one-person hit shows about his bone disease and his inability to get arts funding. In a former life, Dominic was an MC battle and slam-poetry champion. Through his Learn To Write Good creative writing course, Dominic has taught hundreds of students around the world how to think dyslexic. He also works with young people through the Atawhai program, teaching art, yoga and meditation to help them with their mental health and self-esteem. Currently, he lives with a small, vicious dog and dreams of one day owning an animal rescue farm.
Gemishka Chetty (she/her) & Aiwa Pooamorn (she/her) are collaborators and co-directors of Creatives Creatures, an art collective featuring migrant POC. Aiwa is a Thai-Chinese mother, poet, theatre maker and performer. Gemishka Chetty is a poet, artist, writer and performer. Their debut theatre show was Go Home Curry Muncha in 2019, followed by Have You Ever Been With An Asian Woman? whichwon Auckland Fringe's 2020 Unfuck The World award.
They will be working on Amma Issues, an exploration of what it means to be an Asian feminist. To try to find solidarity or a way to heal in our communities as a response to the questions posed. The sick joy of openly cursing our ammas but also being in love with them.
They will be working with SARITA KEO KOSSAMAK SO, is a first-generation Cambodian born New Zealander. Sarita is an actor, writer, producer and co-founder of the independent company I Ken So Productions, with husband Ui Natano Keni, founded in 2017. Working across theatre and film, she is passionate about all forms of storytelling, sharing and in search of the culturally rich, unseen and invisible amongst us.
Ankita Sareen-Singh(she/her) is a playwright, screenwriter and award-winning theatre producer (Oriental Maidens) hailing from Chandigarh and Kirikiriroa. Not long after completing her Master's in Screenwriting from AUT University, Ankita won the 2021 Piki Pitch and is currently developing her adult animated series 'Slayer Sisters' with Piki. She has a few other irons in the fire including a half-hour episode for TVNZ’s Motherhood Anthology and her Seed grant feature film 'Bindu Patel and The Lost Spirit'.
She will be working on a new play RABID, painting an orgiastic nightmare of a civilisation on the brink of collapse. Think the deranged lovechild of Lord of the Flies and The Handmaiden with a South Asian twist.
She will be working with Trick of the Light, an award-winning theatre company from Te Whanganui-A-Tara (Wellington) known for their highly inventive theatrical style, founded by Hannah Smith and Ralph McCubbin Howell.
Kraus a.k.a. Pat Kraus (he/him) is a producer of psychedelic music from Aotearoa/New Zealand. Since 2002 he has released 18 albums on labels including Soft Abuse, Ultra Eczema and Moniker Records.
Kraus is developing Pain Stories, a performance that uses interviews and electronic sound to talk about chronic illness. He is interested in expanding this conversation not as an abstract desire, but as a practical need.
He will be working with Julie Hill throughout his residency. Julie Hill was a founding member of the cross-discipline company, Winning Productions, for whom she wrote the plays Turbulent Flux, Stories Told To My By Girls, Whistloe Solo and The Arsehole. She has published short stories in Turbine and JAAM. She has worked as a writer for TV comedy, a music producer for National Radio and went viral in 2017 for her scathing take-down of Richard Spencer
Anders Falstie-Jensen (he/him) hails from the vast plains of Jutland, Denmark. He is the producer, writer and director for The Rebel Alliance. As a playwright, his credits include, The Rehearsal, The Bomb, Standstill, Centrepoint Watching Paint Dry, Let Me Tell You About Auckland and Back to Square One?. To date, The Rebel Alliance has presented more than 30 individual seasons across the country and Anders has produced all of them.
His project, The Wondering Wandering Choir (TWWC), is a roving choir. Like carol singers but out of season. TWWC can perform anywhere. TWWC uses the mass of the choir to create the performance space. Perhaps they form a circle with the audience. Perhaps they are scattered around the performance space to create the sense of a room filled with pillars. Or a forest. TWWC is a wandering soundscape.
He will be working with KITA - Nikita 雅涵 Tu-Bryant, a Taiwan-born kiwi based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington). She is known for fronting her psych-pop band KITA who are about to release their debut album produced by Grammy Award-winning Tommaso Colliva (MUSE, Razorlight). Nikita’s other work consists of acting and composing for theatre and film, painting and poetry.
