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Justin Shoulder fuses man and machine in post-apocalyptic Carrion
By Cameron Woodhead
Justin Shoulder in Carrion.Credit: Christopher Pearce
Crouched on its haunches, the creature stares out at the audience with lasers for eyes. Its almost nude human form writhes under a twisted exoskeleton of yellowed bones, and it wears an inscrutable mask – white, moulded to the face like the death masks of the ancients, a mess of earphones braided into hair.
This weird being is at the heart of Justin Shoulder’s Carrion, a feature-length work of performance art that weaves theatre, choreography and surreal costume into an eerie fever-dream of a posthuman future.
Shoulder draws on the use of masks, particularly in Asian performance art.Credit: Alex Davies
Shoulder has always had a flair for outlandish spectacle. He got his start in Sydney’s queer nightclub scene, where he lived and collaborated with drag artists, and is co-founder of the Glitter Militia, which runs an alternative art party called Monsta Gras for those feeling too freakish – or too political – for Mardi Gras.
“I always say the nightclubs were my education,” Shoulder says. “My current practice evolved from that scene and there are strong elements of spectacle and transformation in the costuming, which I collaborate on with my partner Matt Hegh.”
Not quite human: Justin Shoulder.Credit: Liz Ham and Tristan Jalleh
“But the other strong influence is my Filipino heritage, my Asian identity,” he adds. Shoulder performed a piece exploring his roots, Ex Nilalang (the title comes from the Tagalog word for “creature”) as part of AsiaTOPA last year. Carrion nods to the multifarious traditions of masked performance in Asian culture.
He’s keenly aware of the uncanny power of masks: “I remember first seeing a Chinese dragon when I was a little boy and being completely terrified; that sense of fear and awe. It seemed suited to exploring the future of humanity and what might replace us.”
The creature in Carrion is a hybrid – a mutant melding of animal, human and machine.
“That’s been challenging from a choreographic perspective,” Shoulder says. “I’ve had to embody different movement styles and languages and merge them into one another. The creature undergoes several metamorphoses and I’ve become fascinated by the transitional states, the process of becoming, between them.”
There’s a phenomenon in aesthetics called the “uncanny valley” that describes the eeriness and discomfort we feel when confronted by something that’s “not quite human”. Shoulder’s transhuman figure, which sits on the edge between recognisably human and not, plays upon this. Yet the work also asks if we should perhaps be more discomfited by the Earth this creature has inherited.
There’s an edge of hope to the piece – a sense that even devastation contains seeds of possibility.
Justin Shoulder, performance artist
Carrion imagines a post-apocalyptic landscape. The figure scavenges through a world laden with suggestion of ecological collapse, of nature (as Western Romanticism has conceived it) being made and sundered; a world where technology has gone rogue, Terminator-style; a world where androids have replaced human labour.
Though the piece explores the direst sort of existential threat, Shoulder assures it's not all doom and gloom. “I didn’t want to deny how bad things are looking,” he says. “But I didn’t want to paralyse anyone with despair, either. So there’s bleakness but also a vein of cheeky humour. And there’s an edge of hope to the piece – a sense that even devastation contains seeds of possibility.”
Anyone who has seen Shoulder’s work will know to expect the unexpected. And while you can safely rely on unforgettably bizarre costumes, the experience follows the logic of dreams and is just as hard to describe.
What is clear is that this vision of the end times will come to life with surreal spectacle and magnetic presence, riding high on the back of the skills and unique influences – from queer burlesque to Asian performance style – that Shoulder brings to the stage.
Justin Shoulder performs Carrion at Arts House, North Melbourne, June 27 to 30. artshouse.com.au