The 2023 Porter Street Commission recipient, Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, presents ROCKAMORA – a giant animatronic puppet named after his mother’s primary school bully. The artist invites the audience to empathise with this larger-than-life, misunderstood antagonist by guiding and animating tasks such as eating, brushing its teeth, and cleaning its ears. Collaborating with performance art collective The Bait Fridge and music ensemble Slowmango, ROCKAMORA becomes an evolving site of community gathering, ceremony, and protest; a way to counter lived experiences of harassment and discrimination and encourage social change.

Kaspar Schmidt Mumm, ROCKAMORA (work in progress), 2022, technical design. Courtesy the artist and Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, South Australia
Adelaide Contemporary Experimental
10 June to 12 August 2023
South Australia