Rosanna Raymond

Acti.VĀ.tion
Running Out Of Breath

June 12th, 2025, 7pm
Alte WU Wien – Universitätszentrum Althanstraße

Sistar S’pacific aka Rosanna Raymond is an artist, performer, and cultural activist known for her dynamic contributions to contemporary Moana Nui (Pacific) arts. Her embodied practice, or acti.VĀ.tions, critiques colonial museum traditions and activates the Vā Body — a living vessel that holds space with ancestral, present, and future narratives. Raymond’s work bridges performance, installation, and dialogue to keep culture alive through innovation and relational practice.

TALK
Culti.VĀ.te, FAB.ricate, Acti.VĀ.te: A Moana-Centered Creative Praxis

Grounded in the Samoan notion of vā — a relational space that honours connection and reciprocity — my body centered practice recentres Moana-based protocols and epistemologies, through the creation of the Vā body. This SaVĀge methodology employs the tenants of Culti.VĀ.tion, FAB.rication, to Acti.VĀ.te people, spaces, and things. This presentation is a visceral offering: a weaving of visual, aural, and performative threads that intersect academic and artistic languages as I draw from over 30 years of experience working across Aotearoa, the UK, Europe, and the Moana Nui (Pacific).

Acti.VĀ.tion
Running Out Of Breath

Building on Part 1, this second offering deepens the performative dimension of my practice. Running out of Breath revisits my time in residence at the Dahlem Ethnological Museum in 2014 — a moment of deep encounter with the colonial archive and its residues. Presented through a constellation of performative actions, ceremonial gestures, archival imagery, soundscapes, spoken word, and moving image, this lecture unfolds as an embodied archive.

Rather than recounting, I re-live and re-member — offering the body as a site of return, rupture, and resistance. The collections I once encountered behind glass now dwell within me: carried, reconfigured, and activated through performance. This piece invites reflection on the museum not just as a container of objects, but as a charged space where breath, memory, and matter converge.

The performance by Rosanna Raymond is hosted by the Program for Art and Education/ Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and WIENWOCHE.