Justin Shoulder laughs quietly at the suggestion he's a bit like a rock star, leading a band.
As creator of Titan Arum, an innovative performance involving movement, sound and light that features in the New Annual festival, he can buy into the rock-star notion.
An integral part of Sydney's queer performance history, he's got a global track record of stunning, original performance work that pushes artistic boundaries.
"A lot of the works have many moving parts, and started off pretty DIY and small scale and over the last 15 years it's kind of expanded to have so many collaborators," he says in a brief interview in a laneway off the Hunter Street mall, near where Titan Arum is showing (164 Hunter Street) during the festival.
To describe Titan Arum briefly only opens the door to more questions.
The New Annual program calls it "a carnivalesque garden housing imagined 'exotic', medicinal and dangerous species. In a series of appearances throughout the exhibition, Shoulder inhabits these plant forms and animates them through dance, light and sound before disappearing again into 'nature'."
The site for the performance, 164 Hunter Street, will be extremely intimate. Audiences (all ages welcome) will be limited to about 50 people per session.
The site will be open throughout New Annual (which began on Friday), so passers-by can stop in and examine the exotic plant forms and detail created for the show.
"This work has alien, oversized plant forms and elements of clowning, it's very playful," Shoulder says. "When you watch a Ghibli film [Japanese animation], Hideo Miyazaki films, there is often a gamut of, you know, it's not so binary - good and evil ... I try to tap into those kind of animus mythologies so things that you are scared of as a kid are just as important as those that make you excited. That's how it was for me, anyway."
Titan Arum is advertised as family friendly, and Shoulder certainly sees it that way.
"I try to imagine the works are pretty universal," he says. "Some are born in clubs, so they are born in that very late night spaces. It depends on what you deem as G, but also there elements of horror or particular spectacle that might be more scary for younger people. But often it's more what people project on to it that they fear as opposed to the reality of what it is."
Shoulder, who is also known by the handle Phasmahammer on social media, has created a global reputation as a shapeshifter in artistic performance. His creative concepts keep evolving, with deep collaboration with set designers, music makers and lighting creatives.
"I call it future folklore, it relates to ancestral myths," Shoulder says of his storytelling concepts. "I'm Filipino English Scottish, and I kind of tap into those stories, but also create new ones. So it's often a syncratic mix of all of these ideas."
In the beginning, he is the ideas man.
"They are often rooted in everyday ideas, or like anxieties or desires or like political stuff or any concerns," he says. "They kind of grow from those feelings.
"Usually it starts with an idea, or like a creature," he says.
"Titan Arum is one of the biggest flowers in Southeast Asia. It emits a very disgusting smell. That attracts flies, to pollinate. The idea of this kind of garden of carnivorous plants, that was the seed. They became something I could inhabit and perform with, That was the kind of the beginning point."
The creatures he creates, inhabits if you like, are a major part of the magic of his performance.
"It's probably the meaning of the body and how it inhabits objects," he says. "It's definitely a meeting of performance and object-making, and the interplay of sound and light. So it's multiple levels and they are all very important."
His collaborators on Titan Arum include his partner Matthew Stegh, lighting designer Fausto Brusamolino, composer Corin Ileto, and Insite Arts producers Jason Cross and Penelope Leishman.
The work was first commissioned by the Art Gallery of NSW and the Australia Council. It was also shown at Oz Asia arts festival in Adelaide, which, due to pandemic lockdowns, was only an installation with no performances.
New Annual curator Adrian Burnett says it's "a dream to have someone of that calibre" in the festival, as the festival strives to embed a sense of experimentation and adventure into the city's cultural pulse.
As worldly as Shoulder is, he's well grounded. He's as comfortable in Newcastle, where he's been a frequent visitor with his partner Stegh, as anywhere in the world.
Sharing the gift of his work is not lost on him.
"I love it," he says. "Sometimes I get a bit stressed, but I realise I am very lucky to get to tell my stories and work with a team and travel and have very dynamic everyday experiences."
