Corporare — Evan Task in Outer Space

Behold a tech bro horror genre in outer space.

Created and performed by Matthew Crosby, Corporare presents a child, his rocket and his sociopathic fantasies. Corporare looks at the corporate body, a metaphor of madness made real.

The complexity of a celebrity ‘founder’ entrepreneur who governs a company seemingly whimsically with little regard for personal liability or consequence for worker or the community in which they operate became the performance story of my research; the horror trope of alien invasion in space is for me delicious theatrical terrain. So it is that my Evan Task, boy prodigy, is faced with the (horrible) dilemma of outward invasions and inner eruptions. Corporare becomes a kind of retribution for wrongs done without remedy and tries to understand how, yes, male businesspeople can delude themselves so successfully.

"Hidden behind my veil, I am a corporate fiction… neither culpable nor accessible. Space though, is a storied frontier of delusions. It is a silent and cold vacuum where the loudest must finally listen. It is the medium in which my body forms: corporare! Where I am punished most horribly. Where my skin lets in the red lamé art-worms of Mars. Come witness my final reckoning. Come! Formare corpus!"

Development of Corporare was facilitated by the generous support of The City of Melbourne.

"What a show! Just bloody gorgeous. Elegant, funny, gently caustic. I felt so privileged to live in a city where this kind of event might happen, a coming together of artists to witness someone at the height of his expressive powers!"

- Maude Davey

"Light and space are obvious in the matter of space travel, but that combo also works on many other levels, physically, emotionally, and metaphorically. The whirling, spiralling constellations on your geegaw world are reduced at the end by human decay and infantile ambition to nursery room playthings, like bubby's mobile"

- Jim Daley