Latai, descendant of celestial navigator Taumoepeau will lead you in a poetic movement to embody and adhere to Country.

MASS MOVEMENT is an experience of multiple parts engaging in the socio-relational space of departure, arrival, and reception in the urgent face of forced relocation.

As your own vaka/vessel make your way through a self-guided audio pilgrimage of deep adaptation that traverses the waterways from Naarm to Birrarung and all the way to Flagstaff Gardens.

Following the coordinates of saltwater, freshwater and civic water, the works invite contemplation and visceral interactions about the humanitarian disaster of displacement, culminating in FOLAU, a mass choreography of 100 bodies amplifying a climate emergency distress call from the Pacific Island Nations of Oceania.

“MASS MOVEMENT is the work of Australian artist Latai Taumoepeau of Tongan lineage and heritage. Latai contemplates the reality of forced relocation of Pacific people from their submerging island nations. In an attempt to understand and prepare for the complexities around environmental displacement.” – Latai Taumoepeau, 2021.