This website was made on unceded Wangal land.
Cleo Mees is a writer with a background in video and performance. She has a deep interest in improvisation, and is excited about the ways in which writing can converge with broader artistic and political pursuits.
contact: cleomees@gmail.com
Image Credit: Sophia Compton
writing
Cleo's current work-in-progress explores experimental approaches to non-fiction and essay writing. She is currently working on an autofiction project about friendship in adult life. She also writes arts reviews.
Cleo is a long-term member of the Sydney-based collective, Writing Dancing, which explores the various ways in which dance-based and written practices can enrich each other.
RECENT WORK
Transmission Workbook / ADSR Zine No. 14 (2021)
Feeling Good / TEXT Journal Vol. 25 No. 1 (2021)
Letters to Sheila / Choreographic Practices Vol. 11 No. 1 (2020)
SELECTED ARTS REVIEWS
Explicit Contents - Rhiannon Newton
Happy Hour - feat. Katina Olsen, Ryuichi Fujimura & Murasaki Penguin
An Evening of Solo Works - Meg Stuart
Sip My Ocean - Pipilotti Rist x MCA
Interchange Festival: The Political Body - Critical Path
RealTime Arts | e-dition 6 Dec 2017
Aeon - Lz Dunn
RealTime Arts | e-dition 1 Nov 2017
Doing Dancing - Rhiannon Newton
RealTime Arts | e-dition 30 Aug 2017
Bunny - Luke George & Daniel Kok
RealTime Arts | issue 131 | 2016
RUTH - Antony Hamilton & Julian Hamilton
RealTime Arts | issue 129 | 2015
Something in the Way She Moves - Julie-Anne Long
RealTime Arts | issue 113 | 2013
FURTHER REVIEWS
Carrion - Justin Shoulder
RealTime Arts | e-dition 8 Nov 2017
Triumphs and Other Alternatives - Muscle Mouth
RealTime Arts | issue 130 | 2015
PRIME:ORDERLY - Dean Walsh
RealTime Arts | issue 112 | 2012
Panto - Lizzie Thomson
RealTime Arts | issue 105 | 2011
ESSAYS
Cleo Mees (2021). "Feeling Good: The Casual Academic's Guide to Purpose, Pleasure and the Meaning of Work in Precarious Times".
TEXT Journal, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 1-20.
https://doi.org/10.52086/001c.23496
Cleo Mees (2020). "Letters to Sheila: Improvisational Scores in Creative Practice Research". Choreographic Practices, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 9 - 27.
https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00009_1 | Unformatted Draft
Cleo Mees and Tom Murray (2019). "Visual and screen-based research methodologies". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
Oxford University Press.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1196
Erin Brannigan and Cleo Mees (2016). "Breaths, Falls and Eddies in All This Can Happen: A Dialogue". International Journal of Screendance, Volume 7.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/ijsd.v7i0.5463
video
HYBRID AND ESSAY FILM
[A] p a r t | 2017. Video Projection. 40 minutes. Single Channel.
[A]part is a suite of original music by composer Ellen Kirkwood that explores “what it means to exist in a world facing climate change, a global refugee crisis and the omnipresence of the internet” (Kirkwood). Her most personal work to date, the piece was written for performance by Sydney's pioneering female-identifying and trans* jazz music collective, Sirens Big Band, together with musicians Sandy Evans, Andrea Keller and Gian Slater.
Cleo produced video projections to accompany the suite.
[A]part premiered at Io Myers in August 2017, and was supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.
[A] part - excerpts.
Washing Lines | 2017. Video series. 8 x 5-9 minutes.
Production Credits:
Director, Cinematographer and Editor: Cleo Mees
Sound Post-Production: KLANG
Academic Supervisor: Dr. Tom Murray
Technical Supervisor: Marcus Eckermann
Washing Lines is a series of single-take handheld video portraits of people hanging out their laundry at home. The eight portraits that make up the series were improvised, and were selected from over 60 improvised shoots conducted with different people between 2015 and 2017.
This project explored improvisation and sensory renditions of place in handheld cinematography, with a special focus on the affective and sensory dimensions of domestic labour. It drew inspiration from improvised dance and from 'haptic cinema', as sensuously theorised by Laura U. Marks in her book, Touch (2002).
Washing Lines was the creative component of Cleo’s PhD.
Washing Lines - Improvisation no. 51
You Laugh With Your Whole Face | 2012. Essay film. 14 min 45 sec.
Production Credits:
Director, Cinematographer and Editor: Cleo Mees
Animation: Adam France
Music: Harri Harding
Academic Supervisors: Dr. Maree Delofski and Dr. Nicole Matthews
Technical Supervisor: Marcus Eckermann
In this essay film, Cleo stages a dialogue between herself and 'Golem Girl Gets Lucky', a series of vignettes written by painter Riva Lehrer. The film evokes Cleo's imaginative and deeply personal responses to Lehrer’s writings, which - despite important differences in their lived experiences - strike a chord with her. In a slow-moving contemplation of queerness, disability and sexuality, You Laugh With Your Whole Face explores the politics of ‘relating to’ others, and the pleasures and problems of taking a piece of writing personally.
This film formed the creative component of Cleo’s Honours research , which focussed on essay filmmaking, theories of reader response, feminist theory and critical disability studies.
You Laugh With Your Whole Face - video stills.
VIDEO: SELECTED COLLABORATIONS
"Our Journey Into Space" | Participatory Storytelling Video
with Harri Harding (composer / facilitator) and Lost in Books, 2018
Editor
"My Choice Matters" | Video Portraits
dir. Grace Vaughan for the Council for Intellectual Disability, 2018
Adam - Enterprise and Satisfaction
Cinematographer and sound recordist
Shailaja - Meaning and Motivation
B-Roll cinematographer and sound recordist
"Bridge of Dreams" | Promotional Trailer
with Green Peas for Breakfast (animation) for Sirens Big Band, 2017
Cinematographer and editor
"Giving Time" | Interactive Documentary
dir. Julia Scott-Stevenson, 2013
Cinematographer and sound recordist
“We’re All Gonna Die” | Music Video
dir. Alex Munt for The Model School, 2011
Production Manager
VIDEO: SELECTED PERFORMANCE AND RESIDENCY DOCUMENTATION
"Talking Bodies”. Performance lectures by independent dance artists. Performance recording. Curated by Katy Green Loughrey and Rhiannon Newton. Lawn Library Program, 2019
"Bridge of Dreams”. Indian-Australian music composition project. In-studio documentation and video edit. Free Energy Device Studios, 2017
Rhiannon Newton "Responsive Residency" showing. Performance recording and video edit. Critical Path, 2016
Arabic Speaking Refugee Women's Music Group performance. Performance recording and video edit. Facilitated by Sirens Big Band and the CORE Multicultural Communities' Women's Settlement Project. Cabramatta Community Centre, 2015
Linda Luke “Still Point Turning” development showing. Performance recording. Rex Cramphorn Studio, 2013
De Quincey Company “Swarm Bodies” research residency. In-studio residency documentation. Critical Path, 2012
movement
For the past 10 years Cleo’s movement background has centred around BodyWeather and Contact Improvisation. She participates in week-to-week training where possible, as well as intensives and courses. These have included site-specific BodyWeather intensives (BodyLandscape with Frank van de Ven, BodyWeather Bellambi with Linda Luke), Contact Improvisation courses with Lee-Anne Litton and Alejandro Rolandi, and (more recently) some joyous first experiences with House.
SELECTED PERFORMANCES
Luminosity by Marina Abramovic. 1997/2013. Re-mounted for 13 Rooms, Sydney. Kaldor Public Art Projects.
Mirror Check by Joan Jonas. 1970/2013. Re-mounted for 13 Rooms, Sydney. Kaldor Public Art Projects.
Untitled. 2014. Devised and performed by Cleo Mees and Kathryn Puie at Fraser Studios for Platform 4, De Quincey Company.
Biped. 2011. Devised and performed by Cleo Mees at St Luke's Hall, Stanmore, for the Kinetic Jazz Festival, Kinetic Energy Theatre Company.
If I were a rock I would have been here for centuries. 2011. Devised and performed by Cleo Mees at Fraser Studios for Platform 3, De Quincey Company, curated by Linda Luke.
creative practice research
Cleo explores method, improvisation and affect in creative research — particularly in relation to dance, writing, and cinematography. She is interested in the poetic possibilities of working across disciplines.
A central aim of her research is to develop new frameworks for making sense of our experiences when learning. Using embodied and practice-based methods, she is interested in the vocabularies that help researchers and learners make sense of — and harness — things like failure, desire, reflection, and uncertainty.
Cleo is sceptical of dominant (colonial/patriarchal) ideas about what constitutes valid 'knowledge'. She is passionate about the queering, decolonising and broadening of ways in which research is carried out, articulated, and supported by institutions.
RESEARCH QUALIFICATIONS
PhD, Macquarie University, 2018
Washing Lines: Encounters in Improvised Handheld Video Portraiture
Bachelor of Media with Honours (1st Class), Macquarie University, 2012
You Laugh With Your Whole Face: A practice-based exploration of reading, response and the essay film
teaching
Cleo teaches in the areas of filmmaking and critical & cultural theory, at both Undergraduate and Masters level. Most of her teaching takes place at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Macquarie University.
Cleo has also worked as a mentor and facilitator. In 2018 she was a peer artist providing feedback on work-in-progress for the Powerhouse Youth Theatre production Playlist, and she has worked with Enda Murray on digital storytelling workshops with the Irish seniors community (culminating in the short film, 'A Lifetime of Stories', 2019) and on Refugee Week video workshops for young people (resulting in the short film, 'Modern Creators', 2015).