Rise Again
Rise Again | Stop-Motion Video Animation
Stop-motion video installation | 2021 | Artists Jade Armstrong and Jordy Doust (Magician)
Materials: Repurposed Melbourne Fringe Festival guidebooks, glue
What do you do with 50,000 guidebooks when your event is cancelled due to lockdown?
Rise Again was created in response to this very question, posed by Melbourne Fringe Festival after the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of the in-person festival events. Co-created by Jade Armstrong and magician Jordan Doust, the work uses pages from the now-obsolete printed guidebooks to reflect on a city and a society undergoing profound transformation.
Through stop-motion animation, the video begins with a fast-paced, repeating world: a metaphor for the unquestioned momentum of pre-pandemic life. The rhythm then breaks as the city collapses, echoing the emotional and structural fallout of Melbourne’s extended lockdowns. From these ashes, a phoenix emerges and takes flight - a symbol of creative resilience, renewal, and the possibility of reimagining life after crisis.
Commissioned for Art Guides the Way at the 2021 Melbourne Fringe Opening Ceremony, Rise Again offers a poetic meditation on the beauty that can emerge from change. It honours both the grief and the growth of this moment in time and invites viewers to reflect on who they’ve become.
What might rise from the ashes of your old life?
Featured in:
Art Guides the Way, Opening Ceremony at Melbourne Fringe Festival, Australia (2021).