Know Thy Neighbour #4: Cassandra Tytler

The Town recently teamed up with arts organisation SPACED to support Know Thy Neighbour, a metro-focused residency program that commissioned socially engaged, context-responsive art projects embedded in Perth’s neighbourhoods.

This fourth iteration, Know Thy Neighbour #4: Gestures, turns its attention to the small but powerful acts that connect people and place. This collaboration saw WA-based artists undergo residences in places both specific and widespread across metropolitan Perth, supported by local governments, arts organisations and community associations. The artists research and create as socially engaged practitioners, engaging with local participants and communities to develop concepts and respond to the social, environmental and historical contexts they encounter.

Learn more about Know Thy Neighbour #4 on the SPACED website here.

Cassandra Tytler with Town of Victoria Park

Cassandra is an artist and researcher whose practice spans experimental moving image, performance, and site-based socially engaged artworks. Known for her wry humour and incisive critique, Tytler combines storytelling and technical experimentation to investigate the intersections of politics, place, and power. Her installations and performances often unfold through site-responsive encounters that draw audiences into the layered conditions of a location, where humour and play sit alongside an engagement with environmental and social questions.

Project Title: Soft Assembly

Concept/Theme: A series of participatory performance games, developed through community input, that use critical play to engage with Burswood Park/Joorolup and the wider Town of Victoria Park. Through cooperative gameplay, participants work through complex social and environmental tensions while also encountering these places in a more open, playful way. The games are structured so that form emerges through collective interaction rather than being fixed in advance.

Relevance: This project works with residents of the Town of Victoria Park to create a space where local concerns and tensions around development and environmental change can be expressed and worked through via participatory play. It responds to the theme of Gestures by focusing on small, collective actions that give form to these positions.

Cassandra Tytler took up residence in the town at Leisurelife from May to July 2026 and also got involved with the Burswood Parkrun community as part of her project. Read Cassandra's reflections below:

Know Thy Neighbour Residency: Cassandra Tytler with Town of Victoria Park #1 (Leisurelife residency)

Know Thy Nighbour Residency: Cassandra Tytler with Town of Victoria Park #2 (Burswood Parkrun)

Soft Assembly by Cassandra Tytler: KTN4 Residency Showing

You’re invited to take part in a work-in-progress showing of Soft Assembly, the result of Cassandra Tytler’s Know Thy Neighbour #4: Gestures residency, with sound by Mary Rapp.

Saturday, 31 October
8.30-10am
BHP Boardwalk and Amphitheatre, Burswood

Soft Assembly explores Burswood Park as a place composed of overlapping histories, movements and ecological relationships unfolding across different timeframes and sensory worlds. The work offers multiple ways of understanding and engaging with the park through moving image, sound, movement and collective composition.

Three participatory sessions will take place and run for approximately 20–25 minutes. Please register for your preferred starting time.

You are also welcome to attend and observe without taking part. Click the button below for more details and to register: