The Curious Mundane

Recently, I discovered that the audience to a performance can do so much more than just sit and observe. They can take an active role, blurring the lines between an audience member and a performer to create an immersive, collaborative experience for all involved.

A screenshot from the 2004 Super Night Shot

Latterly, a group of students and I watched three digital performances done by different companies across the world: Radio Ballet, Can You See Me Now? and Super Night Shot. All these performances integrated the audience, in different ways, into their performances. Radio Ballet, for example, communicated to their audience through a radio, instructing them to perform certain actions simultaneously. Can you see me now? used a blend of online and in person elements to create a game for their audience, who ran about the streets of Tokyo to ‘capture’ the online players (both in the more literal sense, and also in photograph). Finally, Super Night Shot went out into the streets as a designated character and tried to involve members of the public in their film/story. The interesting thing about all the audience interactions in these performances is how dependant the entire performance is on them – these random people, who just happen to be passing by are now involved in something much bigger, whether they are aware of it or not.  All of these performances have affected how I view the audience by enhancing the importance of the role of the spect-actor in both the experimentation and creation of art, as well as how a creator can find significance and inspiration in the mundanity of the average human life which surrounds them.

One of the products from Can You See Me Now?

Though I found Radio Ballet’s concept of exploring permitted and forbidden gestures in public interesting, and Super Night Shot’s interaction and reliance on the public intriguing, I was particularly inspired by Can You See Me Now? As a performance creator, their work particularly stood out to me due to the way they stretch and play with time and location. By integrating two different elements of media into their performance, it was interesting that they then managed to produce a third element at the end: the photographs. As an audience member, watching this take place, the photographs, though named after people I don’t know, seem significant and artistic. Thus, the blend of different media elements and the production of the end result gives the whole performance a sort of liminal feel, which, as both a viewer and a performer, is extremely intriguing and satisfying.

Moving away from the performances of others, we began to make creations of our own. Our task was, in groups of three, pick a prop and a costume each and take three pictures in three different locations. Once in our costumes, our group had not only donned some bizarre accessories but also the beginnings of a character. We initially took pictures individually in locations and poses that seemed to match these characters. However, we then changed our perspective and decided to have a bit of fun with it. We kept the characters poses and personality as they were but combined the characters together in photographs and changed the location to something more familiar, yet a place that would be absurd for the characters themselves. This gave the impression of surrealism in our photographs, as well as enhancing the liminal feel not only because a viewer could see that the characters were out of place, but also it seemed as though each one of them were waiting for something to happen.

Finally, we all gathered back together as a large group and discussed everyone’s photos. It was interesting that many of them had that surrealist, liminal feel. The absurdity of it all reminded me of how, as strangers to the majority of the world, we do not know anything about the lives of the other people we pass on the streets, and though they may just seem like part of the crowd to us, they actually have so much going on that we know nothing about – and what if this were to manifest itself in props and costume? What if the public could take a look at a stranger and instantly know a larger amount about them than what we could previously? If I were to make a performance based on both the photos we took, and the performances we saw, I would make it about the lives of strangers, and how we can find interest and excitement and joy even in the mundane.