SHOWING WITHOUT GOING

Instructions to Imagine

There are examples of artworks involving instructions which are perhaps only meant to be read or heard, the result of acting upon them left to your own imagination. Perhaps useful to remember: being given an instruction, being told to do something - this of course is real, and it has an effect, regardless of whether or not you carry it out. 

#participation

 

Connections

Past liveness re-conjured

I think that it's interesting that this piece can exist in a live way if you simply read out the rules. The projection or threat of the resulting event is already quite palpable, but that a group of people once actually did do this (apparently true - there are photos) somehow grounds it even more - like the weight and inertia of that drunken evening is carried through into the here and now, simply through reading out the instructions / rules of the so-called 'game' - not least of course because the 24-hour news cycle has not stopped since they originally played it. 

Examples

Rules of the Game

Forced Entertainment
Approaches

Scores

Spectrums

Control

Lost
Total
Spectrums

Addressing absence and distance in the work

Address as an explicit content
Address as implicit content
Spectrums

Active audience

mentally active
physical active
Examples

Surrender Control

Tim Etchells

the theatre space as a performative memorial visited by an ephemeral community, the audience

a larger number of people sitting in a space, walking through it, maybe moving, reacting to certain instructions imagining the absent, the absent bodies and relating to and questioning their collective memory
Approaches

Mass action

Spectrums

Active audience

mentally active
physical active
Approaches

Museum

A performance that I imagine in my home

The spectators are my neighbours. The invitation is delivered directly to their doors. They are previously constellated, informed and invited to be part of the performance. Everyone must move one door away, maximum two. (How far is it not going?). They are invited to dinner at their neighbour's house. However at your neighbour's house there is no one there. Only a pair of headphones and a set of instructions await to them, which will make them live their neighbour's life for an hour.

Instrucciones para rehabitar tu hogar - Instructions to re-inhabit your home

Where do I live, what do I keep, what do I throw away, who else lives with me, who are the ghosts that inhabit my house? Is my memory of my childhood home something that still lives with me? An audio-letter arrives at your house. A letter with a text that invites you to inhabit your home through the memories that live in it. It doesn't matter if your house is big or small, if you live with others or if you live alone. instructions to re-inhabit your home proposes to the spectator to take the place of a stranger before his own past, before his own memories, re find your ancestors through small details, write yourself a letter for the future and keep it in a place that you could forget. Imagine your home as if you had to run away never to come back and someone would find your footprints and your traces. What would that stranger read in your notebooks, in the edges of your books, in the photographs you left hanging? Intrucciones para rehabitar tu hogar invites you to create a new space inside your home, a space you didn't know before, a space of encounter with your shadows in a friendly way. The work ends with you inviting you to have a coffee, a glass of wine or the perfect meal you would like to cook to yourself if you met yourself today. On this date with yourself you fall in love again, as if it were a first date, you flirt, you seduce each other, you like each other, you may even have disagreements and touch you, but the most interesting thing is how you generate in your intimate space a different way of meeting with yourself. At the end of the evening the audio-letter holds a surprise for you.
Approaches

#PARTICIPATION

Copy K1tt3ns

'Copy K1tt3ns' is a sharing and project development platform that enables artists to share their unfinished scripts with audiences and ask them to perform these scripts as part of their development and reflection phase. It is open-ended in the sense that audiences decide how they want to respond/direct the script, and can tackle either single characters, develop settings and scenographies, etc. Additionally, the artists can choose to use or discard these audience proposals. All parties are invited to challenge intellectual property, and the artists need to reflect on their loyalties to the initial ideas. This could happen over recordings, live video/audio calls or edits of the transcript.. either as static documents or over collaborative processors such as Google Docs.
Questions

Authorship

Approaches

Script

Approaches

Re-staging