Day 4 of the Workshop – Performance Day (12.00 – 14.00)
What was i worried about this morning? Making an Art Performance in a public place…? No, performance seems to be a very natural expression of art work for me now. So it must had been that i was to run for the longest amount of time that i have ever run for… usually my “runners wall” is 40 minutes but my running performance for the workshop lasts for 1 hour.
I changed into my running kit and bought some Mars Bars.
I ran from the pedestrian crossing near the “non place”, over the bridge and to the crossing at the other side of the bridge. Adrenalin had kicked in and i was excited about the performance/run. It was great to be running again, for the first time in over a week, and i had forgotten how much i had missed it. My body felt free and my mind made sense of this performance, how it could be described and what it was hoping to demonstrate as i overtook pedestrians and bikes whooshed passed me.
There was one lady who was walking along the path with a sledge like contraption, quite slowly as she had a lot of shopping. I went past her once, and then turned around at the end, passing her again. After running the length of the bridge i passed her again as she stopped to talk to a friend coming the other way – they were talking for a while, and so i passed her for a forth time.
This is the concept that i am interested by: there had been some criticism that the running didn’t look that abstract because the distance across the bridge was quite long, and perhaps i should had gone a shorter distance. However, i was looking for something that was normal for 95% of the time, and only seemed strange for the remaining 5%, for example this lady who just saw me run backwards and forwards a few times. Maybe she didn’t think it was strange at all, and perhaps that is irrelevant?
The run was never trying to be anything grand or show stopping, in its most immediate sense, it was a record of repetitive activity and the increasingly exhausting effect this had on my body as my rhythm changed over time.
My rhythm did change, and i hit my “wall” at 45 minutes. My legs did not hurt which was good, but my breathing still needs working on. Towards the end of the performance i could sense that some blisters might develop. Lisa and some others from the workshop ran with me, this was good, i enjoyed their genuine encouragement.
1 hour came round (i thought it never would!), i collapsed in a sweaty heap on the grass by the pavement and ate another mars bar. I feel this is one of my most interesting works so far, and there is scope for development…
