barren day 12
Virtual occupation
Coming up to a conference I am dealing with the idea that our consumption to enjoy and developments of lifestyles mean urban sprawling and abandoned spaces are not occupied sufficiently to prevent the encroachment upon land. While we watch, play and attend cultural events, culture at our feet is something represented – and here it is in the gallery. In this case cultural activity that sports in edges to towns and cities and other would be abandoned or valueless spaces. Activity which would otherwise occupy sites which are are happening in a gallery. This is designated gallery wishful thinking to transfer these ideas into those spaces considered barren.
Dave and I have observed how pressing Like on facebook for various protests and activism and petitions is like a virtual doing it. We like the idea, we hold true to some of those principles in our private homes but beyond that interaction with the computer button and the social network it’s hard to get very far. barren intends to have a manifesto and challenging our own virtual behaviour is part of that. By physically occupying spaces we begin to territorial activity making those spaces into places. Those spaces then become active and physical rather than a nostalgic nod to the imagined romantic notion of lost and hopeless spaces represented through dewy photographs . Likewise we have documented and recorded every inch of this exhibition and the photographs go up on Artsmith relegating actual attendance to the gallery null and void. By viewing it through a lens or screen the exhibition might as well be completely virtual.
It occurs to me that there is some cross over between this documentation and interpassivity like Zizek’s (How to read Lacan; The interpassive subject; 2007)example of the canned laughter on a sitcom which fulfils the requirement for us to laugh ourselves. Does barren in a gallery fulfil its idea of occupying edge spaces, barren lands by simply incorporating and imagining what it would do if it was in the space physically?
So I am presenting at a conference and it is on this very subject that I’m embarking on a short film to actually do the physical thing of occupying a bit of land performatively and film it. It will be shown in Wolverhampton on Thursday and I’m keen to put myself under pressure to realise a few ideas on this. Namely that the film will be silent singing/shouting a little like the old silent movies. It will demonstrate the very virtuality it chooses to challenge and hopefully begin a criticism on how we occupy and use our spaces regularly without ultimate planning for festival, workshops or booked in dates on a highly prepared schedule, but spontaneously (reasonably so) actively and with an energy that comes from activity not interactivity. However I will be sure to upload it so that all can enjoy and consume it via interactivity on your screens!
A more spontaneous approach is often referred to as improvisation and can import that notion of duende (x factor) that Garcia Lorca (1933) translates to us. One of my methods within choreography and over my whole practice is to work with loose structures. They are planned but they require an intention that is still working hard to the last chance/improvisation that comes from many of those discussions. It is essential when grafting in this way. Tim Ingold (2012)would refer again to the innate sentient knowledge brought through experience which I’m now counting on as I move bodies silently into a line on top of a hill to silently yell at passivity to form a boundary which embodies obstructing the onslaught of things creeping over borders like the slapping of a tidal edge and the strategies put in place while we are interacting. It is a silent call for activity and since authors have written on the power of silence as protest this is the silent movie in chorus for the conference exhibition.
