Notes From New York

An Impromptu Performance

As I was getting the subway back from the screening of Daria Martin’s film at the Tribecca Grand Hotel tonight, I saw an impromptu performance on the train. Two men got on at East Braodway, one stop from Brooklyn. I didn’t notice either of them until the one at the other end of the carriage started playing the cello. Then I started to look at the man sitting in front of me – he was sideways on so I could gaze at his profile without being too obvious. He was somewhere between forty and fifty years old and homeless. Just like everything else in New York, he could have been cast and styled by a film crew. He wore a plaid shirt, heavy trousers and boots with no socks on. His feet were tapping away in time to the music.

That’s when I realised that the two men were a double act. The guy on the cello sat at one end of the train, while his partner sat at the other, and when the cellist had finished playing they would both ask the other passengers for a donation.

By this time we had made a stop in York Station, and carried on again. Pretty impressive for a couple of homeless buskers, I thought. Not only have they managed to find a cello, but they’re also really treating us to a proper performance. OK, so it had none of the virtuosity of Zeena Parkins, the experimental musician who had performed on the electric harp back in the Tribeca Hotel. But inbetween the clattering of the subway train and the rasp of the driver’s anouncements, I could tell that that cellist could really play. I looked round at my fellow passengers to see if anyone else was having the same thoughts. A woman who was up near the musician had taken out her purse, so I surreptitiously fumbled in my handbag too, praying that I could remember where I’d stashed all those $1 notes and not pull out a $20 by mistake.

We pulled into the next station, and I saw the homeless man by me begin to stand up, so I closed my hand over the note ready to give it to him. He turned round and got off the train. The cellist was at the other end of the carriage, cap in hand, receiving fistfulls of change from a grateful audience. The homeless man strode purposefully towards the exit.

I realised suddenly that they were not a double act at all. The cellist was just a cellist (and now, as he came closer, I could see he was actually quite smartly dressed), and the homeless man was just another one of us riding the subway, with somewhere to go. I had witnessed an impromptu performance, but my preconceptions had transformed it into something else entirely. The cellist walked towards me and got off at the doors in front of my seat. Embarrased by the force of my own preconceptions, and shaken by the realisation that this man wasn’t homeless, I kept my hand in my pocket and never gave him any money.

Mary

When is it ok to leave a durational performance?

When is it ok to leave a durational performance? When your legs go numb? When your drink is finished? Or perhaps when you see the curator of the event of which the performance is part, gather her bags and head to the door?

I braved over an hour and a half of Tony Conrad’s ‘Window Enactment’ at Greene Naftali Gallery last night, which means I stayed long past any of those criteria had been met. Sniffling into my tissues on the floor of the gallery, it was only when I saw the time that I realised I had spent most of my viewing minutes daydreaming about cats. Absorbing, Tony Conrad was not.

Perhaps my problem last night was more to do with Conrad’s work than anything else (I’ve reviewed it at www.writingfromliveart.co.uk ). But the question of how long to stay in a durational performance is one I’ve come across before. In an object-based show, a few minutes looking at each painting or sculpture will let you know if you want to move on, or if it deserves more attention. At the theatre, your time is packaged up neatly into watching and socialising between acts, and a lot of Live Art or performance follows a timed structure. But when your gallery handout gives just a start time, and especially if you are unfamiliar with the artist’s work, it can be agonising to decide whether to leave and if you should risk missing out later on.

I felt a similar audience-anxiety watching Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci at the National Review of Live Art in February this year. The awkwardness of coming and going was exacerbated by the fact that the artists were in a special room with a kind of sound-proofing air lock between it and the corridor outside. As a result, the work was buffetted from the hectic mayhem of the Tramway venue, but it also meant that the quiet performance space was rudely interrupted by any audience member who started shuffling her shoes, grabbing her bag and making for the door. Luckily, in February my anxiety was fleeting. I enjoyed the work, and the longer I stayed the more it absorbed me. I left when I felt pleasingly full– the feeling you get from that last mouthful of food that sates your hunger.

But the lack of beginning and end was obviously troubling for some people, and it became troubling for me last night. The problem comes down to how much agency and control you, the viewer, feel you need. One of the first reactions to unclear definitions is anger (see our posts about the queue for Vezzoli’s performance, below!) – how dare the artist waste my time? I’m not here to be manipulated! Except of course that’s exactly what you want the artist to do – to invade your life, your headspace, your normality, and show you something different or interesting.

In which case – who’s responsibility is it to set the boundaries? Should we, as viewers, submit to the mercy of the artist for an undisposed period of time? Should we surrender to an artistic authority beyond our quotidian minds, or should we expect the artists to work for our attention and justify their right to occupy our thoughts? More importantly – should we ever admit that we have been thinking of cats instead of ruminating on the multi-layered possibilities of a ‘special live performance’? Answers on a postcard please.

Mary Paterson