Tactile Wandering - A Participatory-Performing-Play Intervention.

Some Silly Drawings and Thoughts

The Richmond Hill Archaeological Wunderkammer

This participatory event was set up at the annual Richmond Hill Street Music Festival in Richmond Hill, Port Elizabeth on the 21 June 2014. It was conducted as a means of continuing the theme of mapping space and objects, and the activation of “non-art” space as "performative play" spaces that I had started in the Richmond Hill Participatory-Performing-Play Arts Expedition and in the central Walkabout/Eat Central project. I set up an “Archaeological Mapping of Richmond Hill”, which entailed asking visitors to collect objects that they found on their visit to Richmond Hill, and to bring them to the Arts and Culture Tent to be ‘collated’and added to the Richmond Hill Archaeological Wunderkammer. In the tent, I set up an “Arts Laboratory”, complete with wooden laboratory or examination tables, a trolley, a pin-board, and a series of white sculpture podiums – all on which visitors could place and examine found objects. In the laboratory, visitors could also draw, examine, play with or ‘dissect’ objects that they had collected, or objects that were already a part of the collection. I created pamphlets (see pamphlet directly below) to hand out at the festival which contained ‘instructions’ for visitors, asking them to collect objects and bring them to the tent to take part in an archaeological mapping of the area. I also created a series of prompt or cue cards (see below pamphlet) to aid viewers in participation and play. Below is what ensued.