Exploring the Performative Art Object.: July 2014

This is a long overdue post on a participatory event I conducted earlier this year in Richmond Hill, Port Elizabeth - the area in which I live.

The Richmond Hill Participatory-Performing-Play Arts Expedition was conceived as a means of exploring the relationship between viewer and art object in a 'non-art' urban public space[1]. The use of the phrase “Participatory-Performing-Play” in the title of the event indicated that it would necessitate participation and play on the part of the visitor, and furthermore, that there would be an element of the event that required the visitor, or, conversely, the artist, to perform. The “Expedition” meant to play on an art “exhibition”, in this sense linking the outside urban space to a gallery space. It also indicated that the event would be structured as an “organised journey”. I saw the event as a means of using the street and cityscape as an interactive sketchbook, and invited viewers to do the same, so as to determine different visitor’s perceptions of how the urban space, and the objects within it, should be used[2].

The project entailed the use of selected 'found' spaces throughout Richmond Hill which I set up as “Play Sites” for visitors to explore and interact with. Viewers/participants[3] were directed via prompt-cards to these sites from the Richmond Hill Park where I had asked everyone to meet at the beginning of the event. I utilised a notice board within the park to display information about the expedition, including the event poster, a map of the area, and instructional information which read as follows:

“You are invited to join in on an expedition of participation, performance, and play through Richmond Hill. A series of ‘Play Sites’ have been set up throughout the area. They can be accessed via the map and prompt cards below. Use the cards to explore the sites, using the street as an interactive ‘sketchbook’.”

Beneath the notice board I placed a pigeon-hole box with numbered holes that corresponded to seven different Sites. In the numbered holes I placed the prompt-cards, a series of drawings of each Site which acted as hints as to where each one was situated. Although the addresses of each Site were provided, the drawing of the Site did not include the objects I had placed in it; only a drawn description of the surrounding street scene. Thus, participants were only partly aware of what they were looking for. Each completed Play Site would be revealed to them only once they had reached it.

At each Play Site, I set up a compilation of objects, arranged according to their surroundings, in a designated space in the Richmond Hill neighbourhood. In each case I chose the sites according to the objects, most of which were made prior to the event as sculptural 'sketches' or test pieces during my art-making praxis within the last year. As such, the objects were not made specifically for the sites they were to be placed in and some adjustments of both object and space had to be made. This was part of my performative action as artist. As I only set up each site approximately an hour before the event was due to start, I was tested and had to act performatively in this stage of my art-making process. This helped me to see the entire event (including the previous making and setting up of the objects), as an ongoing art event, consisting of further “pockets” of artworks or art objects[4] within it.

It further placed emphasis on how objects are made and considered differently according to their context - the polished and considered gallery object and the practical, improvised art object. I could clearly see the difference between objects in this space and objects in the gallery space. The gallery is for looking and thus objects in this space must look polished, finished, look nice. But in the outside space they need to be more practical. One wants to interact with them – not look at them in the gallery sense. Things in the outside get blown over, stolen or ‘appropriated’ by unaware ‘performers’, drawn on, moved around (fluxed), broken/fixed, and become a part of viewer’s actions. In the outside, objects become not as important as what gets done with them. Their performative value is increased – their value lies in their power to be performative. What happens when the same objects are displayed in a gallery? This is the atmosphere I want to create within the gallery – this sense of disruption/the object being disrupted/people’s expectations being disrupted.

[1] As opposed to a gallery space – one designated specifically for art or artistic activities.

[2] As opposed to visitor’s perceptions of gallery space and how it is used.

[3] In an art gallery, a person who comes to look at an exhibition would typically be referred to as a “viewer”, but in this case, it was sometimes unclear whether the visitors to each play site were merely viewers (in the same sense that someone watching a movie is a viewer or “non-participant”, separate from the artwork), or whether they were actually participants in the making and using of the site, and thus acted as co-creators of it.

[4] I would define each play site as an artwork consisting of art objects.