Actions and Events

What will happen?

This is a different question to: how will we relate?

Or: what will we look like?

We knew that we wanted to explore actions and events in public spaces which use some interaction or participation of onlookers. This desire stemmed from our interest in disturbing norms with a view to opening up new ways of seeing our society, that might lead to re-imagining it along more socially just lines. Inviting onlookers into what happens also drew on what we know about traditional festivities, where the roles may be clear but there is a sense that anyone and everyone is participating. This is very different to the modern practice of actors owning the stage and audiences paying to occupy the auditorium. 

We explored some of the common storylines of events that crop up in traditional festivities, such as:

- someone is chased (out of town)

- someone dies and is resurrected

- a space is made for a special figure (to dance)

- a special figure arrives (from above)

- permission is requested (from the mayor, the church, the carer of an important object)

- a group in costume visit door to door

- a performing space is marked out on the ground (with ashes)

- a scene is played out several times in different locations in the town

- a group or individual changes costume (hat) and take son a new role (after prayers, etc.)

- an effigy is paraded

- an effigy is cleaned

The roles, or characters, range from the wild (mythological creatures, devils) to the civic (bishop, gypsy, widow). In exploring costume, we particularly became interested in costumes

- with the face fully covered (with no eyes or mouth or nose)

- with the face fully covered (with eyes or mouth or nose)

- with the face partially visible (with a nose, for example)

- with the face fully visible

Do these options represent a spectrum from wild to civilised? From amoral to ethical? From the trickster to the realistic character? From destruction to reason? 

Aside from this, we became intrigued by the potential of using eggs as objects. See the separate post on eggs for more details.

Jon Davison