March against Consumerism

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Georgia Harris

A March against Consumerism

Framing Statement
We were asked to think about the topic of liberation and what this could mean. There are many different interpretations of liberation some personal, some general. We decided to use the high street as our site, as it is heavily populated throughout the day. This would work well as we wanted to liberate the public in some way. After looking into the high street as our site we realised that the public were being overtaken by consumerism. Nowadays, we live in a consumer culture, one that means the majority of people on the high street are there to spend money. “The norms of the culture of society in which the person has been bought up… [will] affect what the person will perceive of the situation.” (Redman,1979, 48). This shows this consumer culture getting worse especially for younger generations that may know no different. We decided to liberate these people from their everyday routines by offering the idea of a gift. The ‘gifts’ we decided on were high fives, compliments, hugs and then the final statement was originally unclear. After trialling several methods we finalised our fourth sign as ‘what would you write?’ We wanted it to be the most interactive of the signs. This meant that one side of the sign was blank whiteboard for the public to write whatever they wanted to express. We each held one sign for 30 minutes at a time, each at a different point of the high street. We started at the bottom with compliment as we felt this was the least interactive then gradually becoming more socially interactive with high five then hug and finally what would you write. This was with the idea that the consumer would make their way up the high street and encounter one of us the further up they went. After 30 minutes we all came together for a ‘changing of the guard’; this was a formal changeover of signs inspired by the royal changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. After the changeover we each went back to the four stops and carried out another half hour with the new sign. Our piece began at 11am and finished early at 1.30pm due to weather conditions. The signs themselves were each 3ft, with the actual written part being a2. We wanted them large and high so that they were visually striking from a distance and so that the consumer could see each sign from any point on the high street. To ensure the piece ran smoothly we all wore synchronised watches so that the marching and change of the guard was perfectly timed and looked professional. This was contrasting to the 30 minutes stood alone as we interacted with people having informal conversations. Our costume was also a large part of the overall aesthetics of the piece; we all wanted to look unified meaning we wore the same. We chose black and white as these are neutral colours but then we added colour onto the signs to make them more inviting. We also had to take into account the timing of our piece, it was carried out on the 7th May, and this was the UK Election Day. We needed to ensure we did not look like we were canvassing something which is actually banned on the high street.

A picture of the ‘Can We Hug?’ sign – Lincoln High street (taken on 7th May 2015)

Myself standing with the Can we high five? sign – Lincoln High street (taken on 7th May 2015)

Analysis of Process
Dominique and I began the process by looking at Carl Lavery’s ‘25 instructions to perform in the city’. We decided to choose the task of leaving messages of enchantment and friendliness on trees around the city. We wanted to use the high street as we had already swayed towards having this as our site. We purchased old luggage tags to contrast against the pervasive media topic we had been asked to look at. We hand wrote these messages and took on our journey along the high street. The first tree we encountered was just off the high street. we attracted lots of attention whilst doing this activity. This made us think about looking at creating a reaction. Doing something out of the norm and observing that people are startled by it is something I found interesting. We carried on and chose a tree inside a local bar/restaurant, after asking permission we tied the messages.

The first tree we encountered.

One of the hand written messages.

We had one man come up during the process and read one, he replied “how lovely” and walked away smiling. We also liked the fact we were making a different to people’s days even if for a small moment. After completing this activity we fed back to the group and decided this was potentially something we could expand on for our final piece.
We were inspired by Tim Etchell’s 8 fragments. We looked into fragment 5, observation/coincidence. Etchell talks about the “endless possibilities of people passing each other in the street”. (Etchell and Phelen, 1999, 79) He discusses the possibility of going with that person and what would happen, how it would affect your life. We were especially intrigued by his take on the ‘escalator’ he describes this as a place “where we pass each other as objects on a production line”. The most interesting aspect of this was the observation of each other on an escalator as we get closer to meeting and then as Etchell discusses “we could speak, or even touch, our eyes drop and the moment passes” (Etchell and Phelen, 1999,79). We decided to create our own observation on based around Etchell’s work, we ventured to the high street and people watched. We decided to expand on our message idea and after observing people in town write down the first thing that comes to mind on a speech bubble.

Speech bubble thoughts.

This was an interesting task as it forced us to look up at people that we might normally just pass on the street. We created a video on our research.

The man in the video was especially thought-provoking as we watched the man hand out flyers in town and we were shocked by the amount of people who walk past and ignore him like he is not even there. Most people not even paying attention to what he was distributing, this posed us with the question what if he was handing out something incredible or life changing? People see him and automatically say ‘no’ or look down and avoid him. What if he was handing them a million pounds? They would never even know. I found this extremely interesting, society assumes you are trying to sell them something and they are not interested. They would not expect you to be doing something that just benefits them. We are constantly as a society trying to get from A to B, we rarely just stop and take notice to our surroundings.
We then tested this theory on an escalator offering out high fives, also shown in the video. We had absolutely no response a man even avoided us. After using these speech bubbles we came up with the idea of having large speech bubbles in town potentially blank for society’s thoughts to be broadcast. What if we wrote down our observations for the world to see? To show society or yourselves what image we are giving of to the rest of society. Would we be shocked at ourselves or would we still be disinterested? Could our piece make a difference and change a small aspect of how society views each other?
As our site is rather large we came to the realisation that we may need to pick certain aspect of the high street. ‘A Sardine street box of tricks’ highlights that choosing the right location is essential. To do this you need to be “hyper-sensitised to the flows, stories and textures of what is around you” (Persighetti and Smith, 2011, 12). We were inspired by the Situationists and there method of ‘drifting’, to drift is to aimlessly wander around, to not be on a specific route with a destination with no distractions and to make note of what you uncover. What do you notice about locations you may have been to several times before? We began to drift, we separated as a group and decided to meet together later in the day. Whilst drifting, I began to feel myself observing everything, thinking about people’s journeys. Where they were going? What they were doing and if I could disrupt this flow. I walked the full high street alone then we came together continuing up steep hill as at this point we had not ruled this area out of our site. Whilst up steep hill we discovered an out of place brick that had come apart from the others in the road. This individual brick changed the whole aesthetics of the road and made us think about the idea of being out of place. Foust and Jones believe the “consumer subjects are ‘in place’ performing properly” (Foust and Jones, 2008, 9) this links to the brick and how everything has its rightful place. We wanted to play with this idea as our gift –giving could be deemed as out of place on the high street.

Drifting- Photo of the overturned brick.

Early on we decided to eliminate the use of pervasive media, we felt like we should add this into our liberation by liberating society from media as well as consumerism. Often the use of mobiles on the go is the reason for not paying attention and interacting with each other, therefore we eliminated this from our performance apart from to documents pictures of the day.

We stuck with the idea of giving out a ‘gift’, breaking people’s everyday routes and routines by offering something unexpected. We created a long list of potential ‘gifts’ we could give to society. We decided to have one each, high five, hug and compliment were the first three we felt would work well therefore we decided to go to our site as test out these gifts. We used a typed A4 sign and stood on the high street to see what reaction we drew. We included a few other options for the fourth sign as this was the sign we were unsure on. We gained a lot of positive feedback from our experiment and the reaction we wanted for the three signs. Unfortunately our other options of signs did not work as well, ‘Can I lend an ear?’ And ‘Can I help you?’ This may be as they are more open questions and the public may feel uncomfortable and that these signs are less approachable. The idea of conversing with a complete stranger is one that is quite alien to the public especially on the high street as people are set in a routine. This is what we as a group are trying to liberate the public from, therefore still having the fourth sign as a conversational gift I believe is still a good idea. We may need to look at the way we present the sign, making it more welcoming. As seen below we documented our reactions on video.

When on our site, I used the ‘can we hug?’ sign. I received a good reaction from this; some as expected just gave a quick hug with no talking and carried on with their daily routine. This is still a good outcome for us as we have still managed to break their everyday cycle even if for a fleeting moment. On the other hand, other members of the public stopped and asked us what we were doing then received the hug and thanked me for “brightening their day”. I encountered two older ladies (shown in video) who asked what I was doing, after I explained one gave me a hug yet the other was originally quite reluctant. After seeing her friend receive a hug and the positive reaction she changed her mind and decided to join in too. Both thanked me for making their day better and went on to apologise that they “were not 20 year old, young men”. We both shared laughter and they went on with their day. It was really nice to see how much a simple action like a hug can make a difference to someone’s mood.
Although several members of the public did not join in, most stared and smiled or discussed what we were doing amongst themselves. This again is still creating the overall outcome we wanted. As we are still breaking their social norm.
After this trial and the drifting we decided upon our four locations on the high street. We wanted the audience to be able to see all four signs from wherever they stand therefore we decided to begin at the bottom of the high street near HMV and then end at the top of the high street near Kind bar. Luckily there is the Stonebow that separates these two halves of the high street therefore this is where we decided to do our meeting and ‘change of the guard’. This means two people stand either side an equal distance apart then come together at the stone bow for the changing ritual.

The Stonebow, Lincoln.

The Change of the Guard.

We decided that we wanted the signs to remain in the same place starting with the most amount of separation (Can I compliment you). Then on the journey up the site the degree of separation decreases to high five, then hug, then finally a more personal sign that was yet to be decided. Debord explains that “The Phenomenon of separation is part of parcel of the unity of the world” (Debord, 1995, 13). We want to play with the idea of separation and keep this decrease a constant throughout the day therefore we would change the people holding the signs and not the signs themselves. This also worked as we were changing every 30 minutes meaning a member of the public may encounter one of us and then carry on their route however if we changed the signs they might continue to come across the same sign all the way up the high street. This is not the outcome we want as we want to see how far the audience will go with the different signs. Are they brave enough to encounter the fourth sign?

The decision of what to write on the fourth sign was a tough one and one that changed a lot throughout the process. We came across Gillian Wearing’s work on signs. Her piece “signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say” really inspired us. Strangers on the street were approached and asked “to write down something that was in their head” (Molon and Schwabsky, 2002, 28). Some of the outcomes were really interesting, what was more fascinating was the diversity of the responses. Some comical, political and emotional.

Gillian Wearing- I’m Desperate.

This picture especially intrigued me as the man photographed at first glance looks like a business man, respectable potentially wealthy yet interestingly enough the sign he is holding is ‘I’m desperate’. It is unclear about what he is desperate about but I feel this makes the picture more thought-provoking as you get to make your own judgements. After researching more into Wearing’s work we decided we definitely wanted to include the audience into the fourth sign. Whether it is confessions or just simply writing messages we felt this would be a perfect final sign to break down the barrier between us and the consumer.
Antony Gormely’s work on the fourth plinth helped us to confirm this idea. The fourth plinth is a platform for artwork in Trafalgar square. It was originally a space for a statue of William IV but was left blank due to insufficient funds. It then became a space for contemporary art to be displayed. Gormely’s piece ‘One and other’ that was performed on the plinth was inspiring. Gormely used a different member of the audience every hour as his art work; this member can do whatever they please. It invites people to be their own work of art. “The idea is that this will be a portrait of Britain made out of 2,400 hours of 2,400 people’s lives” (Sooke, 2009) This is exactly what we wanted to achieve with our fourth sign so we decided to keep it an open question, simply, what would you write? This offers the public to ask their own question, write a personal thought or just a statement to society.

The first four performers of the fourth plinth.

We carried out a dress rehearsal the week before our final piece. This performance was not carried out at our site as we felt it would lose its impact on the day if the signs were seen before. We did however take the signs blank to our site to practice the changing of the guard. The reaction these signs created was more interesting, the public could not comprehend that we were holding blank signs. We had several people coming up and asking what we were ‘advertising’. They found it more peculiar to see blank canvases then to see adverts, this is an example of how consumerism has taken over the public.

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Performance Evaluation
We arrived at our location at 11am ready to begin, we decided to put our waterproof ponchos over our ‘uniform’ as it was slightly raining and was predicted to rain later in the day. We wanted to look united therefore we decided to keep the ponchos on all day so it did not look messy taking them off and on. For the first 30 minutes I held the ‘can we hug?’ sign, this was my favourite time of the whole performance. I had such a positive reaction, lots of people stating thing such as “you’ve made me smile”. The day took many different turns, some stages where no one would approach for a long time and others where we were inundated with high fives and hugs etc. There were some personal responses and some that were not as interactive. The most memorable response was when I complimented a lady’s necklace, she then let me into a personal story that she may not have otherwise shared about a man she once loved giving her the necklace. This story really made me think about how if I had not been doing this performance she may not have shared it with people. This is exactly what we wanted as it also made her think, she was very interested in the message behind our piece. I then went on to tell her the point of our performance and she agreed completely. She hates pervasive media for the very reason it has stopped people just simply conversing like myself and her. The changing of the guard ritual worked very well, although one member of our group did remove her poncho, this is my opinion did affect the piece as we lost our unified look. However, as the rest of the group we did decide to remain in ponchos as the weather took a turn for the worst and the rain did pour heavily. I thought the weather would affect the response we gained and although the number did decrease during the rain, it was shocking the amount of people that still wanted to stop in the pouring rain to receive a ‘gift’. In future a performance such as this, I believe should be longer in duration. We did have to cut it short due to the weather, however if we were to redo it on another day it would be interesting to see if the time of day changes the responses we receive. Overall, I believe we were successful in breaking people’s everyday routines and breaking consumerism even if for a fleeting moment.

Word Count 3,267

Can we High five?- Performance day.

Can we high five?- Performance day.

Bibliography
Debord, G. (1992) Society of the Spectacle and Other Films. London: Rebel Press.

Foust, C. and Jones, R. (2008) Staging and Enforcing Consumerism in the City: The Performance of Othering on the 16th Street Mall. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 4 (1) 1-28.

Hardman, R. (2009) Now there’s a poo on the Trafalgar square fourth plinth [online image]. Available from:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197704/Now-theres-poo-Trafalgar-Squares-fourth-plinth.html [Accessed May 10th 2015]

Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 Instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 25(3) 229-238.

Molon, D and Schwabdky, B. (2002) Mass Observation: [accompanies the exhibition organized by the by the Museum of contemporary Art, Chicago]. London: Merrell Publishers.

Redman.(1979) Consumer behaviour: theory and applications. London.

Sooke, A. (2009) Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square. The Telegraph, 26 Feb. [Accessed Online] at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4838343/Antony-Gormleys-Fourth-Plinth-Trafalgar-Square.html

Persighetti, S. and Smith, P. (2011) A Sardine Street Box of Tricks. Plymouth: Blurb Inc.

Sabrina290694 (2015) Georgia Hug 2 [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT8VZ5QwDxI [Accessed 20th March 2015]

Tate, (1993) Gillian Wearing OBE. [Online image] London: Tate. Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wearing-im-desperate-p78348

Visit Lincoln (2012) Guildhall and the Stonebow. [Online image] Lincoln: Visit Lincoln. Available from: http://www.visitlincoln.com/things-to-do/guildhall-and-stonebow [Accessed 14th May 2015].

Questioning Retail – Final Blog Post

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Eve Oxspring

Framing Statement

Site Specific Performance is a completely different discipline to anything we have been taught before. We were asked to create a performance that would take us away from the familiar theatre environment and only work in a separate setting provided. For us, that setting was Lincoln High Street. Our group also had an additional briefing, as we were asked to submit our final performances to Lincoln’s Frequency Festival in the hope of being chosen to perform. The theme of this year’s festival is liberation, so we somehow had to include an element of that into our performance as well.

While creating our performance, we looked to many different theorists and works to give us inspiration, including Guy Debord and the Situationists, as well as performances such as I Wish I Was Lonely (Thorpe & Walker, 2015). We discovered pretty early on, however, that it appears nobody has used the media we used in a performance context ever before.

Pervasive Media

“Pervasive Media is basically any experience that uses sensors and/or mobile/wireless networks to bring you content (film, music, images, a game…) that’s sensitive to your situation – which could be where you are, how you feel, or who you are with.” (Pervasive Media Studio, 2015)

An additional element of our performance came in the form of Pervasive Media. Our group immediately picked up on the use of mobile phones within Pervasive Media, as mobile phones have become such a huge part of everyday life, especially within the last five years. We researched the use of mobile phones and their capabilities in a public space, and decided to harness those capabilities to aid in our performance.

Questioning Retail

Our performance, entitled Questioning Retail, took place on 7^th May 2015 on Lincoln High-Street. It began at 9am and finished at roughly 2pm. The aim of the performance was to question peoples’ views on consumerism and Pervasive Media within the high street site and offer a disruption, however brief, to give them the opportunity to really take in the environment around them. In order to do this, we handed out QR codes, a vehicle usually used for promotion, with links to articles and websites based around five topics: politics, the environment, human interaction, histories, and the physical process of creating our performance. Our audience expected to receive a fifty percent off voucher or something similar; we flipped those expectations on their heads. To keep our audience from just

The day of the performance.

throwing our QR codes away, as people are prone to do with other promotional literature, we placed relevant quotes and statistics on the reverse of the QR codes to draw their attention and pique their curiosity.

As well as this, we felt our performance needed an additional level. We therefore placed an additional QR code on a t-shirt with a statement that reworked the popular ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ posters. My t-shirt, for example scanned to a link of a poster with “Keep Calm and Carry On?” with a simple question mark addition on it. When handing out QR codes, we encouraged our audience to also scan our t-shirts and converse with us about their opinions on what they found, as well as their opinions on the performance as a whole.

Process

Debord describes media as “capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images.” (Debord, 1992, p. 17) From the very beginning, our group was interested in the use of mass media and technology within society, and how that has affected the way that people shop and even interact in public spaces. Social media has become so prominent in our everyday lives that even when people are together, they would rather communicate through Facebook, Twitter, or other forms of social media than talk face to face. We were interested in liberating them from that, or at least harnessing that to use in a innovative, thought-provoking way.

MaKey MaKeys

In one of our first workshops, we played around with MaKey MaKey technology. This simple computer chip and set of crocodile clips can be used for numerous different purposes, including turning bananas into a drum kit (see Video 1 for more). Using tin foil and crocodile clips, and then holding hands, we created a completed human circuit that enabled us to project different images or sounds from a laptop and projector.

(Video 1)

We liked the idea of having people interacting with us on the high street in a way that physically linked human beings with technology; our initial idea was to have people touch pressure points on our bodies wired up to a MaKey MaKey to produce content that could be projected onto a shop front or wall. We soon realised that the sheer number of wires and laptops needed wasn’t viable, however, nor would it be safe when there was a chance someone could trip or be caught in the wires. This, paired with the fact that we couldn’t think of content to project that would send a strong enough message, meant we scrapped the idea.

Pervasive Games

Leading on from our research into Pervasive Media, we also researched Pervasive Games. (Tapper, 2014) In Tapper’s article, she describes a process of “pervasive playing culture” (ibid, p. 145) between players and non-players within a performance, or ‘game’. Non-players, as described by Tapper, are “unaware that the game exists in the first place”, whereas players do, and this creates an “in-between-ness” between performance and reality. (ibid, p. 147) The players know that they are performing, but the non-players do not, and so, to the non-players, what they witness becomes their reality. This creates “an existential dialogue into which players and non-players are propelled.” (ibid, p. 143)

This article made me think about the nature of performance. If the audience were unaware they were watching or even participating in a performance, was it a performance at all? At what point does something stop being a performance and start being a political statement? As a group, this is something that we explored and brought forth into our final piece, as, to passers-by, we just appeared to be flyering. Only those who asked us what we were doing were brought in on the pervasive game, creating the dialogue as described by Tapper.

“Sit With Me for a Moment and Remember”

After our initial idea of using MaKey MaKeys fell flat, we once again turned back to previous work and theories to inspire us into creating something new. Alys and I looked into Carl Lavery’s 25 Instructions for Performing in Cities, and chose to, in true Pervasive Games style, “leave messages of friendliness” (Lavery, 2005, p. 236) around the high street. Our audience didn’t know they were participating in a performance of sorts, just that someone had left a friendly message on a post-it note in highly populated areas. Another of Lavery’s instructions, “build a forest in a city”, (Lavery, ibid) became the basis of our next idea for a performance.

Our “messages of friendliness”.

Linking back with our initial proposal of creating a disruption in the high street, we considered a physically aesthetic disruption in the form of a park or beach scene in the middle of the high street, which would have a bench or deckchair of some kind to enable the public to sit with us and create conversation. As well as Lavery, we took inspiration for this from Sit With Me for a Moment and Remember (Pinchbeck, 2012). In his piece, Pinchbeck asked for just five minutes of each individual’s time, and asked them to sit for a moment, forget about their busy day, and think back to something or someone who made them happy/sad etc. (see Audio 1). The aim of our performance, similarly, would be to take passers-by away from their phones and the idea of consumerism for a moment, both physically and mentally, and offer a respite in the form of a chat. We wanted to create a contrast between the grey, cold high street by laying down turf and potted plants/trees, creating a bubble of tranquillity in an otherwise fast, busy, but somehow lonely space.

(Audio 1)

We decided to move forwards with this idea, going so far as to contact Lincoln Big about hiring the space. It only then occurred to us that the performance wouldn’t be cost effective. With only a £50 budget for our group, and grossly miscalculating the cost of the amount turf and potted plants/trees we would need to make the performance effective, we eventually decided that we needed an idea that was simpler. We used elements of this in our final performance, however, in the fact that we eventually returned to the idea of having a conversation with the public as a disruption.

Quick Response Codes

“QR codes were first created back in 1994. A Toyota subsidiary named Denso Wave developed the code in order to help in the manufacturing process; they aided in tracking vehicles and parts. It was designed to allow for fast decoding

An example of a QR code.

speeds, hence the name Quick Response code.” (Michelle White, 2013)

One of our first workshops had involved us researching QR codes and their possible uses in a performance context. As a class, we were asked to create a scavenger hunt of sorts using QR codes. Our group placed riddles into the QR codes, the answers to which would take the participants to the next QR code until they reached a picture of a pot of gold in a QR code at the end. With our previous problems having been cost efficiency and safety issues, and with QR codes being free to produce with only the cost of ink and paper to think about, our group decided to explore this idea more.

It became apparent very early on that we were tapping into technology that had previously not been used for performance purposes, or at least not to the extent that we were planning. In trying to research past performances, therefore, we came up with startlingly little. This gave us the unique opportunity of creating a completely original piece of work. We turned to the actual space we would be using as a source of inspiration.

Claire Blundell Jones said in her article Tumbleweed: “In the current arena where vehicles dominate, meandering is becoming increasingly unfamiliar; regarded as aimless and wasting time, it is perceived as a lower-social-status activity. ‘Time is money’, and one is encouraged to be constantly in flux, going from one interior to another, from home to the workplace to the gym.” (Jones, 2010, p. 87) People are so busy with their day to day lives that they hardly ever stop to actually take the environment around them in, never mind think about it. We wanted to change that.

Lincoln High-Street.

We wanted to create a new perception of the high street space – something personal. Pearson described cities as “history [accumulating]. Many live on their rubbish, their debris endlessly accreting beneath the feet […] The remains of the past are all around us.” (Pearson, 2010, p. 97-98) Drawing on this, we explored the idea of creating a dialogue that could elicit a personal link to the high street with each participator, potentially through memory.

Individually, we wanted to give the audience a memory of ours that somehow tied to the high street so that they would then go away and think about a memory of their own. My memory involved books; I was going to position myself outside Waterstones and, in an audio or video track placed in a QR code on my chest, I would tell a story about my favourite book as a child. We soon realised, however, that, while Pearson describes history as an important part of Site Specific performance, the history of the site is usually explored instead of the history of the performer. It became apparent that we could take this performance anywhere and still make it work, which defeated the purpose of it being Site Specific. With this in mind, we returned to the drawing board.

“I Wish I Was Lonely”

A performance of I Wish I Was Lonely (Thorpe & Walker, 2015) renewed our interest in the technological consequences of today’s society. They explained in their performance that we are never really alone even when we are by ourselves, as technology means that we can talk to people online all the time. This could be applied to the high street; people walk past each other every day with their eyes on their phones, quickly moving from shop to shop, and never really see each other. A sense of human physical human interaction is lost.

With this performance fresh in our minds, we began researching Situationism and the work of Debord. Situationists “analyse capitalism in its current consumerist form” (libcom.org, 2006), which coincided with our earlier aims to question consumerism in the retail space. Debord uses the idea of mass media as a spectacle to explain how society has become trapped:

“The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as society itself, as part of society, and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is the focal point of all vision and all consciousness. But due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is in reality the domain of delusion and false consciousness: the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of universal separation.” (Debord, 1992, p. 7)

With the work of Debord and the Situationists in mind, we came to realise that our performance could meld the idea of consumerism and the overuse of technology together, with capitalism being the platform of today’s society’s communication, with technology as the glue that holds it all together.

Culminating the ideas we had had before, we turned to the idea of an instillation rather than a traditional performance as a way of presenting our piece. We brainstormed what most affected the high street and decided on politics, environment, history, and human interaction, as well as the name Questioning Retail for our piece. This is a clever reworking of the original QR meaning. People would be expecting to scan a QR code and receive a voucher code or something similar, so we wanted to flip that assumption on its head. Instead, we were going to research our four topics (with performance process as a fifth category) and put links to websites, articles, and scholarly readings in them, creating hundreds of thought provoking QR codes. We then planned to paste the QR codes up on a shop front or wall for people to see.

Our initial choice of site was a shared doughnut shop and health centre in the centre of the high street. We thought covering the entire outside of the building would create a spectacle large enough that it would have an impact and create dialogue between us and passers-by. We gained permission from the doughnut shop, but unfortunately Lincoln council wouldn’t allow us permission to use the health centre half of the building.

Our initially selected site.

Instead, we moved to a separate, less obtrusive site in a side wall of Marks & Spencer. We wrote for permission, but were sadly not granted it here either. A little disheartened, we had to rethink our performance again.

The side wall of Marks and Spencer.

Despite the setbacks, our research had enabled us to “[stop] seeing the street as a series of snapshots but as an endless movie” (Crab Man and Signpost, 2011, 16), and so we set about thinking up an alternative to the instillation. The final idea came in the form of handing out hundreds of QR codes instead of pasting them somewhere. Here, we would take on the pseudo-role of promoters, luring our audience into believing they will be getting some kind of discount code, whereas instead they would be taken to a website, picture or video that questioned not only the high street itself, but their views of it. With our performance set to coincide with the general election, the idea of flyering took on a whole new level.

We were advised to add an additional level to our performance, so we once again returned to the idea of disrupting the flow of people by having a conversation. We created a series of conversation starters that we put into QR codes on the t-shirts that we wore, and encouraged people to scan us and converse about what they found.

The day of the performance.

These conversation starters followed a template of the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ posters popular during the Second World War. With our performance set to coincide with the general election, the idea of using and reworking these posters took on a whole new level.

We also created a separate blog and Twitter account that archived all our QR codes, and put a link to the blog on the bottom of each QR code we printed, should any participants want to find out more: http://questioningretail.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

Evaluation

Though we had many setbacks along the way, our final performance proved a success. The bad weather meant we had to cut the performance a little short, as our material was getting wet, but we managed at least five hours on the high street, and successfully gave away all of our QR codes. We also conversed with a wide range of people throughout the day, though for many it was just a few choice words about flyering and/or working for the council, as they thought we were trying to get last minute votes for certain political parties. There were even a few people who believed we were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Though we don’t have an exact count on the number of people who participated in our performance, we had roughly 1200 codes at the beginning of the day, and they were all gone by the time we had finished. Overall, I think this was very successful.

If we were to move forwards with this piece, I would like to put a stronger emphasis on conversing with the public. We found many people simply weren’t prepared to stop for a moment and talk to us, even if they had a QR code reader on their phones. Additionally, we found that the vast majority of the public didn’t have QR code readers downloaded onto their phones, so they couldn’t participate as thoroughly on the day as some may have wanted to. Instead, some people took the QR codes home to give to friends/relatives who had a reader. In this sense, the disruption still happened in the high street, but the audience didn’t receive anything they could use in exchange for that disruption.

Overall, I feel like our aims were met. We created a disruption in the high street and successfully made people re-evaluate their perceptions of the site, pervasive media, and also consumerism as a whole. In getting them to question these things, we were able to liberate them from them, also.

Word Count: 3103

Bibliography

Blundell Jones, C. (2010) Walking, the Western and the Tumbleweed. Visual Studies. 25 (1) 87-88.

Crab man and Signpost. (2011) A Sardine Street Box of Tricks. Exeter: Blurb. 30-32.

Debord, G. (1992) Society of the Spectacle. 4^th edition. London: Rebel Press.

Jay Silver (2012) MaKey MaKey – An Invention Kit for Everyone. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfQqh7iCcOU [Accessed 14 May 2015]

Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance. 25 (3) 229-236.

libcom.org (2006) Situationists – an introduction [online] Available from: https://libcom.org/thought/situationists-an-introduction. [Accessed on 14 May 2015]

Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pervasive Media Studio (2014) What is Pervasive Media? [online] Bristol: Watershed. Available from http://www.pmstudio.co.uk/pmstudio/what-pervasive-media [Accessed 14 May 2015]

Pinchbeck, M. (2012) Sit With Me for a Moment and Remember. [Performance] Michael Pinchbeck (dir.) Derby, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield.

Tapper, J. (2014) Pervasive Games: Representations of Existential In-Between-Ness.Themes in Theatre, 8, 143-161.

Thorpe, C, Walker, H. (2015) I Wish I Was Lonely. [performance] Chris Thorpe, Hannah Jane Walker (dir) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 11 February.

White, M. (2013) What Are QR Codes? [online] New York. Available from http://www.mobile-qr-codes.org/qr-codes.html [Accessed 14 May 2015]

Questioning Retail

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Ciara Beighton

Framing Statement

Our process was guided by the criteria of the Frequency Festival; they wanted performances to contain certain
elements, primarily pervasive media. This meant that as a group we needed to determine which form of pervasive
media interested us and design our performance around that. After much debating and deliberation we decided to
create a piece around the idea of a QR code. Our site being the high street we thought this was a good link, as QR
codes are used in retail and advertisement. This link allowed us to come up with a name and an overall concept for
our performance. Another element that the Frequency Festival wanted to be included was the theme of Liberation.
With these criteria in mind, our main aim was to disrupt the flow of the high street; to liberate people from the isolation
they create for themselves in this world of technology. We wanted to make the point that technology has made people
unable to communicate; they walk through the high street without interacting with other human beings.

This is our site, Lincoln High Street. With its huge crowds of people passing each other by, oblivious to the world.

The QR codes themselves added another level to our performance because they are used in retail as adverts or
promotional offers that people scan. We took this idea and contorted an established vehicle; we handed out QR codes
on the high street to the people who were our audience, each of us had created 250 QR codes each to hand out. We
planned to do this from nine o clock am until five o clock pm to symbolise a traditional retail day. Our QR codes,
however, were not adverts but links to images and websites that were hopefully thought-provoking, but not advertising anything.

This is an example of what a QR code looks like. Notice how very digital is seems. If you scan this one it will take you to a website about environmental problems.

We each took a different sub topic to make our QR codes: Economical, Historical, Social, Process and I had
Environmental. We wanted people to question the function of a QR code; this led to our performance name,
Questioning Retail. Additionally we had T-Shirts made with QR codes that led to an image, that would further our
intention of questioning preconceived notions; our ideas developed to not just questioning retail and technology, but
to trying to make people question the things in life they take for granted. This again makes a link to the theme of
liberation; we are liberating people from their own assumptions. In particular, because we performed on May 7th,
Election Day, we tried to include political aspects into our piece. The images on our T-Shirts used the template of the
popular Keep Calm and Carry On image. Each of us had a different modification of this, for an example mine was
“Keep Your Head Down and Let Others Choose?” As a whole we were guided to this final product by practitioners like
Pearson and Debord, while also being inspired by other performances like I Wish I Was Lonely and Sit With Me A
Moment And Remember.

Analysis of Process

The first thing we did was look at Site Specific as a whole. We needed to establish what site specific means and
how we could use this as a platform on which to create our ideas. Mike Pearson attempts to comprehensively explain
what site specific performances really entail; giving examples of previous performances and using hypothetical scenarios in
particular sites. One of the most fundamental definitions is, “In which the scene is set, a personal history of practise is
sketched and a particular context of performance making is delineated.”(Pearson, M. 2010, p1). Meaning that every
individual place has its own history, its own context so a performance in a specific site can only have meaning to that
place.

From the outset we wanted to focus on how modern technology has effected society; how people communicate more
frequently through social networks than actually talking. This focus allowed us to develop ideas that relied heavily on
pervasive media and audience interaction. Our first idea for a performance was inspired by a workshop we attended
about an innovative technology called ‘The MakeyMakey’. This new creation focused on the ways in which humans
and technology could interact, how just the simple action of having skin contact with a device made it work. The idea
we came up with was to have points of contact around our body that when touched would reveal an image, video or
an audio tour. We wanted to establish a link between human contact and technology, to reconcile the biological and
the artificial. After trying to develop this idea we realised the impracticalities; the amount of wires and safety concerns
were too high. Also the number of different images, videos, etc would have required a huge amount of complex
technology that none of us had experience in. However, this led to the idea of being critical about technology, to make
the audience question what has become a fundamental aspect of life. This idea was further reinforced after we
attended the performance I Wish I Was Lonely by Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe. This performance was
focused on mobile phones and how they have effected the modern age. The way the performers handled the audience
interaction was, in my opinion truly inspired; they found the perfect balance of familiarity and distance, performance
and conversation, seriousness and comedy. They had the courage to completely engage with the audience, allowed
trust to develop. This is something we wanted to replicate in our performance; a relationship with the audience based
on mutual trust.

We started to research previous performances and practitioners to develop our performance. One performance that
we all found to be a useful inspiration was Michael Pinchbeck’s Sit With Me For A Moment And Remember. This
performance was “A bench with a plaque reading Sit with me for a moment and remember is placed in a public space.
It is both a dedication to a loved one and an invitation to a stranger. You are invited to sit on the bench to listen to a
recording that reflects on what it means to sit for a moment and remember.”(Pinchbeck,M 2015).

This is an image depicting an example of an audience member participating in this performance. As shown the audience are left vulnerable, ears covered, eyes closed; they put their trust in a complete stranger.

https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-950065-dt-content-rid-1850472_2/xid1850472_2

Like with I Wish I Was Lonely, Pinchbeck invites a relationship with his audience, asks them to be vulnerable; to sit on
a bench alone and even close their eyes. We definitely wanted to replicate some form of audience interaction in our
performance. We looked into other performances that had a high level of audience participation; Janne Tapper
reviewed a performance by an innovative theatre group know as ‘The Yes Men’ in her article Pervasive Games. These
performers took a completely different approach to audience interaction rather establishing trust, they shattered it, “in
that brief moment when the audience discovers that a speaker and his speech, which they considered real, are not
real but are playing. And the audience’s sense of insecurity, uncertainty and even danger rise in that moment.”
(Tapper, J 2014). Pervasive Games gave me a new perspective of pervasive media to consider. If we created a piece
using pervasive media, we would be forcing an audience to confront a truth about their own lives that they were either
unaware of, or did not want to acknowledge. The unaware audiences that were the victims of a pervasive game
became afraid, insecure and paranoid when confronted with the truth. Though we agreed that ‘The Yes Men’ created
a revolutionary new form of performing, we thought the extremity of their method creates fear and mistrust in an
audience, they were even compared to terrorists, “they use fake identities and tell lies, just as terrorists do.”(Tapper, J
2014). We wanted to incorporate the element of confrontation, but were more inclined to create a relationship of trust
rather than fear with our audiences.

With this research we started to create some new ideas for our performance that centred around confronting and
questioning the world with a particular focus on the new age technologies; whilst keeping audience involvement and
reaction a primary concern. As we rejected our last idea due to its complexity, we went back to basics. We needed to
make our performance link to our site as, “a place owes its character to the experiences it affords to those who spend
time there-to the sights, sounds and indeed the smells that constitute its specific ambience. And these, in turn, depend on the
kinds of activities in which its inhabitants engage.”(Pearson, M. 2010, p15). We looked at our site, the high street and
what it made us think of such as: cattle, consumerism, retail, advertisement, shopping, etc. This led to the idea of
disruption; we all agreed that one of the most obvious things in the high street is the mass of people who are shopping
or looking at phones. We wanted our performance to disrupt this autonomous movement through the streets, to make
people interact with others. Our main concern became how we get the people, our audience to stop and talk to us; to
break away from their consumer-driven, technology-controlled lives. A performance called Binary Graffiti involved performers creating artwork on the walls and
pavements, using binary code whilst wearing outfits that had binary code printed on them.

This image shows that these performers use the idea of the digital era as a basis for their performance. The uniformity of their outfits makes them stand out. We were inspired by this in our piece.

“The Binary Graffiti Club provides a platform to celebrate the pioneering spirit of digital innovation and culture through
creative collision and socially engaged artistic practice. The Binary Graffiti Club inspires young people to see the city
as canvas to create change.” (The Binary Graffiti Club, website.) This performance group inspired us to create clothing
that would make us stand out in the crowd, to make it clear that we are members of a group that is set apart from the
rest. We also liked the simplicity of not actually including technology, but using the concept of the digital age as a basis
for a piece. This is when we came up with the idea of QR codes, we thought about the digital age in relation to the
high street and QR codes were the most obvious choice. QR codes dominate consumerism, companies use them for
advertisement or promotional codes. A QR code needs to be scanned by certain applications that can be downloaded
onto a smart phone. When scanned they will take you to a website or an image that would traditionally be advertising
something. We wanted to create T-Shirts that would have a QR code printed onto them; this would make us stand out
in the crowd and hopefully invite conversation.

We wanted to incorporate the aspect of making the audience question the established norms of their lives; in this case
their assumption would be that we were advertising something, so we wanted to challenge that by creating QR codes
that had nothing to do with retail or adverts. This is how we came up with the title of our piece, QR would ordinarily
stand for Quick Response, but as we are challenging this concept we changed it to Questioning Retail, as that is
exactly what we wanted our audience to do. This concept of making an audience question themselves, particularly in
the high street was inspired by a performance by Claire Blundell Jones, Tumbleweed. “The two, woman and weed,
suggest a wilderness within and about us; densely populated suburbias are touched by the cinematic signifier of
emptiness, loneliness and distance.”(Jones, C. 2010). She wanted to escape the Western world and walk with no
purpose or destination, this was something we wanted to make our audience think about.

This shows Claire Blundell Jones walking the busy streets blowing a tumbleweed in front of her. The juxtaposition of this and the constantly in flux high street created a beautiful aesthetic that we hoped to recreate in some fashion.

This was a good starting point, but we felt that we needed something more to get the audience involved. We
developed the idea of producing hundreds of QR codes and creating an installation along the high street. The
performance would be all of us creating a work of art made entirely of QR codes that people could scan at their leisure.
We felt this would create more of a visual impact and attract more people to interact and cause them to look up and
take notice. This idea of a visual impact with an aim of making you question the world is something that we derived
from the works of practitioner, Guy Debord. He is a situationist and believes in questioning the capitalism of society,
he thought that “the spectacle is capitol accumulated to the point that it becomes images.”(Debord, G. 1992, p17). An
art installation links to his concept of the spectacle, something that visually questions capitalism in its current
consumerist form.

The main concerns of our piece became the content of the QR codes and getting permission to create an installation
in the high street. In regards to to the content, to avoid repeating ourselves we each took one of five topics:
Economics, Historical, Social, Environmental and Process. We would create QR codes that linked to our chosen topic.
For example I would create a QR code that would link to a website about animal testing; this makes the person who
scanned the code question the assumed purpose of QR codes, and an aspect of the retail industry that we would
ordinarily choose to ignore. To make our QR codes we used the site below:

http://goqr.me/

The content of the T-Shirt codes was another issue, we wanted people to come and talk to us whilst building the
installation; thus full-filling the aim of human interaction. Originally we thought about having something personal or unique on the T-Shirts.
Personally I was inspired by Tim Etchells’ Eight Stages, there is a particular passage that influenced me where he
creates his own folk tales, “People say here that this man is keeping the city alive.”(Etchells, T. 1999, p77). I wanted to
create my own folk tale about Lincoln and use it for my T-Shirt QR code. This, however wasn’t really in-keeping with the concept of questioning retail so this idea was discarded. The group wanted our T-Shirts to be
relatively the same whilst being simple and evocative. I suggested we use the popular image of “Keep Calm and Carry
On” and change the writing to make it question the world we live in.

This is an example of the images that the QR codes on our T-Shirts led to. This one was mine linking to politics, how few people vote; how they let others decide what society they live in. The question mark was something all the images shared, to further the aim of making people question the things they take for granted. We called this Passive Criticism.

With the content of the QR codes decided we focused on the practicalities of the performance. I called the council to
attempt to secure a building for our installation. While waiting for a response, we realised there were many factors
that would be a hindrance to us. We would need to have laptops and printers on the day to create the QR codes and
print them off; we would need somewhere to plug these in and the potential for rain gave us some trepidation. We
would also need access to the internet which was proving a difficult challenge to overcome. However we had to
amend our idea regardless because Lincoln Council did not give permission for the use of our chosen building.

This is a copy of the letter that we received from Lincoln Council.

We decided to create and print all our QR codes, 250 each beforehand and hand them out as leaflets on the street.
This is in-keeping with our main themes as the audience would assume we are advertising for a company or charity; we
challenge that assumption by explaining our real purpose. This change was also still using Debord’s ideas of ‘The
Spectacle’, we became the visual tool; in our T-Shirts we were going to become that ‘Spectacle’. The final parts of our
process were to create texts that would accompany the QR codes, to make people more inclined to read them and not
throw them away. Another was to create a 50 word paragraph (which can be found on our Blog) that we could all learn
that explained what we were doing, the aim being to get them to interact with us and hopefully scan our T-Shirts and
their individual QR Code. The only thing left to do was to preform our piece: Questioning Retail.

This is one of the thirty short pieces of texts that I found/wrote to accompany the QR codes.

Evaluation

On the day of our performance, we spread out down the high street with our T-Shirts on and 250 QR Codes ready to
hand out. Whilst creating our QR codes we also uploaded them to our personal blog, so if people wanted to see all the
codes we made they could. On this blog is also a link to a Twitter feed that recorded the reactions we received from
the audience.

http://questioningretail.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/

Overall I feel that the performance was a success; that we achieved what we set out to do. I spent the day offering
people my QR codes and was pleasantly surprised by how many people stopped to speak to me. One of the most
memorable instances for me was when a young man stopped the conversation he was having on his phone to ask
me what I was doing. This to me summed up all our main aims, to make someone break from their technology and
actually have a conversation with a stranger, another human being. Even the people who just took the paper and
walked away or even the ones who declined, were forced to look up and talk to me.

This was on the day of our performance. Attempting to hand out QR codes to the audience. In this picture you can see the man has head phones on and we force him to look up and interact with us.

Handing out leaflets made me view the high street in a new way; because I was trying to get people to approach me,
it only served to make how unapproachable people made themselves even more obvious. There were certain aspects
that did not work as well, like the limited amount people who actually have a QR scanner on their phones. This meant
that few people were able to scan our T-Shirts even if they wanted to, which was the case with elderly people who I
found to be the most interactive. Also not many people were interested in talking to us further, they just took the code
and walked by.

This is an example of one of the few people who were willing and able to scan our T-Shirts.

A few examples of our interaction from our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/QrRetail/status/596274607285542915

“We just got asked if we were Jehovah’s witnesses…”

“To the lovely guy who kindly gave us a free umbrella. You proved that social exchange in the high street is possible!”

“Some teenagers downloaded QR code readers just to scan our tshirts.”

If we had to do the performance over again there are certain changes I would make. The first of which would be to
have a QR scanner with each performer so that we could scan the codes for them. This would lead to more
conversation with the audience. Another element I would change would be to have us more spread out, I think we
were nervous about talking to strangers so we stayed close to each other, if we spread out more we could have had
more of a variety of audience responses. Another change I would make is to have a table set up with larger leaflets,
even posters that would draw more people in. Furthermore I would have liked to make the pieces of paper we handed
out look more professional, to print them on card and laminate them. I think this would make people more likely to take
them as they would look less like leaflets and we, as a group would come across more professional. Overall I think our
final performance went very well, we disrupted the flow of the high street and made people look up from their self-made isolation through the medium of QR codes. We as a group created a performance that liberated people from
their assumptions and attempted to make our audience think about the parts of life they take for granted.

Bibliography

Debord, G (1992). Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press. p17.

Etchells, T (1999). Eight Fragments On Theatre And The City. London: Routledge. p76-81.

Jones, Claire Blundell(2010) ‘Walking, the Western and the tumbleweed’, Visual Studies, 25: 1, 87 — 88

Pearson, M (2010). Site-Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. p1-207.

Pinchbeck, M. (2015). Sit With Me For A Moment And Remember. Available: http://michaelpinchbeck.co.uk/sit-with-me-for-a-moment/. Last accessed 14th May 2015.

Tapper, J. (2014). Representations of Existential In-Between-ness. Pervasive Games. 1 (1), 1-19.

The Binary Graffiti Club. (2013). An Art Project by Stanza. Available: http://www.stanza.co.uk/binary_club/. Last
accessed 14th May 2015.

Walker, H. Thorpe, C. (2015) I Wish I Was Lonely.[performance]Hannah Jane Walker, Chris Thorpe (dir) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 11 February.

Final blog submission- March against Consumerism

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Dominique Sabina Gent

Framing Statement

Site-Specific Performance is a term that is hard to completely define, however it is mainly referred to as performance that is only relevant to a specific ‘site’ or ‘place’. If this performance was to be performed in any other location it would become irrelevant, it is also about removing performance from the standard auditorium space to surrounding areas outside and further afield. “The conventions and techniques of the auditorium may be inappropriate or inadequate for ‘site’.” (Pearson, 2010) Our group were given the choice of using either the Lincoln High Street or The Brayford Waterfront as our site. We chose the High Street and began to focus on consumerism and the public’s everyday routines. We aimed to liberate people from consumerism and their everyday routines through human interaction in order to create a sense of happiness and relief. We created four A2 signs that were secured onto large poles to enable them to be seen from a distance they read; ‘Can We Hug?’ ‘Can We High-Five?’ ‘Can I Compliment you?’ and ‘What would you write?’ we felt these phrases would encourage a large amount of interaction and disrupt the flow of peoples routines.

Can We Hug? Final Sign

“The most important aspect was approaching strangers on the street and the interaction between us”

(Wearing, 1999)

Our durational piece took place on the 7^th of May, and was supposed to last just over 4 hours however on the day due to poor weather we finished early but still managed to hold each sign for 30 minutes. We started at 11am and finished at 1.30pm, in order to allow each member to have each sign at some point we included the ‘Changing of the guard’ routine. We took inspiration for this by watching the Queens Guard procedure at Buckingham Palace. We wore matching outfits of Black hoodies, sunglasses, white tops, black leggings and transparent rain ponchos, this paired with the guard routine made the piece uniformed, and allowed the audience members to recognise the performance element of the piece more obviously. Also by including this routine it would continue to obstruct everyday life as we will be placing this uniform ritual in the middle of the high street which is not something to occur in everyday life, thus allowing us to keep liberating society from their social norms. Due to this uniformed routine being added and the fact that we aim to break routine in consumerism we came up with title of our piece; A March against Consumerism.

We took inspiration for our piece, from practitioners such as; Gillian Wearing, Tim Etchell and Crabman and Signpost. The main source of inspiration for our piece came from The Situationists International and Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of The Spectacle’. “The situationist analysis of contemporary capitalist society was simple and effective. Its express purpose was to transform this society, and it remain.” (Plant, 1992) We aimed to create something that had the ability to transform society even if just for a moment, we planned to do so through human interaction and to put a break in consumerism. We also felt that analogue methods suited our social aspect more so liberated ourselves from the use of pervasive media.

Me receiving a Hug

Analysis of Process

Before we chose our group for the final performance we were given a task to complete in pairs, we had to read ‘25 Instructions to Performance in Cities’ from Teaching Performance Studies and choose a task to perform. Georgia and I decided to create a situation for a mass audience of spectators by leaving messages of enchantment and friendliness on trees throughout the city. We wrote different messages on luggage tags and tied them to different trees, some on the Waterfront and some on the high street; we got more of a response when placing them on the high street and had a lot of children asking us what we were doing. We felt this task would create a sense of happiness within the city and we liked the idea of giving someone a ‘gift’ even if it was just kind words that would make them smile.

‘You can do anything if you believe in yourself’

‘Live everyday like its your last’

Following this task we looked at Tim Etchell’s ‘8 Fragments of Theatre and The City’ and mainly focused on the observation/coincidence fragment where Etchell describes the way people ignore each other as they walk past and states that the most extreme form of this as the escalator “where we pass each other as if objects on a production line”, “We watch each other, getting closer, and then just when we could speak, or even touch, our eyes drop and the moment passes.” (Etchell, 1999, p.78) After reading this chapter we formed a group of four that we would stay in for our final performance and decided to explore further into the observation fragment by taking our exploration to Lincoln high street. We filmed the high street and wrote a message that describes how we observe each other every day. We took into account all the things Etchell explores in his fragment and included footage on escalators to go with his view of the ‘production line’. We then wanted to challenge the social expectancy in society and reach out to members of the public to see if they would respond and we recorded this footage and our outcomes.

We realised that the social interaction theme was present in both tasks we had completed, and also the thought of giving ‘gifts’. We spoke about how a man on the street was handing out flyers and people were just ignoring him because of what he was handing out, we discussed the notion to distribute gifts that aren’t as easy to ignore such as verbal or physical gifts rather than objects. We then thought about how to display these gifts to the audience members, keeping it simple but effective we came up with the idea to use large speech bubbles with phrases on that invited audience members to interact with us. We also then decided we wanted to perform on the high street as this is where we were getting the most responses.

We were taken with the idea of using social interaction through giant speech bubbles but that’s all we had so we began to look at different practices to gain inspiration. In class we watched ‘Super Night Shot’ by the Gob Squad, although their ideas weren’t exactly the same as ours we enjoyed the playfulness of the performance, the Gob Squad’s website describes it as “the public become co-stars in a movie that celebrates unplanned meetings with strangers and delights in the randomness of urban existence.” (Gob Squad, 2015) We wanted to replicate the playfulness by interacting with the audience through a series of questions and interactions. We also favoured the idea of synchronisation, in their piece they used synchronised watches to perform different sequences at the same time. We also saw this in Ligna’s Radio Ballet in Leipzig Main Station, where listening to audio pieces everyone partook in synchronised movement, this inspired us to include some form of synchronisation in our piece and to make it a durational piece lasting 4 hours.

(Gob Squad, 2008)

(Radiodispersion 2008)

We looked at Crabman and Signpost’s ‘A Sardine Street Box of Tricks’ they recommended using the Situationists theory of ‘drifting’ or ‘deriving’ “aimless wanders (walks without destinations); in which walkers allow themselves to be drawn along by atmospheres and ambience.” (Crabman and Signpost, 2011) It is also a way of studying your site in great depth looking for and noticing every nook and cranny and to find “happy accidents, coincidences, incidents and discoveries.” (Crabman and Signpost, 2011) I walked from the bottom of the high street to the top of steep hill and really took into account everything I was passing; I took photos of things I had never noticed before and became fully absorbed in our site. The discovery of a ‘Roman Portico’ hidden on the side of an archaic building made me feel as if I was living in a historical ‘Lindum Colonia’ and it began to really excite me and make me want to learn more about the discoveries of archaic architecture or artefacts around Lincoln.

I remember feeling separated from everyone around me as I was walking without purpose unlike them; the consumers, the workers, the tourists, I was just taking in my surroundings and becoming one with the site. Once we had all completed the drifting process we began to look at how the city moves, we watched different people carry out their everyday routines and took note of the different times that these things happened; we felt that these timings could be replicated in a synchronised routine.

Once we had finalised the basic outline of our piece, we began to look at the production of the speech bubbles and how we were going to make them. After much consideration we came to the conclusion that to be able to fit our budget instead of speech bubbles we would be making A2 placards that would be fixed to 3 foot poles to ensure visibility from a distance. We originally came up with the idea to print quotes on one side of the signs to do with liberation; after reading about the Situationists in Sardine Street we looked at Debord’s ‘Society of The Spectacle’ and other Situationist texts to inspire us for quotes.

“There can be no freedom apart from activity, and within the spectacle all activity is banned a corollary of the fact that all real activity has been forcibly channelled into a global construction of the spectacle. So what is referred to as “liberation from work,” that is, increased leisure time, is a liberation neither within labour itself nor from the world labour has brought into being.” (Debord, 1995, p.9)

We felt this quote was appropriate for our performance because it discussed the fact that all ‘real activity’ is banned in the ‘spectacle’ meaning no one is able to behave in a way that is seen as original, instead they act in the way that society expects them to. We aimed to explore this by breaking the consumer conventions of society on the high street and disrupt people’s social norms. This then sparked us to look further into the Situationist International; we were inspired to make our piece in a way that could allow it to somewhat transform and reform society by liberating it from its normal expectations. After much debate and as the piece developed we realised there was no need to display a quote on the sign, as the act of interaction itself conveyed liberation by releasing people from their routines. We finally decided on using the phrases ‘Can We Hug?’ ‘Can We High-Five?’ and ‘Can I Compliment You?’ we couldn’t decide on a fourth sign at first so decided to try out two ‘Can I Help You?’ and ‘Can I Lend an Ear?.’

We took to the high street to experiment and test out our signs; the latter two signs barely got a response, in contrast to the other three which were highly received, in fact when holding the “Can I compliment you sign” I personally had a few great reactions from members of the public, one man came up to me and asked what I was doing because he had been watching us with the signs, I explained and he replied “I don’t normally go out of my way to talk to people, but you really interested me and made me want to talk to someone new” he was impressed and then left smiling. Then following that one Woman gave me a hug and told me I had made her day then complimented me and left also smiling. This was exactly what we aimed to do, something the public weren’t used to but that made their day. “[situationist] movement stands in a less distinct line of pleasure-seeking, libertarianism, popular resistance and autonomous struggle and its revolutionary stance owes a great deal to this diffuse tradition of unorthodox rebellion.” (Plant, 1992, P.1) By creating the interaction in society we feel as though we are part of the situationist movement mainly partaking in pleasure-seeking and libertarianism as we are liberating society from social norms and also just trying to make people feel happier.

Before finding our final sign we went back to the synchronization idea and decided it had to be something that allowed us to swap signs so that we all had an equal amount of time with each sign. We took inspiration from the Queens Guard at Buckingham Palace and came up with a ‘Changing of the guard’ routine. By creating and adding this routine to the performance we will continue to obstruct everyday life by placing a uniform ritual in the middle of the high street, this is not something to occur in everyday life, thus we will be liberating society from their social norms. A known situationist slogan used in the May 1968 uprisings was “La Beaute est dans la rue” or “Beauty is in the street” by making a ritual routine that occurs every 30 minutes we felt we would be representing this situationist slogan and putting some beauty in the street. To then carry on this ritual and theme when finishing our piece we will march out of our site never breaking our ‘character’.

A diagram to explain the changing of the guard.

We were then still left with the underlying problem of the fourth sign, we came across this quote “Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but bringing them to life. A revolutionary organization must always remember to that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.” (Guy Debord, 1961) We felt that this quote summed up our piece as a whole so in order to appease this we decided to make our last sign encourage that equal degree of participation by making the audience member swap places with us for a while and hold the sign. We still weren’t entirely sure how to gain this equal degree so we looked at Gillian Wearing’s ‘Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say’ her method was just to get people to say anything that was on their mind “I think people just felt, ‘I can say something’, and that it was a nice idea that they’d been approached.”(Wearing, 1999) Keeping this in mind we looked at Anthony Gormley’s ‘One and other’ performed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square; where he used members of the public at different times for an hour each as his artwork. “I have no expectations. I would be absolutely happy if somebody got up there with an umbrella and just stood still for an hour. The idea is that this will be a portrait of Britain made out of 2,400 hours of 2,400 people’s lives.” (Sooke, 2009) We decided to something similar with our final sign to encourage the audience to write down what they would be comfortable holding up to the public for social interaction. The sign was going to be a large whiteboard with ‘What would you write?..’ written at the top and on the flip side of the sign, we will be handing over a whiteboard marker allowing the audience member to write on the board and then to continue this participation we will be asking them to hold the sign whilst we take a picture of them holding the sign.

A participant in Anthony Gormley’s One and Other

Participant in Gillian Wearing’s Signs…

Once we had all of our signs, we came up with the order in which we were going to stand; ‘Can I Compliment You?’ at the bottom of the high street, ‘Can We High-Five?’ further along, then ‘Can We Hug?’ and finally at the top ‘What would you write?’. This order was created to show the degree of separation decreasing as you got further along the high street, starting with a compliment that can be shouted to the audience member from the opposite side of the street, ending with what would you write where the audience member becomes the piece. So we would swap signs but they would always stay in the same place with regards to the high street. We had finalised our piece, so decided to do a dress rehearsal on the University Campus, we gained good responses from the public which made us happy with our final decisions and ready for the final performance.

Evaluation of Performance

On the 7^th of May we took once more to the Lincoln High Street, at 11am we marched to the Stone bow in the centre of the high street then marched out to our separate places. When we first began the weather was sunny, this affected the piece in a good way as people tended to be happier to participate when the weather was nice. I began with ‘Can We High-Five?’ and worked my way through the signs getting a lot of responses. However, the weather changed after an hour and began to rain heavily, people became less responsive. Apart from some people who once had responded to our signs said they felt sorry for us standing in the rain so participated. When people asked what we were doing we replied; “The aim of the high street nowadays is to get people to spend money, we want to disrupt this through human interaction and break people’s everyday routines even if just for a fleeting moment.” Once explaining this people seemed extremely happy and we were often told that people really liked what we were doing and that it was a nice idea. We began to realise as the day went on that it was taking the form of a happening “The participatory and interactive nature of a ‘happening’ ensures that each one is a totally unique theatrical/performance experience that cannot be recreated.” (TINATC, 2014) This was true to our performance as even if you recreate the performance you can’t recreate the responses you gain, so no matter how many times we held our signs on the high street we would always get different responses. Allan Kaprow believed that happenings were very playful activities that involved audience members participating for the sake of playing; this is also true to our performance as we wanted to keep it playful and managed to do so successfully on performance day.

The changing of the guard routine worked well in allowing us to swap the signs, and the matching costume coincided to make us look uniformed. However, due to the heat in the first hour, Sabrina felt ill and had to remove her poncho, this did not greatly affect the piece as we were still able to carry out the routine looking uniformed by keeping ‘in character’ whilst marching and swapping the signs over. Due to the weather change we cut our piece at 2 hours instead of 4, this did not affect the piece as we still all managed to hold each sign for 30 minutes and gain a lot of varied responses from audience members. Apart from weather issues, the piece was a success and we completed our desired aim to disrupt consumer’s routines for a moment and brighten their day. We successfully liberated society from its social norms for a moment, and people seemed to enjoy it. I feel as though my understanding of site specific performance has greatly increased throughout this module and with reading different theories and practices I helped to create a successful performance.

During the changing of the guard routine

Me receiving a hug during final performance

Changing of the guard

A participant with the What would you write sign

Marching off the high street to finish

Bibliography

Apted, M., Ferguson, R. and De Salvo, D. (1999) Gillian Wearing. London: Phaidon Press.

Crow, P. (2015) Site Specific Performance Photos. [online photo] Available from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/16804364814/in/album-72157652062387628/

Crow, P. (2015) Site Specific Performance Photos. [online photo] Available from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/16804384074/in/album-72157652062387628/

Crow, P. (2015) Site Specific Performance Photos. [online photo] Available from:https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/16804358994/in/album-72157652062387628/

Crow, P. (2015) Site Specific Performance Photos. [online photo] Available from:https://www.flickr.com/photos/61839232@N02/16806636403/in/album-72157652062387628/

Debord, G. (1961) Pour un jugement révolutionnaire de l’art. Translated from French by Ken Knabb. The Bureau of Public Secrets.

Debord, G. (1995) The Society of the Spectacle. Translated from French by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books.

Etchell, T. (1999) Certain Fragments. London: Routledge.

Gob Squad. (2015) Super Night Shot Overview. [Online] Available from: http://www.gobsquad.com/projects/super-night-shot [Accessed on: 12/05/15]

Gob Squad. (2008) Super Night Shot (2004) [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-anpj9LS4vg [Accessed on 14/05/2015]

Jones, J (2013) Will digital age kill of art? The Guardian. [Online photo] Available from: http://static.guim.co.uk/sysimages/Guardian/About/General/2013/7/2/1372778640203/What-is-Gillian-Wearing—010.jpg [Accessed on: 12/05/2015]

Kaprow, A. (1959) Fluxus and Happenings [online] http://members.chello.nl/j.seegers1/flux_files/kaprow_chronology.html

Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 Instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 25(3) 229-238.

May, P. (2009) But is it art? [Online photo] Available from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2550/3697618831_94c2773f80.jpg [Accessed on 13/05/2015]

Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Persighetti, S., Smith, P. (2011) A Sardine Street Box of Tricks. Plymouth: Blurb Inc.

Plant, S. (1992) The Most Radical Gesture. New York: Routledge.

Radiodispersion (2008) Radio Ballet Leipzig Main Station part 1. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI3pfa5QNZI [Accessed on 14/05/2015]

Sooke, A. (2009) Antony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square. The Telegraph,26 Feb. [Accessed Online] at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4838343/Antony-Gormleys-Fourth-Plinth-Trafalgar-Square.html

This Is Not A Theatre Company. (2014) [Online] http://www.thisisnotatheatrecompany.com/#!happenings/c1gt3

Thompson, D. (2009) Participant in Anthony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth. [Online photo] Available from http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_TWDIyi5pqlc/SlUCHyEH1gI/AAAAAAAAE5Q/kjQBcuLIAOI/s400/Picture+9.png

QR CODES PERFORMANCE -Selma James – Final blog post

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Questioning Retail (QR) was a performance conceived from the observation of our dependency on technology, specifically smartphones. The only way an audience member was able to communicate with us, the performers, or understand the content within this performance was through a smartphone. As technology, specifically mobile phones, has become the most successful product of the capitalist culture, Question Retail (QR) quickly developed into a performance that was self-reflective on capitalism and the consumerist culture. Realising that technology, particularly smartphones, have become a basic necessity in our everyday life, it was only fitting that technology be a fundamental component in our performance. Built on the foundations of questioning the system, capitalism, that the retail industry thrives on and the retail environment in relation to humanity, we created a performance that did not intend to criticise consumers in the high street, instead the QR performance intended to enlighten and ignite a conversation between us, the performers, and our audience in order to reflect upon our society. Our collaboration was highly influenced by the expectations of the Frequency Festival which emphasised the theme of liberation. Our performance was structured by the use of QR codes, however although it seems simply this use of technology had not yet been explored in the artistic world until our production. Within this blog I will reflect upon the various concepts and previous site-specific art that inspired and influenced the birth our Question Retail (QR) performance; our process of creating this performance; and finally a reflection on the performance which took place on Lincoln high street on May 7^th 2015.

Liberation

Liberation is a state of freedom where the individual ego is eliminated and the true egoless state or the state of self is cognized.’ (Charlie Lutes)

Liberation generally means free or freed from something. After discussing ‘what is liberation’ with the group in our workshop, it became apparent to us that defining this term depends heavily on personal experience. It seems that no two people are able to understand ‘liberation’ in the same way, presumably because we all walk different paths in life that are designed in accordance with our personal goals. Questioning the truth that the word liberation signified, we concluded that liberation means acceptance. Accepting a situation or circumstance in order to understand it and be a part of it or change it. In understanding something, you take away the power of oppression; you remove the unknown that stands as a threat to you. Liberation is a complete shift in a person’s perception and may even penetrate to changing their belief system.

Bases on self-reflectivity, before beginning this Site-specific performance journey I was not aware of the fact that a smartphone made its owner a walking encyclopaedia. With the help of Wi-Fi and data, a smartphone is the key to unlock almost every single piece of information in this world, but not every smart phone owner is aware of their power. The QR performance seeks to liberate its audience from this ignorance; it seeks to demonstrate the greatness that technology has provided humanity with as well as liberate consumers from capitalism for just a moment while they interact with us during our performance.

As liberation was the key ingredient to the piece of site-specific performance that we created, our understanding of the word liberation transformed from meaning freedom and acceptance to simply being aware of the society and time we live in. Our intentions where to liberate our audience from the consumerist culture by stopping them in their tracks to take a minute and observe their surroundings; to bring their awareness to the fact that they are products of a capitalist society; and show them the power they posses as people of this time and their dependency on technology gather than on people.

The consequence of Technology

Albert Einstein said,

“I fear the day technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” (Mount, 2015)

Sixty years after the death of one of the world greatest minds, it seems Einstein’s prediction has come true. It is certainly acceptable to believe that technology has become a basic necessity to our existence. Thriving on our cravings for instant access to everything with minimal effort, the growth of technology has exceled the expectations of anything humanly imaginable, thus, creating a new breed of people. Einstein presumably was insinuating through the above statement that by being dependent on technology we are further away from humanity than the generation before us. And that perhaps with the growth of technology, humans are evolving into machines that can function entirely solo with absolutely no dependency on anybody else.

People on their phones while at a social gathering, Mount 2015

Although to many it seems like technology has had a huge negative impact on our basic human skills, it is crucial to acknowledge its benefits. For example long distant communication is faster and far more efficient with the use of Skype, text messaging, directing messaging on social media and email; it has also made knowledge incredibly accessible to anyone, with a communications devise, at any time. However on the other hand, as Einstein feared, technology has had an equally negative effect on people, particular on my generation. From personal experience and from observing the world/ society around me, it has become evident that we live in an era where we would rather text and call then go out and meet. On many occasions you will witness groups of people ‘spending time together/ bonding’ yet everybody within that group is drawn into a technological world through the device that has won over their attention, oblivious to the surrounding that they a physically present in. Physically they are in a place/ location yet mentally they are in a completely different world. With this said, think for a second how many times you may have passed somebody in the street that could have been a major influence in your life, but you missed them because you were looking down at your phone.

Pervasive media and QR Codes

“Pervasive Media is basically any experience that uses sensors and/or mobile/wireless networks to bring you content (film, music, images, a game…) that’s sensitive to your situation – which could be where you are, how you feel, or who you are with.” (Pervasive Media Studios)

Pervasive means to spread throughout. Thus QR codes are the newest form of pervasive media. QR codes are a growing technological means of accessing information. Used by major commercial companies, such as McDonalds, as an easy access portal to their websites. Acknowledging that QR is an abbreviation for quick response, it is evident that technology is simply catering to accommodate our impatiens. QR codes eliminates the effort of having to type in a web address, this form of media owns its rapid growth to the fact that it gives people the option to simply scan a code in order to access the information they seek. First created in 1994 by a company called Denso Wave intended for commercial use. In just twenty-one years, QR code have developed into a portal that allowed scanners to access any sort of information attached to the code, as well as become a quicker way for shoppers to find information on the products they are buying.

A QR CODE used in the performance, 2015

For our performance we changed the meaning of QR to stand for Questioning Retail. We also took advantage of the fact that QR code are a digital tool that emphasises how small the internet the world. We consisted many way in which we could use a QR Code to liberate our audience form consumerism. Although we kept our performance simple by wearing a T-shirt and giving out flyers with QR codes printed on them, one of the most thought provoking performance ideas we brain stormed was to temporarily tattoo QR codes to our skin. As QR Codes were originally intended for commercial use, imagine for a moment the affect temporarily tattooing QR Codes to one’s body. Instantly the coded body would be labelled, thus making it a product. For the duration of the tattoo being on the skin, the person does not exists as an individual being, instead they become a product manufactured by society. If QR Codes where tattooed to a person body, as we had intended to do for the performance, Albert Einstein’s fear would be at its peak, because humans would no longer own technology and use it as a tool, instead technology would own the human and use him as a puppet to drive it growth in capitalism. But isn’t this already happening in our society? Although technology has not yet grown to point where it is inbuilt to our bodies, I has already taken over our lives through our dependency on it.

AR Art

Currently QR (quick response) codes are the fastest way to access information. By simply scanning a pixilated code printed on any surface you are taken into a digital world. This advance of technology may be used to introduce an entirely new movement within the artistic culture. In an article entitled, ‘Invisible visualities: Augmented reality art and the contemporary media ecology’, Amada Starling Gould explores AR (Augment reality) artists phenomenal use of technological tools such as QR codes to reveal their work, therefore illuminating a new perceptive on media – media that exists a form of expression.

Inspired by AR artist Tamika Thiel work entitled ‘Transformation’, we devised our entire performance base on the concept of technology being the key to our content. the Only way an audience member could truly partake in our performance was if the they scanned the codes we had on our T-shirts and the codes we handed to them. It is evident through Thiel’s work that the QR codes and the portable devises used to scan these codes are only vehicles that allow a person’s mind to travel to a different space. However, in order for this ‘travel’ to happen, there needs to be a purpose or depth created within a realistic space, as shown in ‘Transformation’. Considering the essence of invisible visualises, this artistic style makes art accessible only through a digital devise, however it does not compromise the essence of traditional art, which is to enlighten and/or express an idea, perspective, emotion etc. Tamika Thiel’s work was particularly influential when we where devising the historical content for our performance.

Lincoln city then and now

Capitalism

Capitalism is the social system in which we live. As a system, capitalism thrives on class division and profit motive. It is a system in which the minority rule and everything has a price. Capitalism has become more than just the social system it has become a religion.

In agreement with Russel Brands statement that Capitalism is a religion, Walter Benjamin states in his writing ‘Capitalism as religion’:

“one can behold in capitalism a religion, that is to say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish and disquiet formerly answered by so-called religions.’’ (Walter Benjamin)

In observing the system on which the 21^st century western society depends on, it became apparent that money holds a power in capitalism equal to that of God in other religions. If capitalism is a religion and money stood as God within the capitalist religion, the high street would be equivalent to a church. Introducing ‘Retail therapy’, the church of Capitalism claims to help people, consumers, release street and feel better through spending money and gaining material assists.

In regards to our performance, the concept of capitalism being a religion had a significant influence, particularly when exploring social interaction in the high street. Firstly it is important to identify that ‘social interaction’ is a topic that explored people’s relationship with the high street and the characters they portrayed whilst on the high street. The high street is a place where people (consumers) experience the height of capitalism, as it is the church of the capitalist religion. Weather conscious of it or not the people of the high street are followers of capitalism and thus portray certain characteristic similar to that of the capitalist system. For example, whilst overserving the movement of the high street it became apparent to me that many people have a goal they wish to obtain whilst on the high street shopping, this characteristic is also found in the anatomy of the capitalist system. Capitalism is built on obtaining money for growth, thus it is fair to conclude that as consumers we have adapted to the traits of the capitalist system to the point in which we mirror them.

The Situationist movement

Situtaionists’ believed that change began with oneself and that a change in ones perspective of the world would change society. In order to practise their concept, situationists’ seek to disrupt the flow of social norms.

Our performance was on May 7th which was also the day of the general election. In order to subtly reflect this we incorporated Situtaionist art into our performance. Are intentions where to be political without being bias to any party, in order to create this balance we took care to ensure that we did not mention any political parties or discuss our political view points with our audience. As one of the first movements to analyse capitalism it is no surprise that they an Avant-grand artistic approach. With the use of a surreal time portrayed within the images, such as the one below, and the their choice of words and statements, situtaionist artists can be recognised at political critics.

Situationist art, Google images

It is evident that situtaionists’ seek to break the norms of society or the habits of the capitalist system by mirroring them in order to illuminate the horrific affects that this system has had on society. Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle is a critique of consumer culture. Debord reflects the control the media and commodities have over consumers.

“As capitalism’s ever-intensifying imposition of alienation at all levels makes it increasingly hard for workers to recognize and name their own impoverishment, putting them in the position of having to reject that impoverishment in its totality or not at all, revolutionary organization has had to learn that it can no longer combat alienation by means of alienated forms of struggle” (libcom.org, 2006)

After researching the situtaionist movement we were inspired to incorporate some its characteristics into our performance. Our aim was to disrupt the flow of the consumers on the high street and having a conversation with them that questioned the capitalism in it current consumerist form.

The Lives of the High street

The lives on the high street where a significant influence in our research for social interaction. By day the high street was home to all consumers and businesses, however by night, the high street turns into a home for the homeless of the city, the people that no body notices whilst shopping or getting to work. The shop doors that to material fulfilment during the day are also a place o sleep for the homeless at night. Whilst observing the movement of the high street it became apparent that unless a homeless man intentionally makes himself noticed nobody sees him; it is as if he just blends in with the concert jungle we call the high street. This observation evidenced a social issue that is hardly spoken about. Below is a picture take of a homeless man on Lincoln high street, I attached the caption ‘Would you help him if you could?’ to this picture as it was used at a source for a QR Code.

Homeless man on Lincoln High street, 2015

I found this image particularly provocative because this man is sitting directly in front of a store, however after observing him and the movement around him I noticed that only a few people stopped and spoke to him or helped him. Personally, I found this incredibly disturbing because capitalism preachers the benefits of retail therapy however as a human being would it not be more fulfilling to help other?

There is no place for art

Initially we intended to past QR Codes on a public wall on the high street, we approached two spaces, the glass shelter and Marks and Spenser’s wall on the high street. However, we were unable to get permission to use either site. Our solution was to criticise capitalism through the use of its main vehicle, marketing. Our performance was simple yet provocative. We gave out QR codes as flyers and portrayed the character of a promoter on the high street. This however meant that our audience struggled to approach us as they thought we were trying to sell them something. What we discovered was that instead of listening to our opening statement where we made clear that we were a performance not a sales pitch many people abruptly stopped us saying ‘I’m not interested’ and hurryingly walked past us. I also observed that because of the character we were portraying many people intentionally avoided us, by moving to the other side of the street; avoiding eye contact and putting their heads down. However, the audience members who did interact with us understood the point of our performance. As a performer I feel that I gained a lot of high concept ideas from interacting with audience that I had not noticed we had explored through our research. For example, I had a conversation with a gentleman who pointed out that our performance highlighted a horrifying social truth. That as a society we worship money because we work for it and most disturbingly is that capitalism has managed to put a price on money and that price is human sacrifice. After this conversation during our performance it came to my attention that every oppression and war that has and the ones that do exist with in our society were driven by money, from slavery to the middle- Eastern wars, the price of money is human sacrifice.

Works Cited

Mount, H. (2015, January 11th). Was Einstein right? Physicist once said he feared that technology would surpass human interaction – and these photos show that time may not be far off . Retrieved from Dailymail online: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2929268/Was-Einstein-right-Ph

Thiel, T. (2012, November 22). Tamiko Thiel: Tranformation. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdB62q8tZCA

Watershed (2015) Pervasive Media Studio: What is Pervasive Media? [online] Bristol: Watershed. Available from http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/what-pervasive-media [Accessed on 26/01/2015]

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

libcom.org (2006) Situationists – an introduction [online] Available from: https://libcom.org/thought/situationists-an-introduction. [Accessed on 1st May 2015]

Lyotard, J.F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge. Translated from French by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. UK: Manchester University Press.

Russel Brand. (2015). Is capitalism a religion. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW2TBJPuoAI. Last accessed 13th May 2015.

FREQUENCIES

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March against Consumerism

Questioning Retail – Final Blog Post

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Final blog submission- March against Consumerism

QR CODES PERFORMANCE -Selma James – Final blog post

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