Electronic Disturbance Theatre - Politically Motivated "Non-Matrixed" Performing

“We abolish the stage and the auditorium and replace them by a single site, without partition or barrier of any kind, which will become the theatre of the action. A direct communion will be re-established between the spectator and the spectacle, between the actor and the spectator, placed in the middle of the action, is engulfed and physically affected by it.” - Antonin Artaud

The performative avantgarde has long had connections to a political or critical social agenda - from Dada to Situationism to Punk. Working in the gap between art and life, or perhaps in such a way as to render this gap non-existent, the nature of theatrical representation is critiqued from within a performance space. Techniques & deceptions associated with theatre are avoided, by way of creating what Micheal Kirby describes as a ‘non-matrixed performance’ – that which is folded into/inseparable from life.

In 1998, Ricardo Dominguez and a group of collaborators engaged in online civil disobedience actions, in support of rebel activity in Chiapas, Mexico - the Zapatistas, a revolutionary cell fighting against generational government oppression, and are collectively known as the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT). Combining artistic and political agendas, the group utilises virtual networks to promote its activities - encouraging supporters to download and run a Java applet called FloodNet.

Akin to hacker-tactics, or hacktivism, this applet continually attempts to open nonexistent Web pages at specifically targeted websites. By constructing fictional or "bad URLs" (Web addresses of pages that don't exist on the targeted server). For example, participants were asked to input the names of Zapatistas killed by the Mexican Army in military attacks on the autonomous village of Acteal, forcing targeted servers to return an error message each time one of these "bad" URLs was requested.

Aligning the project with conceptual or idea-based art, the fictated URL becomes inscribed in the server's error log as a way of virtually (symbolically) returning the dead to those responsible for their murders. Presumably if enough people run FloodNet simultaneously, the server would overload - so if a regular user tried to access the site, pages would load extremely slowly or not at all.

As Michel Kirby describes, “The materials of Happenings – performer, physical element, or mechanical effect – tend to be concrete. That is, they are taken from and related to the experiential worlds of everyday life. Within the overall context and structure, the details in Happenings relate to things and function as direct experience." EDT's virtual sit-ins operate like a happening (connect to performance/theatre), however with a more direct political resonance, analogous to sit-in demonstrations in which protesters block the entrance to a public building. Projects of EDT tactically utilise existing virtual-actual media networks and structures, Dominguez explaining their goal is to "disturb - and not destroy."

Technologically Mediated Bedtimes

In 2002, the above poster was circulated by Susana Mendes Silva. Visually identical to any number classified advertisements promoting particular services, Artphone essentially made the artist available to discuss contemporary art related subjects with anyone that called her. By dialing the number advertised on the poster above, a user of the service was directly dialing the artist's personal cell phone number. In an effort to entice, she writes “Don’t be afraid to ask everything you always wanted to know about contemporary art”, simultaneously revealing her intention for the project.

Confidently assuming she could answer any question addressed to her, this cell phone mediated performance was repeated three years later but with adjustments and a change of format. Instead simply making herself available by being just a phone call away, Mendes Silva infiltrated an online video chat room. Mendes Silva created Art_room, an online chatting performance where again, anyone could meet the artist online, and once again, by asking everything they wanted to know about contemporary art (provided they had internet access and the correct plug-ins).

These projects are working within pre-existing actual-virtual networks and communities, and simultaneously temporarily shifting and renewing their functionalities for the duration of the performance. Clearly Silva Mendes' agenda is markedly different from say making artful objects, hence the reliance upon audience participation was not only essential in the reception of the performance but in the performance's creation. The audience viewing the performance were also constituting it, by way of engaging in a dialogue with the artist, either using telecommunication or internet networks.

Such artistic methods and concepts provide the ground for Silva Mendes latest, related work, A Bedtime Story, created for INTIMACY: Across Digital & Visceral Performance (2007) , a series of events designed to address an aesthetically and formally diverse set of responses to the notion of ‘being intimate’. Art works included sought to address proximity and hybridity in performance, particularly digital and live art performance practices were set up as agents to further a vibrant discourse and practical exploration of intimate inter-actions. (Click here to be directed to the Intimacy website).

To follow a detailed discussion of how A Bedtime Story operates as a performance piece please click here. Essentially, someone either emails and phones Silva Mendes to book in story time, and then artist and participant meet online at the agreed time. Using skype the artist tells a 30 minute bedtime story, a similar concept to the two aforementioned projects of Mendes Silva.

Mendes Silva describes "the outcome of each performance [as] very interesting. The first minutes were used to chat a little bit and to ensure that each person had the right environment at home. A lot of participants were alone, but some people asked me to listen to the story with someone else, which created a deeper communal sense. One participant didn't have microphone, so we could only interact by chat. This was very strange because i had no immediate feedback, like sounds of movement, breathing or sighing..."

Quote taken from http://a-bedtime-story.blogspot.com/2008/05/about-performances.html

The technologically mediated performance is dependent on the interactions between the artist and the participant, to both set up the booking and during the actual reading of the bedtime story. Mendes Silva offers very specific instructions to her participant, asking them to recreate real conditions under which you would normally sleep. Creating a certain kind of space for this performance could potentially be done by replicating a nighttime or bedroom space in a normative gallery/exhibition space, akin perhaps to relational aesthetics, where participants could hear bedtime stories and fall asleep in the recreated space. The artist however is not promoting a service that could be recreated in a normative gallery space, but infiltrating particular networks and communities, whose spatialities are expansive and diverse - traversing immediate geographical separations (that would not need be overcome in a gallery).

Not only are humans, the artist and the participant, mediating the performance, internet technologies play a central role in this work, and furthermore interactions with embodied perceptual processes and human activity. The boundaries separating the virtual from the actual are progressively blurred as individuals spend an increasing amount of time inhabiting both realms simultaneously. Distinctions made between the virtual and the actual are obscured as, for example, the artist is using skype as an apparatus that enables a transmission of a live stream of sound, her voice reading the story to the pre-arranged participant. This describes the concept of "mixed reality", (Milgram & Kishino, 1994; Strauss & Fleischmann, 1999; Hansen, 2006) envisioning a fluid interpenetration of virtual and actual realms.

The actual-virtual artist-participant interaction online poses some interesting ethical questions, the artist identifies that "there is an implicit degree of mutual trust and discreetness, as you might actually fall asleep", and perhaps therefore, "the performance [is] not recorded." Interestingly the artist allows the participant to interrupt the story, they may speak to the artist at any moment. This not only protects the participant and artist from any discomfort they could experience, but also heightens the improvisatory nature and role of chance in Mendes Silva's projects. Suggesting perhaps all in the performance is improvised - except the choice of the story (the participant selects in advance), that which may not necessarily put the participant to sleep.


Links to:

A Bedtime Story Blog: http://a-bedtime-story.blogspot.com/

Artist's site: http://www.susanamendessilva.com/

Project at Rhizome: http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/27963/#50781

‘Everything Everybody Owns’: A Script for Performance - inspired by Meg Cranston's Keep Same Over

‘Everything Everybody Owns’: A Script for Performance, There are No surprises: Eliminate the Possibility for Surprise

1. Pre-event: Choose/select/designate a space for the event and ask all the participants to bring to the event everything they own.

2. Event: Gather the participants in the chosen space and arrange everything they own in the space.

2.1 Arrange everything they own in the space to create an environment
2.2 Or a structural assemblage,
2.2.1 or a series of assemblages,
2.2.2 or an accumulation,
2.2.2.1 or a series of accumulations
2.2.3. or a formation
2.2.3.1 or a series of formations.

2.3 Allow the participants and the audience
2.3.1 to move through the structural assemblages,
2.3.2 or inhabit the stimulated environment

2.4 Record the event
2.4.1 Take photographs of the event and write captions for the photographs.
2.4.2 Make a video of the event
2.4.3 Sketch the event on a piece of white A2 standard cartridge paper with a 2B pencil.
2.4.4 Record the event using the following materials only - a wasp’s nest, yellow card, toothpicks, glue and purple glitter.


3. Specified Environment Version

3.1 Use everything the participants own and will bring to the event to stimulate a specific environment,

3.1.1. Stimulate a real-life environment in the space, by using objects and materials to create,
3.1.1.1 a café,
3.1.1.2 a supermarket,
3.1.1.3 cyberspace,
3.1.1.4 a dance studio,
3.1.1.5 a tropical island.

3.1.2 Create an environment with dramatic or distorted spatial dimensions.
3.1.2.1 Put large objects into small spaces
3.1.2.2 Make an object smaller than it really is.
3.1.2.3 Make an object larger than it really is.

3.1.3 Create an environment for the objects which the objects would not normally inhabit.
3.1.3.1 The chosen space is a swimming pool. Arrange
household appliances under water so participants can dive under water and use them.
3.1.4 Create an environment the participants can inhabit permanently.


4. Specified Assemblage Version

4.1 Pre-select from everything the participants own to create an assemblage.

4.1.1 Not all objects will be used. Participants still need to bring everything they own to the event so the object-selection process can take place.

4.1.2 All objects must be owned by the participants prior to the event,
4.1.2.1 Objects or material cannot be found in the chosen space and used for the event.
4.1.2.2 Objects cannot be purchased especially for the event.

4.1.3 Suggested assemblages:
4.1.3.1 Attach 100 safety pins to1 kg soap powder or laundry detergent (any brand) and pour the detergent-safety pin mixture into a bird cage.
4.1.3.2 Gather together 12000 litres of water (with or without a receptacle), a series of wires or cables, and a ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’ sign or a ‘Welcome’ doormat.
Create organic forms from the wires or cables and attach them or balance them underneath the sign or doormat.
4.1.3.3 Create a series of face masks using rubber husks from deflated balloons, broken household appliances and fridge magnets.


5. Fluxversion

5.1 Participants must arrange everything they own into tidy market stall layout.

5.2 Then participants are to go and look at the other participants’ stalls.
5.2.1 They are to then,
5.2.1.1 trade,
5.2.1.2 swap,
5.2.1.3 exchange,
5.2.1.4 or barter
with one another, only using objects and items from everything they own.

5.3 Everything the participants own is lumped together in a large pile, and then sorted into new individual lots according to the number of participants. Allow the participants to take away their new holdings.

5.4 Timed Version - Give Fluxversion a time frame.
5.4.1 38 seconds,
5.4.2 35 minutes, 56 seconds,
5.4.3 Or, 2 days.


6. Mathematical / Deterministic / Procedural Versions

6.1 Limit the number of participants to 4.8.

6.2 Limit the number of objects participants can bring to the event,
6.2.1 Ten participants are to bring the number of objects, from everything they own, according to what number participant they are. For example participant one brings one object from everything they own, participant two brings two and so forth…

6.3 Work out the spatial dimensions of the environment or assemblage according to the total volume of all the objects present. Reduce this figure by 74 percent. Attempt to assemble all of the objects in a space that is too small.

6.4 Limit the number of bodily movements participants can make when creating the environment or assemblage to 18 bodily movements per participant.

6.5 Arrange the objects according to size, in ascending order.
6.5.1 Choose every fifth object and remove all other objects. Retain the negative space that this will leave between the objects.

6.6 Create an accumulative time capsule by arranging everything the participants own according to the years in which they attained that particular ‘thing’ - object or material. Arrange all the objects from a particular year, horizontally, and then stack each ‘year’ (the horizontal assemblage) on top of another to create stratification or a vertically layered assemblage.

6.7 Choose another procedure by which the objects are structured or assembled into layers.
6.7.1 stacked on top of one another
6.7.2 or separately in the space.
6.7.3 Suggestions for structuring procedures:
6.7.3.1 Objects are to be assembled by colour. Put all the brown things together, the white on another, etc.
6.7.3.2 or, objects are to be assembled by shape. Put all the square things on one layer, triangular on another, etc.
6.7.3.3 Objects are to be assembled by other physical attributes.
6.7.3.3.1 According to the softness or hardness of particular objects.
6.7.3.3.2 or, by grouping similar things together. Put all the office supplies on one layer, food on another, clothing, etc.

6.7 Resist creating a casual assemblage. Use things that people own to determine chance operations.
6.7.1 Flip a coin to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.
6.7.2 Use a numbered spinning wheel to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.
6.7.3 Use die to determine all decisions for constructing an assemblage.


7. Musical Version

7.1 Use the following music score to accompany the event.
7.1.1 Stimulate the sounds of the music score by limiting the sound materials to
7.1.1.1 materials ‘found’ in the chosen space
7.1.1.2 objects and materials from everything everybody owns that are not being used as part of the event assemblage or environment.

7.2 Use the following score to actually create a musical / sound ‘environment / assemblage’. Choose objects from everything everybody owns to create sounds.

7.3 Score:

Materials, such as rope, wire, cord or strings, are plucked for one minute at 2-second intervals.
A participant repeats SOMETHING CONFUSES US INTO SMALLNESS AND WE COME BACK AGAIN over the top of the plucking for 1 minute 7 seconds.
Silence for 35 seconds.
There is a cracking sound of a whip, wet tea towel or glass lasting for a minute.
There is a sound of gushing fluids for 3 minutes.
Silence for 12 seconds.
There is noise of hammers, wood, ceramics, and pots being crashed together for 20 seconds. Then all participants repeat SOMETHING CONFUSES US INTO SMALLNESS AND WE COME BACK AGAIN over top of the crashing noises for 30 seconds.
Silence for 7 seconds.
Crashing resumes for 12 seconds.
Silence for 5 seconds.
Crashing resumes for a second.
Silence for 12 seconds.
Then a series of saws bent almost in two are struck with metal objects for 2 minutes.
All participants repeat WHEN ONE IS BEING NEITHER EMOTIONAL NOR INTELLECTUAL! for 1 minute over top of saws and metal objects.
Silence for 5 seconds.
Someone blows a whistle for 17 seconds.

- Emma Phillipps © 2007