Episode 4: WE SHOULD LEAVE
[SUNK]
The Sunk Cost Fallacy describes a tendency to follow through on an endeavour if we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits.
It is the bane of gamblers and audiences alike.
It is a terrible curse of human nature, but it is also something that has helped us reach into space, walk to the poles and, sometimes, sit through shows that redeem themselves right at the very end.
[AUDIENCE]
Lucy May Walker is introducing her next song. Someone in the audience is talking over her.
Lucy May Walker carries on, plays the song and finishes the gig. Later, she makes a post on twitter.
GIG ETIQUETTE
Gig etiquette is really important to me - The audience can either MAKE or BREAK a show. Just one person can ruin it for everyone else.
Here are some guidelines for you to follow (So that person isn’t you)!
DON’T TALK DURING THE SHOW
Once the show starts, please refrain from talking. No matter how quiet you think you are… I promise everybody around you can hear you (Including me) and it is so distracting.
Please WAIT TILL THE INTERVAL to chat as much and as loudly as you like.BE IN THE MOMENT
Feel free to take a few pictures / videos of the show, but please keep your FLASH OFF, don’t block someone else’s view… and try not to watch the whole thing through your phone. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it more if you put it down:)
THE AUDIENCE HAVE NOT PAID TO SEE YOU
If you find yourself singing along to a song, that’s great (in fact there will be a few times in the show where I will encourage you to join in)
however, please try to READ THE ROOM. If you are the only person singing, try not to do it so loudly / out of tune so that you distract the people around you.
If you do need to leave the room at any point, please try to WAIT UNTIL THE END OF A SONG to do so.
HAVE AN AMAZING TIME
The most important thing is that we all have fun. I want you to really enjoy yourself and I hope these guidelines can help to make the gig a more enjoyable experience for us all.
Thank you, Lucy May Walker X
The online discourse was bitter and polarised.
Online discourse is nearly always so, but here you found people on both sides spitting fury at their allies. Performers against performers. Audience against audience.
Some folk called this needlessly prescriptive and patronising, others pointed out the ableist undertones that reflected privilege.
Organised fun.
There were threaded conversations about where Lucy can put her comments about when and how people use their phones and cameras. There were others criticising her choice of jovial, child-like fonts and smiley faces.
Meanwhile, there were counter-accounts of awful behaviour that ruined a set, or a performance, for many people.
One thing is apparent — Something is wrong here, the contract between an audience and a performer is dysfunctional.
The fact a performer feels the need to publish rules raises questions about the role of the venue too. If an audience needs to be policed, is that the role of the performer, the audience or the venue?
But really, the only thing that bothers me about all of this is that one line.
“If you need to leave the room at any point, please try to wait until the end of the song to do so”.
I’m not sure I can get behind that.
You owe a performer many things, but your presence is not one of them, not for a second.
[THE FAMOUS LAUREN BARRI HOLSTEIN]
It is 2019, and we are in Tramway in Glasgow to see a show as part of the Take Me Somewhere festival.
Adopting a persona as ‘The Famous’, Lauren Barri Holstein is presenting ‘Notorious’.
It’s promoted as:
Blurring the lines between live art, dance, theatre and fine art, The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein plunges into the ghostly underworld of popular culture. Examining the myth of Medusa, Nicki Minaj and her own legendary self(ie), Notorious examines pop culture’s take on the female monster.
And will feature self flagellation, using a dead octopus (or squid, I only saw the tentacles from a distance), self penetration and the retrieval of gummy worms from body cavities, Miley Cyrus, and a fair bit of audience antagonism.
It will be entertaining, well put together and has somewhat stayed with me. However, whenever I think back to the show it’s the audience that stands out.
When the doors opened we found our seats. I like to sit at the back, partially because it gives me the best view of the entire stage, and partly because the closer I am to a tech box, the more at home I feel.
As the audience settled we could see the usual sort. Other artists, seasoned festival goers, an art critic a couple of rows in front.
But the people who sat next to me stood out somewhat.
They were an East-Asian family. Two adults and two teens. We exchanged smiles as we made ourselves comfortable.
The lights dimmed and the show started.
It’s important at this point to highlight that Holstein often switches in and out of character. ‘The Famous’ is quite abrasive, particularly towards the audience at some points. It’s part of the show.
It’s a fiction we enter into together.
At least it is, provided you are aware of it.
I do not think my neighbours were aware of it. In fact, I think they had quickly realised that they had somehow ended up in the wrong show altogether.
At first there were sideways glances. Then very quiet, but urgent conversation.
I’m sure there was a hint of recrimination too.
Coats were put back on.
There was waiting.
Waiting for the right moment to slink out… which isn’t easy from the back row of a raked seating back with the only aisle running pretty much straight down to centre stage.
Hesitant movement.
But then, a man in the front row stood. I still don’t know if he was just in need of the toilet, but he received a torrent of abuse that made me blush on his behalf. He shouted something back too.
The family sat back down. More conversation.
More waiting and furtive glances. Now? No? What about…
Eventually there was a musical dance number and Lauren moved to the far side of the stage. The family rose in unison and shot down the aisle, all partially ducking like they were under sniper fire from an unseen assailant.
I am happy to report that they escaped unscathed about five minutes before the end of the 90-minute long show.
[AUDIENCE]
There was a particular trend in the 2000s for people to pay in order to be abused.
Artists such as Ann Liv Young would frequently terrorise members of the audience, often using an adopted character, ‘Sherry’, to do so.
It works because, despite the abuse, there is a contract in place. We all know why we are there. Young is there to shout abuse, and we are there to be potentially abused.
It’s part of an ancient tradition of the Fool being able to speak truth to the King. It works because of a clearly defined power dynamic. A contract.
At the end of the show the audience can retire to a bar and recount tales of near misses or survival.
In Young’s case this later extended to accosting other performer’s audiences.
This happened during Patek’s show, Inter(a)nal F/ear, a show that discusses personal trauma.
Young took to the stage and addressed the audience: ‘All of you are dressed the same. You’re all from Williamsburg. You’re all her friends. None of you question anything you’re watching.’
She was then very clearly ushered off stage by the American realness Festival programmer, Ben Pryor, who was also confronted with, ‘Maybe you should be a part of this conversation since you booked this.’
Later, Young returned and shoved a bullhorn through the auditorium door and announced she was willing to provide Patek with free ‘Sherapy’.
Of course this was situated as an artistic intervention, and considering that disruption of this kind has been a part of artistic discourse for well over a century, it was perhaps expected on some level. Although it is interesting to note that Young stated that she did this in character, and perhaps an intervention should really be held by the artist themselves, should they care.
The point is though, where do things stand when the audience hasn't anticipated being abused by an artist?
Where are we when it isn’t part of the contract?
It’s a little like school bullying. The overwhelming sense in the audience is one of being fortunate that the abuse isn’t happening to you. That, and the fact you can’t help but wonder if, a bit like that same kid at school, the artist is being so deliberately horrible to people as a defence against their audience not liking them, or their work.
[LEAVE]
Before I get into this I want to make something clear. This is not about the artist. It is about one particular thing they did.
In this case the artist is Kris Canavan.
Kris happens to have made one of my favourite pieces of performance art. It featured him connected to an overpass through a thread of wire. On tiptoes, the wire passed through a piercing in Kris’s tongue.
It’s wonderfully Ballardian. The scalar difference between human and concrete. The precarious posture. The thin resonating link.
It’s very much the sort of thing I think about when I think about performance art.
As it happens I also learnt about this work during another, somewhat less successful performance by Kris.
A.I.R.(Aktion, Intervention & Risk) is an aktion based lecture that questions the privilege of those in a position to censor or to demand a trigger warning, when so much of life is un-mediated & for many those choices have been removed.
In short: If you need a trigger warning to sanitise your existence, then please - fucking leave the room now
In practice this took the following form.
A reasonable sized audience was ushered into a room set up as a lecture space. Rows of chairs facing a projection screen, next to which stood Kris with a laptop.
We are then shown a presentation of the artist’s previous work, with each piece separated by a statement such as:
“If you are offended by this, please fucking leave the room now”
and:
“If you think that censoring art through trigger warnings is more important than the fact that poor people are suffering, please fucking leave the room now.”
And that’s it. That’s all there was to it. Mostly.
Except…
The audience was a mix of hardened live artists, festival goers and enthusiastic young folk. This was Buzzcut, a Glasgow-based live art festival that frequently showed transgressive works.
As for me, I’ve often described myself as a durational observer. Alongside my partner Gillian, enduring things has become a point of pride. It’s our entire practice.
We can happily go twelve hours, just sitting and watching.
I recall the moment we looked at each other in silent acknowledgement that we would see this through until the end, wondering if Kris would keep going until everyone had left. I was prepared to sit for days in my own filth to prove how little I could be offended by a hastily assembled PowerPoint.
Besides, he offered us no choice, the statements he read out meant that he was defining the conditions of our surrender. The contract between a performer and an audience member declares that the performer can try and make you think, but they can never tell you what you actually think.
So we all just sat there.
And the presentation came to an end. Kriss ran out of slides. The room remained full.
I’m not sure if he had planned for this eventuality. It didn’t feel like it.
He looped back and showed the first slide and started all over.
At this point one audience member gets up and leaves. On their way out they shout a retort, “I’m not offended, I’m just fucking bored”.
No one else leaves, and the presentation finishes again.
An awkward silence. Expecting offense is a risky game.
One more time around then. This time with smirks and sideways glances from the audience. I was starting to enjoy the battle. I pictured the room twelve hours later, an audience fully relaxed into a state of just sitting. Would there be a point where people just started to enjoy conversations, taking pictures and going about their lives against this context of not being offended?
This time, however, a different end.
Kris finishes the presentation and takes some hypodermic needles, which he uses to pierce his lips, effectively stitching them shut.
This might have been more shocking if we hadn’t just sat through a presentation featuring such similar acts. Also, I’d like to note that whenever an artist does this, or tapes their mouth shut to reference censorship, you should always know that it is the artist themselves that is doing the censoring.
And then the trousers are dropped. Shocking. Again, I feel as if, collectively, we were prepared for this by the numerous photographic renderings of Kris’s genitals that we had been privy to.
I’m not sure if you have ever witnessed a human staple their own scrotum before, but it is more fascinating than it is offensive. What size staples do we use for this? Did we pick them up at a high street station or are they medical grade?
The fantastic writer and artist, Harry Josephine Giles makes the following astute appraisal:
“This has the unfortunate effect of implying that being prevented from saying whatever you want whenever you want is similar to not being allowed to put your genitals wherever you want whenever you want.”
Perhaps it would be more shocking if the person doing it doesn’t resemble Donald Duck with their top half dressed and their bottom half naked. Trousers around their ankles.
In our house we refer to this as ‘The Most Naked’. There is something more deliberately naked about it than being fully nude, but it is a nakedness that you associate with little children sprinting off after their bath before you’ve had time to help them get dressed.
The audience remained seated. They remained there.
And no applause. Is this the end? It feels like it, but we are still not offended, and so we do not leave.
The air hangs with an awkwardness. A disconnect.
Kris shuffles off stage, behind the fast-fold screen that bore the presentation. His naked legs and swaddled ankles poke out of the bottom.
And still the audience remains.
A member of the front of house team is standing across from Kris, and is clearly having a conversation through facial expressions alone. They then take centre stage and announce, “The artist wants you to leave now”.
I bet they do.
[AUDIENCE]
Trigger warnings are part of the contract between audience and performer. They let the audience know what they are purchasing. They allow the audience to decide if they want to enter the contract.
It makes the contract explicit.
And who would want to sell you something before you got a chance to see what it is? Probably someone who wanted to either con you or palm off something they know you aren’t going to like.
Risk assessments are similarly part of that contract. I think there’s a tendency to see them as restrictive for the artist, preventing them from doing what they feel they should be allowed to do, but in reality, risk assessments are to enable the artist to do these things, rather than prevent them. They form the basis for a contract that states both the artist and the audience will make it through the performance without unexpected injury.
Often a risk assessment is more about the audience too, and any artist that shirks from them is highlighting how little they care for their audience.
Then there is demanding that an audience leave. That’s just the same as demanding that they stay. It’s presumptuous and self important. It is not the artist’s call to make.
But perhaps the audience would be more willing to play along with your performance if you ask them nicely rather than offend them through your selfish self importance.
[AUDIENCE]
You have purchased a burger at McDonald’s. You saw a picture of it, and decided that was what you wanted to eat, but when you unwrap it, it looks like someone has replaced the patty with a slightly charred rat.
You don’t want to make a fuss, these things happen, and so you stand up to leave.
A security guard pushes you back into your chair.
“You can leave when you’ve finished the burger we made for you”.
[LIVE ART]
It’s common in durational performance to allow your audience to come and go as they please. There’s a recognition that just because you have chosen to chain yourself to a place for 24 hours, they might not have made that commitment.
When we perform we tend to let the space police itself too.
Sometimes it is nice for us to hear people conversing as we work. They might not even be talking about what we are doing, they might be catching up, or making dinner arrangements. It’s still context, it’s still part of what is happening there and then.
Throughout our performances, we’ve had people sob quietly, we’ve had a group sit on the floor and eat their lunch, we’ve had one hundred children walk in shouting and asking questions after we have been awake for over 24 hours.
We’ve had adult lecturers fall asleep.
We’ve had children ask why the adult is allowed to fall asleep.
There have been bands playing in the next room.
People have marched through the space without even looking at what we are doing.
Some people like to take photographs, or film. It’s quite common for those people to spend less than a few minutes with us, coming in, taking a photograph and leaving straight away.
That’s OK.
It’s all context, and the art is richer for it.
[SARAH TROUCHE]
We jump back to 2016 and find ourselves in Chicago.
It’s been a tremendously hot day.
Just the other month there was a protest against a rally being held for Donald Trump that turned ugly. Tensions remained high in the city.
Chicago is the third largest city in the US, and it’s rather ethnically and culturally diverse. Nearly a third of Chicago identifies as Hispanic. Nearly 55% of the population are non-white.
That’s why I was listed as “Adam and Gregory”, the ‘Y’ of my initials being translated in Spanish. I rather liked it.
That night we would go to see a piece of work that I wish I had left. It was ‘Nuit Debout’ by Sarah Trouche.
I think, if I’m being kind, what happened was that the work fell into the cracks between what an artist thinks they are making, and what they have actually made.
The work was promoted as drawing parallels between the unrest in Chicago and the Nuit Debout strike movement that was ongoing in Paris at the time.
Sarah, it was written, wanted to give space, and a voice, to three African American women, using interviews whilst referencing police violence.
The reality, however, unfolded as follows…
The gallery space contained several plinths. On each one sat a face cast in wax. The faces were dyed dark blue.
Audio of interviews with the three women played.
Sarah, who happens to be white, appeared in the space. She was covered in body paint. Her rationale was that this would represent the uniforms of the Chicago Police, however, it was very much the wrong shade of blue. Some people would probably call that shade of blue, ‘black’.
OK, so we had a white woman, not from Chicago, appearing to be painted black, surrounded by wax casts of faces that appeared to be African Americans, whilst audio of interviews with the women played.
Sarah then dragged a power washer into the space.
As the power washer kicked in, the audio was drowned out.
Then, Trouche began to aim the jet of water at the cast faces, which ran blue with dye.
I suspect Sarah meant this to be read as symbolic as an act of violence perpetrated by the police against people of colour in Chicago against the backdrop of silencing dissent.
However, that isn’t how the audience read the situation.
What they saw was a white woman, in full-body blackface, committing an act of violence on the effigies of African Americans, whilst drowning out the very voices of the women she was supposed to be creating space for. Furthermore, it was apparent that many in the audience were starting to wonder why a French woman that didn’t live in Chicago had elected themselves to speak on behalf of the people of Chicago in the first place.
There were angry looks. there was muttering. Sharp, staccato statements, similarly drowned by an industrial power washer. Some people took photographs as evidence.
Trouche seemed oblivious to this, she had failed to read the room.
I figured that there must be more to it than this. That the artist was about to turn it around and frame their actions in a smarter way. Even as people got up and left in protest, I waited to see how this performance was going to elegantly spin and make a social critique about the inherent foolishness of artists parachuting themselves into social commentary that has nothing to do with them.
That didn’t happen.
More people left, and I remained.
I wish I had left too..
[AUDIENCE]
I’m not convinced that Sarah had worn black face for this performance, as she was accused of at the time. Maybe the paint was sold to her as Chicago-Cop blue, despite how it appeared. However, the fact that she didn’t realise how this could be seen was certainly symptomatic of her failing to understand the relationship between artist and audience.
The part of the contract that Sarah Trouche had failed to adhere to was, as an artist, you never speak on behalf of your audience, rather, you speak to them.
She believed she was representing a group of people. That they needed her work to represent them. This was a terrible mistake.
We never got to hear the words of the women who were interviewed and a large chunk of the audience were rather better informed about the white-washing of social issues and police brutality in Chicago than Sarah was.
And I should have sided with them, the audience who lived in Chicago, who didn’t have white skin, or who were women. These people were the focus of that work, and they chose to walk away in protest, and I should have followed.
As an audience member, that’s your power, to leave when you feel like you must.
[THE AUDIENCE]
Whatever it is you owe a performer, whether that is money for their work or the same basic dignity you owe every human, the truth is that you don’t owe their performance anything, let alone something as precious as your time.
What Lucy May Walker seems to have forgotten to add to her list is that the performer is equally bound by that set of rules. That’s the point. It isn’t one sided.
It’s a contract.
It only works if we all choose to be there.
And you are not being quiet for the performer. You are not refraining from flash photography for the performer. You are not staying for the performer, nor are you leaving for them.
You are doing it for everyone in that room, the performer, the other audience members, the front of house staff and the technicians.
And if you can’t do that, don’t delay, don’t wait until the end of the song or the scene change. Don’t hang around until the interval.
You should leave right now.
[NEXT]
Episode 5: Obsoletely
