Our first performance stimulus was to take a question or a task on a small strip of paper and to think about how it could be used in a small one minute performance. The question I got given was:

If the walls could talk what would they say?

One of the first idea’s I had was that if the walls could talk they would talk to each other. I then went onto think what they would talk about, would they talk about the art work and the artefacts that are in the Usher Gallery or the Collection Museum or would that not bother them. I then went on to think that maybe they would instead talk about the people that come to visit the Museum and Gallery.

people in gallery

(image credit: http://blogs.haverford.edu/haverblog/2012/09/11/ying-li-no-middle-way-opens-at-cantor-fitzgerald-gallery/)

To then create a performance out of this idea, I went to the Usher Gallery, sat for an hour and watched the people that entered noting down everything they did as if I was relaying the information to someone else. This is what I created:

A Projection on the wall, showing a live feed of what is happening being typed out by someone in the room.

  • A man wearing glasses is sitting in a chair his hands on his lap, he is silent
  • There is a noise of children in the next room talking, shouting and running around
  • The man in glasses starts to clear his throat
  • From above comes the sound of someone walking around
  • Still the man sits and looks around the room
  • The occasional voice of a teacher cuts through the children’s voices
  • The man in glasses slowly falls asleep
  • The sound of the air conditioning is battling with the noise of the children
  • Two female workers walk through busy in discussion
  • The children in the next room are silenced
  • The man in glasses snores and wakes himself up
  • A bald headed man comes in from another room and before exiting stops and puts his hat on, he then exits
  • Suddenly there is silence
  • The two female workers return, stopping to talk before leaving the gallery
  • One of the workers return and walks straight through without stopping
  • Still the man in glasses sits and sleeps then wakes himself up in a constant cycle
  • A woman in a purple jacket opens the door and hold it open waiting for a man who appears to be her partner
  • They stand with their hands behind their back viewing the different paintings
  • The man puts his hand around the woman’s shoulders
  • The man calls the woman in a purple jacket back to him to show her the description of a painting
  • They carry on around the room discussing the women in the paintings
  • All while the man in glasses sleeps
  • The man leaves the woman in a purple jacket and exits the room without her
  • The woman in the purple jacket shortly follows him

On reflection of this task it felt as if the people I was watching had become the art work, and if I was able to actually able to have performed this as a duration piece instead of a 1 minute reading of what I did, the people i was watching would become aware that they are as much a piece of art as the pieces they are looking at.

Kate Kelly