one-to-one performance and Etiquette, Oto cafe, Dalston

two things i've found/been signposted connecting with the relationships that can happen in one-to-one performances;

One archive: Lyn Gardener's blog post, 'I didn't know where to look' (how does this sit, nearly 4 years on? NRLA in a couple of weeks with back to back performances/performative events will be a good place to consider this in 2009)

excerpts;
"Traditionally, theatre has been a communal experience, but Lois Keidan of the Live Art Development Agency argues that in the age of the internet, the opportunity for audiences to have face-to-face encounters in real time with real people is enormously appealing. "It feels more real than real life," she says, "and because it isn't a mass experience you know that nobody is going to have the same experience as you have. It makes the event unique and it makes you feel special."

Laura Godfrey-Isaacs agrees: "Home has done salon series before that have concentrated on the communal, but this one-to-one season responds to people's desire for experiences that are more direct and unmediated, and less formal. It often results in something very charged because the audience member is crucial to what does - or doesn't - happen. It allows both the audience and the artist to take risks, because they are the only people in the room. They are the only people who will ever know what really happened during the encounter."

like these key things to think about more from the article in my constant thinking about why that style appeals to me: one-to-ones are unique, (and what is unique in my work?, ) you are the only ones who know what really happened,(the re-counting the encounter can be chinese whispers, and the complete privacy is to me, an unspoken thing, i don't re-count it in fact) more real than real life (what does that mean?) you and the audience take risks.......

One current, I must experience this: Etiquette, at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London throughout February 2009 and possibly beyond. A Lyn Gardner "One to watch."

excerpt from website:

"Alongside their innovative stage works (Doublethink, Five in the Morning) involving instructions to unrehearsed performers, Rotozaza here invite the audience to try it themselves. Etiquette offers the fantasy of speaking with someone without having to plan what you say, and the resulting thrill of disowning responsibility in a performance situation. Conversation is shown to be a kind of theatre whereby 'audience' and 'actor' roles are imperceptibly assumed and exchanged."

It is recommended by Etiquette company Rotozaza to watch this Godard clip which i quite like, in thinking about conversations with a stranger:



I like the idea that in Etiquette, the audience and performers are 'removed' and both are equal participants, you can do it between strangers OR between people that know one another,leave that up to the audience that turn up to choose. personally, i'd like to try it both ways, as i do in my own work, (I have said sometime intimate things to strangers I have not told my partner or anyone, and have learnt humbling things about my friends/family in 10 minutes than i never knew throughout my relationship with them, question: why does it take my work to do this??) although unsure if the headset dialogue is the same each time, spoiling the surprise.
The performative instructions for narrative action/conversation are given via headset whilst sat in a cafe. I have been thinking post The Darkroom at Duckie that my scores could be used by someone else entirely, like ideas in Fluxus of the blurring of performance and reality, and Tino Sehgal using actors to carry out instructions. In my application to SPRINT I have suggested there could be multiple encouters at the same time. Do I want to remove myself from the work in this way entirely? Or can I actually do this? More of a directing role akin to theatre??

In reference to participation in art, I will need to come back to thoughts from Art in the Social Sphere, the symposium I attended at Loughborough University this week, with excellent speakers: writer/artist Dave Beech, APG-er Barbara Steveni and gift-girl Lisa Cheung.