I am not sure how many of you, who will read this, have been a viewer or performer in a site performance work, but honestly if you’ve been in one, you have vicariously played both roles without realising it; That is something we will get into a little later on.
In this blog post, we shall be looking/exploring site performance/specific works. I place an or there because site work can be rather complicated, you can have a definitive site or you can choose to explore. This post of course is inspired by the recent viewing of a work; ‘Inhabitants’ by Ivan Perez; A man whose work fills me up with such admiration I could dedicate most of my theatre works to him. We won’t be going through the work; I think my friend and I discussed its flaws and successes quite a lot already.
Site specific/performance work is quite interesting; You take a site & deconstruct its normal use. I mean you can choose to deconstruct its normal use or you can virtual make people see an aspect of that site that they never paid attention to. You bring meaning and a certain language to the site. It really isn’t something easily achieved, you either fail dismally or succeed with ease. There are many elements in a site work, however, to focus here is on the audience.
An element that site work tends to focus on, in an opinion is the viewer/the audience/the watcher. Yes, the site is an important element but the viewer should be regarded as a crucial element.
An interesting aspect about site work is that as a viewer you choose where you want to look or the performers guide you to where they want you to look or what they want you to see. Ultimately however, it’s the viewers decision. If there are multiple bodies or actions being executed. The audience chooses where their focus will go.
There is a but though…you can miss a lot doing that. What if you miss crucial movement from certain bodies? Whose fault is it if the viewer looks at particular bodies and not the ones s/he was supposed to?
In such work, you choose to watch or not. Site, bodies and everything around it, are the properties. As an audience you are, in a sense, asked to perform yourself. Depending on how the work moves and were it takes you, your body as a viewer is shifted to perform certain actions. Whether you are walking or crawling or shifting to a lower level, and many more things. You are asked to perform too. So, you are the viewer who can be viewed too.
Author: JC Zondi