Performative piece, Brixton recreation centre building as a stage, using its architectural form of being able to overlook and watch what goes on on multiple floors at once due to the large atrium through the building. Had people placed around the building, performing mundane, ordinary actions in a loop. The viewers could freely walk around the space searching for these movements, using specific made ‘binoculars’ to spectate us. The addition of these binoculars in turn makes the viewers spectators for the public and so a part of the performance whilst observing.
You are here to speculate a speculative spectacle in which the spectator is the spectacle and the spectacle is the spectator. We ask you to behold, observe, peer, gawk, peep, see, look, gaze, perceive and glimpse.
"Spectatorship is not the passivity that has to be turned into activity. it is our normal situation. We learn and teach, we act and know as we spectators who link what they see with what they have seen and told, done and dreamt."
-The emancipation spectator, Ranciére 2004
"A happening may be scored for just watching. Persons will do nothing else. They will watch things, each other, possibly actions not performed by themselves, such as a bus stopping to pick up commuters. This would not take place in a theatre or arena, but anywhere else. It could be an extremely mediative contemplation when done devotedly; just 'cute' when done indifferently. In a more physical mode, the idea of calling-for watching could be contrasted with periods of action. both normal tendencies to observe and act would now be engaged in a responsible way"
- Notes on the elimination of the audience, Allan Kaprow, 1966
