One of my tutors at Saint Martins was commissioned to stage an installation in the public walk way of the university. He laid out hundreds of chairs in straight lines, with passages to walk through, and had volunteers handing out pieces of paper inviting the audience to 'perform an act of their choice'. The results were interesting, people generally didn't interact much, especially if they were on their own. There were a couple of groups of people that lay on the chairs or moved a couple of them into knew positions, but on the whole it was very tame and polite.
My class of course changed all that, being performance design students this is the kind of thing we study and design, and couldn't help but take advantage of the freedom we were being given. We started by putting all the chairs away, as if to rebel against the idea of the chairs existing, and trying to push the idea of being able to 'perform an act of any kind' to a limit. My tutor who's exhibition it was seemed some what un-happy with what we were doing and at one point tried to put them all back in order. It was an interesting response, and the class and my other tutors had a debate about wether he was right in acting as he was, trying to control the freedom he had given to the public.
The fact that is was in a public space meant that he couldn't technically stop anyone from doing what they wanted, and he should of taken that into consideration. My other tutors encouraged us to push further and see what else we could do with the space, and how we could change the way other members of the public interacted with it. We built a spiral of chairs, which people began taking photos of and asking to be part of. They had just as much right to be in the space as we did, but by occupying an unusual dynamic, people felt obliged to ask to take pictures.
We spent a good few hours playing around with the space, by this time my tutor who's installation it was had gone elsewhere. I would be happy if I had done something that sparked creativity and a rebellion to the polite norms of a public space, but perhaps his integrity was not sufficiently met by the way we decided to interact with the piece.
Anyway it was really fun and produced some interesting observations.
:)
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