Just be here 21/01/2012
 
More from Tim Etchells.

"If there were a tangible contract between the performers and the audience, what in your opinion is the most important thing this contract would include?

For me the most important thing as an audience member is an openness to being there - to watching and experiencing what is actually happening. That sounds very simple, but I think for most of us, myself included, that’s hard, because you come with other things on your mind, with expectations and preoccupations and it’s very easy to get confused between what you’re looking at and what you wish you were seeing. I suppose that in some way every performance strives to create that quite fundamental contact, that contract, which is to say: We are here, you are there, and this is the moment we are engaged in together.
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This focus on engagement-  on presentness - is a struggle against the idea of the audience as a passive consumer of spectacle, against performance in which those watching are not implicated, not truly present. I know, this is a cruel way to think about an audience; a hungry animal that needs something to happen, bloodthirsty, eager for quick pleasures."

-Tim Etchells (Full interview here)

Reminded me of this post and of some of the stuff we're learning and thinking about in Wake Less.
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Not many people will know, or remember, that Binge Culture's first performance out of uni, and second performance ever was at Canaan Downs New Years Festival. Now as we contemplate the possiblity of performing at Splore 2012, I just stumbled across this article, which puts forward the argument for more theatre at this unorthodox kind of venue: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2011/jul/21/theatre-music-festival-latitude
-Joel
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Don't know if you spotted this in the Dom Post the other day, I couldn't find it online so I've had to type it out: 

7/11/2010
Theatre managers around New Zealand are "dismayed" by pirated copies of their performances appearing on the streets- often before the work has even premiered. "They must sneak into the $15 previews," one representative of a Wellington theatre said, "and so outside on the footpath there are these cheap knock-offs for sale which are inferior in every way. Its dismaying."

The "ripped" performances undermine legitimate theatre's profits by drastically undercutting ticket prices. However, as the plays are performed entirely from the memory of one performance, the quality is markedly inferior. One bystander, who asked not to be named, described a "rip" of  Circa's My First Time: "they got the intonations and general blocking right, but heaps of the lines had been learned wrong, bits were missing- and the motivations were shakey."  However, having paid a mere $2.50 for the experience, he admitted he wouldn't fork out for the theatrical version; "what would be the point? I feel sorry for the actors if they lose money, but frankly I don't have the spare cash to be scrupulous at the moment." He added that he never pirated New Zealand plays.

In spite of the threat posed by performance piracy, theatre owners are confident the superior quality of plays performed in theatres will keep punters coming back for the real thing. "We've got lighting, seating and protection from the elements, which is more than you’ll get on some dirty footpath. There's no substitute for actually being there. Sooner or later, people are going to realise what they're missing out on."
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In the days before "pelican eats pigeon", there was "eel eats seagull". And it happened here.
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"I was unfaithful. I had affairs. I cheated. What I did was not acceptable," said Woods, looking composed and speaking in a steady voice. His wife, Elin, was not with him. (full story)

Tiger Woods has taken a break from his golfing career to perform a solo version of Forced Entertainment's landmark 1994 piece Speak Bitterness, in which the guilty take turns to take the blame for everything. Ok, so even if this isn't the actual intention (lord knows its hard to find and speak in one's own voice as an artist), Woods' performance is best read as a homage. Its all there: from the queasy, duplicitious exploration of sincerity, motives, justifications and the need to confess, right down to the garish blue background. The desire of the performer to tactically humble himself gives a stong element of ritual to this type of theatre. Look at the faces of the audience, playing the game with him, fully illuminated and there to be spoken to directly.

As for coming back to the PGA Tour, the planet's best golfer said: "I do plan to return to golf one day. I just don't know when that day will be. I don't rule out it will be this year."

Great dissection of what on earth is going on here (and with MPs in NZ, and guilty celebrities everywhere) in the New Yorker.
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Fantastic. I love stuff polls, even the more sensible ones like the one shown above. Who needs boring old Radio New Zealand when we've got this calibre of news info-tainment and logical mind of Michael Laws at our fingertips. (Oh god I'm so ashamed.)
-Ralph
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Tricks and Traps 27/01/2010
 
This envelope is adapted to survive and reproduce in the jungle. It is an eye catching  yellow and red, divided into sections: priority delivery in one, in another, an outline of a jet plane. There are two small boxes next to winner authenticated, and look, the "yes" one has been printed with a tick it it. In another section, a warning that I have a deadline before which to collect my prize.

All of these adaptations are geared toward the opening of this letter by an individual of my species.  Thousands are scattered like seed pods in letterboxes all down my street, and will succeed with a few.

Not me though. I will not be fooled by such basic tricks: wings that look like eyes, harmless snakes disguised as venomous ones, sentimental music in films, artificial perfumes, this envelope.

Though I'll never know unless I check...

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Who dares wins: Marc Ellis cuts off a woman’s ponytail for $50, gets her quick before she realises quite what’s happening. She's a grandmother, and goes quiet and looks genuinely horrified at what has happened, like she's been done by confidence trickster. This operation looks legitimate- there's  camera, celebrity and consent-  but isn't shaving off a woman’s hair a pretty traditional way of destroying her? Ellis, (upbeat, matey, looking desperate) pounces before she changes her mind. Snip, snip...

-Ralph
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