Working title of project (1-4 words): Phōd

Strategic outcome:
Outcome 4 - New Zealand arts gain international success

Discipline: 
Culinary

Idea or kaupapa: Current modes of contemporary dining in Aotearoa (seating, ordering, receiving the food you have ordered, leaving) are hackneyed and stagnant. Cutlery, for example, is deplorably predictable in both its form and placement.

Phōd will be a non-linear, progressive eating experience. We will not patronise our clients' lazy predilection for easily digestible material offered in bite sized chunks upon verbal agreement. 

The condescending and infantile expectation that money will simply "get you food" will be challenged and inverted. Salads, for example, may never arrive or appear at high velocity on non traditional platforms. The assumption that someone else will look after the dishes will be playfully examined.

Exact form and content is still in the workshop stage, but for some patrons the entire Phōd experience may consist of waiting for a meal that never comes and then being charged for extra drinks. 

A mature and confident dining public will appreciate this intention to disrupt their complacency rather than adhere to an accepted formula, and tip accordingly.

Working title of project (1-4 words): 
Inter[r]-(Miss)ion

Strategic outcome: 
Outcome 4 - New Zealand arts gain international success 

Discipline:
Pan-performance.

Idea or kaupapa:

The piece occurs in a modern theatre foyer and lasts 15-20 minutes.  The only performers are the theatre staff who will be paid as normal (see budget). 

A short program note and legal disclaimer will outline to audiences that Inter[r]-(Miss)ion is an event wholly external to their wider existence. It bifurcates their lived experience, which is therefore claimed in its entirety as a 'found performance' by the artists and is as such eligible for royalties (see budget). 

During the piece, audience members can autonomously choose to queue for the toilet, buy a magnum for $6 (see budget), stand and pretend to text, or hope to avoid that one person.

This event is planned as the central part of a trilogy, with presh0w and {post}s_how still in conceptual development.

It's the final season of Mad Men, the only show I've ever followed from start to finish as it came out.  I watched the first season on a laptop during Christmas holidays at the bach six years ago, mostly on a short bunk bed, with the heat of a wood fired stove coming through the wall. I remember seeing one episode, where the brother appears, outside under the stars in front of a brazier, with my own brother and uncle. Those episodes were addictive for their mystery and promise. I wanted to know Don Draper's secret, and see his past catch up with him. I watched each scene for clues to a mystery, expecting escalation. I wanted to know what happened next.

Pretty soon it turned out that we knew all there was to know about Don's past, and so the show changed. It became, for me (I'm sure lots of people have shows like this), a part-time parallel world running alongside my own, into which I would dip into every year or so. Like a durational theatre performance, events were no longer significant for their relationship to a beginning years before, or an ending years later. I watched some of those seasons mainly out of sense of duty, bored with the characters and frustrated with their inability to change. Then when something big happened, I wished I'd been paying more attention and seen the clues leading up to it, because I felt like I didn't really see it.

People didn't often die on Mad Men, (Game of Thrones' method of bluffing a narrative as a large cast wanders aimlessly), but simply disappeared and were never mentioned again. Years later I'd remember that in 2008/1960 a certain character used to be a series regular, like a certain person was a regular in my own life. I'd think about how people disappear, and of course I'd start to read my own like a series of seasons, with series regulars and surprises appearances, which is a recipe for melancholy. Man Men is almost wide, slow and meandering enough to seem like life, except that I can go back to an episode of Mad Men and find a person again, and they will be the same. Halfway between fiction and life, then. With way better looking people.

And now (2014/1969), since the show is seven episodes from ending, I've been watching it more closely, because endings bring (artificial?) weight to actions which would otherwise not be important. For the characters, though, its just another decade beginning.

I remember 2008, when I watched a show remember 1960, where the people were nostalgic. I remember the characters in my life and in the show, and I map the slow changes in each, and in remembering them I create a story. I remember the people I watched that episode with, wrapped in coarse blankets and duvets as manuka logs burned on the brazier, the sky full of bright stars, and I think how their lives have changed and complicated. Of course, the whole god-damned show is about nostalgia and the bond it creates between us and a product- not least the show itself. Well, I guess I get the last laugh. I got it all online for free.


*******

I'm actually a big Game of Thrones fan, but I always find it funny when people talk about certain characters and their actions as if any of it makes sense. My favourite is all the discussion of how Little Finger is a 'shrewd master of the long game' and how people try and guess his 'strategy' as if it can be figured out or predicted, like chess. There is no net in this tennis match, guys. People will continue to die in random order, and the right people will be where they need to be when the wall falls and the dragons come. Really looking forward to that Mountain/ Viper fight though. It's going to be awesome.


Ralph

The Civilian Party, that's who. Glad to see this after the website has been inactive so long. 

"The only thing that our great nation has to fear is fear itself, stagnant unemployment, low wages, superannuation costs, the economic consequences of existing and prospective free trade deals, rheumatic fever, Winston Peters, small pointy objects, daytime television, oil spills, earthquakes, cancer, traffic congestion in Auckland, systemic poverty, the ineffectiveness of throat lozenges, tornadoes, the housing shortage, global warming, gay marriage, straight marriage, bullying, chemtrails, losing one hour of sleep at daylight savings time, paedophiles, the current account deficit, terrorism, bus fares, and the possibility that a crab will sever our undersea telecommunications cables."

I was round at friend's place the other night for Game of Thrones. They have a giant TV there and a new, unlimited data allowance, and while we waited the talk was energetic and constant. Someone was on the sofa with the keyboard, typing and searching, and I saw this powerful engine being woven into the social interaction in a way that was organic and fluid. A vastly sophisticated improvised power point underscoring the conversation and extending on offers made in passing. No pop culture reference so obscure that couldn't be backed up with imagery or video in an instant; JCVD embarrassing himself on South America TV, Tom Hanks in a trailer for his breakthrough film, a terrible kung fu/dance scene, it's there. A complementary layer to the conversation, and never the sense that the focus had moved away from a social experience. Maybe there's hope for we old gen-Y's after all, to keep on top of all of this and stay sane. 

Ralph