Tate Family Festival with Hamish MacPherson - Feb 11th - 12th, 2017
Perhaps I should give an overview of my interest in Larp? But who for? I feel like I have written this already in so many different ways, for so many different reasons - usually for some sort of application. So perhaps I should as my dyslexia tutor and supervisor have recommended, write in a manner more familiar to myself. If I write how I talk, it feels more natural. So why is there a repeated stumbling block? After todays training session on how to manage time better, and especially when thinking about procrastination, I recognise that my reluctance to write isn't my not having the time, its more that I don't feel like what I will write will be any good. The feeling of being an impostor is something that seems to be expressed or at least felt by a large percentage of the people I have met who are doing a PhD at Kent. I used the analogy today comparing my well written proposal which got me onto the PhD being a bit like the bands first amazing album - the lifetimes work without any pressure and driven by the joy of just wanting to make something amazing, unlike the second album which inevitably is driven by the need to make a 2nd album, I.e the market / label or whomever pushing. As such its rarely as good as the first album, I.e can I now produce the goods?
Tate Family Festival with Hamish MacPherson - Feb 11th - 12th, 2017
I was commissioned by Tate Learning to produce a participatory work to be included in the BP Family Festival, which this year had the theme of Play the Gallery. In the lead up to this commission I had been developing a work in collaboration with a choreographer called Hamish MacPherson. We’ve been working together since 2014, having first met whilst both performing in Tino Segahls These Associations. We soon discovered a mutual interest in Larp, I’d just received a research bursary to study it, and Hamish having been into it as a teen. Most of our early work together involved Hamish working alongside myself in the capacity of a performer or as part of a small artist cohort. We might disagree about the origin of the idea for this latest collaboration, but to my mind the idea was born whilst idly wasting time in the duty free perfume section of a Swedish airport on the return journey from Knutpunkt (annual Nordic Larp convention). We’d been talking about whether or not it would be possible to run a larp without using spoken language to facilitate play or communicate narrative. We wondered if the other senses such as smell, sound and touch could be used in play of words and speech. We’d also been watching a lot of Derren Brown at the time (the episode in which he subliminally manipulates people to hold up a Securicor struck a chord). We’d were also obsessed with the amazingly bleak 1980’s British docu-drama Threads, especially in the way it depicted the emergence of new tribalism and proto-language formation post nuclear apocalypse). This coincided with our discovery of non-verbal larps, such as White Death by Nina Runa-Essendrop. I’d been inspired by the methodology of Guillermo Gomez-Penaand in books such as Etho-Techno. Around this same time I co-wrote a pervasive non-verbal Larp called The Checkerboard Crew, inspired by the secretive lives and codified signage of the American hobos. Hamish and I had ran this a couple of times and we’d been thinking about developing a more ambitious post-apocalyptic version in which spoken language had been all but forgotten.
In order to reach this lofty height we first immersed ourselves in relevant source material on survival skills, alt-prepping, crisis management, sign language etc. Before we knew it we’d laying the fictive groundwork for a large scale multi-day larp. In true ethnographic style we we signed up for the the biggest UK larp we could find, which as it happens was run by artist Matt Stokes, called Stone Frigate. This amazing larp set in Keilder forest Newcastle, explored the fraught lives of WW2 sailors who’d absconded from service due to mental health problems. With fresh wind in our sale, and a sense of what might be possible we set earnestly got to work. Our enthusiasm faltered when we realised the scale of what what we were about to take on.
So, rather than try to eat the elephant all in one go, we chopped it up and and appropriated it piecemeal. Our first port of call was working out some core methodologies which would inform the workshops and larp itself. We decided that it would be wise to test some very elements over a number of informal R&D sessions. We wanted to see if we could find methods which shortcut the need for inversive realism, I.e. larping in a forest.
As an aside, I should point out the context within my own practice from which this project emerged. In 2014, I staged what was to me a very important solo show called Wasteland Rituals with Legion TV, involving Hamish MacPherson, Typhaine Delaup, Christopher Patrick and Malachy Orozco. I staged two larps, one in a woodland in Hackney Marshes and the other in a basement of an old school in De Beauvoir, London. The larps explored the meeting of fictional community groups (played by audiences) with fictional outsiders (played by performers and dancers). The outsiders sought integration into the greater Metropolis, but feared rejection. They came from a unknown land and spoke using small, medium and large sized pastel coloured sculptural objects. The community groups and outsiders met, and engaged in an object and movement based conversation. The objects acted as the metaphorical bridge between audience, acting as the alibi for simple exchanges, rituals and dances. This notion of using objects as the alibi for engagement between alienated groups, was to become central to my subsequent project with Hamish and is key to current research.
So, back to this project. We wanted to explore object based participant engagement and whether or not this could shape meaningful narrative, however simplistic.
We had a lot of questions to answer. What objects? And is it possible to unlearn, or break the tacit use of an object? We collected up a bunch of primary coloured objects which seemed to imply open ended use. We had rope, gloves, harnesses,tape, ear-defenders, light-bulbs on stands, bungee cords, foam crash mats, a projector with symbols, glasses, coloured paper, an electric pump, feathers, string, coloured sheets and sticks.
Initially, it was just Hamish and I in a dance studio, working against a clock to unlock aspects of the objects, before reflecting upon them. It was really challenging to not do as you would perhaps first think with a given object, but slowly over time we began to form simple tasks with selected objects which we would then get each other to test out. We repeated the exercise a few times, bringing more people in as we went. Some objects made the cut, or felt very hot in their ability to dictate flow of participation experience. Such as the coloured sheets, which were placed over the head and taped in place to limit vision and hearing. As were the various sized gloves, which we used to inhibit rather than heighten senses. After a few sessions we bravely put forwards a 1hr trial run of whatever we thought we had at a scratch night with Coney at Camden Peoples Theatre. We’d limited our palette of objects down into four coloured groups, each of which we saw as having a strong implied character and open ended use. We located a number of audio-scores which we planned to play as part of the experience, NASA space recordings and contact-mic recordings of various bodily organs and and limb joints. Our chosen objects were red and green pine and almond scented sheets, tape covered bamboo canes, tape covered cardboard boxes, rope harnesses, over-sized gloves, coloured goggles and four freestanding light-stands with primary coloured domestic bulbs.
In keeping with our non-verbal preference, we chose for the larp to have an emoji based name, [tree, hand, torch, eyes, ball, ear, wind, nose, arrow, thought] and importantly, no written or spoken introduction. Before they entered the space participants were given a coloured badge. The participants were guided into the sparsely lit black box theatre space and formed into a circle around a pile of canes. After a few moments, a billow of smoke filled the space which was my cue to pick up a cane and start whipping the smoke which to our gleeful surprise, everyone else starting doing too. In the remaining 45mins Hamish and I took turns to feed objects into the constantly shifting sequence of ritual exchanges, confused embraces, and musical conversations. At points the the smoke, sound and heat in the room became almost unbearable. At the 44th minute, the pulsating sound-scape stopped, the lights went out and we gently lay down amongst the carnage. We faded the lights up, brought people into a loose seated circle and handed out sheets of paper and pens. The pensive silence with an invitation for people to spend 15 minutes writing or drawing an account of whatever they felt just happened. This was a wonderful moment to watch. It was like watching someone wake from a dream and attempt to piece together fragments of meaning. This was followed by a round robin discussion, which to our surprise (given our presiding feeling was FUCK there is nothing to this and these guys are inversive theatre makers etc - they need structure / characters etc) was incredibly positive. Roughly half the participants expressed a sense of care as presiding over their experience, most notably towards people wearing sheets. This was offset by the other half reflecting on the joy they felt as causing chaos and destruction throughout.
A year later, we repeated the piece now called [tree, hand, torch etc], this time for larpers as part of The Smoke ( the U.K’s first Nordic Larp Con at the Nursery Improv school in London Bridge). This time however, we’d been given 2hrs to fill. Terror sank in. How could we possibly stretch this unstructured nothingness to 2hrs? These were larpers, they would definitely expect structured workshops, lengthy character creation, relationship building and social contract signing. At least thats what I’d come to expect of Larps and larpers. With this, they would receive none of that… For this run we made use of a large scale plastic modular construction set which we used to build frames, cubes and tool like objects which we scattered amongst the set. After much deliberation about running one hours worth of non-verbal object based workshops we took the brave decision to simply run the whole larp twice successively. Our hunch was that the first run, might to the uninitiated seem like a workshop, whereas it was really more of a trial run. On the first run, players were led into the space one at a time, then given an object / prop / costume. One everyone was in, we left them to it for 45mins. After what looked like a fairly confused initial 45mins, we alleviated players of their objects and invited them to collectively draw something of their experience on a room sized sheet of paper using giant charcoal branches. We later found out that players used this as an opportunity to name and each other with simple shapes and symbols. The players were the led out of the space and instructed not too talk about what had just happened. We hastily redressed the space before inviting them back in one at a time with a slight difference. This time, rather than give them an object or prop to use, we gave them a choice between what they had last time or something new. Players had to make an on the spot choice, a handicap familiar to them, or something they had seen another player use previously. We found this to be an effective shortcut to character creation based on a simple decision, did I have fun last time, or did X have look like they were having more fun?
As with the previous run, the larp ended with a reflective discussion, which some players chose not to talk in, preferring instead to communicate their feelings via drawing. Again, there was an overwhelmingly positive sense from the players with feelings of frustrated confusion followed by moments of letting. Once again, players expressed their being two sides to take, chaos vs order, construction or deconstruction, care vs neglect. Less inhibited players, felt a keen responsibility towards ones who had opted to limit their vision through donning the coloured sheets.
All of which leads me to talking about last weekends Taste gig, [monkey, door, clock] which Hamish as I saw as being the next step in this projects development. Importantly this would be its first exposure to participants of different ages (it was a family festival), which according to Tate figures were roughly six thousand in number. As we occupied the central octagon space, the majority of the public would pass through our intervention. Its was constantly busy, chaotic and free flowing. It was also drop in drop out in the purest sense, if people liked it they stayed as long as they wanted. If they didn’t they left, often trampling over whatever stood in their way. The cacophony of action also included a raucous backdrop of roaming artist workshops, performances and carnival music. One of our core tasks over the weekend, was ensuring the survival of our objects when coming into contact with hundreds of highly charged toddlers, children, teenagers and adults. After the first day, about 30% of our sculptures were in dire need of repair which thanks to a some nifty late night glue-gunning we were able to do.
So, onto [monkey, door, clock]. We decided from the off that we wanted something which was going to be strong visually, was museum wide, could merge with other activities on the day, could engage people across the ages, was child friendly, didn’t require spoken facilitation, and something that created a story. With these things in mind, one of the first strong ideas was to make a work which allowed the public to become moving artworks, a bit like leaf-cutter ants carrying works around the gallery. We initially thought about having a start and an end point at either end of the gallery, acting as portals through which the public would step with an object which we’d given them to care for on route to the other portal. Upon reaching the end they would deposit the object before recording their experience in some way. Along the way we considered various options for the portals, ranging from 4m x 8m inflatable race gantries to freestanding doorways made out of white plastic plumbing pipe. Regardless of the portal we chose, the important idea we wanted to explore was it acting as a shortcut to a more lengthy process of creating a fictive space to inhabit and rules that govern it through facilitated workshops. For a host of reasons, we eventually settled on using transforming the central octagon space into an otherworld itself, achieved through suspending multicoloured fabric floor to ceiling drapes between the 8m high sandstone pillars.
We wanted the work to serve as an advert for itself, and looked to simple indexical methods to signify its presence and a somewhat open ended, interpretive rules set which would allow anyone to access the work. As with the previous incarnations, we decided to use colour to suggest relationships and lead interaction between participants. Rather than make arbitrary decisions about the colour, we let the materials take some of these decisions out of our hand. We knew a core element of the work would involve interactive sculptures and foam seemed to fit the bill. I’ve worked with it in the past, as its affordable and abundant if bought in off-cut bundles. It also tends to come in a pretty limited palette of pastel colours, which we adopted as our primary palette for everything else including our costumes and multicolour drapes (as did Tate who opted to use our palette for the entire festival). Working with Hamish is always a great privilege, we both come from very different disciplines, dance and visual arts, but its rare that we collaborate so evenly and rarely spend so much time dedicated to making sculptural objects. We ordered a ton of foam, glue, tape and card and set ourselves the task of creating as much objects as we deemed necessary to fill the octagon space and keep an army of families entertained. We deliberately didn't plan how the objects would look, opting to respond intuitively to whatever materials turned up. We opted to alleviate ourselves from too much of an aesthetic burden when making the interactive sculptures, we tried to think about them as being alibi tools alibis each of which encouraged a different kind of engagement modality, ranging from carrying alone or with others if especially large, being worn or serving as a seat. Hamish and I wore costumes consisting of the same pastel colours present in the foam sculptures and curtains, and tasselled masks which completely obscured our faces.
Something I was keen to explore was the objects acting as a bridge between the participant and other artworks in Tate, be that as a prop to emulate a trait of a work, a soft surface to perform to a work from or as an offering to a work. The goal with the work, was to create a space in which assemblages and temporary sculptures could be made with ready-made foam shapes as a form of repository from which objects could be loaned for a pre-agreed time. The notion of care is something Hamish and wanted to look at, caring for each other and for the objects. We wanted to see how the act of care might manifest, ranging from a loving playful embrace for a thing, to slightly regretful burdening of an unwieldy cumbersome object to be dragged around the gallery like a reluctant begrudging yet still cared for child. We also made half a dozen reflective card and polystyrene sculptures, which we intended to be used in conjunction with the foam sculptures and Polaroid cameras to reflect and capture elements of works participants, further alluding to a conversation between the disparate elements. The repository space was manned throughout the weekend by Hamish or myself, with the other person acting as protector and co-facilitator of the soft sculptures. The repository was a space in which groups of the public could borrow costumes which matched the drapes and our own costumes, a soft sculpture and a Polaroid camera. Each group was then invited to venture into the gallery for 15mins, and to use their sculpture and a work from the collection to tell a story which they should try and capture using the camera. Upon returning, the Polaroid photos were attached to some larger freestanding reflective sculptures, which served as a gallery of stories and indexical of what you could do, I.e. whatever you want. Something which turned out to be hugely successful was a large woven mat made from multiple sheets of foam. This was used by younger children and families as a space to play on, and provided a nice way to centralise an otherwise chaotic score. It also turned out to be a hit with numerous autistic children, whose parents got in touch afterwards via social media to express their gratitude at providing such an autism friendly environment.
All of this said, it was far from plain sailing. After having miraculously installed the curtains, the next major stress came on the following first day where it slowly dawned on us, that us not speaking (we had a card with a picture of a camera on one side and an empty clock face on the other) and being masked made it next to impossible to convey what we wanted families to do. This resulted in Hamish and I getting incredibly frustrated with ourselves, each other, precocious children and the ever expanding creche where parents happily let their children wilfully destroy our beloved foam sculptures. It became very apparent that there is a key difference between constructive play and destructive play. At times Hamish and I felt like arbitrators, fun marshals whose main prerogative was saving sculptures from wild eyed bouncing kids. I truly did not enjoy this part. Our body language was very telling, and in spite of us being decked out in pastel happy colours with full head masks, the children could tell we weren't happy and I had more than one angry staring competitions with children and parents. We were also woefully understaffed on the first day, and the Tate staff that were on hand, were about as soft touch as it gets. In the end we had to spell out the difference between good and bad play, which by the second day had sunk in.
However, day 2 was a very different affair. First of all we receded on our commitment to using no written language. If we wanted children to engage in nuanced gallery wide photographic performance activities, we needed to give them clear instructions. So, we wrote some clear and simple instructions, then took turns at being the custodian of cameras / cloaks and conveyor of tasks via written card instruction. Which left either one of us to roam, safeguard, instigate and occasionally perform for the other passers by. This worked tremendously well. It felt clear, safe, rewarding and highly generative. In spite of using some simple written instructions, participants were given an enormous amount of agency and autonomy which they made tremendous use of.
All in all it was a brilliant weekend and I’m over the moon about what this project has opened up.
The Mat is great.
The objects are fantastic.
Polaroid stories worked brilliantly.
