You Got Me But Baby I Got You

Responding to Thrashing Without Looking.

A feisty party game I got to play twice – first as what I’d call ‘predator’, and then second as ‘prey’. The audience is divided and there are no spectators here – except perhaps the Aphids crew, who bring us twelve-at-a-time into their latest private experiment in live cinema.

The four predators convene around a high table of champagne glasses, perched anxiously on bar stools with no idea what we’ve just walked into. We make small talk about awkward first dates before our mischievous host brings us back to the menu. We’ve each been given a smorgasbord of hypotheticals about our ideal first date, and begin to make choices that we’re quietly sensing might be about to become realities. Would I go for table tennis, or dinner, or just kissing all night long? I can see a packet of tic tacs sitting discretely on the table.

We’re making a karaoke video clip and the four of us are about to play starring roles. Our host introduces the crew and the cameras. The eight people I just stood next to in the foyer are now stranded in the middle of the arena, strapped into video goggles and unaware – or all too aware – that they themselves are being watched. I just filled out a list of my preferences, but I was certainly not in control.

It’s the racing mind that makes Thrashing so titillating. As prey I felt like the butt of a cruel joke,  learning very early on that you’re one of the singles  in the video, consciously being picked or not picked by other audience members. As potential dates quickly came and went, giving me champagne and then taking it away, the desire in me to maximise each moment waged war with the self-awareness that made me constantly adjust my posture and retreat  into my shell. The hollow sensation of unrequited romance washed over me in glorious slow motion.

But as predator it was bewilderingly fast. Acting on snap decisions and looking only for immediate gratification I made the worst small talk, danced dirty against unwilling strangers, and did indeed kiss all night long. Our conquests were documented and fed live into the goggles of our prey – we were making this video for our own entertainment.

From either side – and much like most first dates – it seemed impossible to win. The twelve of us had completely different experiences of this work, and the gulf between me and my date could never really be crossed. When the goggles came off we all rushed to shake hands, and swap stories and  internal monologues and half-dreams. Thrashing is a filmically mediated reconstruction of the dating game, mixing volatile intimate encounters between strangers with that slightly numb feeling that comes from the realisation that your dream date is the stuff of stock footage.

At the shows finale I slow-danced with a stranger who couldn’t see me, but held me close. We  swayed softly together to the music of Wendy Mathews. Later that night I shared an awkward gin and tonic with a stranger as we sat listening to the very same song, in French.

Thrashing Without Looking saw me coming.

Mark Pritchard lives in Melbourne and makes theatre. He trained at the VCA, UOW and PACT, and is a Kickstart artist for the 2012 Next Wave Festival.

Thrashing Without Looking was presented by Aphids at Artshouse.Created by Martyn Coutts, Tristan Meecham, Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Thoms and Willoh S Weiland. Sound design by Alan Nguyen.

www.aphids.net

Photos by Bryony Jackson

Rate of Exchange

Field Theory was dreamed up by a group of artists with varying interests and practices.

It is fair to say that all of us are interested in different ways in which to engage people in experiences of meaning. If that sounds a bit vague it is because the actual parameters of the work that we have carried out is so broad and does not follow a simple and easily definable pattern. If one was to look at what we have created separately in the past year, (beyond the Field Theory funding model) it would look something like this;

- researching an underwater choral work about coral
- undergoing a year long investigation into what it takes to be an expert
- directing an 11 artist collaborative project which yielded 40 new works in 3 weeks
- creating a socially engaged project with the City of Melbourne to enliven/activate an area of the CBD for a transient local community
- creating an interactive tug-of-war on a train

And that’s just a couple of the projects.

SO with such a wide variety of interests what is it that has brought us together to create Field Theory?

Field Theory is an alternative funding model, an attempt to try to enable the type of projects that we are interested in to continue and thrive. It came about through a filtering of discussion around how to fund a project like Jason Maling’s three year The Vorticist. Funding bodies are not set up for an ongoing or iterative project like this and we are not artists who can claim triennial funding or the like.

So we created a model that uses crowdfunding. This has precedents in organisations like pozible in Australia, friendfund in Germany and The Awesome Foundation and Kickstarter which came from the US.

The main differences to those projects are that we maintain curatorial control over the artists that are selected to be funded. The reason for this is that we want to engage in a more personal or intimate exchange with the community that are supporting the projects.

Each supported artist is asked (in return for the $5000 that they will receive for their project) that they will send one gift to every Field Theory member (The Field Theory organisers assist with the sending of the gift). This then cements the economy of exchange that will be built up over the period of the membership.

TO our surprise (delight and consternation) there were some very enthusiastic Field Theory members who once they had given their $100 to the cause then also wanted to come and be in every work and support in other ways. Part of our theory was that there was a crowd of people out there who were eager to take part in some activities that were art related and we were correct, however we were not ready for the response and this presented a challenge to us.

If we are to throw open the doors to people having a stake in a work then how far does this go? In films when there are large funders or backers for a project there is some influence these fat cats will have. What about the thin cats of live art funding? What is the rate of exchange for Field Theory?

I guess this is something we will continue to investigate as we move forward into our second year.
We are a few weeks away from completing the final Field Theory project for its first year. Very soon after that we will put the call out for the next years members. Please stay tuned to the Field Theory website over the next month.

fieldtheory.com.au

Martyn Coutts is a
Field Theory organiser.

Pie

lala talked with Willoh S. Weiland about Pie, a participatory live art project programmed into Primavera 2009 by curator Jeff Khan for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Pie asked contemporary artists to sit down with a member of the general public and talk about their work. If the member of the general public wasn’t happy with their explanation then they could throw a Pie in their face. If they got along then they could choose to sit down and share the pie with them.

lala – The Pie has a lot of connotations in film history as a device of slapstick and gentle ridicule. So why the pie?

lala – Pie started as a project which was part of This Is Not Art Festival in October, 2008 in Newcastle and this year was at the MCA in Sydney, what were the differences in the project?

lala – The MCA and the Primavera exhibition are quite progressive in their programming yet it seemed like it was quite a challenge for them to get their heads around the idea of a once weekly performance?

Pie was a work by Spat and Loogie (Kat Barron and Lara Thoms) and Willoh S.Weiland. Performed 5 times over the course of the Primavera exhibition at the MCA, Sydney 2009.
Spat and Loogie are a Sydney based artistic duo
Willoh S.Weiland is an artist and curator living in Melbourne.