When the Guests Are Not Looking (2016-18)
When the Guests Are Not Looking is an extended project that takes the form of a publication and live performances presented in an exhibition context. The publication consists of a series of index cards each of which containing a short description of a performance alongside a drawing of an empty gallery space. They function as scripts for performances that have the qualities of pointlessness, of irreverence, of a gust of wind. The exhibition consists of a display of the index cards, architectural interventions, as well as performances that take place in and around the exhibition space.
The project is structured around the title character of Denis Diderot’s “Le neveu de Rameau” which presents a dialogue between a philosopher and a vagabond. The dialogue confronts two opposing figures and two opposing relationships to work. On the one hand, there is the philosopher, with his love for unconfined thought and his oeuvre, and, on the other, there is the Nephew, a hero of indiscipline, an idler, a buffoon, actor, pantomime and a musician who avoids all sites of production and operates in their margins. He is a parasite who derails society’s production machine.
To realise this project, the artists collaborated with a number of performers who each perform a range of actions while inhabiting one and the same character of Rameau’s Nephew. These actions are performed both during and outside of the hours that gallery is open to the public. They remain sporadic and unannounced. In other words, visitors to the gallery may or may not bear witness to a performance during their visit, and if they do, they may or may not be aware that what they are witnessing is a performance.
In “Le neveu de Rameau,” Diderot offers an example of an alternative subjectivation within the Enlightenment, a period often portrayed as the root of our contemporary obsession with work and productivity. The social and philosophical project of the Enlightenment was founded on a rationality that meshed with the emergence of a capitalist economic system based on maximizing efficiency and productivity. In this project, the figure of the Nephew, a figure of modernity and an unproductive artist who is literally workless is used to tease out these historical connections and to make new connections with the current transformations of labour.
Performers: Marina Buston, Jessica Del Fierro, Lia Fallah, Cindy Kao, Tobias Macfarlane, Evan Medd, Darylina Powderface, Katrina Robinson, Elisabeth Saul, Jack Strudwick, Amanda Sum, Jessica Taylor, Henry Wu, Maria Yanagisawa and Jordan Zanni.
When the Guests Are Not Looking, 2016-2018, installation, publication and performance; installation: theatre lights, piano, dolly, sound system, carpet, blanket, books, cloth rack, hangers, transparent sequin top, cutlery, dishes, glasses, coins, glass bowl, oranges, cookies, performance cards, wooden sticks, coloured gels and platforms. Photo: Blaine Campbell.
