Proposal Sent:
“Can we infect you please?”
protoPLAY PERFORMANCE PROPOSAL TO FORWARD CULTURE, 14/04/2007
“The fate of thought depends and will depend for a long time between regret and assay”. Jean-Francois Lyotard, What is post-modernism?, 1982
protoPLAY has been developing work and process of working that are explicitly responsive to other people ideas, art works, art forms, questioning connections between disciplines in art as well as between practitioners - through opening up to collaborations.
For FWD CULT, protoPLAY proposes a performance based on the metaphor of the virus. We will need the organisers of FWD CULT to send us the proposals with images of all participants of FWD CULT by the 5th of April. Drawing on those proposals, protoPLAY will then devise and construct a collective performance, and present it at the FWD CULT event. If possible, protoPLAY would like to be the last to perform, so that the connections between the performances would be apparent to the audience. ProtoPLAY’s performance should last 20 minutes.
Our intention is not to disrupt, to spoil or better the other artists work, rather we want to use it primarily as a catalyst for a collective creativity. protoPLAY intends to act as a virus, entering into the content of the other works at the event, blurring and distorting their ‘codes’, copying and pasting, adapting, responding, connecting. We want to play on the connections between the work that we perceive, and the ideas that the works stimulate in the imagination of protoPLAY.
This project is a further development on protoPLAY’s inter-artist collaboration and cultural recycling. In 2006, we initiated “We Know Where To Find You” with the Permanent Gallery- Brighton-, a collective 190 minute performance, blurring the roles of the audience and the performers during a live event, using a polymorphic practice, asking the gallery to provide with a theme; and “Deconstruction/Reconstruction” during which 14 artists lived, worked and slept in the Basement gallery- Brighton- for 100 hours, questioning the issues of authorship and collaboration in art.
The theme of the virus can have extremely negative connotations if one cherishes the stability of the system in question that might be potentially be infected. Thus biologically we are of course extremely conservative, scared of disease and the changing effects of ageing, for example. But artistically we are much more progressive. The difference between these points of view is important. Our Art, be it called ‘Live art’, ‘Process Art’, ‘Cross-Boundaries Art’ etc. cherishes experimentation, risk and the capacity of a system to change. Thus ‘Can We Infect You, Please?’ is intentionally risky. We do not know what works we will receive, only that we will have a limited amount of time to process and respond to them. Our work takes into account the event as a whole and so is able to cross the boundaries, between the works and practices of the participants, between authorship and non-authorship, and challenge boundary of the fear of plagiarism.
The performance has already started: Imagine that this e-mail response to a call-for-submissions is the vector of transmission for the virus, and that this proposal is the point of contraction. You can chose to stop the virus before it gets a chance to take hold - by declining this proposal, or you can choose to collaborate with us, by selecting the other works and giving us access to their structure and content - and then seeing what happens… Can we infect you, please?
To watch the video documentation of “We Know Where To Find You”, or to download a digital copy of the catalogue of Deconstruction/Reconstruction, please visit www.protoPLAY.net
www.protoPLAY.net/ protoPLAY.collective@hotmail.com 0044 (+) 7727 077 924
March 14th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Ok, didn’t understand everything but I understood that it’s a bit cheeky.
Are we going to interact with and disturb other artists’ performances or is it more like the D/R exhibition ?
Did you send the proposal without asking people what they think about it?
Anna and I didn’t knew about it, did we missed something ?
ps: did you make this category not private ?
March 14th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
lot of questions………….
March 14th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Hi Thomas,
During last meeting, we said that we have to come up with an idea for this proposal, but that we have to keep quite “general” as we only had a few days to submit something. So , yes, Orion and me worked a few hours yesterday to bring a proposal together.
But don’t worry, it’s really an open proposal, and everything will be devised with the whole pP group during the preparation workshop. As we tried to put in the proposal, it isn’t our intention to disrupt anything ,but rather to use it as a starting point/catalyst for a collective performance. it is also a way to involve the organisers in our work.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
hello
i hope you could understand the proposal ok - otherwise perhaps the person we sent it to might not either….
yes its quite cheeky - but its mostly a bit like DR but wrapped up in some ideas about viruses, to make it a bit different, a bit interesting, and to try to make sure it gets selected.
how do you mean did i make the category not private? I thought the category was already in global private part that you made?
is it because i put a link to a private pP.net page in the 2nd email?
mmm-mmmmmmmm
March 15th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Ok, cool.
For the proposal, I understand the people from the gallery wanted something quickly. And if it’s a mutation of the virus D/R it’s all good.
ps: for the private thing, it’s my fault I forgot to set the ‘child’ categories as private. I fix this today.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:11 am
>>>>>>>>>>>>>NEWS FLASH<<<<<<<<<<<<
Oliver rang to say he liked our kind offer to infect the exhibition, and the proposal has been accepted.
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March 16th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Like it, like it.
March 25th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Good stuff! Thanx for building the proposal. It’s going to be great.