Red Tape Project (Part II) - report
Last Tuesday, I made an appointment for tutorial with lecturers Simon Pope and Dave Shepherd and told them about the work that I did in Nottingham last week. I also told them I was much more comfortable making work with red tape compared with building a human-sized cage and doing a performance inside it. They seemed to think that making this kind of work with red tape was also a good idea, so I went ahead and made another performance, durational, in the installation room yesterday.
Prior to making this performance, I have done a lot of thinking about the concept of a contract, and how a signature can bind the individual to a piece of paper. I recalled some of the things people talked about concerning the contract and how it affects them in conversations with me, and used these memories to inspire me to write on the piece of paper that was taped onto the wall in the installation room, while I bind myself after every time I write on that paper.
Most of the time I write my name, or different versions of my name (since my full name is very long), whereas for fewer incidents I write the stuff out of memory from the many conversations I have had with people, as I mentioned above. For example, when I wrote down B$150,000, that was from a conversation I had with someone from Brunei, regarding his yearly salary; or when I wrote down "3 years in the UK = 5 years teaching unwilling brats!" ; was from another conversation with someone, who obviously doesn't like teaching. Of course, I will not name names here but you know what, to their relief, anyway, I don't think I can pinpoint who said what- because some of those conversations were years ago.
The objective of this work was to reveal what people felt about a contract, and how it restricts the individual from performing certain tasks. I was very happy this performance turned out, in my opinion, quite successful, but disappointed that only two people turned up for the show - I needed more opinions from the audience because I am still rather confused over what I would like to do for my degree show, which is due very very soon.
Anyway, here is a collection of pictures from the performance if you are interested (just double-click the image to look at over 300 photos of this performance):
