(Brian Wene is a performance maker and MA graduate from Goldsmiths College with a focus on audience interactivity within contemporary performance modes. His specialization is in activating the involvement necessary to produce performance, based on the idea of cold or unrehearsed participants. Engaging in processes can only be beneficial, let’s see where they can be used.)

When responsibility for another human is hoisted upon you, apprehension follows suit. Can anyone really accept in open arms the responsibility of another’s sensations? The Milgram Experiment decided to test obedience and the conflict of running against the participant’s conscience. How far would you be willing to go with a voice insisting that you continue? What if it was all make believe? What is the difference between play and reality?

In a new version of what we are calling “Mechanical Failure” the ongoing idea of power and obedience is questioned. Participants are asked to follow instructional statements located on headphones. The instructions vary from ‘Stand up’ to ‘Follow the instructions given by the other participant.’ Initially the participants are located in the audience and then asked to come onstage, put the headphones on and partake in an experiment of sorts. The stream of instructions work in effect to eliminate any past from the participants’ points of view. As soon as an instruction is given, a short silence is provided for the completion of the task. But the important aspect of the participant’s role in the performance is to provide ‘live interpretations’ of each instruction.

The term ‘live’ is the basis of the work. By breaking down the actions of the performance into single sentence instructions, an elimination of the performance history and an inability to predict the future occurs with the participants. The end result would prove to be fresh and alive each moment of the experience. As this is not a game, in the sense that it can be won, the participants are asked to live in the moment and give up fully to their own instincts within the performance. The idea is not to give up their thoughts to the mechanics of the performance, but to start afresh following each instruction.

Understanding the allure of this type of performance depends on one’s interest in what is known as the ‘situation’ of our modern daily lives. “The situation is thus made to be lived by its constructors. The role played by a passive or merely bit-part playing ‘public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors but rather, in a new sense of the term, ‘livers,’ must steadily increase.”(i)

Guy Debord’s statement about creating ‘livers’ of the performance/artwork speaks directly to specific goals within the scope of fully participatory performance and artwork. The Situationist ideal of participation includes direct intervention of people within their own lives, to “Draw him into activity by provoking his capacities to revolutionise his own life.”(ii)

The material within Mechanical Failure can be considered an example of this type of direct intervention of the participants based on their own experiences within this world.(iii) This reliance on and activity based upon personal choice/experience could be liberating in the sense that importance and value are placed on the participant throughout the event.

As Jeff Kelley states in the introduction to Kaprow’s The Blurring of Art and Life, “Our experience as participants is one of meaningful transformation.” (iv) The transformation here is grounded in the familiarity of the mode of presentation to the participants, that of following instructions. We have all experienced both sides of the leader/follower system, however have the important questions been raised about what is right for each individual within this situation? Kelley further states, “Participatory art dissipates into the situations, operations, structures, feedback systems, and learning processes it is like.”(v) A new perspective can thus be gained through Kelley’s statement that the act of participation will dissipate into the reflective situations after the performance is over.

Ideally, the confidence in and comfort with oneself gained from aiding in the creation of a performance event would bleed into real situations and “revolutionise his[or her] life.”(vi) Or, conversely, participation in this type of activity could de-specialise the nature of the performing arts, specifically the nature of performer/performing.(vii) De-specialisation in this context does not refer to a belittling or degrading of performance activity or the role of the performer, however an actor’s much relied on idea of ‘training’ does not suit this particular mode of presentation. What we ask for is the human being behind the training, not a showcase of technique. With the focus on the person and their responses to the material in each moment, the participants are allowed to be what Debord stated as ‘livers’ rather than those we call actors. By using personal experience as not simply an impetus for choice, but as the trail a participant follows.

Through different media the question of “Who’s responsible” arises. Is the mysterious voice to blame for the goings-on of the participants? Are the participants acting on their own free will? How long can an audience witness the events onstage?

Finally, Mechanical Failure was conceived and directed by Brian Wene, Edward Sharp and David Luff. It had its first performance on October 3rd at the Union Theatre, Southwark. Subsequent performances will be on October 6th, 7th, 11th and 19th. All performances will be part of an ongoing theatre festival titled Shortcuts 2006, running through October 21st at the Union Theatre. See the website below.
www.shortcutsfestival.co.uk

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(i) Debord –IN – Art Into Theory 1900-1990, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992, pg. 694.
(ii) Ibid, pg. 695.
(iii) “Therein, the given natural and social forms of experience provide the intellectual, linguistic, material,temporal, habitual, performative, ethical, moral, and esthetic frameworks within which meaning may be made.” Jeff Kelley, Introduction to The Blurring of Art and Life, Berkley: University of Berkley Press, 1993, pg. xviii.
(iv) Ibid.
(v) Ibid, xxii.
(vi) Guy Debord, Toward a Situationist International, 1957.
(vii) Not all aspects of course, but particularly ideas of strict adherence to a technique or craft.