What can you see?
The performance takes its starting point from the word surveillance – “close watch kept over somebody or something”. It playfully reflects on the act of seeing and of being seen, on the relationship of vision, language and power, as well as the sanctioned voyeurism, eroticism and auto-eroticism that lies at the heart of performance.
Simple, non-representative actions unfold for the sake of being observed. The entire performance looks onto itself and at the same time back at the observer looking onto the performance. In this funny and intense economy of gazes the performance is concerned with little else than its own unfolding.
To stand in front of other people. To play table tennis, to jump, to dance in front of other people constitute invitations for both performer and spectator to commit to the eventfulness of the passing moment.
What happens to our being when it is subjected to a field of visibility?
The performance experiments and toys with means to escape the grip of power inherent in the codified subjection to a field of visibility. It lays bare its own desire of becoming-imperceptible. Becoming visible as force and event: becoming table tennis, confetti & grace.
Surveillance was developed with 12 final year students of the BA Acting at University of Leeds.
And what can you see now?