Virtual Closing Party: Audience

Performer/Audience/Mirror (1975) by Dan Graham

First performed at the De Appel Arts Centre in Amsterdam, this work explores the interactivity between the performer, his audience and a full-length mirror. Using the mirror at the back of the stage as a monitor, Graham voiced his unrehearsed observations of the audience, activating the various feedback cycles taking place within himself as performer, between the performer and audience and among audience members themselves. Now considered an historical work by Graham, it represents the artist’s pioneering use of video to document perception and his interest in the semiotics of film.

Downpour (Torstrasse) (2004) by Ceal Floyer

In Downpour (Torstrasse) (5 minutes, 55 seconds), Ceal Floyer has filmed windy storms in various locations, where rain was blown in diagonal directions. By tilting the camera, Floyer captures an image of perfectly vertical rainfall, the illusion given away only by the border of the frame. Both of these works reflect Floyer’s manipulations of every day situations, testing the slippage between function and implication, the literal and the imagined.

Speak (1962) by John Latham

Speak (10 minutes) by British conceptual artist John Latham comments on London’s emerging underground scene in the 1960s and offers rare insights into artist’s avant-garde film practice. The film features the use of coloured discs to create an animation with stroboscopic effect, a technique developed for Latham’s first stop frame animation Talk Mr Bard, either in anticipation of the psychedelics of the era or a formal exercise in kinetic art. The work was first projected onto the stage at an early Pink Floyd gig, where band members were rumoured to have recorded (lost) soundtracks for the film, which were rejected in favour of Latham’s own recording of a circular saw slicing through piles of books.

THE TRAP, Matucana 100, Santiago de Chile, December 2007 (2007) by Santiago Sierra

In the film THE TRAP, Matucana 100, Santiago de Chile, December 2007 (5 minutes, 33 seconds), Santiago Sierra chose a selection of 13 individuals from the cultural sector, including Chilean government officials, art world professionals and critics, to participate in this work. The film opens with these individuals entering a long, dark corridor made from plywood. At the end of the structure, the participants find themselves on stage in the middle of a theatre surrounded by 186 Peruvian workers. With no escape, they are forced to retrace their footsteps. Without their knowledge, the corridor figuration has changed, no longer leading to their original point of departure but instead to the street. Once outside, an invigilator hands back the keys to their cars and thanks them for their participation.