Anti Design Festival

Last time I blogged The Anti Design Festival was in its fourth day and I was a little unsure about how my work fitted into its surroundings and how well the audience were receiving it. As is usually the case with these things, I spoke far too soon. The day after that blog post was published we made some small, but significant changes to the work. When I say small, I really do mean small- we pushed the time of the first tour back an hour and put an extra sign up on the wall. But what a difference it made. From that point onwards, the audiences doubled, trebled even, in size. This size difference bought a new dimension to the work- rather than small groups being whisked around like lost lambs the audiences became bolder and more opinionated; a safety in numbers reaction to this crazy lady trying to sell them everything that moved. The size of the groups allowed people to see the piece for what it really was as well. Rather than feeling uncomfortable, self conscious and hurried they could see the performative elements and almost always gave applause's at the end- something that has never happened before.

The last few days of ADF also highlighted how anonymous my work actually is; I could walk between the audience or even on the tour with them and listen to what they had to say. Extending even beyond that, my name hasn't appeared in any of the ADF adverts or publications- the piece wasn't even advertised as work. Looking at my website as well, there isn't even a picture of me. Instead, documentation of lots of other people and my name- on the first day of ADF Cecilia Wee, the curator didn't even know what I looked like, something which is unusual for performance artists.
Whilst in reality most audiences do not know what the artist/writer/director looks like, my audience are rarely even given my name. But before you think I'm complaining about this observation I'm not- I genuinely like it.

One thing people have been asking me a lot recently is will I appear in my own work? Why do I hire actors to help me? Initially I had to get actors- in order to make my audience (tutors and university peers) to believe in my work they had to not know it was work. And if I had been there that would have failed outright. But now, I'm not sure. My audience has changed quite a lot and often the people who will see my work don't know me. So maybe I can be in it- it would certainly save money. But there rises another issue. I am an artist not an actor- can I perform the pieces as well as they can? Probably not...

So, (this is leading somewhere I promise) I am thinking about taking acting classes! No, seriously, I am. At the moment my 'thinking' has only extended to clicking on an arts jobs ad for classes, not even signing up for them yet but I am thinking about it! So I say, watch this space! I might make it onto my own website yet...