Warehouse 275, Taidong Railway Station, Japanese-built, early 20th Century

drawing of labyrinth

labyrinth & building

May 20th, first step toward realisation using slabs of slate

2nd step, May 21st cardboard mock up

‘Fields of Engagement’ – Xiamen

A site-specific performance work devised by Petra Johnson for the Zhongshan Park Project in Xiamen.

‘Fields of Engagement’ – Xiamen

consists of three stages:

1. Rehearsal – fabricating an object

1. Activity – walking a pre-determined route

1. Epilogue – my morning is your evening

1.       Rehearsals are strips of activity where positions are redrawn: physical & virtual as well as literal & metaphorical.

A rehearsal enables the getting to work; it is a means of feeling the actuality that is to be performed. For a performance artist an object is a tool of the trade and can act as aide-memoire and as double. For the Zhongshan Park Project the rehearsal invites the public to engage in the negotiation of meaning through the fabrication of an object:

Object – a thing that facilitates the interacting and exchange, objects communicate the actual activity.

Thing – things allow, encourage, and permit activity.

The public rehearsal at Zhongshan Park consists of three sessions: each session lasts three hours during which the object is fabricated. The object is a seemingly suspended map of a route that will be walked during stage 2: the activity. Before we weave our way through the streets of Xiamen, the route is isolated from its daily environment. Before the foot will touch the ground, fingers and hands will make visible the twists and turns of the route to the eye. Bereft of context, the route: a line of twine held in place by transparent, elastic string, ploughs a furrow in the imagination of those who are not familiar with Xiamen and triggers the memories of those who inhabit and make the city.

On a flat plane two parallel lines will never meet, however, on a round sphere like the earth, they will eventually converge.

The site:

Zhongshan Park – a site hosting a plethora of phenomena.

The audience: incidental

The duration: 3x 3 hours

The schedule:

January 1st:     1 morning session              – North Gate

January 2nd    1 midday session                 – Playground

January 3rd     1 afternoon session            - near South Gate

Objective: In the context of the above locations in Zhongshan Park and within sight of the Art Theatre, which like any theatre is built specifically for staged illusions, ‘Rehearsal’ is a celebration of ‘the architecture within which a society works, plays and worships’. [1]

2.            Activity  

A one to one walk from Zhongshan Gongyuan to the sea.

‘walk with me’ seeks to make visible the composition of the ordinary. By applying a tight structure with set rules (as in a game), ‘walk with me’ provides a territory that is potentially free from ideology. The walks are durational performances punctuated by the two participant walkers’ corporeal rhythm. The participants are the artist and a companion. The paths are pre-determined yet each participant defines them afresh in their response to instigating prompts handed out by the artist. These prompts create an aesthetic milieu in which artist and companion co-create together. Suspended from everyday activities, they share memories, they observe small acts of everyday life, they note the mood of a moment, they sense the constancy of moving bodies walking in unison; they hear the rhythmic sound of soles tapping the ground.

‘the earth functions not as an object or as a centre of gravity but as the primary reference of our spatial existence and of our world.’ Dalibor Vesely

The site:                         From Zhongshan Park, near South Gate to the Sea.

The participants:     anyone

The duration:            90 – 120 minutes

The schedule:             between 9^th and 23rd of January 2013

Objective: Looking for the potential that animates the ordinary ‘walk with me’ asks: How do ordinary impacts create our capacity to affect and be affected?

How can we relate common experience and the resonance of passing events?

What links us inextricably to each other?

3.            Epilogue

A live Skype link with Kiosk Babylon, a working Xiaomaibu run by Mahira Yigit Hahn in Cologne, Germany.

A barely perceptible performance about the plain sharing of time: our evening is her morning.

As the day wanes in China, it awakens in Europe. Our past is their future.

Event time:                         the there – Kiosk Babylon in Cologne opens at 11.00 o’clock.

Set time:                              the here  – it is 18.00 o’clock in Zhongshan Park

Symbolic time:                  the sun has risen; the moon has risen

A stage for performance, a stage for exchanges, a window into the daily life of a kiosk.

Thank you for all your comments. From today onwards there is a film showing the walking routes in Beijing, Shanghai and Cologne simultaneously. At the appropriate stops of the walk – approximately every 10 minutes – the film shows a prompt that is handed to walking companions on live walks. You will find slips of paper to record any observations you make whilst watching the film. Please place the notes next to the appropriate prompt on the wall.

Once again, your feedback will be much appreciated.