Coerced Peformances

See also: [Happenings] [Performance Art] [Art History INDEX] [Comments for film Zardoz]

Coerced performances

The concept of a *coereced* performance is where people (not necessarily aware of their roles) are brought into a performance by coersion. For example, the following (if you will play along) In the movie *Sneakers* where during the middle of a scrabble game one of the players realises that the name "Seatec Astronomy" is not what it appears. He (Redford's character "Bish") clears the letters off the scrabble board and they start to re-arrange the letters until they reveal what it *really* stands for. The camera closes to their faces, and then scans along the letters, revealing little by little what they spells t o o m a n y s e c r e t s Thus, by forcing you (hopefully) to scroll the scroll bar thingie left to right, i am "forcing upon you" a behavioural performance in a piece that i have created. Here the *intent* is that you would have an experience similar to that of viewing the movie and how the pan shot works with the letters to slowly reveal what the "secret" of the name is. Ironially, the secret of the name is that it has to do with secrets. [Back to the ART CRITICISM page...