Revolution Road: Rename the Streets!

Whilst waking around Zoo art fair a leaflet was handed to me. It accompanied video documentation of a performance of a group renaming streets (via a blackboard) in Cambridge in front of a group of spectators. The leaflet reads as an order of service for the day’s events. In this respect it both acts as a prop within the piece and documentation after. It documents its self without meaning to. For me this made video documentation no longer necessary. In fact to even know that the performance had been undertaken was no longer of importance to me. The instructional quality to the text made the piece for me. It made it able for the work to be re-enacted again and again or indeed in the first place. Is there any need for the performance to happen at all?

Within the text this need becomes apparent through the importance of the ‘Witnesses’. The witnesses confirm the impermanent changing of the street name as a permanent. Only the witnesses will acknowledge this as a ‘real’ change. This ritualistic nature is pivotal to the piece naming the witnesses as ‘more important than (an audience or participant), like witnesses at a wedding or godparents at a christening.’ It mocks the importance of ceremony whilst relying on it.

Things to think about…

Importance of an ‘audience’ within own work

Ritualistic quality to viewing as well as performing own work