not particularly related to the fourth week, but as @sanna.toi user put it in the chat, it would be nice to create a group, could be a facebook group for example, to continue sharing and exchanging ideas, to stay in contact with the rest of the students, and build a little network.
I have just created one, if anyone is interested, here is the link
Cheers!
I am going to describe my participation in a bloco de carnaval de rua in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (street carnival blocks). Aspects key in audience interaction are in bold (mostly everything, as a bloco consists almost of a 95% audience and 5% musicians, production, stiltspeople, puppeteers, etc). The artistic piece/celebration consists of a percussion and/or brass band that plays popular songs, sometimes versions of all- time classics, or specific carnival marchs (“marchinhas”). Those have been rehearsed previously, including stops, or small dance steps that they will perform and the public will probably follow/imitate (from squatting to jumping, raising arms, etc) Everyone wears a costume, of whatever they like; sometimes not even a representation of anything, just something out of what is considered ‘normal’ during the rest of the year. The band has a starting and finishing point in the city, and a set time to start and (sometimes) end. Some performances have lasted as long as eight hours. Some performers start at different locations and then group later, to mislead the crowds, some only announce their meeting point minutes before to avoid huge crowds and control the audience number. The audience participates, surrounding and basically following the band along the city streets, bridges, occupying statues or monuments, wearing their own costumes as well, singing and dancing like there is no tomorrow, in a huge collective catharsis. There is a production team that surrounds and maintains space around the musicians, provides water to them, and big puppets that march along with the public. Something very special happens, is that inside the bloco, little independent blocos appear. Small groups of people that bring similar or theme-related costumes appear, complete with their own banner, and even their own choreographies. A nice example of this was a gimmick “camarote” (as in theatre box/vip area) bloco: four people held Styrofoam columns with a velvet rope forming a perimeter, strolling along with the multitude,and you could walk inside w/them if they gave you a paper bracelet, and be a part of an ironic vip area that was exactly like the rest of the crowd. So one bloco not only performs but sets the scenic space for the entire audience to perform whatever they want. Everyone becomes a performer. Like a matrioshka of revelers.
Also Video Mapping by Coletivo Coletores- Transmemorial. Exhibited on FLIP 2018. (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty) Paraty, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Strong graphics, indigenous, afro and fringe areas represented on a very delicate political time.
Red Ball Project. It is a traveling public art piece by American artist Kurt Perschke. Considered “the world’s longest-running street art work” the piece has been to over 25 cities globally and moves through a city with a new site each day of the performance.
Two types of public places I could name or identify would be:
a. the street
b. A subway or train station
c. (Privately owned but still…) the hall of a bank.
The criteria used:
a. Public as in no one can be restricted or banned from transiting it, dancing, singing and owning it in a bodily-self-expressio way. Not the freest of public spaces (in comparison to a field for example, places with no walls or edification).
b. Public space, thinking about its diversity and quantity of public in transit, some with no time and some with waiting time to spare. A place where time is fiercely demarcated and with bigger and more spatially condensed flows of audience than the street.
c. A little and more private, thorny version of b. A place where all transactions require privacy and safety/no risk/protocols and rules enforced, quite opposing concepts when talking about public creation or art. Public as in open to the general public, but legally a privately owned space.
Bearing those in mind, my definition could be a place where public means open to all public. Where people transit. Where there are no restrictions or rules or categories defined, both for audience, their possible interpretations of the piece, and the actual work of art presented.
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