Please visit the Net(work) blog at :
The structure of the event consisted a main performance area where audience members could sit and watch performances. Along the other VIVO walls were smaller "fair booths" that surrounded the main performance space. I was interested in this structure because I envisioned that people could move between watching the main performance in the middle and interacting with the performances on the periphery.
The reality was that when people walked in they immediately sat down and watched the center pieces, and were initially timid about visiting the performance booths. It was also hard to pull focus on the performances because all the pieces in the center and the sides were evenly lit. This made it difficult to create a mood and to hold that audiences undivided attention. However, it more responsibility on the audience to make meaning of the various components that were competing for their attention. My hope was that a greater sense of agency was achieved through synthesizing the fragmented information.
As the show went on and the performances in the center became more interactive, the audience members felt more comfortable branching out and exploring the booths. By the end of the show, the chairs in the center were removed allowing for a more free flowing and almost anarchistic environment where people were visiting the booths and congregating in the middle and even engaging in chair fights.
In my own performance as a "customer service representative" for the show I got audience members to take survey. I received a wealth of insight about what people thought was effective and in effective at the show based on the criteria presented within the survey. I got lots of suggestions about how to improve the show theme at many ends. Overall I felt the show was a really good learning experience and I plan on incorporating the feedback I received as well as the lessons that I learned from group dynamics into future shows.
Francis, Genevieve, Jenny, Lindsay and Victor expressed concern with nature of ideas and how they come into fruition through language. Francis installed a voice recording at a spotlit podium. His voice recording struggled to put thoughts into language, humming and haaaing, unable to find words. Jenny dressed in white and projected the subtitles of her Spanish voice recording. She spoke of the origin of ideas and the space of potential before their arrival. Genevieve talked about the inspiration from her performance coming from a dream. She insisted that she was being "used" by the small ghost to tell the stories of red pears. She refered to them by their first names, while talking about their career status and personal life. The name she used referenced famous female writers, such as the ghost"Sylvia", aka Sylvia Plath. Through language, Genevieve created fictious personal histories for inanimate objects. Lindsay constructed a drama on her blog by asking others to report any information about her missing lover. Victor similarly created a fictious senario through language. He exited the classroom leaving a note explaining that someone in the room was a threat to his heath. Futhermore, he stated that we only had 3 more hours to live. The class was left to question the implications present within his note.
Jenny, Andy and Anna presented performance as a practice and a skill. Andy brought in a video installation of a rap performance that he did at UBC. The video positioned 
Ruben, Skunk, Francisco, Grant, Derya's performance all worked within this realm of interest. Fransisco stripped down to his underwear, laid himself down on the flooer and covered himselve in maple syrup with a paint brush. The syrup acted as an adhesive to which he applied sheet after sheet of golf leaf onto his body with a roller. Francisco's body became a painting, a sculpture and an object of spectacle. Ruben also made himself and object of spectacle by covering himself in white powder, and posing as a sexualized crucifix. Signs on his body read "super sexy" and "xxx". He seemed to imply the interrelated nature of sex and sacrafice, religion and sexual repression. Patrick explored mating rituals and their ties to Easter in Pegan religions. He made a dramatic enterance into the spotlite wearing an easter bunny head and a long red robe. He expressed his virility through a Jackson Poluck like expression of spraying silly string all around him. He then made a padded "nest" where he laid his egg. Therefore his Easter bunny became androgenous and multigendered.
