October 11th, 2008
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On Sunday, October 11th, I went with some of my classmates to the Shua Group Rehearsal for the Federal Hill Public Moves project. We were required to go to the rehearsal for our Visual Concepts III class, so I think most of us were under the impression it was just some art thing. I’m not a very abstract thinker, nor am I a huge fan of performance art. In fact, I was sort of dreading it. I remember complaining to my sister about it, and she told me to suck it up, because at least I got to experience things like this. I thought about it for a while afterwards, and realized she was right. So I went, suppressing my negative opinions of what little I knew about performance art. We met Joshua Bisset and Laura Quattrocchi outside of the Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore at the base of Federal Hill (the massive hill that we would soon be practicing on). Joshua and Laura were really kind in welcoming us newcomers to this field of art, explaining as basically as possible what we were going to do.
The piece is called Public Moves Federal Hill – a mass performance and human installation. Joshua explained that we were doing this to make people more aware of their space, and that we were ‘moving’ the hill. I think my first impression of this was more realistic, and I thought “Seriously, how can we move a HILL?” Of course, he didn’t mean it literally, but still. The skeptic in me was still there, and I was, to some extent, a bit negative about it. But that’s the thing. All my knowledge about performance art is based on someone else. I had read about it, and even sat through a presentation in my Introduction to Art and Media Studies class. Through words, and even Joshua’s explanation of the whole thing, I could only think “I’m going to make a fool of myself, and get really dirty for absolutely no reason.” But when we actually did the work, I found I was making friends with the people I knew as just ‘classmates’ and had a fun time trying to figure out what we were supposed to do. I still don’t think I got it quite right, and I probably messed up the whole thing for everyone, but I tried. And it was entertaining to try.
Later, when we did the actual performance, there were a few changes. The second performance, in my opinion, was more fun. Even though there were less people, we were more adjusted to what we had to do as performers, and it was easier to maneuver. But overall, it was a pretty interesting experience, and my opinions have definitely changed because of it.
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Entrance
Entrance is the first step of the whole performance. We had to gather at the base of the Hill and start climbing up to the top. During the rehearsal, we kind of all just walked up in clumps, and during the first time we did it, I was still rather confused at how everything was going to turn out. The final time we performed the action, we walked up in a single file line, which must have been entertaining to see as a spectator.
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Intersect
Intersect happens after entrance. I’m not sure if I got it properly, but essentially you have to mimic or ‘intersect’ with other people. It was really hard at first to do this. I felt really silly doing it. But during our rehearsals, and later in the actual performance, I learned to relax a bit. It was easier since I’d gotten to know some of the people I was working with.
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Freeze
Unfortunately, since we were all frozen, I couldn’t take a picture of this one. After the intersect, we heard five loud blasts, which was the signal to freeze what we were doing. This was to force everyone not participating to be more aware of the space they were in. Overall, this was really painful, because most of the time we had to freeze, I was in a really odd position.
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Meeting
Another signal went of to cue the ‘meeting’, in which we grabbed hands like we were greeting one another, and pulling ourselves forward to keep moving. This continued for a long while until someone whispered the word ‘line’. Once you heard that, you had to tell everyone else you met and gather in a line at the top of the hill.
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Line
Line happened in two ways; during the first rehearsal, we raised hands, brought them out, and walked down half way down the hill together with our hands out. After that, we did the ‘pacman’. All of this was a little hard, because it was hard to keep balance and the hill was slippery. During the actual performance, Joshua and Laura had come up with a way to make it easier for us. We would gather in the line, without the hand raising, and then walk down half way, and drop down into the ‘crab walk’, where we would walk down as if we were crabs.
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Circling and Tangent
Circling and tangent is where we would walk back and forth on the sidewalk on the hill, changing directions by making circles. Tangents were running up and down the hills during this process. After a while, someone would cue us to disappear, where we would disappear off the hill, and reappear by crawling out and laying down on the hill.
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Couching
After laying for a bit, we would start bunching up in groups, or ‘couch’. We would group up in more groups until we were one large group in the center.
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Portrait
The group in the center of the hill was called ‘Portrait’. Once someone shouted “Go” we could either climb up the hill and leave, or pose for a picture.
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End of Performance
The end of the performance involved us walking up and creating a line again. We would slowly back up, doing the ‘sunset’, in which we faded out, ending the whole thing. It was a lot of fun, and after doing it twice during the actual performance, I was glad it was over. The experience was fun, but really tiring.
