A Thought Experiment 2018
A Thought Experiment, performance at 3:e Våningen at Live Action Gothenburg 2018. Photo: Christian Berven.
I attempted to evoke a meeting point between imagination and empirical experience, "What if" with "What is", boundary as a divide and boundary as a means of communication, screen and interaction, collective awareness and individual actions.
The audience and the room are divided by halv-transparent paper. Four coloured light sources in the corners of the room are creating dual shadows of each participant approacing the papper. Participants barely able to see their own shadows due to halv-transparent paper and the light setup, on the contrary shadows casted from the other side of paper are much more distinct, besides all shadows are colored by complimentary colors from the lamps. All this seeds a doubt and confusion about all casting the shadows.
Instruction to the participants: Draw outlines of the shadows you see.
An interplay between participants develops on both sides of the screen boundary.
Although separated only by thin screen of paper participants almost completely abandon vocal communication, preferring gestures or other playful ways of communicating their intentions.
Realising at once that fulfilling the task directly is impossible, participants assumed various roles and behaviours in posing, freezing in place, chaising each others shadows, drawing randomly, etc. living traces of the interactions by marker pens.
Resulting collective drawing is reveald instantly by switching off color lamps and swithcing on ordinary ceiling lights.