Open letter, Aberystwyth: 6/4/2014

 

'In practical terms, we intend to open the project to the public for six hours between 12 noon and 6.00pm on Thursday April 10. We may go on longer if we are able. During these hours the public may come and go as they please. Within the six hour frame we will be attempting to make a complete chain of events occur which, if it were to complete, would do so in approximately 10 minutes. So, theoretically, we may complete the sequence many times…..or never…… Much of what is ‘performed’ will be a meticulous re-setting of that which has failed. In bald terms the work is a ‘domino’ construction of energy transference between found objects.

 

In conceptual terms the project engages with the vital, fatal and glorious endeavour of getting it wrong – a distanced optic which regards evolution, with affection, as an accident waiting to happen. But for me, and the team, this engagement with failure is serious stuff. Without the courage to fail, stasis - creative and otherwise - remains inevitable. 

 

In this process we are also learning that we are far from alone. Everything is alive. Sand is alive. String is alive. Barbie dolls are alive. Observed closely, nothing is ever as you left it. Nothing is inanimate, and everything is systemic. Accordingly, the project has no set title as such, only a nickname we have found ourselves using – ‘It worked yesterday….’ The public presentation will be an endeavour, rather than a performance (though I recognise these may be the same) – an endeavour to make an accident waiting to happen, happen. At present I’d say the odds are probably no better than 200/1. They may shorten. They may not'.