I liked the video stuff for the first half hour and the working musician bits for the next. The song lyrics were suggestive enough to make my head play a bit, especially next to the polar bear and the program text. The plants and ushering were less interesting to me, but they put these other elements into a relationship with the more academic issues about audience/performer, authentic/counterfeit, etc.

I think this “emperor’s new clothes” thing is a little unfair. Saying it always puts us in the superior position of the young boy. Isn’t it possible that either there is something there that we missed, or even that there is something there but we just don’t care? Or don’t like it?

I hope my posts on this matter do not put Mr K off Skewed Visions as we seem to disagree about the value of Ms Wampler’s work.

I do not know what Wampler wanted (whoa whoa), but when my guest and I discovered/realized the plants we were entertained — more to watch. I didn’t get a feeling of Ms Wampler being frustrated with the audience, certainly not in any vindictive way. I felt that she was using these “manipulative” strategies to put the performance into a context in which a higher level of self-awareness is coupled with an uncertainty about what is happening with the performance on a fundamental level.

Because the audience is always a part of the performance — this is not a new idea. But so many works continue to use the conventional relationship unconsciously or unquestioningly. I admit that one does not have to provoke the audience in order to (for example) create a more fundamental curiosity, but so few works work with that relationship and it is full of rich possibilities.

I am heartened by Mr Anderson’s thinking not because he enjoyed the performance, but because if he gave this one a chance he may also give my work a chance.