Observe the Apprehension

You are invited to participate in a one-day performance by Per Hüttner and Fatos Ustek.

Date
3 - 8 pm on Monday, October 25th, 2010

Location
Basekamp space
723 Chestnut Street, 2nd floor
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106

Following their ongoing investigation into the boundaries of artist, curator, critic and their audience, Hüttner and Ustek will invite the audience to be involved in a new performance.

Hüttner and Ustek will set up a table at the Basekamp space (if weather permits, outside in the street) where they invite the audience to participate in their performance. Here they will explain what the participant is asked to do. Once the basis for the performance is made clear, the participating person will be joined by two performers who will be dressed up in uniforms developed by French fashion designer Emelia Rota. Ustek will leave the foundation and install herself in an agreed upon public place such as a café or shop. The two uniform-clad escorts and the participant will shortly thereafter join her. The two performers will kindly ask the curator to leave with them. She will agree. The two will hold the curator’s arms and they leave together. There will be no struggle or argument.

It is the participant’s responsibility to document the surrounding people’s reactions. The participant can do so using digital camera, video, sound, text or any other form that they feel is appropriate. This will be discussed in great detail with the person who agrees to join the performance.

The project turns virtually all the power structures of the world (and art world) upside down and allows the participant, not only to become performer and critic but also to study how members of the public relate to two officials in uniform. It could be two friends picking up another friend – except the uniforms they wear.

The project is planned to be repeated in Europe to investigate differences and similarities in social behaviour.

Each participant’s documentation of the performance will be posted online.

See you then!

Per Hüttner is a Swedish artist based in Paris who has a long-standing experience of performances in the public space and critically acclaimed projects that deal with audience participation and that break down the boundaries between exhibition and performance and artist and audience – noteworthy exhibitions include “I am a Curator” at Chisenhale Gallery in London and “The Invisible Generation” which was realized in public spaces in Melbourne, Shenzhen, Beijing and Kiev.

Fatos Ustek is a Turkish curator and critic based in London. She is the co-founder of the on-line magazine “Nowiswere” and have curated a series of exhibitions about the idea of present moment in time in Britain, Switzerland, Belgium and Macedonia.

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Basekamp is a non-commercial organization of people researching and co-developing interdisciplinary, self-organized art projects with other individuals and groups in various authorship-blurring configurations for the past decade. We use our Philadelphia space, along with temporary camps in other locations, as a home base to invite domestic and international collaborative groups in a joint experiment to develop new models of relations within overlapping art communities. The goal is to continue proposing collaboration as a practical and theoretical stance, and to participate in its evolution.