........................................................................................................................................................."YOU DECIDE 02#"
Performance
Amy Thomas and Oliver Irvine
"In Oliver Irvine and Amy Thomas’s ‘You Decide 2#, the implication of the audience is given political relevance. Described as an ‘Orchestrated Interrogation Circuit’, the piece features a female figure in an orange jumpsuit suspended in a harness, her legs forcibly spread apart. Throughout the room, there appear to be bodies crumpled on the floor under black cloths. On the back walls, a figure in a yellow radiation suit paints the same motif over and over again, slowly darkening the walls with its broad splashes of paint. But this whole scene is largely obstructed by clusters of painter’s easels, prepared with paper and pieces of charcoal. As the sound of hymns and prayers comes over the sound system, blindfolded spectators sit at the easels and begin to draw. It’s not clear if the first to draw were instructed to do so, but as they leave, other audience members volunteer to take their place, covering their eyes to an image that is impossible to ignore, putting charcoal to paper, and sketching their testimony."
Theron Schmidt is a writer and performer based in London. He was selected for Writing from Live Art, a Live Art UK initiative, and his critical writing has been published in AN Magazine, Dance Theatre Journal (forthcoming), Platform, and Real Time (Australia).
