Precarious Office: a climate refugee from the future

Precarious Office was a promenade performance that took place earlier this year in Macau. I designed a walking route through the city which started on the southern shoreline, passed through the city centre and arrived at the gallery, Ox Warehouse, who were supporting the artistic residency. 

The starting point was notable as it was off limits: a small patch of trees sunk into the coastal mud, the remains of a mangrove forest which had been cut down to make way for land reclamation. It was here that I was smeared in mud. The smell was ripe; this was salty sea mud and sand. I had to climb over a fence to get down to the beach and this provided the first obstacle of the show: lifting office furniture over this fence then pulling myself over it too.

The route took me through a flat reclaimed area of land which casinos and banks have now colonised, then up a public elevator to the older part of the city. The reactions of passers by were an integral part of the work and there was no shortage of these. In a way the people glued to their phones oblivious to what was going on are just as interesting too. All hell could break loose, but as long as it didn't get between them and their phone, it would be irrelevant.

The performance was given with no explanation, it simply consisted of a tall, western looking man, covered in mud and struggling with office furniture to cross the city. I quite wanted to let the image be itself and not surround it with a story or set of expectations. 

That's not to say I didn't have any intentions or designed it by chance. I have seen many videos and news reports lately of people fleeing flooded homes. I wanted to make this an office space, however, to emphasize the spirit of blind industry that is in no small part playing its role in shaping our current climate crisis. The image had to be kept normal, however, as if this were a routine situation, something that goes without mention.  

The heat, duration and resistance of the materials made this quite a difficult performance. I was in no way acting tired, I genuinely was exhausted and had to use my full energy to make it across the city. It was humid, hot, the plastic started to hurt the skin, the wheels didn't enjoy the bumpy pavement. It was a proper test.

Having arrived at the gallery, the office equipment was then displayed as part of the exhibition with the full length video of its transport playing on the screen. This gave the objects a greater significance, they were not just props for a performance but an integral part of the exhibition. What's more, the sound was edited so that the sound of the office chair rolling over mock historic cobbles was privileged. This was to draw attention to performance like quality of this recently constructed history and to reduce other sounds so that this video could combine more effectively with the other works in the audio space of the exhibition. 

Expanded Tourism - The Gods are Thirsty

I finally put together some clips of the performance that took place during the Expanded Tourism workshop in Tenerife a few years back. We ascended the formidable volcano El Teide, starting in the night, walking through the dawn and arriving at the summit before the 9AM cut off time that the site has. Along the way I made a performance, at regular stops, in which I offered beer to the volcano. I was trying to channel the energy of the tourist sites that line the island. 

It was a tough performance, in the end. As we got higher up, altitude sickness kicked in and with the fatigue from the climb this made the last push to the summit surprisingly hard work. But the reward was immense. What a view and what a place to savor a well earned beer. 

The Mud Man: Walking Art in Macao

On a random Wednesday morning in April I climbed over a tall barrier that blocked off the beach. I was covered in mud head to toe and carry office furniture.

To be precise, I was pushing, pulling, carrying and dragging an office chair, a folding desk, a computer and a monitor. This was a mobile office that was being pulled through the city to the obvious bemusement, not to say disdain, of well dressed passers by.

The small wheels were not designed for pavements and slopes. I had to try really hard to control it all and it became quickly clear that this was not going to be an easy task, it was physically demanding. I threw myself into it and became very focussed on the action, this was the only way I would get it done. Most sensible people would give up here, then again, most sensible people wouldn't do something like this in the first place. 

The first part of this walk cum drag took place on flat reclaimed land next to the casinos. All of a sudden a steep hill rises from the ground and, fortunately, there was a public lift that I was able to squeeze into to take me to the top. I was already feeling wrecked.

Now into the old city proper I pushed on. I don't particularly want to explain why I did this, I rather like the fact that the whole thing was unannounced and people in the street, here too for that matter, had to find their own explanation. I think there is a lack of things in our cities that don't fit but which provoke interesting questions even wonder. More often the things that come out of nowhere are less obvious or less benign. You lose your job because of technology developed half-way around the world or your bills jump sharply because a war. Life itself makes less and less sense and is unstable. 

And onto one of the Portuguese style areas which are beautiful but have these small stone cobbles which are a nightmare to pull a loaded office chair over. Well I guess they were not thinking of that scenario when they paved the streets in traditional Portuguese Calçada. There is an interesting history to these stones, which are not as old as they appear. They were put in place in the dying days of the colonial administration leaving a residual Portuguese mark on the city which has come to be embraced. For me they were not welcome at all! 

An hour and much sweat later I arrived at Ox Warehouse where the exhibition will happen next month. One part of it be the video of this walk, which these still are taken from; another part will be the office equipment itself. If it's still working, it might even be used to show the video, let's see. This question of gallery presentation is a persistent question that many artists have worked with: how to show or share a walk? In this case the walk is a spectacle too so the focus is on the walker as much as on the terrain. I might return to this subject in a further post and look at a few examples of walking art presentations but first things first, a long deep shower, a video to edit and an exhibition to install. Opens May 6th.

The Tour of All Tours: Shanghai Xintiandi video

Every now and then I find bits of video on old phones or wherever and that's precisely what this is. Some footage of The Tour of All Tours in Shanghai. Seeing as there is rather little video of this show online, I thought it would be good to share it.

The thing that made this performance stand out from the other iterations of The Tour of All Tours was the fact that it was banned by the authorities. To be perfectly honest, I think that says more about Shanghai local council than it does about the show; there was nothing particularly aberrant in this version, it was meta-tourism as usual. 

In terms of video, this does remind me of a plan I have to adapt a tour for the camera. I made one such effort for the Beijing tour and that was part of the exhibition On Tourism (Xiamen 2022). I would like to make a proper effort to do it for the camera, however, rather than piece together bits and pieces. It had struck me that this Shanghai tour might be suitable but the area has changed and is less welcoming. It has turned into a luxury shopping and red tourism site that would make it harder to pull off this sort of thing nowadays. The tour moves on and will happen elsewhere.