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.
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