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It might go something like this:
You arrive in the foyer.You wait in the foyer.
The purpose-built fall-out, architectural overspill. Propping up the bar.Drinking tea. Chatting. The in-between performance, purpose, actionand thought. The place where the why, how, when and where can cometogether, or be left hanging…. There’s room here.
You leave the foyer.You return to the foyer.You wait in the foyer.
Something comes up in conversation whilst we’re waiting; in what wayare we being asked questions? Good question. Now uttered, it sits in thefoyer in-between us, in between the work. It’s a graphic all curved andshapely, a pregnant ¿una pregunta? But heavy. The sheer weight of it forcesholes into things, yawning chasms appear in the standard issue linoleum
oor. We struggle to avoid falling into them. To question, then, is to fall;
from grace, from the moment, from the work, from one’s self....In what way are we being asked questions? The question still hangs therein the room like a bloody big elephant. Tusks, teeth, trunk. The elephantspeaks, she tells us in plain English – because she’s an English elephant -that she might have the grammatical appearance of a question but in thiscase she is something else. She is a critical judgment disguised as a question.Something a bit more tricksy, maybe, but equally weighty, equally loaded.And what she wants is a response but not an answer, not a full stop. She’scalling for something with a bit more….room.
You leave the foyer.
T h e w h y , h o w , w h e n , w h e r e , w h i c h . I s , a r e , c a n , h a v e , d i d , d o e s , i f , w a s , w e r e … w h o … ?
B y R a c h e l L o i s C l a p h a m a n d A l e x E i s e n b e r g
E a s t E n d C o l l a b o r a t i o n s 2 0 0 9 , Q u e e n M a r y U n i v e r s i t y
1
Yoko Ishiguro
1
Occupied
2
Male and female toilets
3
Usually I would use the urinalbut I am forced to ‘go’ in a cubicle by a Yoko, who is dressed in a panda costume
4
Durational, over the whole day – this is an occupation after all and it is difcult to
occupy quickly
5
There are people and objects and there is this panda but I need to‘go’ – this is the main thing on my mind. And so I forge a direct path towards thecubicle – as if to say to the panda, “this is also my toilet”. There are other people inthe toilet, people who are not there to go to the toilet. I begin to ‘go’
6
I am aware thatmy feet can be seen from the gap at the bottom of the cubicle
7
Relived and steadied, Ibegin to compute the multitude of objects that are colonizing the toilet space: a singing
doll, toy soldiers arranged strategically on the oor, toilet paper stuck to the wallsexplaining the denition of an occupation, clothes on hangers hanging from cubicle
doors and other paraphernalia of a life condensed into a suitcase
8
Yoko is Japanese, sheis not from the UK
9
Usual toilet sounds: water, ushing, air freshener being dispensed
alongside a doll singing this high pitched digitized tune
10
We do not talk to each other
– there are virtually no words. Male toilets in particular are spaces where conversationis kept to a minimum and despite the obvious intrusion of the panda and her stuff, this
convention is still difcult to break
11
The public-ness of the toilet has now given way tothe occupation – the toilet has become Yoko’s space – it’s as if we need her permissionto talk, as if we are now intruders
12
Did anybody use the urinal?
13
How did they?
14
It happens to me without me knowing, conrming that this is the sort of occupation
that happens by stealth. No guns, no tanks but instead something quiet, smaller. Thisintrusion that happens even when you are not there
15
I turn, undo the lock and open
the door to the cubicle – and my suspicion that I was being watched is conrmed, as
Yoko (the panda) is standing right there, staring at me – her face still as our eyes meet,surrounded by the head-gear of her ridiculously cute panda costume – a face-off ofsorts
16
I wash my hands but this most everyday of actions is complicated now. I realizewhat I have done (pissed in her home) and washing my hands seems that it could add
further insult to what is already a difcult situation and so it becomes impossible
17
Iknow that this is a performance - Yoko wears a costume, she doesn’t really live in toilets,she is playing and un-playing things out. But the illusion facilitates the establishmentof a temporary autonomous zone, where, for a short while, the rules don’t apply and I
nd myself ctionalizing the rules of the toilet and instead playing by Yoko’s rules (the
un-real)
18
Take up residence in toilets
19
‘Life a Users Manual’
, by Georges Perec, 1978
20
Japanese abstract painting of paint
21
Occupying a country
22
Occupying a toilet
23
What’s
the difference between occupying a country and occupying a toilet?
24
That moment atthe end of the night when you need to go to the toilet because you are about to go onyour journey home. Now Yoko has cleaned up – the occupation is over
25
Artist name
1
Title of work
2
Setting
3
Audience
4
Duration
5
The beginning
6
Feet
7
Objects
8
Origin
9
Noise
10
The words
11
Why
12
Did
13
How
14
The middle
15
Face
16
Hands
17
Fiction
18
What
does she/he do?
19
A book
20
A painting
21
Something big
22
Something small
23
A question
24
The end
25
2
Siân
Robinson Davies
1
Disguised As Things
2
A black box studio - 70 seats – onthe left hand side we can see the technician behind a lighting desk
3
Sitting facing thestage, sitting close to the person next to you, some people are sitting on the stairs
4
30minutes. Relatively long periods with nothing on the stage – a bending sense of timeand a lingering duration
5
The beginning is the ending, some sort of reversal – it starts
with a bow and the giving of owers to the audience - the instruction is: throw theowers onto the stage at the ‘right’ moment
6
We see some feet wearing a lampshade - a
domestic mask
7
A lamp, a bird house, a table, some cups - simply presented and alwaysin relation to the body – this far more unpredictable and unstable object
8
‘The buildingblocks of language,’ she said much later, after she left the stage
9
Very quiet contrastedwith the noise of struggle, the noise of failure – a particular type of noise whichreverberates throughout the entire studio, perhaps throughout the entire world?
10
Bigplacards – titles, which in their handwritten simplicity contribute to a(n un)certainmove away from words, a reduction
11
because of the stage space, this black box
12
Didyou expect it to turn out in this way?
13
How different it is performing on a stage to,
say, a toilet? The stage space with it’s conventions and inescapable intensication of
whatever occurs there
14
Standing in the middle of the stage now, on a low table, Sian
is gently elevated off the oor and balances on one foot whilst holding up as at least 5
or 6 china cups by various parts of her body
15
This time her face is not covered, full ofconcentration and tinged with some fear, it draws us in
16
In a balancing act such as thishands become very important – stretched out, trying to grasp the air – but on the stage,there really is nothing to hold onto – you can’t hold onto time, can you?
17
Since eachimage is followed by a relatively long amount of time where there are no performerson the stage – just some space - the gesture that has just occurred has room to lingerand as it does I build my own logic out of the events, in my own time. I begin to createa narrative
18
Try, struggle, fail, repeat
19
'Abc's',
by Melissa Torres, 2004
20
A photographof Philippe Petit balancing on a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974 – look howhis hands are as steady as the giant buildings themselves
21
From behind the curtain,where we can’t see her, Sian slowly pulls a white wire off the stage
22
A small moment,perhaps something not even intended (an accident) becomes elevated because of thetheatre, the theatron – the place where we (can) see (almost) everything
23
How do youwork towards the unspectacular?
24
A bow is taken, the ending evokes the beginning
again. Theatrical conventions - owers are thrown and we clap together
25
A r t i s t n a m e
1
T i t l e o f w o r k
2
S e t t i n g
3
A u d i e n c e
4
D u r a t i o n
5
T h e b e g i n n i n g
6
F e e t
7
O b j e c t s
8
O r i g i n
9
N o i s e
1 0
T h e w o r d s
1 1
W h y
1 2
D i d
1 3
H o w
1 4
T h e m i d d l e
1 5
F a c e
1 6
H a n d s
1 7
F i c t i o n
1 8
W h a t d o e s s h e / h e d o ?
1 9
A b o o k
2 0
A p a i n t i n g
2 1
S o m e t h i n g b i g
2 2
S o m e t h i n g s m a l l
2 3
A q u e s t i o n
2 4
T h e e n d
2 5
3
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