The Waiting Room - Video

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  The Waiting Room | 2014

The Waiting Room was a live interactive performance and installation performed at Chelsea Degree show 2013. The installation was a construction of a generic waiting room based on Samuel Beckett's stage description 'lieu vague' (Waiting for Godot). Inside the installation there was a group of 6 actors (2 groups of 3) whose role was to take a ticket on entering the waiting room and then ‘act’ waiting as they anticipate their number’s being called. On being called they leave the space through a separate door and are instantly replaced by more performers (the second group) creating a real life looping effect. Outside of the installation there is a 7th performer who controls the ticket calling machine, meaning only the actors numbers will ever get called. Alongside the actors the piece encourages audience participation, and there is a further 5 seats available for members of the public and a ticket dispenser at the entrance for them to take their turn. Through them merely entering the prescribed space they too become part of the performance (‘Spect-Actors’ Augustos Boal). However, as their numbers never get called it means that they must make a decision about when to leave the work, or what the work is, which challenges the expectations of viewing artwork. The Waiting Room aims to heighten perception of the audience, through the re-arrangement and negotiation of an everyday encounter. It is a liminal (in between) space, not only in its physical proximity to other work but more importantly in it’s concurrence with Marc Auge’s methodology of the ‘non place’ in that it does not exist without the before or after. In this situation I am making the in between state a constant, giving the impression of existing in the perpetual present whilst the pointless waiting and movement in and out of the space is a performance that never begins nor ends but is purely in motion. The Waiting Room aims for the audience to be moved between the realm of the real and the artificial, and similarly from the world of the waiting room, to the obvious construction of my installation, to the space of the exhibition, which is also ultimately a constructed space.