The Death of The Death of Hercules.

by Ruth Barker, 22 Feb 2011

Hello,

I’m adding an image of Rotterdam Central Library which is tinged with regret, because a project I’ve been working on has just been cancelled.

It raised an interesting question though, which is why I raise it here. Since October I’ve been talking to a woman I shall here call M, about the possibility of doing a public performance in the Library’s foyer. M approached me about it (she’s curated / organised / managed several performance events in public locations around the city of Rotterdam), and I was keen to do something in such an unusual location.

We’d been speaking for a while and the work was well into development. I often work with a fashion designer, Lesley Hepburn, who produces bespoke garments for the performances, and I’d commissioned a new piece from her, which was already complete. I’d finished the script (called ‘The Death of Hercules’) and was into rehearsals, when it emerged that M hadn’t yet got permission to use the site. This is the work in development:

The library is a very public space, and M at first suggested that we didn’t need explicit permission from the institution, reasoning that I could perform more spontaneously, occupying the space unannounced, as it were. I was very uncomfortable with this proposal, and flat refused, which was probably frustrating for M (sorry M). It took me a while to be able to articulate why it was so important to me to get official permission, but here’s what I came up with:

1. I wanted to feel invited in.

2. I wanted the work to be a gift to the people who use the library. I wanted the performance to be happening for them, rather than at them.

3. I didn’t want to feel that I was critiquing the library space. I wanted to feel that I was adding to it, instead.

4. I wanted the work to have its own space and time within the library.

5. I wanted the work to feel wanted.

This isn’t to undermine the validity or importance of interventionist work. It isn’t to prescribe how any other work should or could be made. But it was important for me to realise that in this case, in this place for this work, I wanted that frame of the official sanction, the formal invitation. It surprised me to learn just how much the lack of that changed (for me) the meaning of the gesture I was making.

And so the project isn’t now going to happen. At least, it isn’t going to happen yet, and it isn’t going to happen in the library. I’m still talking to M and in many ways I feel as though this unexpected change of plan might be for the best. I think we both understand my practice a little better than we did before. And we’re looking for a new space – a new context that can we build the work within.

Wish us luck,

More later,

R.