The Centre of Attention
Cue Card Action Portraits
(Action Diana)
participatory - performance - installation - film - exhibition
by
The Centre of Attention
Cue Card Action Portrait / Action Diana is at once an exhibition, a performance and a chance to see the artist at work and participate.
The Centre of Attention was onsite for the duration of the shows/ work to produce a feature length film casting the public as the characters throughout.
The exhibition hall becomes a set, a production meeting venue, a group show with other artists' works selected as the mise en scene. Fine art, film, performance, participation, installation, story-telling combine to create an 'hot installation'.
The contemporary exhibition as a display of inert, finished product has run its course. For the Centre of Attention, the moment of the exhibition is a locus for intellectual and aesthetic play and experiment as well as the opportunity to generate together material to work on at a future date.
It is a productive site. The Centre of Attention's interest lies in the act of marshalling the elements that an exhibition situation provides and create without physical fabrication. In this instance, to use the audience members as the unruly material in the artist’s hands to make a film which is both a documentation, a series of portraits and an art work. By pushing participation and installation to absurdity the audience has been dematerialised.
The footage produced is a document of a number of performances in the gallery space. The work suggests a notion of the poverty of video art against the wealth of art in a movie.
The work in progress will be screened in the gallery and on the internet daily to further emphasise the battle between artist and viewer to consume one another. The artist consumes the resources of the infrastructure for its own ends, while pretending it is for your benefit and your entertainment.
This is an ongoing work by the centre of attention.
thecentreofattention.org