Thoughts On "The Audience"

Besides the performances that I write about everyday, there is a rigorous production of other planned and impromptu works that take place undocumented. Most of the works are nomadic and drift through the city at various points in the day. It is hard to locate the works, and often audiences looking for performance actions end up finding residue and traces. (Especially in Emma Waultraud Howes', Juliana Pivato's and Marc Couroux's works).

The invited audience is in most cases not the desired witness/participant for the work. There is a tension played out everyday between the officially published schedule of the festival performances and the unofficial one that changes everyday. What is the artist's obligation to audiences who expect to find performances as “advertised” and then do not? Traditional festivals intend to build audiences by fulfilling the promises of their schedule and programming. In the case of Visualeyez audiences are expected to find both the information and the performances. Indeed, it is through the process of finding the work, either through deliberate searching for it or stumbling upon it through chance encounter and anomaly, that one fulfills the intent of many of the artists here.

Interestingly, the blog is the most constant and stable site for invited audiences to encounter the performances featured in the festival. The artists are very aware that there is a larger audience watching the progress of their works. In morning discussions, we talk about the impact of the blog audience on the works. Even though there are few comments posted in response to the blog, artists appreciate the fact that audiences can access the processual development of their works throughout the ten days of the festival.