Happy 2007! Routine Hearing at HERE

As a HERE Artist in Residence, I will present my own play in the Culturemart Festival next week (Jan 12 & 13). I'm also supposed to go see all the other HARPies' shows, which, honestly, I don't see how that is supposed to be feasible, considering everyone is going to be in rehearsals up til the day of their own show.

Anyway I managed to go see David Morris and Juliet Chia's show last night (Jan 2), Routine Hearing. I was not expecting to enjoy this work -- only because I'm not such a fan of audience participation, nor am I a fan of overtly political work, which I had the impression this would be. But I was pleasantly surprised to find myself genuinely engaged and excited by many of the ideas they were exploring. Though I found the program to run rather long, and there were some logistical kinks to the structure, the fundamental ideas about the physiological process of hearing/listening were fascinating. Some things I learned: regardless of whether you are right or left-handed, your right ear (and left brain) are wired to be receptive to language. Due to selective hearing, many times we will pick up on changes in tone/emotion rather than changes in content of text. According to a scientific study that monitored numerous staunch Democrats and Republicans, they found that while the subjects were made to listen to political speeches, the area of their brains used for LOGICAL REASONING was NOT engaged. Extrapolate from that -- the current bifurcation of our political system is resulting in people making decisions on moral grounds instead of thinking things through and digesting new information logically.

So the thing about the performance was that there were no performers -- or rather, the audience members were the performers. We all had to sit on chairs on a grid on stage, and with CD-players in hand, press play when instructed. With 10 different variant CD's, it was unlikely that the person sitting next to you would be listening to the same thing. We were instructed by the woman's voice on the CD to physicalize our listening, in an attempt for us to become more conscious of our own process of listening. Lean forward when drawn in. Lean back with arms folded when disgusted. Cup the right ear and turn to the left when ambivalent. Turn to the right and look behind the chair when distracted. There were three sessions during which I listened to maybe 7 or 8 different audio tracks, ranging from Rush Limbaugh to Francis Fukuyama to Stephen Colbert, a wide spectrum of conservatives, neo-conservatives, and radical left, and all throughout this, we all worked at physicalizing our hearing.

The surprise pay-off at the end, was that we'd been videotaped the whole time, and they replayed our movements in fast motion to classical music (projected onto the floor of the stage), so we could see what kinds of floor patterns, gestures and choreography out listening created. A dance for political hearing.

The CD players limited aggressive movement (maybe podcast next time?), and the whole exercise was rather long. Many audience/participants were either confused, reluctant, or just plain got tired after a while. Nevertheless, this piece (play?) did unearth questions about our process of not only listening but participating in a democracy. It was strange to be the observer and observed all at once, very meta... But in a way that is what participating in democratic society is about, right?