'Keep people safe': Designing a participatory performance within the strict parameters of social distancing in Australia. Issue 1 (6th March 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fahd, Cherine
• Is Part Of: Scene. Volume 10:Issue 1/2(2022)
• Page Start: 83
• Page End: 101
• Publication Date: 2023-03-06
• Subjects: pandemic -- touch -- ethical design -- design restrictions -- design process -- Sydney Opera House -- visual art; Design -- Periodicals; Visual communication -- Periodicals; Performing arts -- Periodicals; 792
• DOI: 10.1386/scene_00045_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2044-3714

Abstract

This article recounts designing and performing an intimate encounter with strangers during the pandemic. At the end of 2020, as Australians emerged from a long period of 'lockdown', the celebrated Sydney Opera House again opened its doors to the public. Commissioned to create a new work for the Sydney Opera House's Antidote Festival, I designed a 'touch' performance that met the Australian Government's COVID-19 protocols for social distancing at indoor events. Instead of being frustrated by the restrictions, I used the health and safety rules as if they were conceptual instructions. Surprisingly, I was reminded of the 1960s and 1970s conceptual artists whose experimental capacity was borne from instructive limitations. Seeing the restrictions as an opportunity, I discuss how the physical limitations ushered in by COVID-19 (along with the heritage status of the Sydney Opera House) provided the parameters for conceiving a scene and an experience that was everything the pandemic denied – public, participatory, intimate and physical. I also reflect on what I learned in the process and how needing to keep people safe brought profound ethical understanding.