Still Acts

A ‘still act’ is an arrangement of people and objects held in stillness for long durations. The term comes from anthropologist Nadia Seremetakis who uses it to describe social events that can alter our normal modes of perception and attention. In these performances, I arrange people and objects in stillness for long durations. The effect is similar to the theatrical tradition of tableaux vivants, which were used for religious and ceremonial processions prior to the Nineteenth Century, and as a form of trompe l’oeil entertainment up to the present day.

My still acts differ from a tableau vivant in a few ways. First, they are meant to draw passers-by into a radically different experience of affective space that contrasts with the normal rhythms of the city. By “affect” I am referring to assemblies of objects, sensory cues and physical actions that, in combination, create strong emotions and agency for the people involved. Still acts reorient public spaces by interrupting flow and encouraging people to gather. They happen in places where witnesses must decide what to do in response. Some photograph the scene, some try to go around it or through it, some add themselves to the stillness, and some try to make the actors break. The still act invites the audience to consider their mode of attention, and offers them a heuristic opportunity to react to the performance.

Over time, the still act is not entirely still. Imperceptible movement occurs, muscles shake, and the spectacle changes due to forces that the performers cannot control. The more the actors attempt to suspend life, the more things work to break the stasis.

  • Still Act at the Chicago Cultural Center

    Still Act at the Chicago Cultural Center

    Part of the City of Chicago's first annual Looptopia Festival - May 11, 2007. Photos by John W. Sisson.

    As part of the events surrounding Chicago’s first all-night Looptopia event, I worked with a large group of 30 performers and musicians to produce a performance in two parts. One part of the performance took place in a gallery within the Chicago Cultural Center building and involved a surreal installation with the musicians and a strange variety of domestic objects and actions. The second part was a long-duration still act with 25 performers arranged in poses drawn from art historical references on the entrance steps leading into the Cultural Center. Both parts took place simultaneously.

    During the performance, the streets of downtown Chicago, as well as the Cultural Center building, flooded with thousands of people who wanted to experience the City’s first-annual all-night Looptopia event. Eventually, the crowds became so dense, that the police closed off the streets around the Cultural Center, and locked the doors of the building to prevent more people from entering.

    The sheer size of the crowd and the police shutdown forced us to cut the duration down from three hours to two, but it was an incredible experience to put these surreal and totally still worlds into the hyper-revelry of the event.

     
  • Still Act for the JAW West Festival

    Still Act for the JAW West Festival

    At the Portland Armory - July 2007

    A still act that I created for Portland Center Stage’s 2007 JAW West Festival. There were roughly 20 people arranged in a line that started at a table of theatrical props and costumes, snaked through the lobby, and ended along the sidewalk outside the Armory Theater.

     
  • School of the Art Institute of Chicago

    School of the Art Institute of Chicago

    Performed at various sites around Chicago between 2006 and 2007.

    It was graduate school and I was interested in still life painting and the way objects and people assemble into groups. Stillness seemed like a good way to slow things down for more careful looking. After spending a decade perfecting a technique of highly articulated theatrical movement and physical action, suddenly I found that I was interested in seeing the body sustain a frozen position for long durations. Sometimes I think of this as an exercise in what Susan Sontag called the aesthetics of silence. Some people said I was torturing my friends, but they were willing participants, I swear!