[NetBehaviour] The Participatory Act of Giving up Control

[Johannes Birringer]

Hi Randall

thanks for sharing this, and also alluding to the Networked Practice Online Symposium that you all have planned, it seems like a very interesting event.

Now the report you published, which seems to comment on critics's responses to the "Kidnap" piece, does not at all jive with discussions I recently
took part in, and I personally admit to feeling appalled at some of the more manipulative immersion theatre practices that are currently en vogue
or seem to have sprung up, in the experience economy and from providers of immersive fun or humiliation reality-TV (locking audience up, coralling and coercing them,
faking existential crises, provoking traumatic experiences), testing whatever limits they are testing now in live art;

being kidnapped, i would have thought, desiring to surrender and give up control (?), is not an aesthetic trial run or "existentialist" prototype you can sell as "political performance"? 
or can you?


respectfully
Johannes Birringer
dap-lab

________________________________________
From: NetBehaviour [netbehaviour-bounces at lists.netbehaviour.org] on behalf of Randall Packer [rpacker at zakros.com]
Sent: 29 January 2018 02:46
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
Subject: [NetBehaviour] The Participatory Act of Giving up Control

Here I discuss Matt Adams & Blast Theory's controversial performance work Kidnap, in which spectators paid £10 to enter a lottery in the hope of being kidnapped: a classic exposé on the participatory act of giving up control. Matt is a keynote for the upcoming Art of the Networked Practice Online Symposium. This blog feature was based on essays by Maria Chatzichristodoulou and Steve Dixon, both participating in the Symposium.

The Participatory Act of Giving up Control
https://thirdspacenetwork.com/symposium2018/participatory-act-giving-up-control/

Best,

Randall