CROWD THEORY
Crowd Theory
is an ongoing series of photographic performance events exploring ideas
of community and the nature of crowds. Each staging involves up to 400
people who are particular to the site of that production. For each
event, a time and place has been specified and a group of people are
assembled, but their specific actions on-site are left undirected and
uncontrolled. Through this random orchestration of bodies in
site-specific venues, Crowd Theory
seeks to expand upon accepted definitions and perceptions of what it is
that constitutes a ‘community’ and how this converges with the notion
and implications of a ‘crowd’. The subsequent mural-sized photographs
that remain as evidence of these encounters create a vision of what
happens when large groups of people gather at sites of significance to
themselves, how they choose to be represented within these locations
and how in turn, these spaces potentially represent and define their
inhabitants. This
evolving project began in 2004, when the then Footscray Community Arts
Centre director Jerril Rechter and Simon Terrill came together to
discuss ideas for a project involving people closely connected to FCAC.
They wanted to create a work which was not only about the people
associated with the Arts Centre, but which was also a spontaneous
creation by the participants. Inspired by the crowd scene paintings of
16th century Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel, Crowd Theory
brings together performance, visual art and community engagement. Its
process of ‘performative photography’ allows participants to literally
inhabit their own idea of place. The process is one of selecting a
location, making an invitation to people who have an affiliation with
that venue, setting up an on-site situation and then allowing the
spontaneous properties of a large group of people to emerge. With the
assistance of lights, soundtrack, rigging and catering that work to
provide the atmosphere of a film-set, the project seeks to harness the
emergent and socially promiscuous potential of a crowd. The
photographic process ritualises the event and in so doing, provides an
image of this unique facilitation of a transition from ‘individual and
group’ to ‘crowd’. From consultation through to exhibition, a full
staging of Crowd Theory
takes four to six months and involves a reunion of the participants at
the conclusion of each project for the presentation of the final
large-format photograph. To date
there have been five Crowd Theory
events staged, the first of which is captured in Footscray
2004, with the Maribyrnong River and Melbourne city skyline forming a
spectacular backdrop. Two ensuing productions continued an association
with this district: Braybrook
2004 focused on a relaxed gathering of locals scattered across the
neighbourhood sports oval and Footscray
Station 2006 showed a twilight spectacle of bodies waiting and
in motion at this site of arrival and departure. Southbank 2007
was a massive undertaking that involved 350 residents from two imposing
apartment blocks in the centre of Melbourne’s CBD. Opening their
curtains to reveal their private homes, it was a staging of theatrical
proportions combining with the intimacies of voyeuristic delights. The
most recent project was held in a mud-covered patch in Melbourne’s
docks and Port of Melbourne
2008 provides a rare exposure of this restricted and enigmatic place of
conveyance, filled with its workers and framed by a backdrop of cargo
ships and cranes. Future
projects seek to collaborate with other cities, countries and groups of
people and will shift and develop in form and content as a response to
these new territories. Viewed as a group, the collated visual history
of these projects and the people imaged in these places will come
together to form their own theoretical crowd.
|
| Port of Melbourne, 2008, 180cm x 240cm, type
C print, produced in association with Footscray Arts Centre and Port of
Melbourne |
|
| Southbank, 2007, 180cm x 245cm, type C print,
produced in
association with Footscray Arts Centre and City of Melbourne |
|
| Footscray Station, 2006, 170cm x 250cm, type
C print, produced in association with Footscray Arts Centre |
|
| Braybrook, 2004, 90 cm x 180 cm, type C
print, produced in association with Footscray Arts Centre |
|
| Footscray, 2004, 180cm x 240cm, type C print,
produced in association with Footscray Arts Centre |
SELECTED REVIEWS
Urszula Dawkins, Imagining the ritualised hour,
RealTime issue #87 Oct-Nov 2008 pg. 49 and cover (http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue87/9199)
Suzy
Freeman-Greene, Looking at the big
picture, The Age, 16th August 2008, pp 21-22 (pdf)
Jo Roberts, Crowd mentality precious
cargo in theory, The Age, 27th July 2008, p 19
Penny Teale, FX in Contemporary
Photography, McClelland Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2008
Louise Martin-Chew, Alternative
Realities, Samstag catalogue http://www.unisa.edu.au/samstag/scholars/scholars08/terrill.asp
Daniel Palmer, Crowded Space,
Inside: Australian Design Review, No 49,2007, pp 38-40
Harbant Gill, Close to the Madding
Crowd, Herald Sun, 20th June 2007, p 63 Chris Healy, Crowd - or Community?, Meanjin,
vol. 65, no. 2, 2006, pp 167-172 (pdf)Crowd Theory, catalogue essay, 2006
(pdf)
TV:
ABC TV Stateline Melbourne's Crowd Theory Project
Broadcast 27th April 2007
RADIO:
Derrick Gill ABC 774 – Evening Show July 2008
Mark Williams 3PBS – The Opening July 2008
Laura Milkye interview 3RRR – Smart Arts July 2008
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