Freedom in the Face of Absurdity
An Evening of Performance Art at Peckham Levels
I entered the Cad Red Closet event at Peckham Levels numb from a long working week. I left feeling revived, my mental state transformed by a vivid reminder that life doesn’t always have to be quite so serious. The night consisted of a series of different performance art pieces exploring the format through a range of different genres: music, fine art, drama.
Performance art has this sense of play that really resonates with me. This permeated two performances in particular: “The Notated Body II” by Ben Adamson and “A Serious Storyteller” by Xixi Xiao, which provided the perfect antidote to another day rushing round central London in a state of semi-consciousness.
The evening of performance art was curated by Catherine Li, who manages the studio space at Peckham Levels. Having previously organised a series of arts workshops in the auditorium, she reconfigured the auditorium space to create an intimate environment that brought each performance closer to the audience. Red curtains ran across the length of one wall concealing the entrance and dividing the open plan auditorium.
In this makeshift ‘closet’ space, time felt temporarily suspended and each performance was able to create an ephemeral community, all drawn together through a shared experience of the absurd.
When I spoke to Catherine, she emphasised her desire for the evening to be mindful of the sense of vulnerability that comes with both presenting and participating in performance art, while still retaining that sense of play and enjoyment that comes from the eccentric and zany art pieces.
Ben Adamson’s “The Notated Body II”
The first performance was London-based multimedia and sound artist Ben Adamson’s performance “The Notated Body II” which carefully probed the intersection between meaningful messages and playfulness. He stood almost entirely naked in the centre of the room with just a marker pen and a microphone throughout his 30-minute performance, with the audience forming a circle around him. He began by asking audience members to join him in the spotlight one at a time. Removed from the safety of the crowd, they were invited to make a mark - any kind of mark - anywhere on his body. After which, they had the option of whispering into his ear what they had written or drawn, which he would then repeat into the microphone.
There was initially some awkwardness and reluctance among an audience perhaps not prepared to participate in such an intimate but also exposed way. Some wrote words, others chose to doodle or make abstract marks - perhaps to avoid the further intimacy of whispering into a naked stranger’s ear.
Some participants were clearly outside their comfort zone, others less so. It soon became clear that, without the artist inviting comedy into the performance, many leant in that direction, perhaps anxious about being perceived as overly sincere in front of strangers.
Ben’s performance was a fascinating opportunity to witness an artwork that only really exists thanks to the active participation of its audience. Inhibition and hesitation gradually gave way to a more relaxed engagement.
While others struggled to think of something profound to contribute, one wrote simply ‘I’m too shy’. Other participants offered everything from scrawling ‘MUG’ across the artist’s forehead to the more poetic ‘La Tristesse durera toujours’ (a quote from Van Gogh, meaning ‘the sadness will last forever’) and the self-affirming ‘I accept myself’.
There is something quite mesmerising about seeing a hesitant and uncomfortable audience gradually loosen up and connect with one another. Half an hour in, we felt less like a passive audience, more like a group of collaborators, comfortable in one another’s company.
What initially felt awkward and alien took on the quality of childlike play - a vivid illustration of the power performance art has to develop a sense of community. In life as in art, letting go of inhibitions is so often the precursor to positive experience.
Xixi Xiao, A Serious Storyteller
This sense of collaboration intensified during London-based performance artist Xixi Xiao’s absurdist performance, A Serious Storyteller. This was a tale in four parts, which Xixi tells me she sees as transitions rather than separate acts. For Xixi, performance art depends on building trust with the audience. She closely monitors the mood before presenting each section of her performance.
In the first section, from behind the glass wall of an adjoining room, Xixi thrashed around, making exaggerated and erratic movements while
packing and unpacking a suitcase. She pulled clothes off and on, banging on the glass wall and intermittently directing an unnerving stare at the audience. She then re-entered the auditorium and acted out a scene in which she appears possessed by three inner spirits, which she described to me later as Angry, Naughty and Calm.
Xixi then transformed herself again, taking on the persona of a cat, going up to audience members and nuzzling up against them. In her final transition, Xixi called upon audience members to join her at the front of the auditorium to help stage an ‘auction for freedom’.
When I asked Xixi about her strategies for engaging the audience, she said “if you give me a reaction, I’ll pick up from you and I’ll communicate your energy with other people, and in this way we connect”. The reaction to her performance as a cat clearly illustrated this. Some began to laugh. Others meowed back at her. The more the audience engaged, the louder and more insistent her meowing became. This was arguably my favourite part of Xixi’s performance as it was at this moment that the audience really relaxed. The speed at which Xixi was shape shifting did not allow time for worrying about how others might perceive our individual reactions, we were all able to let go of our self-consciousness, we couldn’t help but be entertained.
She then abruptly diverted this wave of energy, snapping out of her cat performance and announcing her “auction for freedom”. This abrupt change in persona created a palpable feeling of anticipation amongst the audience, at this point in the performance we truly had no idea what was coming next. For this final section, Xixi took on the role of an auctioneer, informing us that we each had an endless pot of imaginary money with which we could bid for imaginary freedom for all of humanity. The money might have been entirely fictitious but almost every member of the audience was reluctant to part with it. I asked Xixi how she handles this kind of resistance. She said simply that she doesn’t worry about it. She believes that every one of us is there for a reason.
She continued cajoling her audience and soon a ferocious bidding was underway. Before we knew it, we had all relaxed and were engaged in play again. Fun is an intrinsic part of Xixi’s performance technique.
“Life is there to be enjoyed” she says, “you must learn to lighten up and liberate yourself”.
The feeling of lightness that I felt when leaving the Cad Red Closet is one I have tried to hold on to since that evening in March. Not only have I become more open minded when engaging with performance art, I have also tried to practise employing this more playful attitude in day to day life. Perhaps the time spent rushing around commuting isn’t really as colourless as it often seems…
By Maia Tacey
Maia Tacey is an MA History of Art graduate from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her research primarily examines modern and contemporary painting with a particular focus on material studies and technical art history. Based in London, she has a keen interest in the ever-changing art scene of the city and the emerging artists within it.
Ben’s instagram: ben.adamson66
Ben’s website: https://www.benadamson.art/
Xixi’s instagram: xixixiao1111