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Live Streaming Now! Forced Entertainment’s -12am Awake & Looking Down

Forced Entertainment’s “12am Awake & Looking Down”
Performing at PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany.

 

In 12 am: Awake & Looking Down, five silent performers endlessly reinvent their identities using stacks of cardboard signs with which they name themselves, and a store of jumble-sale clothing (coats, dresses, suits, anoraks, trousers, pyjamas) from which they dress and re-dress. This catalogue of names range from LOST LISA and VALENTINA TERESHKOVA to ELVIS PRESLEY (THE DEAD SINGER) and THE MAN WHO WENT TOO FAR. The piece lasts anywhere between 6 and 11 hours and — as in other durational works by the company — the audience are free to arrive, depart and return at any point.

12 am… is a physical and visual performance that explores the relation between object and label, image and text. 12 am… also functions as a kind of narrative kaleidoscope as the named figures, in different combinations, share space beneath the backdrop of electric stars. The piece plays on the growing exhaustion and inventiveness of its performers as they create new stories or juxtapositions between characters.

12 am: Awake & Looking Down was developed from material first used in the company’s theatre performance Emanuelle Enchanted (1992) and is the first durational work created by Forced Entertainment.

The complete list of characters/signs used in 12 am… is published in Certain Fragments.

© Forced Entertainment 1993. 6 to 11-hour durational performance.The audience are free to come and go as they please.

Credits

Conceived and devised by the company
Performers: Robin Arthur, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor
Direction: Tim Etchells
Design: Richard Lowdon
Lighting Design: Nigel Edwards, Richard Lowdon
Soundtrack: John Avery

Commissioned by National Review Of Live Art.

(Source – Forced Entertainment Website)

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Caden Manson is a director, media artist, and teacher. He is co-founder of the media ensemble bigartgroup.com and network, blog, and publisher, contemporaryperformance.com. He has co-created, directed, video- and set designed 18 Big Art Group productions. Manson has shown video installations in Austria, Germany, NYC, and Portland; performed PAIN KILLER in Berlin, Singapore and Vietnam; Taught in Berlin, Rome, Paris, Montreal, NYC, and Bern; the ensemble has been co-produced by the Vienna Festival, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Hebbel Am Ufer, Rome’s La Vie de Festival, PS122, and Wexner Center for The Arts. Caden is a 2001 Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellow, is a 2002 Pew Fellow and a 2011 MacDowell Fellow. Writing has been published in PAJ, Theater Magazine, and Theater der Zeit. Caden is currently an associate professor and graduate directing option coordinator of The John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.

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