no man’s land – The Event​

 

Using the above premise as a starting point this event envisages taking over all the busker spots on the London Underground during the morning of November 11th and creating a truly unique and powerful event.

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The intention is bring together a young orchestra made up of professional and final year students from across the world.  The orchestra will learn a new piece of music over the week leading up to the performance.  On the morning of the 11th, each musician will take up a busker spot on the London Underground.  The performers will have no sight, or be able to hear, any of the other players. There will be no conductor on the performance day.

 

Following only sheet music in front of them. each performer will only play the part appropriate to their instrument and position within the orchestra.  For example, the third violin may have to wait 10 minutes before playing just a few notes.  Some instruments may only be used for a few seconds throughout the entire concert.

 

Each performer will be recorded throughout the concert in film and audio.

 

Behind each performer there will be an individual sculpture, some commissioned for the event, others already complete, each representing different aspects of conflict.  Next to each performer will be a spoken word artist or poet.  During the period of silence of the musician, a poem, letter or diary entry will be read out.  These will be sporadic with the public unaware of the timetable of performance.

 

​At the conclusion of the event, the recordings will be gathered together with the film and music synchronised in real time.  This will then be uploaded to a special website dedicated to the event.  No tampering will be allowed to the timing.

 

The Result

 

The upload of each individual player to the website will be combined as if the entire orchestra was playing in one room.  Any number of conditions could affect the assembled piece, players missing their cue, public interruption, faulty equipment or instrument and so on.  No attempt will be made to rectify deficiencies in the performance.  The results will be unknown as to how this concert will sound, and will remain unknown, to all participants until a special one off event following 11th November.  This post event will involve the entire orchestra assembling to play the whole piece in front of a live audience.  Before this takes place the audience will have the opportunity to hear the entire underground piece as it was played at the stations.  

 

The spoken word aspect will be constructed into a montage for the post event concert.  Each individual performance will be made available on the website.

 

​Diaries

 

Everyone who participates in this event for a fee will be required to keep a diary.  A page on the specially commissioned website will be assigned to each person where they will update their interaction with the event.  Each diary entry will have a maximum of 1000 characters only.

 

On the completion of the event, there will be an archive of everyone’s journey who took part in the event.  This will be published on the website and offered to an artist to create a new piece of work for 2013.

 

Intention

 

There is deliberate intention built into this performance from the very beginning: from raising the funding to the orchestra watching the audience listening to the recording from the 11th November event.

 

This project is intended as a representation of the premise set out above.  For all involved there will be a journey of emotion with excitement, the repetition of practice, the nerves of the event itself, the worry of the result and the concern of not letting the team down.   The impact of the event will spread wider than the participants themselves as those people closest to the individual performers and crew will also have to interact with the emotional impact the performance will have.

 

For the wider public there will be a sense of everyday life and an examination of how extraordinary or extreme events can quickly become part of the routine.  The performance will resonate in many different ways with the thousands who pass by.  A sense of enquiry will be the likely outcome, a slow dawning of what was seen/heard.  It may be months before a person realises they have seen the event, if they ever remember, expressing the slow realisation of the tragedy among the general public of the Great War.

 

The Underground

 

The event is about journeying, not the physical journey but the mental travel that everyone takes everyday.  The monotony many feel, the beauty that many no longer see around them until a point when life is uprooted, disrupted, the being itself is at risk of being extinguished.

 

There will be fretting and disappointment, setbacks and mistakes but also a sense of camaraderie will form, teams will develop, new people will meet and the project will become consuming.  Leaders will appear, skills will arrive through volunteers and a self-momentum will ensue.  Friendships will be made.  Post event, many will know they were part of something unique and for those not involved will be in wonderment at what took place.

 

​Bringing The Event Together

 

If permission is granted, the event begins immediately.  The timeline will be very similar to 1914 when the phoney war began across Europe.  While generals prepared for battle, the diplomats retreated for their annual two month summer holidays and the majority of the public were blissfully unaware of the storm clouds gathering.

 

The event follows the preparations timelines of 1914.  Funding will need to be raised, an orchestra formed, music agreed, sculpture commissioned, spoken word curated, technical issues considered and equipment acquired within the allowed budget.  Discussions will need to be had, people persuaded and performers found.

 

There will be fretting and disappointment, setbacks and mistakes but also a sense of camaraderie will form, teams will develop, new people will meet and the project will become consuming.  Leaders will appear, skills will arrive through volunteers and a self-momentum will ensue.  Friendships will be made.  Post event, many will know they were part of something unique and for those not involved will be in wonderment at what took place.

 

Chaos

 

The speed of events will give a sense of chaos to many of those involved.  This intended emotion will add to the overall experience for all the participants allowing, although very mildly, a taste of what was experienced by those young men nearly 100 years ago.

 

Epilogue

 

The performers who are chosen to be part of this event will initially be excited by the prospect.  As they practice they will develop in a way that human groups evolve with some becoming friends and other not.  There will occasionally be frustrations and much fun, there will be an excited expectation about the event day itself.

 

On Sunday morning at 9am, many of the performers and crew will feel different.  There will be nerves, ‘what if I mess it up?’, ‘there is disruption at the station I need to get to my spot to prepare’ or they freeze.  Whatever the feelings, each team allocated for the individual busker spots are on their own.  They must set up and be in position to start exactly at 11.05am (allow for the 11am silence to take place).

 

​What happens during the following hour outside the performance itself cannot be predicted.    Post performance everyone will be keen to meet up to discuss their personal experiences yet no one will actually know whether it was a ‘success’.

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The delay in getting to hear the completed events will create new nerves for all involved.

 

The Concert

 

A concert will take place a few days after the 11th where an audience can listen to both the recorded event from the underground and a full performance of the commissioned music.