Oct. 1996.
IV St. Petersburg International Biennale SPATIA NOVA St. Petersburg History Museum
"A Place for Performance" Performance - installation - object

Materials:
Black card, white gouache, stand for a text, Polaroid camera with a set of photosensitive plates.

Action:
On the floor there is a black paper circle 2 meters diameter with the inscription “A Place for Performance”.
I bring in a stand with a text and put it within the circle.
I go off to the side and photograph everything that is happening in the space of “A Place for Performance”.
I hand round pictures to the spectators. The rest of the pictures on the special stand, I install into the space of “A Place for Performance”.

Duration: 30 minutes.

Conceptual text

I try to swap roles with the spectators and take a look from the outside onto my place, the place of a performer.
I go off to the side limiting my participation to the role of an observer and registrar.
The alienated spectator becomes a performer, and I become a spectator for him. “A Place for Performance” is a place for performance is a place for performance. (“Rose is a rose is a rose”).
This is simply ‘a place for performance”, a place for performance itself, “this same place”…, no more, no less.
Within “a place for performance” a new quite tangible space is formed, made of nothing – a clot of darkness.
This space is charged with potential energy of action. This is an area of possibility, probability of an event.
Unlike, for example a scene (place of action), this is an area of non-action, of inaction, of not-doing.
Crossing the magic circle - the boundary of the “place for performance”, the spectator is becoming a virtual performer – a part of energetic potential lurking within the boundaries of this place. He now has a possibility to transform this energy into action and also has a right to take decisions – to act or not to act. He has a right to say something (or nothing); he has permission for silence which could become a necessity to express himself.
In this way this place becomes some sort of space for testing performancism (the ability to perform).