INTELLIGENCE (2019)

In the Facebook Era, the Instagram Age, and the Virtual Reality Revolution, is there still that urge to connect to a more human, elemental state?

Maybe it’s because we live in a world of instant media accessibility and lightning-fast communication, that I felt coherent words and actions were insufficient to explore the idea of connection to the natural world in Intelligence.

Both the written and acted elements of the piece were created by the participants as a response to a series of instructions. I asked each performer to use their phone to form four sentences; each sentence beginning with a word of their choice that they felt best describes their relationship with ‘nature’. They then used the options given to them by the algorithm on their predictive text to create the rest of the sentence.

These sentences surely reveal so much about the lives of these friends and strangers. They are nonsensical and surreal- isn’t this the best way to get to the truth? I then gave the performers a stone and asked them to perform a process or action with it in an attempt to become 'closer' to it.

Each of these episodes might also be approached as a spell. Take the formula home with you and see what happens. Maybe in the midst of this global climate emergency, if you use it in the right way, this spell will have as much real world impact as an angry tweet to Donald Trump.

‘Haha.’