Perform

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Copenhagen, November 1996. Crisp, low sun.

Entering through a courtyard, I looked up. A goods lift, of the type seen on small building sites, was carrying some dirty plates up to a bedroom, which had a floor but no walls. There seemed to be someone sleeping up there.

I entered the building, passing an intensive care bed, a suburban railway platform, an office in the back of a nightclub, a teenagers bedroom, a small gallery, and many other Western European environments. There were a large number of people around- after all, this was a major event in Copenhagens’ European City of Culture programme. It soon became clear that the ones who pretended you weren’t there were the performers. Conversations, confrontations, gossip, whisperings, ignorings; all the routine ways of being in Europe, in our families, in or out of our heads. There was no pressure on time: I could stay as long as I wanted. Similarly, the actors seemed free to wander between environments, to improvise the stuff of lives. Sometimes quiet, sometimes melodramatic, it soon became apparent that it was the rooms that had a script, and that different actors were free to work around the overall theme of each place. I wandered: a micro-flaneur with the city brought to me.

A bell sounded loudly: I noticed a panel of coloured lights in the corner of each room. The actors stopped what they were doing, noted the new colour flashing, and seamlessly shucked off their previous behaviour repertoire.

Conversations switched, dominance swapped characters, some actors left, and others arrived. I was disoriented and thrilled. To play with and discard senses of self as a trifling matter, to wear personality like a changeable coat. I was in Weltsuret , an installation by Lars von Trier.

For three hours daily, four days per week over a period of 7 weeks, the cast gave themselves over to this building, the Danish equivalent of the ICA although a lot bigger. They willingly became inhabited by behaviour dictated by the set itself, and by the imperious prompting of an all-powerful lighting panel.

Bells would sound and lights would flash at unpredictable intervals. Half an hour could go by, and the cast would have developed fantastically elaborate scenarios, to be discarded without hesitation on cue. At other times barely a sentence would escape; the cut-up effect would see words of one character transform into those of another, sometimes from the mouth of the same actor. The sense of discipline was extraordinary.

What was prompting this mechanisation of theatrical experience?

There was no correct way through the building: at first glance the control room seemed to be just another set. The actors entered and exited as in any other room. In this room, however, the audience could not enter the equipment space. For the first time since entering this behavioural maze, freedom of movement was restricted to one side of the desks. Actors were looking up references on character and behaviours, which had been built up over the previous weeks and indexed by researchers. Monitor screens glowed: internet connections were monitored, and a large screen showed a night-time infrared picture. Scale was difficult to make out: nothing seemed to be happening. A small scurry of movement occurred, and the bell rang.

Still unsure of what I was seeing, I waited for it to happen again, while looking intently at the surrounding monitors. There seemed to be a connection with a web server in the American Southwest…

A second scurrying-and a better view of the screen. An insect… the bell rang again, and the full realisation of what was going on suddenly hit me.

Fifty or so people in Europe were being controlled by the movement of ants on the other side of the world.

A series of infrared light beams were laid across one square metre of New Mexico. Neither too near nor too far from a nest, the speed and direction of the ant was translated into a specific code.

Reaction to the realisation of what was happening became a second performance in itself, this time one by the audience. Many people seemed outraged. A feeling that the natural order of things had been breached- but to no good purpose. A feeling of having been cheated was in the air. Perhaps the famous Danish sense of propriety and order had been offended. On the other hand, many people didn’t seem to realise what the control room was, assuming it to be just another setting. A strong polarisation of the audience had been achieved, and a visceral realisation of new media communication possibilities.