Franco B at the RCA

Last Wednesday I visited the Royal College of Art for the first time to see an exhibition and symposium on gender and performance. Although my work does not deal with gender directly, I was interested in seeing Franco B's work as I was aware that he is a well known performance artist across the UK. The performative character of the symposium was of much interest to me in terms of the audience role and the autopoietic feedback loop.

Described as a sculpture swing, Thinking of you went into exploring the spectators'  will of participation and moreover their trust in the other members of the audience. A swing stood in the middle of the space, waiting for its first volunteer; the lack of predefined performers made this piece a purely participatory performance, where the volunteers became performers and their audience was responsible for the direction that the piece was to take next.


Spectators were invited to ride the swing and take turns, the only (apparent) rules being that if one chose to participate they had to undress completely in order to use the swing and that the swing must not remain empty. This meant that you'd have to stay naked on the swing until somebody decided to take your place. The specially composed music that played in loop for the whole duration of the piece (an hour) made a beginning and an end clear each few minutes, but of course the mechanism of the audience had its own pace and each member of the audience had a different response.


Despite the gallery atmosphere and the fact that the piece was described as a sculpture, I found it highly performative and yet the audiences' participation did not seem in any way forced. The piece flew with a changing pace, and it wouldn't have taken place if it wasn't for the audience.