Rider Spoke - an intimate talk anonymous

Recently I visited a couple of times the Live Art Development Agency. A cosy little library, which contains an amazing number of DVDs, books, magazines and other pubblications. I spent two days mostly watching DVDs that document the work of various artists who work in the field.

Although I didn't find any video documentation of the work of Richard Foreman, Richard Schechner and The Wooster Group, whose work I have only read about so far, I found the library very useful for getting to know performance artists and experimental theatre companies operating in the UK.


I watched a video that documents the piece Rider Spoke by the artists' group Blast Theory. It was of much interest to me due to their approach to audience participation. Rider Spoke sends out its participants on bicycles around the city with a specially deviced digital map. They are to find a hiding place where they can verbally answer questions about their personal life and emotions on a recording device, while the venues are indicated on their digital screen.

The video documentation I had access to was from Rider Spoke at the Barbican in 2007. While it contained technical explanations of the technology involved and practical issues, it gave you a taste of the participants' voice recordings, letting you in each private little world made of words. 


While the piece offes its participants freedom and self-sufficiency, they embark on a journey unsure of what is to come next. Their orienteering skills are put to the test and they are asked to answer personal questions while cycling around or stopping at a certain spot, which could have been just visited by another participant. It may be said that the participants are the sole protagonists of this work and although their stories are revealed in a collection and released as documentation material, the participants are on their own and the project is about their personal way of interpreting reality given a certain setting (the city). Audience is not a collective organism here but rather a moving body of individuals who visit the same places all at different times. 


Rider Spoke wants the audience to talk about themselves in an intimate manner, and there is no better way of doing that than letting each participant wander around on their own. Participants are confronted with their own thoughts and feelings, which becomes all easier to do in the absence of a rigid and predefined space and a spectator/actor who is there, eager to hear it all.