A Real-Life Soap Opera 2004: MA Show and Performance and Installation at Waygood Gallery for Platform 000004

A dysfunctional family (hired Actors) go around the centre of Newcastle causing havoc and I secretly recorded them, played the raw footage at Waygood Gallery on the night. Think of when Nam June Paik procured his first video camera and took a cab to the gallery recording everything on the way…something like that but not as earth-shattering. Also it was my MA show @ Sunderland University.

SYNOPSIS

The format for a 30 minute domestic drama was created in American mainstream TV subsequently sponsored by Soap Products, hence the word “soap opera”.

Most Soap Operas favour the audience already knowing a character’s foreshadowing fate and the creative construct of the story. Through the twists and turns and occasional spectacular exits, we the voyeur, the receiver, watch with hypnotic aptitude at the unfolding narrative and subsequently hooked for the next instalment.

In A Real Life Soap Opera, I am displacing the foreknowledge of the voyeur and replacing it with the surprise and the spectacle. Disarming this foreknowledge leads to a more intense voyeurism because of the unknown narrative and the audience’s expectancy of what comes next.

The fact they do not know that this is a staged event makes them part of the drama and therefore reverses the passiveness.

The installation alludes to domestic referents in a familiar living room where we watch soap opera’s, reality tv and sitcoms; watching a simulation of a living room of a family watching the TV, as in the case of the Royle Family.

The installation is a work in progress as I work out the character structures, contrived narratives and the implications of the performance in an environment that is conducive to the genre.