A series of live performances, contingent installations and public participatory events by artist Greig Burgoyne with Sabine Oosterlynck commissioned by P/rops performative patform for NEST space, Ghent, Belgium, December 2017, and funded by Stadt Gent.
Commissioned to coincide with Gent Matinees art wk/ends, this was an immersive speculative four day residency based in NEST - the former library for the City of Ghent Belgium. NEST is an experimental and unfolding situation, whereby while the library is relocated, for one year this five storey block is a temporary haven or 'nest' for start-up companies, the homeless, stateless, artists' projects, a make shift houseplant hospital not to mention cafes and bars.
The project comprised a series of responses using materials acquired on or near the site to respond to a 1970s looking ex-librarians office and its immediate surroundings both inside and out. The first outcome entitled 'Stripes' - a series of repetition gestures using brown parcel tape, reiterates the linear brown wood panelling within the space. A drawing performance that both covers yet reiterates in some kind of workout of gestural strokes of a daily grind of architectural space.
This was followed by a post-it note dance - a collaboration with Oosterlynck and audience to cover themselves in post-it notes and then shake/ jump/ leap until all the post-it notes are shed. The residual installation indicated both the activity, while also evoked the other responses /performances and actions made in/ around the space.
Prior to this a series of live performative works entitled 'Islands' using locally sourced floorcloths evolved in and around the surrounding interior spaces/ corridors. This also echoed a development of walk/count/follow/lost, here it is Burgoyne & Oosterlynck who measure out, by walking their alternate space, recorded on mobiles then 'swap' and follow those actions, only to desert the spaces they are in the process of reiterating.
This was concluded with two alternate performances of 'Yellow Brick Roads' 1 & 2, that begin through repetitive gestures indicative of floor cleaning within the office space using bright yellow floor cloths bought/sourced nearby. These part speculative / rule based performances resulted in a 'yellow brick road' of sorts that was then directed as a walk across the roads and through the streets of Ghent. The walks continued until the cloths disintegrated or parted company with each other and Burgoyne was left stranded, so to speak.
In his text 'Desert islands and other texts' Deleuze spoke of the deserted as less the island, but the sea around it. In these times of strife, forced diaspora and rapid migration though conflict, NEST seems a poignant site for this series of actions somewhere deserted by logic but compelled by it, re-orientating new spaces or configurations that embrace periphery and inclusivity, albeit seemingly in the midst of the very opposite.
