Parklife

The art of performance

I try not to write too much about my kids these days. I say kids like they’re still running around eating Play-Doh and plaiting loom bands. That is definitely not the case any more. They are quite growed up and they deserve their privacy. They were fair game when they were small. Tiny anarchists who spend all your money on Cheese Strings and pepper you with questions for 18 hours a day, many of which are simply ‘WHY?’ do not deserve anything at all.

Having said all that, Tilly came back from Finland last week and told us such a ridiculous story that I absolutely have to write it down.

Tilly is currently doing a year of her degree studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. She has been taking many modules, one of which was a course in performance art. It’s how her practice has been developing and she was very excited to be learning more about it. It all culminated in each participant having to create and perform their own piece.

Tilly decided to do what she called ‘backwards burlesque.’ This involved starting naked and then putting on your clothes to music. So far, so good. It was a clear concept that you could totally imagine a performance artist doing.

She started explaining that she had decided people would sing the national anthem. It was unclear when this was to be sung. Before, as a kind of patriotic warm up? Or even after, like when the BBC used to go to bed every night by playing the national anthem and leaving you with a small, white dot to look at? Also, was it the Finnish national anthem or the English national anthem? I do not know any of these things. I am annoyed that I do not know. I thought I might like to live with the mystery, but I don’t. I am going to send her a strongly worded email to this effect. Hopefully answers will be forthcoming.

She was confident that she wanted audience participation. This involved choosing a karaoke tune that she would project onto a screen behind her, so that people could sing along. Again, it was not clear why the audience would sing along at a burlesque performance, but by this stage we were so deep in, it seemed churlish to ask why? Also, performance art is the answer to many of these questions, so we just nodded obediently. She picked Wonderwall by Oasis. She decided that it was a stone cold banger that everyone could get behind and it would set the right mood. Hard to say what kind of mood was covered by the word ‘right’ in all honesty.

She loaded everything she needed onto her laptop and took it to the class, where there were only four people in the audience due to issues with the timetable. Undeterred by low audience numbers, she took all her clothes off before setting up her equipment, only to find that the sound didn’t work. The next few minutes were spent hunting round for an HDMI cable and then having to call in a technician to help.

I said: ‘You had put some clothes back on, right?’ To which she replied: ‘Nope.’ At this point Tallulah started weeping with laughter and pounding the table with her fist.

Once the sound was working, she commenced the performance. She said it was much trickier than she imagined to dress herself seductively to the plaintive tones of Manchester’s finest Britpopstrels. Personally it was not surprising to me. Oasis are not a band that lend themselves to a natural sense of allure. Too nasal.

Also, as she was wrestling her way into her trousers she realised that her audience were not doing much participating. Again, I was not entirely surprised. It may have been that they were still getting over the shock of seeing a naked woman grappling with HDMI cables. Whatever the reason, they were not singing along. Tilly decided to help them out by showing rather than telling. She started belting out: ‘Toooodaay is gonna be the day, that they throw it all back to yoooouu,’ while flinging her jumper on.

This did not help matters and by now, she was quite annoyed. This took the form of louder singing from Tilly who was getting quite aggressive: ‘THERE ARE MANY THINGS THAT I WOULD LIKE TO SAY TO YOOOOOU,’ dons bobble hat. ‘BUT I DON’T KNOW HOOOOWWWW.’ Probably because she is only at entry grade Finnish.

We were all crying by this stage.

She had become so fixated on the singing that she had started to slow down with the clothing. The plan had been to put on far more clothes than a normal person would wear, so there were quantities of things still waiting, but the song was drawing to a close. She began speeding up, flinging on clothes at an alarming rate and bellowing: ‘YOU’RE GONNA BE THE ONE THAT SAVES MEHH’ as if she had a personal vendetta to settle via the medium of shouting.

She said that by the time she got to the end, she was rolling with sweat and quite hoarse. Also, she was wearing four pairs of trousers and three jumpers and was finding it hard to move about.

When we could speak again, we asked her what her audience had thought. The hot takes were that it was extremely confusing and quite stressful but the main thing Tilly was annoyed about was that the people of Finland don’t know about Oasis.

On reflection, she should have tried a different tune.

I put my trousers on, have a cup of tea
And I think about leaving the house