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Clapping Piece

Creative Strategies final solo work
Brookes University – Black Box studio
February 2010

For this performance I sat before the audience with a soft lighting rig on me and partially on them, also seated. Upon standing up I started clapping rapidly and gradually slowed it minute by minute until each clap became uncomfortably far apart. After 8 minutes I stopped with the last gap between claps lasting approximately one minute.

This was a rethink of Cage’s 4’33” but rather than the audience having jump into a silence through his ceremony of staged performance I wanted instead to introduce the silence gradually. As the clapping slows it at some point switches from ‘clapping’ to ‘claps’ which is entirely subjective for the audience. There is a tipping point between the two is a moment of awareness as you start to tune into ambient sound; diggers, birds, traffic and our own sounds all quietly permeated the room.

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