What does it look like when these people say 'us'?

What I saw at two performances of the White Box Project on September 10th and 24th was this: the spontaneous creation of a social organism. A kinetic organism, sustained by relations of mutual trust, co-operation, interest, respect, enthusiasm and collaboration. These relations were carefully choreographed by deceptively simple-looking forms. From what I 

remember of the 24th September performance, some of these forms were: speaking quietly,

speaking with a raised voice, walking along a fixed route between two walls at an increasing speed whilst talking, lying down gravely flat and straight, assembling in attentive circles around supine performers, shuffling along the perimeter of the courtyard, walking or running around it in switching directions—and so on. I think an exhaustive and ordered list is worth making—it would be part of the archive—though here is perhaps not the place to attempt it. Nevertheless I want to point to the subtle complexity of this performance’s logic, its accurate execution by a group of skilled lead performers and its deft development in response to the thoughts of public collaborators over a number of weeks.  

I think the White Box Project is a critical, social work of art. It flexes, tests itself, experiments, makes room for change, and accepts the incompleteness of process. It takes the social conventions of the proscenium theater—the passive / active, consumer / consumed, work / leisure divide between performers and audience—and asks everyone to reinterpret their roles. It does this testingly through a vocabulary of movement which was just about within the bounds of decency and permissibility tolerated, at least, by the participants of the two performances I saw. The forms of group movement offered by the piece created a small self-elected society in which it was, for the half hour duration of the work, normal to participate democratically. This sense of normalness was partly created by the few who acted differently: especially by those who participated with an individual expressiveness over and above the norm. In the two performances I saw two individuals stood out as abnormally interesting personae—for their self-fashioning and investiture as much as their actions and speech. But there were also those who opted out and whose position was uncertain, ambiguous, potentially a bit divisive. They were attracted especially to the security of corners.

Did the willingness of most people to participate speak to a basic shared desire to enter into relations—sometimes with only vague associations attached—with each other? Was there a sort of latent collaborative spirit waiting under the cover of conversing friendship groups and lone individuals in a courtyard in Williamsburg? A collaborative spirit that basically desired a form to express itself? And a spirit that found—perhaps with a little tentative persuasion—just such a form in the choreography of the White Box Project?

I think so. I think what the choreography unfolded was the organic shape of a shared class identity. I think the choreography described the limits within which a public desired to know itself, to incorporate others and to experience this feeling of incorporation and its possibilities for action.

Some more of the choreography: screaming all together at the top of everybody’s voice, kneeling at a touch upon the shoulder, assembling in groups along opposing walls and moving in formation towards an opposite group. Do these shared choreographic forms represent essential ways in which humans experience their co-operative relations with one another? Or do they represent a crowd in Williamsburg, in evenings in September, a crowd with histories, money, tastes, beliefs, desires, looks, fears, bodies, names? In short, I think, the White Box Project asks: What does it look like when these people say ‘us’?


John Cooper