As part of an assignment for one of my Visual Concepts classes at UMBC, I took part in what could best be described as a “mass human art installation” this past Sunday, October 26. The piece, titled “Public Moves,” was organized at Federal Hill by the Shua Group, known for their many diverse and unique art installations. The purpose of the installation was to create a living public display featuring Baltimoreans of all shapes, colors, and sizes and to simply create a unique method of mass public interaction staged as a performance to the people of Federal Hill and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
When first told of our requirement to participate in the Installation for a class assignment, I wasn’t entirely sure what to think. Though I had recently gained a newfound appreciation for performance art, actually performing and taking part in an installation like Public Moves seemed incredibly daunting and, in many ways, extremely foreign. Though I had stage performance during high school, I still had no idea what to expect as far as my role in the final product was concerned.
Along with participating in the performance itself, we as a class were also required to participate in a performance rehearsal in order to get acquainted with the installation, its organizers, and its process. After two run-throughs I felt like I had a pretty clear sense of what I had to do, as strange as it may have seemed as a newcomer to the group! The installation was divided into different actions ranging from “entrance,” which members of the installation acted “normally” and simply mingled with the group, to “intersection,” where the group wove around each other through the shaking of hands, to crab-walking and crawling up and down the side of Federal Hill. Needless to say, I was a bit confused by all this seemingly arbitrary behavior, but overall, ready to play my part on October 26.
When the day of performance finally came I knew that getting to the museum, mid-day, during a Raven’s home game would prove to be difficult, but I had no idea that absolutely every parking space on the right side of the Inner Harbor would be filled with so many cars unwilling to move. Parking karma was not on our side on the day of the performance, but what we didn’t have in luck with parking. my classmate Jessica and I made up with speed–meaning that we managed to speed-walk/run to the American Visionary Art Museum quickly enough to catch the tail end of coordinator Josh Bennet’s pre-performance speech.
The performance itself was much more fun than I originally anticipated! The amount of people that showed up for the initial performance was absolutely massive! I had no idea there would be huge a huge group of people involved in the performance. During the practice I attended two weeks prior to the performance, only about twenty people showed up to the practice, so seeing and interacting with around two hundred people during the performance made for an incredibly heightened impact of the performance–two hundred people makes for a much stronger statement when compared to twenty!
I think Public Moves was a great success. Everyone at Federal Hill that wasn’t a part of the performance was completely entranced by what was going on that afternoon, gawking with puzzled looks when all two hundred performers froze their positions for a few minutes and gawking still from the benches at the performers crab-walking down the hill. I left the performance with a genuine feeling of accomplishment and participation (as well as a very real feeling of muscle cramping in my quadriceps) as well as a feeling that I had made a difference within the Baltimore and Art Community by taking part in Public Moves.
