How might we do less together, and would you like to watch?
First proposed by Jeremy Bentham, the idea of the panopticon was popularised in Western philosophy by Foucault and Miller. Drawing on this idea, Field Day was performed by Hamish McIntosh on May 15, 2020, alongside seven other performance artists and dancers based across Aotearoa New Zealand and so-called Australia. The performers were tasked with sitting at a desk while staring at a wall in stillness and silence for one hour during a live Zoom broadcast (17.30 - 18.30 AEST), with the audience acting as their 'prison guard.' At the time of Field Day's performance, the COVID-19 crisis had re-opened debates over surveillance and the clinic, with our shift to Zooming and working from home simulating, in part, a panopticon. Noting the immediate cliché of using digital video technology to criticise surveillance culture, Field Day was uninterested in novelty. Instead, it sought to rustle the lowest possible hanging fruit to trouble established arts companies who, at the time, appeared to be reverting to equally established means of labour despite our unprecedented grief.
Season: May 2020, International Zoom Broadcast | Performers: Deborah Fletcher, Caspar Ilschner, Georgia Van Gils, Holly Hepburn, Issy Estrella, Oliver Mathiesen, Tiana Lung, and Hamish McIntosh
