Critical Stages (Dec 2021)
Staged Installation, Reported Speech, and Syndemic Images in Blindness and Caretaker (2020)
Abstract
This essay attends in detail to the specific verbal techniques used in the construction of two installation-based performances presented in London in 2020: Blindness, a socially distanced sound installation, adapted by playwright Simon Stephens from José de Sousa Saramago’s 1995 novel Ensaio sobre a Cegueira, staged at the Donmar Warehouse; and Caretaker, a durational installation by Hester Chillingworth live-streamed from the Royal Court. Exploring reported action as an aural/oral dramaturgy specifically located at the intersection between curatorial and performance-based practices, this critical response takes up the modes of address employed in its case studies to situate these projects in relation to reciprocal modes of production that have, during this century, rendered the gallery a site for performance. Syndemic conditions invert this direction of travel. In order to navigate the reopening of theatres in the context of social distancing, the contemporary stage is reimagined as a space for installation. This transformation is performed via a set of practices that challenge the dominance of the ocular in contemporary culture and critique established modes of looking by foregrounding verbal over visual representation.
