ARTISTS TALKING

Trade Gallery, Nottingham, 30 September – 2 October

In her writings on the art of participation, Anna Dezeuze coined the term "do-it-yourself" artworks in an attempt to delineate between the form of interaction the viewer partakes when looking at any artwork, and the kind of engagement required for art to be truly participatory - an active, usually physical participation innitiated consciously and voluntarily. Not so much 'do it yourself' as 'do it together', the work of artist collective Reactor seeks to implement the audience in constructed realities in which the distinctions between artist/performer and audience are continualy being questioned. The Green Man & Regular Fellows, 'a live artwork in the form of a pub', creates a theatricalised construction of a familiar social situation where, in the spirit of the futurists performances of the early 20^th century, rather than politely encouraging consensual collaboration, the work aims to provoke and antagonise its audience into what would ordinarily be uncomfortable interactions.

True to Reactor's typical utilisation of web based technologies to add a digital dimension to the narrative of an event, The Green Man's website (www.thegreenman.vze.com) set the tone and immediately instilled reservations about the establishments' authenticity. A sensory bombardment of flat, bright colours, flashing logos, pixelated icons that lead nowhere and a multitude of disharmonious fonts are set to a pan-pipe musac version of Whitney Housten's I Will Always Love You to create a discordance and a kind of adhoc anarchism analogous to the milieu in the pub itself.

The pretence of using dated technology in the website acts as a mode of distancing; problematising the role of communication and the transmission of information by means of simplifying such things to the point of appearing crude and deceptive. Whereas modern web design employs such things as cascading style sheets (CSS), meta-tags and portable network graphics (PNG) to essentially demystify and add clarity to a clients brand/product/organisation, The Green Man's website added another layer of mystification and intrigue, almost necessitating a continued engagement.

Having been admitted as a new member to the pub itself, (all potential attendees had to apply in advance and await approval) I headed down at around 6:30pm on the Friday evening to catch early doors. I'd forgotten my pack which included a membership card, a list of members rules and a small wooden token for 'one round', but after some negotiations with the doorman Tony, an elderly gentleman donning a flat cap and reading an old copy of Moby Dick, I was allowed to enter.

On first appearances, The Green Man is a traditional pub. With characteristic hotchpotch styling, the bar area is lined with old handcrafted wooden pub games sat atop small round tables. Pastoral scenes share the wall space with portraits of livestock, baseball playing cards and anonymous holiday snaps of sedately grinning bronzed couples in the Costa Del Sol or gangs of ruddy overweight blokes slumped over dry stone walls in The Lakes. On the bar a complementary selection of peanuts in shells and 'meat on toast' awaits patrons delectation and covering the floor is a thick layer of sawdust. The Landlord wore a Bavarian Tracht get-up complete with lederhosen, leather braces and an alpine Lodenhut on his head, whilst regulars skulked in the shadows cradling half-pint beer mugs of bright green liquid and glancing sheepishly at newcomers.

Things began rather tamely. We sang a song together at the bar and had a pub quiz in teams of four where I won a hamper that included Pakora mix and a tin of sausages in lard. Then, in a group of four (always in fours!), I had a 'putsch' at a kind of bastardised version of billiards called 'The Game' using a mace, one end of which was the 'knob end' and the other was a golden goats penis. In the complex transition from standard membership, through regular fellowship, irregular fellowship, to finally become The Pog - a kind of jester-come-gamesmaster dressed as a clown - things became ever more peculiar. With the permission of The Landlord I entered the clandestine back area of the pub on several occasions.

In this labyrinthine series of ramshackle rooms, imbued with more than a whiff of malevolence, I had a hot towel facial treatment, made a beard, emerged from a pink duvet case in a rebirth metamorphosis, dressed up in a goats mask and furry trousers as the god Pan and paraded through the pub to cries of "Hooky Hooky", was accompanied by The Quack (The Butcher) to The Underworld for 'tea (and biscuits) with the dead', performed in a guilders play, perched on a pommel horse as the Jobonowl and umpired a game of Dwile Flonking and finally, after having a root vegetable extracted from my spine, went to The Wood for a good old 'knees up' in front of the Green Man himself.

The Green Man and Regular Fellows sits somewhere between a dramatic re-enactment of English folkloric traditions, an episode of The League of Gentlemen and a live Paul McCarthy performance in a set collaboratively constructed by John Bock and Mike Nelson. If the art of participation seeks to create active and empowered subjects, The Green Man should be held as a resounding success. I found myself playing a role from the moment I entered, as if I'd left my real persona, along with any inhibitions or preconceptions about interactive art, at the door. What was created wasn't simply an excuse for maniacal, debauched behaviour. It wasn't simply a chance to forget about critical context. It was an emancipatory investigation into group dynamics and social relationships where instead of stiffly sipping red wine and trying hopelessly to talk about Deleuze, I held hands with strangers, gave a grown man a piggyback and danced and howled with wonderful irregularity to the jingling of tambourines. Cheers!

Aaron Juneau

I am an artist and writer living and working in the East of England. My interest in writing spurs from an enthusiasm for fiction and an insatiable passion for narrative in art and literature. My work both visual and textual rotates around narrative and the potential cross overs between the two within this discipline.

aaronjuneau@hotmail.com

First published: a-n.co.uk November 2011