This is a TED talk by Charlie Todd, the founder of Improv Everywhere, in which he shared his experience of doing different improv projects in public places. I find it quite interesting and relevant to what we talked about yesterday.
Creativity has its place in daily living and if it is not present in the natural environment around us, it needs to be created!
It's interesting to me how we've created this social world where there is no natural expressions possible or accepted in daily life! (especially on the tube!)
And there is another project done by Improv Everywhere where they sat up a photography studio in an underground carriage and took yearbook photos for the passengers, thought we could draw some inspirations from it. x
Great that you found these guys - there are lots of related projects as well but I hadn't seen the photo-carriage one!
ReplyDeleteHaha this is great! Made me think about our original idea of the life drawing class, but the problems with that were that we were still segregating people and the perhaps cliche idea that being creative=going to life drawing class.
ReplyDeleteCould be interesting to do a sort of flash mob life drawing class on a tube carriage. One intervention with one of us in one of those nude suits, one of us giving out pens and paper and three of us as posed as regular commuters to participate so others will be more inclined to join in. Could also do another one and replace the person in nude suit with a trolley with a bowl of fruit on it.
This way we would be questioning the idea of free time and what we do with it, as well as peoples creative and social inhibitions. Life drawing is usually a private, intimate thing between people with similar interests who have all purposefully used their free time to attend a class. By springing it on people like this we're questioning this organised form of creativity. There's also a lot of humour in having someone in a nude suit and also a trolley with a bowl of fruit on it in a place like the tube.
Just an idea to think about!
About life drawing - does anybody have a skill that we could use individually for something similar? One could draw (even though it might just be for jokes and see people's reactions to a picture they expected to be fabulous, well our average / below- VanGogh skills).
ReplyDeleteI love that idea with the fruit bowl, what do you mean by nude suits?
Love the idea that comes with it. Maybe we can think of three ideas in total to implement?
Oh Idea - I take pictures, so I could ask if anyone would like their picture taken (and hypothetically, maybe not with my camera) but a two min. crash course on photography until the next / your stop.
ReplyDeleteMiles makes music - he could sit down w a pen and paper next to strangers and casually ask them what is going through their head, composing a song together.
I think it would mostly be viewed as a joke but we would draw attention to specific people, and in the example I mentioned with Miles, he could look around and be like "does that sound good everyone?" as if the whole section of the tube is composing a song together.
I don't know why I've picked Miles for this, but that's just an idea I've had.
I nominate Cam to do a workshop sess the pole dancing as mentioned in my blog post above. Naturally.
Yeah I think theres a lot we can do on the tube, and finally all those nights Cam has spent studying the art of pole dancing can come in handy ;)
ReplyDeleteI think we need to remember that people aren't necessarily going to be willing to participate, so we need to intervene in a way which isn't too intimidating, but still powerful enough.
Oh and by nude suit I mean this kind of thing (because obviously real nudity could get us arrested (but that's a whole other project!)) http://www.amazon.com/Leg-Avenue-Nude-Body-Suit/dp/B0043044P0 (of course that one is very expensive for some reason...)
Ha! I'm sure, can't wait.
ReplyDeleteOkay so: subtle and powerful. Check.
Jokes! Nudity project does sound awesome. Clearly politically as well.
Idea comes to mind, dressed in a nude suit and a group of people doing a life drawing class in an outside space (or tube). Interesting to see the reactions of people.
@Nadia brilliant idea! we shall discuss the details tmr haha:)
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