live ensemble performance | 2005-2007

Flock was a simplification of ensemble performances such as And, Here and There and Pieces of People. The performers try to match their speed and their distance from one another as they walk or run. No one leads as the group meanders and drifts around a town or through buildings. The group can spread very thinly, with everyone running in every direction, or it can contract into a tight seething mass. The group is particularly alert to thresholds and boundaries. If one performer crosses a symbolic barrier, such as a divide between a path and a lawn, the others will copy, which will start a trend that will lead to the group occupying a new area. The group as a collective entity interacts with its environment in this way.

The title suggests the dynamic behaviour of birds as they flock or bees as they swarm; it also plays with the idea of forces that hold molecules together. However, it does not confirm any of these associations . It is an artificial model that encourages us to think of these individuals as a coherent, singe entity. The integrity of the group is maintained internally but an individual outside the group, who encroaches on their space, can threaten it. They move away from anyone outside the group. They disperse and re-form. The performers wore their own clothes and were indistinguishable in appearance from the general public. The performance was almost invisible at times, lost in a crowd, but its subtle and strangely subversive behaviour would draw attention. It works against the idea of spectacle and the seeming insidious effort to integrate into its environment amplified its alien nature.