In all the works presented in this section, the spectatorship/participation from members of the public happens in settings that resemble more performance arts contexts than music. The roles everyone plays in the performative encounter are as co-creators of an experience, even if this experience has been narrowed down first to exist in its current form by composers. There is an asymmetric mutuality here, akin to the roles called forth by Saketopoulou's concept of 'limit consent' 

“Limit consent’s twinned emphasis on mutuality and asymmetry takes responsibility out of the judicial framework of culpability, ushering us into a different register of how to think about risk. This register is more about a holding of the other and a trust that one will bear what happens—without knowing what is going to happen. In this unusual type of trust, the top too is vulnerable, and in that sense, limit consent opens up both parties to the unforeseeable, which is another way of saying that there is no guarantee as to what comes next, only a commitment to undergo it together. “(Saketopoulou, p. 68., 2023)

This type of artistic participation invites members of the public, or hierarchical 'bottoms' in Saketopoulou's conception, to step into an artistic encounter designed by the 'top' or the composers. While the setup of the encounter has been fixed by having a pre-determined physical location or containing certain props or objects, or even by having a porous potential narrative, the 'top' carries the burden of fearing the encounter with the 'bottom' which is perceived as overly powerful. 

This sharing of responsibility between 'tops' and 'bottoms' allowed me to bring a vulnerability into the encounter that did not have to masquerade as strength. By building the encounter directly and both risking something of our own - my body by being in contact with another, the other's body by not knowing the context of the encounter a priori - the participation became an equitable exchange, determining a context I could sound in, shaping and being shaped by the encounter.  

There are three pieces within this container which address this type of participation slightly differently. In Balancing Art Residency (2021) I vocalise for 4 hours a day for 3 consecutive days in a gallery space within which myself, Julita Hanlon and Chonghe Fan built a physical sculpture that offered my body sensory stimulation and places to retreat to in order to mediate the encounter with the other. In this piece participants are free to come and go, shaping the encounter, tapping into it for as long as it is interesting to them.  

Tea Break (2022) is, in a way, a first iteration of the kind of participation that becomes more refined in the following piece Ecstasies of Things (2022). It is a one-to-one piece in which physical objects and the act of tea making offer a loose narrative within which the encounter with the other unfolds. It shares a detailed hyper-focus with an audience member, giving enough space for the other to focus on their own sensations. 

Ecstasies of Things is the second collaboration with Christine Cornwell in which both of our bodies mediate an encounter with pleasurable objects for four audience members around a table. Voice opens this encounter but then remains silent, prioritising a sonic tactility that foregrounds the powers or ecstasies of objects. 

What all of these works have in common besides audience participation is the use of textures or objects to mediate the encounter with the other. 

I came to understand this function of objects or textures as mediators using Donald Winnicott's concept of a transitional object. As Winnicott defines it, a transitional object is an object such as a blanket or a teddy bear used by children early on their development which helps them "move from a state of being merged with the mother to a state of being in relation with the mother’ (Winnicott, 1968/2005). Extrapolating this concept away from the complex mother-child dynamic, its uses are in defining a strategy for separating oneself from the other in order to more clearly define individual desire through physical objects.

If my predilection in the encounter with the other is to inhabit them too fully, to become merged with them, living/sensing/desiring through them, then these physical sensory tethers help create an intermediary pit stop for the self, a separation point that redirects the self back towards one's sensorium, away from the other while still existing alongside them. This is a strategy for practicing self-sensing. 

To put audiences in situations in which their sensory experience is invited to the table, risking something of their own does bring an ethical responsibility forward, namely the need of the performer to hold space for them. 

Holding Space

I’ve encountered the phrase holding space in contexts ran by contemporary dance or somatic practitioners which have generally adopted the term from psychotherapy and healing professions. If in therapeutic contexts it might mean a prioritisation of the needs of another (Kelemen, Kearney and Groninger, 2017), within performance practice its meaning gets focused on active listening and enabling of different voices to be heard (Pascoe at al., 2020). 

If in previous contexts I’ve been looking at ways to reduce the potential of escaping into another fearing an estrangement from oneself, here we can see the sensitivities to another’s needs, if done in a balanced way, as a strength, a useful ability that helps facilitate an equitable encounter. This balance I propose can be achieved by shifting from feeling through another as a form of empathy to a more compassionate approach of feeling alongside another. In other words, practicing self-sensing so as to pull back or away from the other back towards the self while remaining in relation. In this way, whatever the other is feeling can have resonance and can affect a shared space of feeling but a more opaque knowing of being-with is employed that reduces the hyper-vigilance of pre-empting reactions by being sucked into the desires of another. 

In the context of my practice, to hold space means to make active and/or explicit a set of priorities that are enacted within a togetherness and to keep tabs on whether these priorities are actualised/respected or not. To breach the contract of respecting said boundaries can happen as long as the breach is in itself accounted for/made explicit and included in the next activation. Steering the encounter towards the fulfilment of the contract is the responsibility of the one(s) holding space.   

I offer being explicit as an option here as it depends on the kind of encounter taking place. In the participatory performances in this container, being explicit is not entirely necessary as long as the performer is affectively attuned to the shared reality, adjusting and accommodating the other as needed. In co-creative contexts, like the ones within container three, being explicit, particularly in a group or in early trust-building stages of relationships, ensures a sharing of responsibilities and accountability between all members of the artistic act. 

 Holding space centres more on human needs and the affective charges of bodies than a more formal/rigid framework of togetherness. It is a caring role that requires an ability to sense the in-between of relation, of holding a dual position of being both inside and outside the shared space, sometimes at the same time.