2016 · Participatory performance and game score
Created by Thiago Antunes in the frame of apass
The ethnic inspiration of the different saunas of the Grimbergen SPA, near Brussels (“African lodge”, Turkish bath”, “Mediterranean sauna”, etc), and the rules of the house inspired me to create a set of game-like instructions for its visitors.
In the frame of A.PASS programe, I invited my research peers to try those scores in the sauna, during a all day immersion trip. Each instruction should be placed inside the individual lockers, and the bracelets that gave access to each locker was constantly exchanged. Therefore, at every time a participant had extinguished her task or wanted to try another score, they would open a locker of another person. The game would finish when everybody had eventually managed to open to her/his own locker.
The bracelets should be exchanged in the sauna “discreetly”, whenever the participants feel the need for changing their tasks. The scores were:
- Read carefully the rules of the sauna. Choose one rule to subvert. Experiment doing the same with variations (explicitly, discreetly, with a partner)
- Check what is inside this locker. Rearrange the organisation of the personal belongings in there. Bring something from outside to ornate it.
- Choose a person. Accompany him/her very discreetly, wherever this person goes. If this person finds you weird, starts to run away, or makes a complaint about you to the spa team, you lose. Then you have to exchange your bracelet with someone else.
- Choose a number. Help out this number of different people.
- Share food or drink with someone that you don’t know.
- Enjoy the spa. If you get bored, you lose. Then you have to exchange your bracelet with someone else.
- Take a picture or make a drawing of something you find interesting here.
thiago antunes 