We were tasked to create a 10 seconds performance piece. First, I brainstormed a list of events and actions that could last for 10 seconds:
- Tying your hair in a bun
- Doing 5 pushups
- Watching a vine
- Reading a dumb meme on 9gag
- Cleaning your glasses
- Pouring a glass of wine
- Plugging in a usb drive
- Throwing waste paper into a can
- Chugging a bottle of water
- Saying a prayer before a meal
- Searching up a video on YouTube
- Saying ‘hi’ to someone on the street
- Finding something
- Tying a tie
- Tying shoelaces
- Clicking a pen
- Erasing a mistake
- Unlocking a gate
- Jeremin and Yen Ee’s Secret Handshake
- Eating skittles
Among those things, I chose No. 13 – finding something. I thought the simplest way to show this was to rummage through my pencil case to act as though I was looking for something. The idea was to not have any ‘conclusion’. The whole act of rummaging lasted the whole 10s and at the end of it I did not show the audience that I found the item I was looking for, which leaves it quite open-ended, almost like a cliffhanger. I would also think that it might spark just a tiny bit of frustration in some people as there is all this lead up (the sound of rummaging) but there is no release. Here is my final 10s performance: