Inspiration Description

The documentary does not include a lot of text, because I expect my audiences to view the whole event not based on my test and strong feelings but feel it by their opinions that think in the same way as I am considering. This kind of idea is inspired by Allan Kaprow’s “Notes on the Elimination of the Audinece//1966,” he points out the relationship between actors and audiences of a performance can be in many ways. And in page #104, there is a paragraph illustrating the idea of audiences not being told before there is going to have a performance:

“At those moments of relative quiet the observer would hardly be a passive member of an audience; he would be closer to the role of a Greek chorus, without its specific meaning necessarily, but with its required place in the overall scheme. At other moments the active and observing roles would be exchanged, so that by reciprocation the whole meaning of watching would be altered, away from something like spoon-feeding, towards something purposive, possibly intense…”

Or even do not know they are in a performance: 

“A variant of this is the person who is engaged unwittingly with a performer ni some planned action: a butcher will sell certain meats to a customer- performer without realizing that he is apart of apiece having to do with purchasing, cooking, and eating meat.”

These two big inspirations strongly affect this documentary, I begin my social form performance on a random day happening in Canada Line, and all the passengers in that specific timer with the same skytrain with me are all audiences but also my participants and audiences.

Performance Description

As a part of the passengers who fight for a seat almost every time to get on a skytrain, I feel ashamed about it.  The reason I feel shameful about it is because in my country we are being taught to let the people getting off finish first, and the people getting on can do after. But I realized people in Vancouver do not have this kind of thinking, hence from the first year I came to Canada until now, I gradually changed to a person as Vancouver’s people do which is a group of people I felt selfish in the past. 

Right now, I still feel bad and struggle with being a selfish person that not being acceptable for my past. But at the same time, I don’t want to stand all the time from the first station to the terminal station. So, I begin my participatory performance of  “Canada Line’s Competition.”

In the documentary, I recorded how the events that I experienced in my daily life. In addition, the documentary also goes with different perspectives of angles to view the situation, one is from an outside point of view viewing me also in a part; another one is from my view to viewing it. So, people viewing this documentary also see what role am in (as a person also try to get into a compartment before all passengers get off).

In the whole documentary, I have interviews with two different strangers ( I'm always with a camera, so I use the camera as a way of letting people know the project is happening and voluntarily inviting them- to take the seat beside me to participate my project) about their opinions what they feel about most people try to get into a seat even the passengers getting out haven’t all gone. And, both of the people I had a conversation with mostly think in the same way as I thought, they want to get a seat so they try to get inside a Skytrain as soon as possible.