Demonstrating the World is an absurdly elaborate live reinterpretation of mundane YouTube ‘how-to’ videos. Williamson’s performance is aimed somewhere between a travelling sales pitch and a crash-landed alien. The performance is a public intervention for city centres and offsite programmes, presented from a mobile performance space. The blog for DAO will chart the artistic process of the Demonstratingteam and give accounts of the subsequent encounters and adventures.

Xanadu, Stratford City

28 August 2015

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'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree...' S.T Coleridge 1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge had composed over 200 lines of verse in his mind during an opium-induced dream. He had risen from bed and was fast-scribbling the lines down when, famously, he was interrupted by ‘a man from Porlock’ who wished to talk business. Upon returning to his desk, to complete the poem (he’d only got 40 lines down when the debt collector arrived - I’m assuming the man...

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On Location: the Melting Model

14 August 2015

Blog

In a pre-meeting with the artist-photographer Manuel Vason, we drew up a plan to grab a single dramatic image, guerilla style, by which to communicate the spirit and style of Demonstrating the World during the period prior to the production work itself being realised. We would shoot spontaneously around the vast Lakeside Retail Park in Essex to create a contrast between the retro-futuristic ‘alien’ surroundings of Lakeside, and an arrangement of everyday ‘familiar’ props...

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An Alien Dream-Logic Capsule

12 August 2015

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As described in the first blog in this series, the discovery of a ‘contemporary folk archive’ of ‘How To’ videos on YouTube, set me on course to devise the central component in Demonstrating the World for Unlimited 2. The sheer volume of this unofficial, seemingly endless archive meant that ‘the world’ was practically my oyster (Yes, there are a few ‘How To Shuck/Open Oysters’ videos, such as this one seemingly presented by Star Trek’s Capt....

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'Don’t Forget The Wrists!'

7 July 2015

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‘Demonstrating the World’ is a project for Unlimited 2 (delivered in partnership by Shape and Artsadmin) which had a Research and Development phase and now, in collaboration with producer Edd Hobbs, a production commission. Sometime midway through the R&D phase I encountered the wonderful contemporary folk-archive of amateur demonstration videos on YouTube. (That’s my descriptor: they do not, collectively – as yet – think of themselves as forming an archive)....

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