Performance ensemble Processional Arts Workshop is calling for participants to stage a Procession of Confessions. Amidst ongoing revelations about the extent of clandestine surveillance, the Procession of Confessions provides a way to reclaim control of our information—by freely offering it up to whoever may be watching. Now is your chance to publicly flaunt your meta-data, display banal personal details, and publicly admit your crimes and misdemeanors in a collective act of public exhibitionism. Integrating large-scale puppetry with crowd-sourced sound and live video, this modern-day parade of PENitents will happen at an undisclosed time and place, in tandem with scattered solo performers everywhere joining in a simultaneous flash-cloud of confessions.
During the Festival, PAW artistic directors Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles lead a series of public workshops to construct and animate visual elements for the Procession. Drawing from the infrastructure of surveillance and the dark theater of Communist-era show trials, volunteers will help embody the specter of government overreach as a nest of arachnid eavesdroppers and cyclopean watchers whose video eyes will harvest and webcast the confessions of costumed penitents en route. Those who cannot attend the workshops or the final procession can still participate remotely by performing concurrent confessions in their home communities. Don’t wait for a court order! Waive your 4th Amendment rights and come out to join your fellow citizens, as we fully disclose ourselves and our trespasses to the State.
TO TAKE PART in the PROCESSION OF CONFESSIONS:
- BUILD visual elements with PAW artists in free workshops.
- PERFORM in the Procession—as a puppeteer, or create a Confession to be broadcast en route.
- JOIN the flash-cloud and confess in your own neighborhood. Download simple unencrypted instructions from PAW to create your own penitent costume and digitalmask.
- SUBMIT an audio confession. Add your voice to mix for the Procession soundscape. Find out more and register your interest with Processional Arts Workshop by completing the online volunteer form here.
Puppet-cam is Live!
The all-seeing eye of Our Lady of Perpetual Surveillance will live-monitor confessions of costumed penitents from the main Procession steps of Cooper Union at 5PM on May 4th—the final evening of the PEN World Voices Festival. Remote viewers can watch the Procession unfold via the cycloptic drop-cam as the figure bends down to record each confession en route.
More information (including classified times & locations) @ www.processionalarts.org