Kaprow, Participation, and the Archons

With all of the email correspondence that has been going on this last week, (i.e. lab coats versus t-shirt, balloons, no balloons), Kaprow's "Notes on the Elimination of the Audience" really got me thinking on how our piece is going to be an interactive piece, other than the actual respeaking. In short, Kaprow asserts that the audience needs to be eliminated, there should be only participants, to make a "Happening" successful. When there is an audience the expectation of a totally staged theatrical peformance is anticipated. A barrier between the performers or participants, and the audience automatically forms. Kaprow refers to this space as "dead space." He writes "All the elements- people, space, the particular materials and character of the environment, time- can in this way be integrated." (103) I think that this is what many of us had been grappling with before the idea to perform a kind of "diagnostic" test on participants to see, I'm assuming, what respeaking might be applicable or best suited for them. I think it will be an interesting way to not only encourage participation from the audience members, but will give our class another way to contribute and participate. This allows for the project to be more interactive and complex, other than just the respeaking.
This too falls in line with what Kaprow says that, "it is a mark of mutual respect that all persons involved in a Happening be willing and committed participants."

Which brings me to my next point, I really didn't like Graciela Carnevale's way of "forced" participation from audience members to prove a point about the passiveness of people in a society where violence ensures all around. Still in accordance with Kaprow, I think that participants need to understand what they are participating in, otherwise, to me, it seems like a form of trickery where the artist gets the last laugh.