This performance, which is based in improvisation, is dealing with the idea of power relations and projection as fundamental to our knowledge of the world and of ourselves. ‘Power is everywhere’, is diffused and embodied in discourse and in knowledge, thus creating ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault 1991; Rabinow 1991).

There is a room. There are some pictures on the wall. There are two motionless performers inside the room. The audience enters. A member of the audience is asked to choose a picture and then to give it to one of the performers. The performer holding the card will be the one who instructs/orders the other performer according to the card The other will wear a blindfold and follow the instructions. The relation between the two is situated in the binaries: sender – receiver, knower – lerner, subject – object, stimulus – executor, see – be seen. In this dialogue there is an unwritten agreement: One says – One does. However, this could easily  change if the listener starts to speak and not only listen. The audience observes and witnesses this situation where different dynamics are being developed and behaviours might be reversed. This might give them the opportunity to project themselves in the state of the two performers.

In the end, when the blindfold is removed, and the actuality of your situation is revealed, you’re like the prisoner who escapes Plato’s cave and discovers that what he had thought  of as real was only the shadow of the actual real.

A possible story was presented in The Royal Academy of Art The Hague (NL, 2018)

Performers here: Astarti Athanasiadou and Alegia Papageorgiou.