Collaboration

Nick De Jasy sat down in soul cafe the other day and mentioned he was looking for someone to dress in a gorilla suit, enter a room alone with someone they had never met (also in a gorilla suit), and interact with the objects in there without communicating in anyway other than monkey languages. I said I would do it.

Sunday morning I wake up with a call from Nick with only about an hour to get to his. I was fucked and although it wasn't an early wake up, I'm not usually in a and e til 9am with Duncan who, the previous night had gone samurai on a banana and cut his finger open resulting in 6 stitches from Joyce.

Anyway at Nicks he gave me a quick brief, basically don't touch the cameras and don't speak in any language. 

It was the weirdest thing. I entered the room in gorilla suit and mask to find an identically dressed being. We were shut in for 15 minutes or so and proceeded to smash plates, throw bananas, throw paint, set fire to things, smash plates with a golf club, smash glasses with a dogs toy, slide on the floor, fail to drink coke, bang on the windows at people in a cafe, smash more plates and generally sweat a lot inside the suits. Once the 15 was up Nick came in and we were de masked and introduced to each other. Dave turned out to live 10 doors down from me which was weird.

We both concluded that the experience was very weird and that we had been quite reserved with our smashing. We were dissapointed to have missed the oppurtunity to smash a tv with a golf club but we had both thought it was part of the set up and didn't want to risk it.

It was an interesting project to get involved with and because of Nick's organisation there were no problems on my behalf as a participant. it was a good collaboration to be involved with and I walked away with my creative mind buzzing.