sixty_six_events
(A collaboration with Andy Ingamells)
Global Happening
January 2010

The Q+A below is an extract from an article in Issue 20 of Blankpages, which can be viewed by clicking here

Why ‘66’ and why the particular date?

In the middle of 2007 I decided I wanted to do something with event scores, which turned into six_events, performed in 29 countries across the globe over six days in January 2008. The 21st January to the 27th January, with the 26th as a rest date. The idea (if there had to be one) was to turn ordinary events into performances.  Six simple activities, getting on a bus and not thinking about the duration of the journey, walking down a road and clapping, entering a building and closing your eyes, buying an item in a supermarket and giving it away, ordering water in a pub but not drinking it and standing in a park looking up at the sky, were to be presented or performed, at a rate of one per day. Each event also contained internal tasks.  I had wanted to repeat six_events the following year, but put it off as I wasn’t happy with simply repeating. Near the beginning of 2009 I decided to simply add a ‘6’ to the event, creating sixty_six_events with the decision that every subsequent two years another ‘6’ would be added. So, in 2012 666_events and in 2014 6666_events.  There was no special reasoning for choosing the dates, as there was no particular special reason for choosing a ‘6’ to begin with.

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Street Scenes
June 26th 2010
Midday – 5pm
Old Compton Street, London

Glorious networks of hectically intriguing journeys and fantastic interweaving activities – streets are theatres, if we care to look or not.  Old Compton Street in Soho witnessed the scenes and exaggerated journeys that had been meticulously planned over several months, starting at one end of the street and ending at the other. Premeditated adventures from the simple, quick and unnoticed crossing to the complex extravagant drawn out expedition.

From celebrating closet doors and cake sharing to boiler suits and angry footsteps mixed with break dancers, musicians, Indian dancers, little drummers, theatrical troupes, acting homeless, walking pictures, life size crosses, opera singers, photographers and wandering film-makers   Sometimes performances were blindingly obvious to anyone watching, but sometimes, one couldn’t be quite as sure … did that person sat next to you just sing a burst of opera and is that person sat writing near you writing something specifically about you? Is that everyday existence or calculated commotion?

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Around This House – Happening In The Library
July 16th 2009, 6:30 – 7:30PM
Shoreditch Library, Hoxton Street, London

“Come and see a library like you have never seen it before!  Watch the books as they watch you, while actors, dancers, musicians and artists make their own journeys, finding their way around their surreal house of words.  Sit down, walk around, get as close as you wish to the action, as every corner you turn reveals a new surprise and if you are feeling brave – join in!”

…dancers in drama, singers in science fiction, actors in architecture, performance artists in photography, bands in business, exhibitionists in encyclopaedias, collectives in comics, film showing in fantasy fiction, artists in audio books, dreamers in D.I.Y., mime artists in music, painters in poetry, composers in children’s classics, rappers in religion, improvisers in interior interest, lecturers in law, games and laughs in gay and lesbian, percussionists in periodicals, groups in gardening, balloon blowing in biographies, aunties in art, events in education, trios in travel, poets in politics, Fluxus in food and farming, installations in illustrations, comedy capers in cookery…

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