Greg Wohead, Hurtling

Greg Wohead: Hurtling

Greg Wohead, Hurtling

The lives of others, unknown and known, are filled with the perpetual motion of existence. Like them, you and I travel in our existence through time and space, hurtling towards an inevitable conclusion. For the most part this bond that unites us is seen yet unspoken – it’s analogous to an over-filled commuter train, where passengers are equal participants on a journey yet rarely dare to connect, make eye contact, talk to or acknowledge one another. Greg Wohead’s Hurtling, however, seeks to link each participant in the performance, one audience member at time.

To call this work a one-on-one experience is maybe misleading as it is filled with moments of connection. From the moment of arriving at The Yard theatre, where you’re greeted at the box office and given a card of instructions that leads you on a journey elsewhere in Hackney Wick, you find yourself actively open to the potential of connecting with others. As you inevitably encounter members of the public en route the piece cleverly alters your perception of those around you; suddenly everyone potentially becomes actively part of the experience, whether they know it or not. En route I was asked directions and found myself smiling at strangers, not knowing if they were part of the performance. Eventually however you are greeted, taken through an office block, and directed towards an access point on the roof. Here, alone with the world before you, there is a sense of isolation as you sit behind a desk, where a tape deck and headphones rest.

With an autumnal sun setting in a smoggy London haze, and a gentle breeze gliding its touch across the body, Wohead’s voice greets you through the headphones. Pre-recorded earlier that morning, his Texan tonality is gentle and embracing. A half-eaten apple and scrawled upon newspaper link us together in the immediacy of what becomes a fleeting yet shared existence. There is a sense of how small an individual can feel as the imposing industrial urban sprawl of The Wick clashes with Stratford’s monolithic Olympic Park in the breathtaking vista around you, yet there is a sense of peace and comfort in the voice of our guide. He is a narrator who aurally matches the visual magnificence of the sights before us with an intimate internalised landscape of image and memory.

Here, as past and present are shared, the work leads towards a perfect moment. To describe it would be to ruin its simplicity, but this fleeting shared point in time comes and goes in the blink of an eye. It hurtles past like the trains on the track that stretch out towards a vanishing point on the horizon. It leads our journey onwards and like those moments that catch one’s eye from time to time, that flash by and yet are never forgotten: it’s gone. And with that, the work is over; the tape clicks on the recording and one is left to wonder what has happened. Watching the analogue tape counter rewind, as you complete the task of resetting the desk for the next participant, you can’t help but feel that each of those numbers represents a perfect moment. And though the work relies heavily on a recording, as I left Hackney Wick on my own train home, I looked out and saw the next person on the roof, knowing full well that this next half hour would be truly unique to them alone.

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About Thomas Bacon

Thomas John Bacon is an artist whose current practice focuses upon the conception of the body, being & the idea of a multiplicity of self/s in performance. His work can be located within the framework of live art and philosophical/phenomenological investigations that look to de/construct and challenge perception, alongside the assumed liminal barriers of body-based practices. Thomas is due to complete his doctoral research at the University of Bristol, with his thesis Experiencing a Multiplicity of Self/s. He is supported by the Arts Council England and is also the founder and artistic director of the live art platform Tempting Failure.