2019
Performance - Building a House of Cards, 2019
2nd WASB Biennale WE RESPECT YOUR PRIVACY?
Building A House of Cards was the group collaborative component in the Performative Lecture undertaken as part of the Second Worldwide Apartment and Studio Biennale, ‘We Respect Your Privacy’ on October 26th 2019.
Building a house of cards is usually associated with making something that is unstable, able to be changed, damaged or destroyed by very slight changes in the environment. In this performance the structures were built using the cards of the game Racing Patience ICU where the data on the face of the cards is used to drive changes in an ICU patient’s blood pressure, oxygenation, heart rate and respiration. These can be more than minor or slight changes and can result in either death or the survival of the patient in ICU.
However back to using these cards to build a house of cards, apparently (or as told by received wisdom) it is easier to build a house of cards using a pack that has been ‘broken in’. The Racing Patience ICU cards are slightly thicker than normal cards and while they have been well used, I don’t think they have got to the condition that would be called ‘broken in’. It was very clear during the group performative component of the lecture that it could be a frustrating activity. Interestingly that led fairly quickly to one participant abandoning the ‘rules’ of how to build a house of cards, redefining what a house meant and abandoning the scale of the unit size of the individual card either on its side or base. All in all a very interesting experience reflecting on the swinging changes experienced by an unstable patient in ICU and the importance of thinking outside expectations of behaviour.
