Martin Butler is a performance artist bridging a variety of disciplines. Between film, dance, theatre and visual arts, he explores the new dramatic that information and communication technologies faciliate. His work is part of mainstream advertising as well as that it can be seen in a variety of exploratory and underground contexts.
1.how do you create intimacy with strangers..?
2.how do you take responsibility for people you don know...?
3. what happens when one person witnesses another....?
4.what happens when you witness another?
5. how do you deal with strangers?
1.how do you create intimacy with strangers..?
2.how do you take responsibility for people you don know...?
3. what happens when one person witnesses another....?
4.what happens when you witness another?
5. how do you deal with strangers?
the experience as a choreographer for stage and with dancers..?
developing and directing performance presence?
luka and the last celebrity
the charismatic movement
experiences as a new media artist..
the girlfriend experience...
the watchers
the mauer mob... project organized by networking sites
the possibility of playing with random internet chat roulette sites using autonimous sites as a creative platform...
how intimacy and privacy works online...?
my experience working with in the fashion industry strangers that makes desirability.. a projection of an ideal,
the desire of wanting something that you can not have... ?
mediated and manufactured imagery?
is fashion is surely the same as mediated and manufactured imagery of traditional theatre... the theatricality of advertising....?
of constructed images of constructed realities...?
playing into an ideal which is often constructed...?
the notion of family as a tool...?
how do you do work with strangers?
how do you engage strangers, both as an audience and a possible participant (social networking sites)?
flash mob performance in milan...
how do you make strangers responsibile for your artistic or commercial actions?
manipulation or co ownership.. how do you get people to feel that belong?
the notion of family... the notion of love.. bonding?
either through personal or emotional goals or both ?
uniting through a cause or action or event...?
are people who are often involved not strangers but as of yet un made friends?
why do people participate freely or even pay to part of a an event?
It was a typical over heated, frustrated 2.30pm on a very warm and over crowded milan metro, people minding their own business, old ladies, students, tourists, suited business men, all quietly and inwarding complaining about the heat and the smell of other people, avoiding eye contact, avoiding any contact all together with each other.
A man enters the metro at Cardona, he is in his late thirties, 1.90m tall , average build with a slight beer belly under his bright blue t-shirt, beige army pants, dark aviator style sun glasses, slightly unshaven and long dark hair tied up in a pony tail underneath his red baseball cap.
He stands in the middle of the aisle. He has a large black box with him. He takes from his left trouser pocket a small remote control. A metro bomber? In a way, yes..
Music starts.
He takes a microphone from his right pocket.
He launches into a full dance and singing number, awkward, playful, unlikely.
A suprise attack.
People sing along. People clap along. People smile at each, laugh with each other.
The over crowded metro, becomes his stage, and the people a willing audience.
As he breaks the codes of excepted behaviour in a public space, we happily follow him.
As the location takes on another context, so does the peoples behaviour with in it.
the launch of a new youth movement
In the summer of 2004, six friends from different fields, ( advertising, art, commercial show business, branding and communications, theatre and cultural theory) were invited to meet in a castle on the Austrian Hungarian border. Their goal was to set up a model, a manifesto for a new youth movement.
During a two week brainstorming, with daily sessions looking at how youth cultures and subcultures worked, they developed a manifesto for "The Charismatic Movement", and launched the project of "Luka and the Last Celebrity".
The basic premise of "The Charismatic Movement", was that charisma, and presence, would have a marketable and desirable value.
A Charismat, would own no possesions themselves, they would only wear what was given to them for free, they would stay always for free, eat for free, and succeed.
A Charismat would exchange personality and presence for material possessions, shelter, food, they would become desirable objects for the giver, but would never own anything themselves.
All materialist ideas of having were swapped for the idea of having experience..
The idea was that charismats would question the goals of contemporary consumerism, by becoming a consumerist object or luxury item themselves.
A charismat (Greek "kharisma," meaning "gift) is a person whose personalities are characterized by a personal charm and magnetism (attractiveness), along with innate and powerfully sophisticated abilities of interpersonal communication and persuasion.
A charismat is capable of using their personal being, rather than just speech or logic alone, to interface with other human beings in a personal and direct manner, and effectively communicate an argument or concept to them.
To promote this concept, it was decided that the world of pop music was the easiest, most accessible and most effective way of reaching a large public, with its message.
As a maker it has always been very important that I have or created a feeling of love with every person that I have worked with as a performer. With the idea of love, one can feel inspired, trust, explore, give over, be generous, ask impossible tasks, project, feel pride, create family.
As a maker it has always been very important that I have or created a feeling of love with every person that I have worked with as a performer. With the idea of love, one can feel inspired, trust, explore, give over, be generous, ask impossible tasks, project, feel pride, create family.
Coming from a large and very harmonious traditional family with thirty aunts and uncles and over two hundred cousins from all different kinds of class, professions, personalities, and political views, acceptance has always been an important part of my upbringing, since "family" is "family" after all.
My family exists as both a huge social platform and also as an incredibly strong support. I think this fact has given me a very unique understanding of how to deal with and work within both small and large groups of people.
My mother once told me, "We don't have friends, we have family". Friends of my parents, as a child, were always addressed as " Uncle" or " Aunt", strangers addressed formally as "Mr. ....... " or "Mrs. ......". As my parents made new friends then also my family continued to grow.
This idea of creating "family", has played a very important role in my work method has a maker and how I try to work with people.
"B.O.B" was a project whereby we invited 100 people per night for a seven course dinner, and for the seventh course they were offered love rather than cake.
"B.O.B" was a project whereby we invited 100 people per night for a seven course dinner, and for the seventh course they were offered love rather than cake.
Prior to the event, a cook had spent three days preparing a classical seven course french dinner for a group of invited musicians, video artists, performers, fashion and graphic designers.
After each course the guests were asked to write down the experiences and associations of each dish, not as a food critique but as a poetic text without mentioning or describing the food itself.
Afterwards each group of participating artists was asked to create a performance, a video work, an outfit and a musical track that would manifest the mood of each of the seven dishes.
On the evening of "BOB", guests arrived expecting a seven course dinner. They arrived to what appeared like a fully functioning restaurant with a team of thirty waiters. On meeting the Maître d' at the door, who checked their reservations and who asked if they would prefer the fish, meat or vegetarian menu, they were taken individually by one of the waiters to a table for one person of 1m by 1m.
As the evening progressed, for each course they received the correct wine, and water menu, and experienced the performances, music, fashion, and video inspired by each course.
But rather than receiving the food itself they were served on their plates the written poetic texts of the food they would have eaten.
For the seventh course, the dessert course, each one of the seven performers had to choose one person of the public and perform a five minute solo exclusively for that one person.
The idea of the solo was to create a five minute experience for the chosen viewer that would give them the same satisfaction and experience as eating the sweetest pudding ever tasten, a love solo.
The idea was that those fives minutes each performer had to, without words, express the deepest love, charm, infatuation, tenderness, warmth, passion for that person, for that stranger, to try to arouse in them a sense of well-being and inner glow that you experience when you are in love...
A good stage performer always possesses the ability for the audience to fall in love with them, I think that is how most great stage performers work. If we can somehow fall in love with the person we are watching on stage we are willing to follow them everywhere, and share happily with their experiences. We become hungry for them, we want to see more, laugh with them, cry with them.
What you will need to begin with is:
Five to Seven Seasoned Performers
Five to Seven Plastic Chairs
A Rehearsal Space ( 8m x 8m at least)
An Openness to Explore
A Honest Response
"hello
how are you?
I hope you are well.
My name is Martin Butler and I'm busy collecting research for a new project that I'm asked to participate with in Holland about presence.
Im asking 100 people, two questions..
50 of the people, are people that I've met at some point in my life and have fond memories attached to them and the other 50 people are people that i don't know ...
I wondered if you could help by answering the two questions below.. it won't take too long.. and would really help me if you would answer them
Question one..
When would you trust a stranger?
Question two
How would you make a stranger trust you?
i hope you have time to answer them..
with warm smiles and best wishes
martin "
Working in the field of live performance, be it dance or theater in its many forms, compared to other arts disciplines is that the main difference in its practice is that you are reliant on other people to make the actual art. The performer is, at the moment of creation and execution from the point of the director , the messenger, the interpreter, and the actual "body" of the work.
Working in the field of live performance, be it dance or theater in its many forms, compared to other arts disciplines is that the main difference in its practice is that you are reliant on other people to make the actual art. The performer is, at the moment of creation and execution from the point of the director , the messenger, the interpreter, and the actual "body" of the work.
The relationship between director and performer is a very special one. A bond of trust has to be created which allows the performer to give him or herself to the director, both physically, mentally and emotionally, in order to be able to create what the director has in mind. Since the director is unable to play all the parts himself, the performer acts as an extension of the director.
The director in the creation of the work offers a sketch to the performer, since he is unable to get directly inside the body and emotion and psychology of the performer and the performer with their full capacity, give embodiment to that idea.
In casting a performer, often the director sees or senses something in the performer he recognizes from himself, and that what he would want to convey himself if he was asked to perform on stage. The performer serves a partial reflection of the director, and in the same way the performer must have a sense of self recognition with the director.
I wonder if the same mechanism of identification also work with strangers. That you recognize or identify something inside your self in the other, and vice versa.. once this recognition has been achieved, from that point you can start building trust.
"Mauer Mob. 2009 - Recreating the Berlin Wall" was a large scale art project in the frame work of the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.
The idea was to form on the 9th of november 2009 - the night the Wall fell 20 years ago - a line of people that recreated the Berlin Wall with their physical presence, marking the path where the wall once stood.
Approximately 10,000 people formed a human chain that made its way on the 9th of November around 8.15pm. This action lasted for 15 minutes.
"Mauer Mob. 2009 - Recreating the Berlin Wall" was a large scale art project in the frame work of the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.
The idea was to form on the 9th of november 2009 - the night the Wall fell 20 years ago - a line of people that recreated the Berlin Wall with their physical presence, marking the path where the wall once stood.
Approximately 10,000 people formed a human chain that made its way on the 9th of November around 8.15pm. This action lasted for 15 minutes.
The "Mauer mob" project was about creating a "temporary monument of reflection".
When it was created, the wall was one of the clearest man-made divisions of people with different ideologies.
For the 20th anniversary of its deconstruction I wanted rebuilt the Berlin Wall, not from steel and concrete, but from people.
To remember when Berlin became one again after decades of separations - physically as well as in the minds...
To offer a platform for people young and old, east and west, national and international, to express their own feelings about the barriers.. for people to come together and making something together.. to reflect together in their own personal way.
With the "Mauer Mob. 09 Project", we wanted to say that such divisions are no longer acceptable in today's society.
The Mauer mob project was organised by a massive application of social media, and networking sites such facebook, twitter, the german studivz which lead them to the official website of the project, www.mauer-mob.com
The pathway of the wall was divided into 330 sections on the website, which gave links to Google maps, so people could choose themselves where they wanted to stand, and in which group of 100 people along the route.
The "Mauer Mob" succeeded in gathering 10,000 people to join in. I think because the project allowed people to take initiative themselves, and offered a sense of co-ownership and
co-responsibility.
The project offered a platform for people individually to commemorate or reflect upon the fall of the wall, rather than offering something on their behalf. There was a sense that if we want this to work, we have to do it together, each person was important in the chain as the next.
"Mauer Mob. 2009 - Recreating the Berlin Wall" was a large scale art project in the frame work of the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.
The idea was to form on the 9th of november 2009 - the night the Wall fell 20 years ago - a line of people that recreated the Berlin Wall with their physical presence, marking the path where the wall once stood.
Approximately 10,000 people formed a human chain that made its way on the 9th of November around 8.15pm. This action lasted for 15 minutes.
"Mauer Mob. 2009 - Recreating the Berlin Wall" was a large scale art project in the frame work of the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, in Berlin.
The idea was to form on the 9th of november 2009 - the night the Wall fell 20 years ago - a line of people that recreated the Berlin Wall with their physical presence, marking the path where the wall once stood.
Approximately 10,000 people formed a human chain that made its way on the 9th of November around 8.15pm. This action lasted for 15 minutes.
The "Mauer mob" project was about creating a "temporary monument of reflection".
When it was created, the wall was one of the clearest man-made divisions of people with different ideologies.
For the 20th anniversary of its deconstruction I wanted rebuilt the Berlin Wall, not from steel and concrete, but from people.
To remember when Berlin became one again after decades of separations - physically as well as in the minds...
To offer a platform for people young and old, east and west, national and international, to express their own feelings about the barriers.. for people to come together and making something together.. to reflect together in their own personal way.
With the "Mauer Mob. 09 Project", we wanted to say that such divisions are no longer acceptable in today's society.
The Mauer mob project was organised by a massive application of social media, and networking sites such facebook, twitter, the german studivz which lead them to the official website of the project, www.mauer-mob.com
The pathway of the wall was divided into 330 sections on the website, which gave links to Google maps, so people could choose themselves where they wanted to stand, and in which group of 100 people along the route.
The "Mauer Mob" succeeded in gathering 10,000 people to join in. I think because the project allowed people to take initiative themselves, and offered a sense of co-ownership and
co-responsibility.
The project offered a platform for people individually to commemorate or reflect upon the fall of the wall, rather than offering something on their behalf. There was a sense that if we want this to work, we have to do it together, each person was important in the chain as the next.
"If I wasn't beautiful, would you still want to buy me?"
"If I wasn't beautiful, would you still want to buy me?"
Over the last few years i have been, working inside the fashion industry in Milan. Working as fashion show art director/ sceneographer / choreographer and casting director. I have been able to experience how the fashion world works from the inside.
It is said " that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder", but there must be something that the multi-billion dollar fashion industry knows, that allows them to be able to easily manipulate the "beholder".
Fashion is the industry that creates beauty, and visual allure, on the most quickest and hard hitting level. It dictates to the masses, both educated and not, what is acceptable in the ideals of beauty and what is not, it is a standard that we are all expected to follow.
In history the heads of court, dictated the ideals of beauty, but in an ever democracized society, it is the fashion houses themselves, (once the servants to the kings, now kings themselves), that now define, how we perceive beauty, how we should perceive ourselves and how we should perceive others.
Beauty is a strange beast.
We want it and if we can't be near, it we want to touch, buy or experience things that have been around beauty..
In my experience working as a casting director for shows, and I have to see hundreds of internationally beautiful men and women in one day for a show.
The standards are extremely high, her nose is too big, his bum is too low, she cant walk, too tall, too small, too old, too young, too thin, not thin enough, too Slavic, too Brazilian, too American, too editorial, too commercial, the list goes on and on and on.
Definition a model-
1.One serving as an example to be imitated or compared..
2. A small object, usually built to scale, that represents in detail another, often larger object.
But despite the hard standards of what it is, when you offer yourself as a model, it is a something else that captures the imagination. They are all extremely beautiful people, people that you would stop in the street to look at. But the good ones, the good you want to work with, be close too, have something else..
It is a certain presence, that makes you want to be around them, a brief moment of falling in love, a moment of infatuation.
Fashion like all art serves as a mirror to ourselves.
Fashion holds up a mirror to the viewer, but rather than seeing your own reflection, it reflects another, and even if you can't touch it, you want to..
Special K has come out with numerous television commercials promoting their Special K diet plan.
Their latest ad features a modelesque woman sitting at the breakfast table, staring forlornly at her breakfast bowl. Then, she opens her cabinet and smiles at the array of Special K cereals at her disposal.
"You too can have a breakfast like mine"...
It was late on a dark and cloudy night, and i was walking with a friend home.
The street was quiet, and badly lit.
A young woman appears from around the corner, maybe 20, 22 years old, she was very beautiful, dark hair, dark eyes, pale skin, red lips, wrapped in a 3/4 quarter length mink jacket, and carrying a small dog in her arms.
She approaches us.
We stop.
" Hello", she says, in oxford english, " I'm sorry to disturb you, but I've just lost my purse and my wallet . I don't know what to do. I need 12 euros to get a taxi back to the hotel. I don't suppose you could help me, could you?"
" Sure, no problem", we both gave the girl six euros each.
"Thank you", she said, " have a nice evening", and we all carried on in different directions.
Later my friend and i began talking, would we have done the same thing had it been a homeless person, who had asked for 12 euros in the middle of the night, for something he needed.
Probably not, would you?
Ships that pass or crash in the night or the possibilty of playing with random internet chat roulette sites as a creative platform...
Looking for good people on chatroulette is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
This summer i tried to experiment a little with how you could use these random chat sites as a possible creative platform.. as an anonymous theatrical experience, playing with fictitious characters, and to test how much people can take responsibility for strangers they meet randomly online.
This summer i tried to experiment a little with how you could use these random chat sites as a possible creative platform.. as an anonymous theatrical experience, playing with fictitious characters, and to test how much people can take responsibility for strangers they meet randomly online.
I asked a friend, a pretty young looking french girl to act as bait, since most users are male under 24 years or genitalia exposing middle aged men, she fitted perfectly the idea of "internet bait".
The idea was for her to chat with strangers on "Chatroulette" for five to seven minutes, playful, seductive, flirtatious, keeping their interest, with the web camera quite close on her face, to make her look even younger but exposing a little in the back ground of the frame the house and the patio doors leading into a drak garden. After seven minutes, two masked men, burst in from the doors at the back of the room. They violently place a bag over her head and drag her away, out of the image frame. The image remained of an empty room, until the other person decided to leave. We could still watch there response from outside the frame of the camera .
Maybe a little harsh as a scenerio, but what was interesting was the response from the viewer. The scenerio that they has just witnessed, was a possible abduction of a cute girl, who they had made good social contact with, and who had been violently removed from your visual frame by two masked men. The viewer had witnessed an extreme event. They were the witness of a possible crime. In the five times that we re-enacted this scenerio, the response was quite similar. The person on the other side of the chat, the viewer, went through a range of first confusion, then slightly growing concern to full concern. Most people stayed on the empty image of an empty room for ten to twenty minutes, before clicking away.
2007 - present
I presented four human avatars to play with. in a project in collaboration with Mediamatic.
You could log in at home with your character of choice, by just clicking on the picture on the website.
You could direct the avatar, explore the space and challenge him or her.
Each user was given a limited time to explore and play with their avatar.
An Avatars point of view by Roel Swanenberg aka Zachary (in the Girlfriend Experience)
An Avatars point of view by Roel Swanenberg aka Zachary (in the Girlfriend Experience)
"Hello, welcome to the Girlfriend Experience. For the next 15 minutes you and me are one and the same person." That whas my opening line. I must have said that at least a couple of hundred times.
As an avatar you want to give the user an experience, but you're also trying to keep it interesting for yourself as an avatar. It's not only about executing commands, like: slap her, kiss him, dance, bark like a dog, etc. You try to establish a personal connection with the user and you start to build from there.
The most inspiring moments where those in which you collaborate, e.g. A guy starts to speak to other avatars in poetry, which gives me the opportunity to improvise with him and create a new language together.
As an avatar you learn a lot about your user in a very short amount of time. How they think, what they like, how they look at the world, e.g some users didn't speak at all. They just wanted a audiovisual trip, no communication. As an avatar that's a challenge. How can you keep it interesting for 15 minutes.
Another interesting inside-fact. As an avatar you can also have a mind of your own. It happend several times that I didn't have a user. In that time I could do anything I wanted, even pretend that I did have a user.
The strangest encounters where those between people that knew eachother very well, e.g a married couple or a group of friends, who would use us avatars to play their strange games.
It takes a lot of patience to really listen to a user and try to find out what it is that person really wants. You may have to suggest things, be openmindend to try out new things and at the same time try not to get frustrated if something technical is going wrong.
There is also a scary side to it. People know who you are, but you don't know them. You can imagine how it feels if someone comes up to you in person after a session and says: Hey Zachary. It's me. Bill. I'm the one who slapped you in the face and called you an asshole!
When I look back on it now, it feels like a out of body experience mixed with a dream, a little bit of torture and a sexual sci-fi touch on top of it.
Martin Butler
