Table Games

2021

Performed, Filmed, Edited and Streamed in Real-Time

Duration: 7 Hours, 1 Minute

Made in collaboration with Nina Nadig

Table Games (2021) is a 7 hour 1 minute  live edited performance that was live streamed on the 17th April

2021 during Covid restrictions.

Five characters sit around a table playing poker for real money which the winner receives at the end of the performance. Each player has

been given a score of gestures, sentences and actions that they activate over the course of the game. As the performance progresses the

social dynamics and power relations between the cast begin to become apparent as arguments, laughter, tension and boredom dominate the

atmosphere at different moments over the course of the performance. At times nothing happens, at times it seems as if something is about

to happen and at times things do happen.

The performance is translated to screen through a combination of 360 degree tracking shots, birds eye overviews and two tightly framed

handheld cameras. Cinematic props, soft lighting, costume, music and backdrop draw on the aesthetics of cinema, television and theatre

simultaneously. During the streamed performance the two artists live edited the four camera recordings over the course of the seven hours.

The contingency of the live event and split second decision making is revealed in moments where the camera cuts suddenly, or the wrong

button is pressed - betraying the fact that there is no second edit. The tempo and rhythm of the editing moves between different registers

- long circular tracking shots; quickly edited, tightly framed sequences; shot reverse shot conversations and static overviews draw on a

range of moving image vernaculars in a work that shifts between cinema, television, theatre and live stream.

“Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He

comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly, his voice, his eyes express

an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the in-

flexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tightrope walker by putting

it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light moment of the

arm and hand, all his behaviour seems to us a game… He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We

need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a cafe.”

(Sartre, Being and Nothingness, London: Methuen, 1957)