MANUAL
Multiple dates and times
Birmingham Library, B1 2ND
Description
MANUAL is a one-to-one performance that transforms a public library into a space of sensory encounter and heightened awareness. Staged covertly during public hours, participants arrive on site with instructions to meet a guide, and from there they are led silently through a series of tiny actions following written notes and immersive audio in headphones. They walk through the space and listen together. They look at books and read to each other. Sounds and images found in the library combine and blur. And as the piece progresses the materials they encounter come to form a manual for slowing down.
Intermingling with the daily life of the library, MANUAL proposes a performance that develops through the act of listening and reading with another person. Through a slow and careful process, this piece stages a quiet meditation on the library as a space of shared attention.