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The Perfect Human (and the things we do) : A performance research project considering how a performance event can be sustained through individual acts of genuinely daily behaviour. The project is constituted as a series of context specific performance and installation works, each performed with 20-30 self-selecting participants from the locale, and taking its initial dramaturgical structure from the script of Jorgen Leth’s 1967 film 'the perfect human'.

Performed in Italy, Spain, Germany, Switzerland; since July 2009. A performance research project, initially developed within a commission by Inteatro (Polverigi, Italy) during a two year period as associate artist to the company. Subsequent versions having been commissioned and produced by BAD (Bilbao, Spain), CAOS (Terni, Italy), HAU (Berlin, Germany), and Teatro Sociale (Bellinzona, Switzerland). The project being realised within the context of Brookes’ ongoing artistic collaboration with Spanish artist Rosa Casado. Research questions: • How might a performance event be sustained through individual acts of genuinely daily behaviour? • How might an artistic installation structure and allow a genuine engagement in personal behaviour, in public space? • In what ways might an ensemble of non-performing participants act as a mirror for their audience? • What kinds of discourse might become possible within a performance environment where performers and spectators are revealed and acknowledged as the same? Significant features: The project is constituted as a series of context specific performance and installation works, each performed with 20-30 self-selecting participants from the locale, and taking its initial dramaturgical structure from the script of Jorgen Leth’s 1967 film 'the perfect human', through the live delivery of a text drawing on the film’s narration. Within a large interior public space, redefined by the arrangement of 30 identical chairs, tables and anglepoise lamps; participants demonstrate aspects of their daily behaviour, constructing a reflective social meeting place, and reframing notions of human perfection within the fragility and imperfection of the developing structure. Within its open promenade form, the work engages a choice between participation and non-participation, framed by an awareness of how events result from the sum of our individual behaviours. The work proposes a social discourse through demonstration, within a social place evoked simply by our decision to populate it.