Troubled by the muted actions and the amplification of seemingly resonant but ultimately meaningless language transmitted by the UK government during the pandemic, “StayInAlert” was a means for me to personally circumvent the isolation of lockdown and in my absence from others it became a wish to cultivate and give agency to their collaboration and participation offline. Exposing and undermining the inconsistent and confusing messages of national guidance and the nebulous instructions of behavioral change, the work developed from a script over time, incorporating the now ubiquitous Lato font and borrowing from the design and propagation of public information resources to become first a script and slideshow, then an audio work, and now a video (“StayInAlert” (2020):
https://youtu.be/bgWbPbvzK9Q).

Keen for others to see my video while also responding to and poking fun at both government guidance and the public’s now weary apathy, I devised a “Socially Distanced Performance.” Dressed in black, wearing a face covering, and using a grabber hand with which to keep a minimum safe distance, for several hours I attempted to distribute flyers to the public on the busy street above the foreshore. For the most part I was avoided, although occasionally I succeeded. The performance, the flyers, myself, and the video were met with a mixture of awkward disdain, embarrassment, and uncomfortable laughter; many of the public were unsure if what I was doing was official, and/or if touching the flyers or opening their mouths to speak was either a good idea or not. Once all the flyers were exhausted the performance was concluded.