My iphone photo taken at Ann Carlson's 70-minute performance hike, "Picture Jasper Ridge."

On Friday I went to see Picture Jasper Ridge Ann Carlson’s 70-minute performance hike through the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve near Stanford University. You could not have asked for a more beautiful day to see art outdoors. As we passed through the gates of Jasper Ridge we were divided into smaller groups and asked to hold silence. This was my second “no speaking” performance this year, the first was Sleep No More by Punchdrunk Theatricals, where the audience followed—sometimes ran—after the performers, who ate and sang and danced and seduced one another through several floors of the McKittrick Hotel.

In Picture Jasper Ridge, the performers do not move or speak either. Visitors come upon them in tableaux vivants recreating archival images on or near the spot they were taken. Using a printed program, we were able to identify the images, along with some images of nature that indicated the passage of time: a skeleton of a deer who died giving birth, a rare leatherwood flower, a tree that had grown over the “No Swimming” sign affixed to its trunk.

One essay in the program addressed the experience of photographing a living image of an archive and many people brought along cameras. It is rare for an audience to be allowed to photograph work by someone as acclaimed as Ann Carlson. I brought my Nikon SLR but at the last minute decided against it and left it in the car. Even though I love taking photos, the thought of being an audience member with a large camera is intimidating to me even when given permission. So I didn’t bring my camera, but when people began taking photos I couldn’t resist taking several (including the one above) on my iphone instead.

For the first 20 minutes or so, it was impossible to silence the part of my mind that incessantly chatters white-paper jargon about “audience engagement” an “manufacturing meaning” because it was such a unique experience but one that seems tailor-made for community-based, neighborhood-based work. I was not surprised when, following the show, I learned that Picture Jasper Ridge was informed by Carlson’s earlier work Night Light, which was performed at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2002.

After the hike the audience and performers gathered around picnic tables to share a meal before taking the shuttle back to Stanford. It was opening night (afternoon?) so everyone was buzzing about the experience. I overheard one of the performers talking about how some of the groups seemed more “generous” than others because they took in the tableaux, while other groups—clearly the lesser groups according to the performer speaking—were busy snapping photos.

As someone who performed as an actor on stage every year for 20 years, I get what he was saying but I had never thought of it that way. It has been eight years since I performed and in that time pro-am photography and smart phones have become part of the live art experience. So, I’ve had the experience of being an audience member with a camera. And I’ve had the experience of being an administrator enforcing camera/no camera rules and conferring with artists about it. But until yesterday I hadn’t put myself in the shoes of a performer in the sense of what it feels like to perform for an audience who is actively engaged—with their cameras, or with some other activity that calls upon the audience as a creative or curatorial participant.

Of course it feels better to see emotion on the face of your audience, to hear them laugh and cry and gasp and clap. When the audience is active the rules change, the usual cues of an audience who is enjoying the performance are gone or different. After this experience I will be more mindful of that in my own work.

For Picture Jasper Ridge, I really enjoyed having permission to participate in a small interpretive way by framing and editing and sharing  the beautiful images created by Carlson and her collaborators. And a “performance hike” was well suited to this type of participation. The performers were still and we were not rushed from place to place. Because the hike was 70 minutes there was a lot of time between the performances to take in the experience with all senses and let one’s mind wander. As we got deeper into the hike I thought about my own history and how it connects with the natural world.

The morning after the performance, I enjoyed looking back at the photographs and recalling the whole experience. Picture Jasper Ridge was an experience that will stay with me for a long time.