CRASS
creation of changing configurations of these small fires coupled with a sonic element based on the foghorn.The questions that interested me (at any rate, the questions I could articulate) involved the relationship between the duration of the performances and the attention spans of individual members of the audience.” The book Anthony McCall, The Solid Light Films And Related Works shows a move, however wrapped up in art, towards the streets.You might even consider it in a lineage that ends up in the present day with graffiti artists such as Banksy: “For the Exit group, one of the most interesting aspects of McCall’s performances was its inhabitation of the exterior realm staked out earlier by Krapow’s happenings and more contemporary land art practices: ‘Anthony’s piece appealed greatly to us because although the “happenings” element of his work was one that we too had been developing, the idea of moving out of the confines of galleries and performance venues into open space was something that we hitherto had not really considered.’” Shortly after this, Anthony McCall moved to New York, but Penny and Gee decided to continue and mutate the idea of fire performance. Rather than dealing with bureaucracy, however (as they had at North Weald Airport), they decided to perform the pieces without authorisation.The first was on a hill by a main road near Colchester, that as well as attracting the attention of the traffic and a small word of mouth audience, attracted the police. With no frame of reference, however, the police simply gave them a warning. After this it was decided not to continue with the fire pieces due to the emerging conciousness of their environmentally dodgy nature. But the idea of performing on or in “squatted” space would stick around for quite a while. . .
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