Project Ambush: paparazzi on display
The Update
The Idea
Project Ambush is a covert strategy that will engage the paparazzi in a series of performance art pieces that will be documented via photography and video.
In short, what this project proposes to do is organize a series of radical acts and tactical interventions that will, in the process of their documentation, produce images. These events will include the paparazzi, as either willing or unwilling participants, and in the name of art, their likeness will be legitimately captured and later exhibited in an art gallery.
The photographic images of the paparazzi that are captured as a result of documenting each work of performance art will be available for purchase.
Methodology
The paparazzi will participate in these events because the event will be choreographed in a manner that it will be brought to them in a moment that they are publicly pursuing a celebrity. Each intervention will be planned in advance and scheduled, so that the celebrity may have the option of "guiding" the paparazzi to the event. The circumstances, setting, time and place for the ambush will be coordinated with the celebrity's management team.
While the specific strategies of the performance(s) are currently in the design and development stage, this project intends to employ several different methods in an attempt to jar the project participants from their everyday reality. An examples of potential performance pieces, two strategies currently being considered for this project are:
~ Hiring of a Mariachi Band or Operatic performers
~ Employing a team of actors in white Bunny suits or men in white HazMat suits
However, regardless of the performance strategy employed, all documentation will be conducted "en masse" in that this project will employ a team of previously concealed photographers and videographers who will quickly converge upon the participants at the start of the event. It may be that both the performers and the visual documentation team are hidden in vans in a nearby staging area and then are delivered to the event at the start of the performance. The logistic will be planned depending upon the time and location of the performance/ambush.
Upon the start of the documentation, the celebrity is welcome to either watch the event as a member of the audience, become a documenter of the performance (i.e. film/photograph the paparazzi) or make their escape. However, this decision will need to be planned in advance as it will impact the length of the performance and the logistical strategy concerning the team's safe departure.
Note: While the camera lenses will be entirely focused on the event and its participants, Project Ambush has no interest in including the celebrity in the photographic or video documentation that will occur during the documentation process.
Potential Outcomes
Possible outcomes of the Project Ambush performance art events include:
~ An Art Exhibition
~ A Documentary Video
~ A TV Series
~ Academic Essays and a Lecture Series
~ A Photo Book with Essays on the Concept of Radical Aesthetics
~ A New Pedagogical Construct for Teaching the Core-Concepts of Radical Aesthetics