Over seventeen nights in Shanghai, Bournemouth, and London, the work lived up to its name, gathering over twenty thousand participants. We were blessed with great weather (apart from one ghastly, torrential night in London), and even greater participants. Our Shanghai dates – all clear, dry, still, balmy evenings – were sandwiched between Typhoons, so the scale of our good fortune cannot be overestimated.

Each of the three cities had its own distinct response to the work and, as a result, Congregation had a very different atmosphere in each location.

We began in Shanghai. (Congregation was commissioned by SCAN and The British Council and premiered in Shanghai as part of the UK’s programme at the Shanghai World Expo). We were hugely fortunate to be given the opportunity to present the work at the Rockbund Art Museum (RAM). The museum, set just off Shanghai’s Bund, opened earlier this year and is housed in a wonderful 1932 five-story Art Deco building which does nothing to discourage the romantic view of a pre-war ‘Paris of the East’ fueled by jazz, hedonism, and more…

China gave us a very warm welcome. Everyone involved at the British Council and at RAM were enormously helpful and thanks to them all, despite the inevitable hitch or two, we were up and ready to go in time for the opening night on 5th September.

Presenting any new work is always nerve-wracking. However, those nerves are normally ameliorated (though sometimes worsened…) by repeated viewing and tweaking of the piece through a series of run-throughs and dress-rehearsals. As our large-scale installations require huge height, outdoor public environments, and (of course) the public, we have no way of viewing them until they’re finished, installed, and open.

Congregation was also a big step forward for us; over double the length of any previous work, it was our first attempt to make an interactive, digital, piece that could guide its participants through a sustained emotional narrative, whilst still allowing them the individual and collective freedom to generate unique responses. Although the language was still rudimentary, we were aiming to create public theatre in the truest sense.

Despite these uncertainties and our nervousness, we were delighted with the piece in Shanghai. Although the overall response of participants was more cautious, and less garrulous, than we were used to, Congregation felt hugely at home there. So much so, that we feared that it might prove too considered and gentle a work for the more robust welcome that we knew would await it in central Bournemouth…

In conversation with Shi Hantao, RAM’s Director of Marketing & Development, we talked about the relationship between the individual and the collective in Congregation and the parallels Hantao saw there with the Western and Chinese psyche.

In our work, the people who first begin to explore the space’s potential (typically the more gregarious and risk averse) seem to be most richly rewarded by the work’s and other participants’ responses.

But this is the basic dichotomy: the more they participate, the more they become a part of a collective body (and the more the collective body borrows from and expands on their participation). The more they become part of a collective body, the less significant their contributions become, except as part of the whole.

In Shanghai, over the course of four nights, some very beautiful and considered responses began to emerge. Those rather magical nights at RAM will always have a very special place in our hearts.

We left Shanghai the morning after the final show in order to make it back in time to open the piece in Bournemouth for the Inside Out Festival. Our hugely valued – and delightful -  right-hand man, Kester had returned a day or two earlier to do all the hard-work.

The opening night in Bournemouth was rammed. Thousands of people congregated to see the work. So many, that any meaningful interaction initially proved impossible. Despite the lack of room for people to move in and explore the work, the atmosphere that the crowd generated was truly magical.

As the throngs began to thin (slightly), the piece came to life…

There were some fascinating social interactions going on. Just before 11pm, a man – probably in his late 20s – took charge and started to suggest ways the group could make shapes which then became thermal imprints on the ground and screen. At his suggestion around 25 strangers held hands in a circle and all lunged with one foot to the middle, then lay on the floor and made a smiley face. One couple said they’d been married the previous week so we made a heart shape, which, once achieved, led to a huge round of applause and total group euphoria. The man who’d been suggesting the ideas then exclaimed “I just want life to always be like this…

Many people stayed for at least three or four cycles (each cycle is about 25 minutes in length), as they were so involved in ‘working out’ the game. Some (including myself) stayed for hours, finding new ways of moving with the light and with other people.”

From http://insideoutdorset.blogspot.com/2010/09/tripping-light-fantastic-kmas.html

Bournemouth’s response was quite different to Shanghai’s. In Bournemouth the initial response tended to be playful rather than cautious. We suspect there were many variables that contributed to this beyond the obvious, though significant, cultural ones. Congregation felt different. Though clearly still the same piece, it seemed to survive, even adapt to, the change in circumstance, becoming a less meditative, more exploratory experience.

Congregation remained in Bournemouth’s Central Square for ten busy nights.

At 8pm, once it was deemed just dark enough KMA’s crane was once again raised and the installation’s generator was turned on. The square was sparsely populated as Bournemouth’s busy and sunny day had given way to an autumnal grey twilight. Something quite magical happened when Congregation started.

There were only around 30 people in the square but they all seemed to literally stop in their tracks and start to play.

Some people had returned to the piece having experienced it a previous night – “I hadn’t been able to get it out of my head.”

As we were stewarding for the evening we had the opportunity to talk to quite a few people who just wanted to know what was going on – people were saying “it’s the best thing I’ve seen in ages”, others wanted to know how it worked, another couple who looked to be in their late 70s stopped and stared before succumbing and leaping into the light themselves. University students promised to try to get friends down to flashmob the site, another simply wished “Bournemouth could always be like this.” For most of the afternoon we’d been stewarding near a couple who were going onto the homeless shelter later that night, one of whom said “Bournemouth can be such a cold hard place, and look at it now, it’s warm, people are all smiling at each other, this is amazing, I love it.”

From http://insideoutdorset.blogspot.com/2010/09/sunday-sermon-back-to-congregation.html

From Bournemouth, it was on to London. Congregation’s home there was in the imposing and very beautiful environment of the Rootstein Hopkins Parade Ground opposite the South wing of Tate Britain.

The first of the three nights in London was an absolute deluge. The sort of rain that nobody goes out in. The second night was Tate’s night for local residents. The weather was perfect and the mood of the piece and its participants was truly beautiful.

“It is so good and life affirming to provide common ground where we can encounter each other and smile, even if it is for a moment.”

“Interesting that it held, indeed increased the interest and participation for a very long time.”

“I am a Millbank resident and I went to the KMA Congregation light and music show last night. It was an almost transcendental experience.

It was quite amazing also to form part of the art show by KMA with my own physical presence. And then the interconnectedness with others forming the dial and circle. It was moving. Literally and emotionally.

the ending of it also was so beautiful”

Extracts from email feedback to Tate

The last night was Tate Britain’s Late at Tate night. The rain had returned and it poured throughout the day, stopping about an hour before we began.

Late at Tate is a wonderful event. The gallery stays open until 10pm and attracts around three thousand visitors, many of whom joined in Congregation.

This last night at Tate combined some of the best energies from all the previous shows; it seemed to restore the contemplative response of Shanghai, and the lightheartedness of Bournemouth, and elevate both.

We’d just like to thank everyone who helped or participated in any way. It’s no platitude to say that Congregation wouldn’t have existed without you.

Images from Congregation are viewable here; http://gallery.me.com/kitmonkman1#100088
A short, edited, video is viewable here; http://www.vimeo.com/16004669

Commissioned by SCAN and British Council, Congregation is due to premiere simultaneously at Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai as part of World Expo and Bournemouth for the Inside Out Festival, followed by further performances at Tate Britain, London

Congregation illuminates the responses that humans make to interruption and interference in their environment. The interruption, in this example, is the arrival of a lone figure (The Angel). This figure cannot communicate, can barely move and appears powerless. Despite its impotence, the figure is utterly immovable, indelible, and as such must be perceived as super-human, with an authority and permanence as powerful as any force of nature. If it will not adapt, it demands to be acknowledged; and the witnesses of the arrival must establish a relationship with it. Our human need to believe – to attribute meaning, to understand our environment – leads us to make extraordinary attempts to relate to this enigmatic presence, and we fall quickly upon universal patterns of religion, spirituality, faith. We seek affirmation in sharing these beliefs with our neighbours, and attempt to reduce and distill the mystery into something tangible. Communities form as consensus develops, and factions seek to confirm their specific relationship with the visitor by defining their differences from each other.

And what then becomes of us should this visitor depart? Are we willing to accept that what seemed permanent was merely an apparition – that we were fooled, and foolish – or was the power in the shared experience sufficient to outlive the trigger? Will we miss our visitor, or rejoice in the reaction which was catalysed? Was the act of the moment more telling than the subject?

Patchy bloggers, at the very best, we’re going to make a concerted effort to keep making regular updates to this page as development and travel progresses…

A wonderful image from the Great Street Games in Gateshead found on Flickr. Thanks to photographer Paul White

The games were set out of doors, in large urban spaces, with no pre-prepared participants. The scale of the arenas created a vast aesthetic impact on the urban environments in which they were placed, drawing audiences to them, quite often by chance as people went about their daily lives. Curiosity drew people in, but it was the intelligence of the language within these games which held the public attention and engaged them in problem solving, play and social engagement.

By manipulating time and space within the public arena and blurring the distinction between participant and audience, KMA’s work is opening up vast new environments in which art and audiences meet equally on each other’s terms.

Some video footage from Great Street Games is available here