In this performance, Gaillard dresses up as a member of the French National Volleyball team. As soon as the French team line up for the national anthem, Gaillard sneaks his way form the crowd, into the French line up. This performacne is an extremely hilarious and satirical video in which Gaillard attempts to make mockery of the intense, serious nature of the situation. The contrast between the focus of the players and Gaillard michevous, exagarated personality is very conflicting and interesting to compare. For example, during the national anthem, the French Teamm remain silent, whereas their ‘newest member’ Gaillard sings loudly and passionately.
In this performance much of the comedy arises from the atmosphere of confusion and absurdity created by Gaillard. He establishes a sense of complete chaos in which many players either seem unaware or simply perplexed by his sudden appearance. What is very interesting concerning the performance is the amount of time it took for Gaillard to be noticed and removed from the court. This in turn drew me to consider the idea of how people in society react to subversion. It was clear that when Gaillard went to shake the hands of his oppenant, that some people seemed surprised by this new players appearance who had not appeared earlier on, however they did seem to openly challenge this. This is an idea which I find fascinating about performace/performacne photography, the fact that an artist/performer is about to get away with acting subversly directly unchallenged, simply because people do not know how to respond to such an unusual form of behaviour.
The subtely of this performance I believe works very well. Gaillard’s objective is not to draw attention to himself as such, but instead it is to try to blend into a situation that he does not fit into. This means therefore that Gaillard is conducting his performacne from an ‘outsider’ perspective. An element of comedy that irises from the fact Gaillard has thrusted himself into a ridiculous and in many cases inappropriate situation. It is exciting to watch and there is a constant anticipation for Gallard to be caught out. This idea relates very effectively to the idea of chance, because the crowds reaction is completely uncertain and the length of the performances depends directly on factors outside of Gaillards control.
This performance has inspired me to explore the concept of an ‘outsider’ in performacne. By acting subversly in situations that you have no connections to, makes the performance even more exciting and on edge, because their is no way of interpreting how strangers will react. Also there is something more risky about it, due to the facto hat acting subservy in public is prehaps uncomfortable and more difficult than it would be to act subservy in front of people you know well. Such a performacne enables the performer to view the situation objectively. I felt that this was the case during our trip to St Malo, because we had no prior experience of then place, and we were complete outsiders, forced to react and adapt (change) to the various situations that we were presented with.
