Redefining sensory awareness in a public library.
MANUAL is a one-on-one performance that turns a public library into a space of sensory encounter and heightened awareness. Staged covertly during public hours, viewers arrive on site with instructions to meet a stranger at a particular time and location. From there they are led silently through a series of subtle events, following written notes and immersive audio in headphones. They walk through the space and listen together. They look at books and read to each other. Sounds and images found in the library combine and blur. And as the piece progresses the materials they encounter come to form a manual for slowing down.
Intermingling with the daily life of the library, MANUAL reflects on the act of listening and the intimacy of reading with another person in a public space. Through a carefully guided participatory experience, the piece invites viewers to engage with the library as a site of deep sensory awareness, and to reflect on the social and technological conditions of shared attention.
