Wondermart is a site-specific audio tour that sends lone participants on a journey of rediscovery through the familiar surroundings of the supermarket. The piece is concerned with the communal non-places that surround and increasingly define our lives, and explores the possibilities of interaction within a commercial setting for decidedly non-commercial reasons.
Alongside guided observations and interactions with the environment, participants receive insights into the history, social influence and secret sales techniques of the mass retail trade. A series of tasks prompts them to negotiate their way through these familiar surroundings, whose usual banality is transformed into a surreal and disorientating mystery tour by the use of a multi-layered soundscape.
Each person’s journey emerges as a unique fusion of predetermined input, personal choice and unscripted encounters with the surrounding reality, where the shoppers, unaware of the show in progress, become actors for the privileged eyes of the participants. This element of unpredictability lends the experience a palpable sense of adventure, heightened further when observers realise that they may not be the sole participants in this particular journey.
The Wondermart project is led by Silvia Mercuriali, created in collaboration with writer/performer Matt Rudkin and composer Tommaso Perego, from an initial idea developed by Ant Hampton and Silvia Mercuriali, and supported by the Foundry Theatre, NYC
It draws on rotozaza’s previous work, combining the instruction-based work of ‘Etiquette’, with the journey through real environments explored in Silvia's solo work ‘Pinocchio’.
Previews 27-28 March 2009, BAC, London
