TOMBOLA! (2017-2018)

Live participatory performance and two-screen video installation

A participatory live performance event by Vicki Thornton and Adam J B Walker, TOMBOLA! immersed the audience in a cacophony of chance, and possible synchronicity. In its live performing, the work looked forward to its future filmic second existence, with cameras and camera-people being prominent performers themselves. Participants’ entrance into the space also evoked a casting-call

While nostalgic British TV game show catchphrases celebrating unearned material acquisition played out in the space, the audience themselves were invited to perform multiple absurd scripts in Ukrainian, Russian and English constructed from the fortune-cookie-like phrases printed on receipts from the Ukrainian supermarket chain, Silpo. The soundstage-like terrain became so overladen with text that it started to melt into a background upon which something more may have begun to emerge. What does it mean when nothing means anything and everything means nothing? Is everything a performance? Is one performance of any more inherent ‘meaning’ than any other?

Live performance at IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives, Kyiv (October 2017). Video installation exhibited at Yermilov Centre, Kharkiv (March 2018)

Produced during the British Council and the Liverpool Biennial's SWAP UK/UKRAINE 2017 artist residency programme.

Script / Direction: Vicki Thornton & Adam J B Walker

Editing: Vicki Thornton