In Your Hands is a performance inspired by the situational approach to understanding the condition of human action and social psychology experiments such as the Stanford Prison and Milgram experiments from the 1970s, which demonstrated the transformation of human behaviour through hyperreal simulation and meticulously designed environments. In Your Hands adopts a similar approach but takes it out of the laboratory into the public arena. In the performance and accompanying video remote-controlled roller skates place the artists’ fate in the hands of the audience, creating a situation where ethical parameters are challenged. Humour and spectacle are used to lure the participants into the thrill of the event while distracting them from what is really happening, namely a subversive social experiment which questions how far people are willing to go to seek their own enjoyment.
In Your HandsDash MacDonald (UK)
performance, 2007

Dash MacDonald (UK)
Dash MacDonald (b. London, 1982) studied product design at Falmouth College and at the Royal College of Art, London, where he received an MA in 2008 since when he started collaborating with Dimitrios Kargotis. They were both members of Platform 11 at the Royal College of Art, directed by Noam Toran, Carey Young and Onkar Kular Singh. They exhibit internationally, most recently in Tokyo, Austria,Zurich, Spain and London.
www.dashndem.com
Contact: dashmacdonald1@hotmail.com