The Face Game & The First Time / Edward Rapley / 8th - 10th August 2008 / (Forest Fringe) Edinburgh Festival 2008

1) “The Face Game: We will have just one minute together, if you like, you can play the game of trying to see my face. Would you like to play that game?”

My friend had preceded me, she came out of breath, hair ruffled, clothes dishelleved, smiling but unsuccessful.

I enter the room a tall, spindly man stands in the far corner, his back is to me, dark trousers, white shirt, dark waistcoat, he invites me to play a game - to try and see his face. He will avoid being seen - I have one minute. I recall tales of desperate strategies I have heard attempted in this scenario: the Indiana Jones roll beneath his legs, the leapfrog on to his back, the relaxed waiting game followed by a sudden dash, wrestling him to the ground and trying to pry his fingers from his face, and most memorably the person who brought a mirror and caught his face in a reflection. The last strategy seems mythic, like Perseus defeating Medusa with the aid of his shield. His bobbing and weaving makes me feel like a child trying to seize a friendly ghost. I catch a glimpse of his face - in record time - the quickest of the festival so far and one of a handful ever to see the sphinx-like-man . I won’t tell you how…

2) “The First Thing: You will come into the room, there will be a chair for you, I will have my eyes closed. Once you are seated I will open my eyes and say the first thing that comes into my head. Then you can leave.”

I enter a narrow corridor. Edward Rapley is sat on a chair, eyes closed. Hearing me, he gestures for me to take the empty seat, the chair is arranged so as to face him. He opens his eyes, he doesn’t have words, instead he makes a rising gesture with his left arm like a vertical wave moment, exponential graph or swoosh. I say thank you and leave.

I am in a queue so I am asked what was said to me, as I have asked others what was said to him. In this particular presentation of the work the comparison of responses becomes a secondary but vital aspect of the experience.

The artistry of the pieces lie in their elegant simplicity. They are the slightest of works; they threaten themselves with disappearing all together. They have the charm of kindergarten playground games; a sharp reminder of how little is needed to engage an audience - for art to be: no electric lamps, soundtracks, objects, props - just him just you.

The encounter is the artwork. By this I mean the art is not to be found beyond the situation of meeting, its anticipation or memory. In both cases these encounters have been consciously constructed and engineered; human engagement and its mechanisms is the ’material’, the equivalent of the Renaissance sculptor’s marble. As with a marble sculpture hammer the chisel wrongly and the entire work will crack, the slightest alterations, removals, angles make the all difference. The qualities that make such a work a successful are shared with those that make any meeting between people powerful.I don’t think this is ultimately different from any artwork, the material, the concept, the positioning, the structure - all collectively combine to create the artwork which affects us accordingly, it is possible to imagine different works creating the same effect, the same experience of encountering, if a conversation (as an artwork) can create the same effect as a painting how much do they differ? This moves the emphasis away from how the work has come to be or made to the mark it makes on us. Edward Rapley doesn’t dress the encounter or present it as the by-product of an object, the encounter is all.

'The Other', could be identified as the route concern of these pieces, however they explore this theme with very different logics, masked by similar aesthetics. With The First Time, we are invited to see ourselves from the point of view of an outside eye. To most Edward Rapley will be a stranger. We are bombarded with statistics as to how much a first impression can work in our favour (or against us). Many psychological studies reveal how our first encounter with someone dominates how he we are subsequently perceived. This work is a portrait of sorts, and we sit opposite the artist much as we might for someone sketching our face, hoping some kind of insight will be revealed to us that we cannot find looking into the mirror. The work cannily exploits our curiosity as to how we are seen by others and the impression we make on the world. We are excluded from huge swathes of ourselves simply because we are in the way of our self, we cannot extract our self from our self. Perhaps in compensation we have our own interiority, a different kind of proximity to ourselves. The duration of the work is Edward Rapley’s response and mental processing - it is not a communal time system. He opens his eyes and speaks, (or in my case gestures) the time he takes to do this dictates the length of the work, his body functions as the chronological system mirroring the playful absurdity of learning more about ourselves (if only what his first response is) through him. With The Face Game someone sits in the corner with a stop-watch, it is more overtly a game and a challenge - with a clearly articulated objective. You and Edward are on a level playing field. The curiosity is now with The Other, what does he look like, will he be disturbing? How will he appear to me? Why might he want his face hidden? I seek him, I seek knowing him. That the game demands I seek his face divorced of explanation chimes with the desire to know what is alien, beyond all rationality. Imagining ourselves as the Other, as Edward Rapley, what is his experience? In The First Thing, there is the unenviable challenge of genuinely mouthing one’s thoughts, at the risk of saying the ridiculous or the deeply offensive and in doing so revealing yourself; your unedited thought processes and assumptions. In The Face Game perhaps Rapley enjoys the physical and mental challenge of staying unseen, of outwitting an opponent? Or does he enjoy being sought after, being leapt upon, tugged, pulled, prised open? - Only Edward Rapley knows. For a while now I have imagined two impossible situations: in The First Thing, Edward would open his eyes to see himself sat opposite, expectantly waiting words, judgement even, he would remain speechless. In The Face Game Edward would be wrestled to the floor, a man would prise away the cover of Edward’s fingers, in doing so each simultaneously recognising they are identical… there would follow a pause followed by a scream in each others faces.