Tell No one

Tell No One – A Confidentiality Clause was a performative art piece by Arlene Burnett and Paul Newman. This was a two day event based in the Birmingham Artists space Periscope. It involved a performance led transformation of the Periscope Space, with an emphasis on forbidden zones, containment and projective clothing. The artists/performers controlled the admittance into specific areas of the space by requiring the audience to sign a confidentiality clause prior to being allowed access as well as regulating the duration of their stay within certain areas of the event. Artists David Brinkworth, Bridget Rush and Catherine Harty also participated in the Tell No One – A Confidentiality Clause. Behind Closed Doors received funding from Birmingham Artists for this project. Tell No one: A Confidentiality Clause was inspired by the story, The Trial by Franz Kafka, where the main protagonist moves from one hyperbolic bureaucratic waiting room procedure to another, attempting to discover the elusive answer to what exactly he is on trial for. Within this template there is the pervading sense of an uncanny surrealism in the description and movement of this central character between unexpected and illogical spaces. A Confidentially Clause borrows from the subtle and sinister ambiguities of this novel and combines them with a more overtly flamboyant transportation between worlds as depicted in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carol.