The culmination of val smith’s Caroline Plummer Fellowship was a somewhat tranquil performance installation called This Cloud Is. A collaboration with Community of Touch, This Cloud Is felt like a social event, cheerful, fluid, companionable, and with lots to talk about.

smith welcomed the audience on the street, outside the underground market where their work was set up. This very public welcome, with cars slowing as they drove past and pedestrians pausing to see what was happening, offered a sense of inclusion, of being invited to the party, without necessarily being exclusive of others.

They explained that the work was an exploration of the significance of ‘community’ from a queer perspective. The installation stations were created by the performer-participants as well as smith, “informed by somatic choreographic practices of attuning-with, sensing and listening as methods of production”. smith had given her collaborators more or less carte blanche to describe their experience of this concept, resulting in an eclectic collection of cardboard constructions each with their own story.

This performance work allowed the audience to have a completely individual and unique experience. I entered a tall box with a sign saying ‘come in’ and found myself looking into another person’s eyes through a small space in the cardboard wall – I didn’t know what to do (I’m not that great in new social situations at the best of times let alone in a very enclosed space). Eventually I said hi and we had a brief but friendly conversation before I whisked myself out. I took a sense of guilt with me at my discomfort in the situation and her completely benign and non-confrontational presence.

The bare concrete space was transformed into a series of installations, with performers at hand to extend the invitation to experience their idea of the work. The installations ranged from fully functional composting toilets with disco lights and way slowed down disco tracks from the 80s to an introvert party with gentle yellow lighting (and a disco ball) and boxes arranged for standing, sitting or lying down. There was a boat named Sarah with a cup of delicious ginger tea, small party snacks and conversation, a gentle man offering to wash and dry my hands, a tumble of cardboard for playing in and a rope path to walk around with a box on your head – apparently very peaceful and with an incredible sense of privacy and relaxation.

I found myself coming back to the projection of elements of the pre-work (smith took one-on-one walks around the city with members of the local queer, trans and other rainbow communities to map their experience of public spaces. The light play across the built structure as well as the people moving through it was eye-catching – there seemed to be a lot of messages and stories to be caught there if only I could.

I said this felt like a social occasion – it wasn’t my own circle of friends but I felt comfortable and safe and very much a part of the group, even though we were all experiencing the work separately. I couldn’t quite manage to get inside some of the smaller spaces and so perhaps didn’t have the full experience available to me but I liked it, especially once I worked through my claustrophobia and talked myself into trying some that I had shied away from to start with. Bumping into acquaintances as I made my way around the space, there was much to discuss about our experiences, as well as catching up generally.

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