Can high finance be artistic, life affirming and a force for good? Or is it always and inevitably destructive, predatory and poisoned with selfishness? Does it liberate or enslave?
These are some of the timely questions examined in Rob Drummond’s 15-minute one-man play Momentum, currently being performed six days a week, up to two or three times an hour, in the temporary Collective Gallery prefab on Calton Hill.
McDonald Road resident Mark Jeary plays a troubled fitness instructor, recently retired at 40 from the City. His Momentum exercise programme involves warming up, reaching a peak, and warming down – in which we are invited to find parallels for the process from birth to maturity to physical decline.
Jeary’s character rejects his reputation as a capitalist shark, but is nevertheless ruthlessly investing in his material future by buying the gratitude of bright young high-achievers.
His plans both to exploit and escape the system have failed though, since not all his human investments have proved reliable. Some unexplained outrage or tragedy has occurred. In the end, our modern-day alchemist seeks an ascetic solution to the problems of self-control and existence.
Momentum is a thought-provoking and intense monologue, the effect of which is magnified by the confines of the performance space and the inescapable proximity of the main character. Yesterday there were only two audience members, although numbers have varied in the past from 10 to 120.
... actors, computer experts, playwrights, economists, and financial experts to explore a financial reality that functions through a collectively produced play and partakes in a real economy. The exhibition features a new algorithmic trading model [the production budget] that [is being] tested in the financial markets.
With minimal direction, Jeary has only been allowed to learn and rehearse the work whilst actually in performance. Audience members are encouraged to participate: to comment out loud, to offer stage directions, demand repetitions or explanations.
And as if that weren't hard enough, Jeary is also working on only two days’ notice, since if the Anti-VWAP computer algorithm fails to profit on the stock market, his precarious employment here ends.
In the interplay between these two modes of speculation, the work gives itself over to the mysterious forces of capital that it simultaneously stages in the gallery.
Momentum is an odd fish staged in a goldfish bowl in the belly of a conceptual whale. It's challenging, innovative, frustrating, and unexpectedly memorable. Certainly worth seeing. AM
Collective Gallery, 38 Calton Hill, 10am–4pm, Mon–Sat until 26 January.
