Purge

Brian Lobel

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781783193295
• eBook ISBN: 9781783193301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Part game show, part love story, part lecture exploring modern friendships. Purge addresses where online friendship stops and real friendship begins. In 2010, Brian discovered that his deceased ex-boyfriend and best friend, Grant, had deleted him from Friendster (a pre-Facebook networking site), which neither had checked since they stopped dating in 2006. Although they had since re-'friended' in life (both virtually and non-virtually), it was the discovery of this past de-friending (and impossibility to 'reconnect' since Grant's death), which inspired Brian to create Purge in 2011. In 2011, Brian Lobel played a brutal game of friendship maintenance: over 5 days in cafés in both London and Kuopio, Finland, Brian gave strangers one minute to decide which of his 1300 Facebook friends to keep or delete. The deleting was real, the pace was maniacal, the results were final. 50 hours of performance, 800 emails from angry, amused and intrigued friends and over 2500 comments from people watching via live stream later, Purge is an interactive performance lecture exploring the process of, and fallout from purging and examines how we emotionally and socially interact with digital media.

Purge

(As the audience arrives, Brian is already on stage, sitting at a computer, wearing a t-shirt reading I Like You and updating his Facebook status, which continues for up to ten minutes.⁶ ‘Together in Electric Dreams’ (Philip Oakey and Giorgio Moroder, 1984) plays, as does Dionne Warwick’s cover of ‘That’s What Friends Are For, 1985. If more time is needed, Brian - controlling the music from the laptop he is typing from - opens up iTunes and rewinds the track of ‘That’s What Friends Are For’. Audience members are encouraged, via the status update, to sing along. When ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ (Prince, 1993) begins, Brian opens his list of Facebook Friends and begins scrolling down. As the chorus plays, Brian un-friends one Facebook contact. Brian logs out of his account, fades the music on the iTunes, and the show begins.)⁷

*1:00 Countdown (featuring a digital alarm at :00)*

I was directing a play — a very bad play — that was my first professional directing gig in Chicago. Actually they were two short plays: The Gunslinger, by a friend, Kalena Dickerson, that was actually really good, and then The Fall of an Acorn, or something like that, by Jesse something. I don’t remember, and together they were not very good, horrible actually, but many of the actors remain my Facebook friends today. It was one of those gigs where I direct the show, make the costumes, hang the lights, build the set. Although with the set-building my friend Marc, who was the playwright Kalena’s boyfriend, was doing the construction, and I was doing the decorations and embellishments.

The theater — Breadline Theater, now defunct — was split into two buildings. One was the main house, where the street address to the theater was, and the other a studio in the building behind — in a building filled with art studios — where the show would actually happen. It was really a disgusting little place, incredibly run-down, asbestos-filled. Marc was working in the front room, while I was in the back. The studio space was weird at night — people would work late, work loudly, or it would be completely silent. It was very unpredictable. I didn’t mind working alone but I didn’t love it either...

*Message received by over300 people via Facebook messenger.*

Dear Friend, or, rather, Dear Former Friend

This email is to notify you that we are no longer Facebook friends. As part of my performance Purge, I asked strangers to vote on whether to keep or delete you from my list of friends. I described and defended our relationship for one minute, but apparently, what I said was not good enough. They have decided to DELETE.

I miss you already.

There are a few choices moving forward:

1) We could never speak again, if you never want to speak again.

2) We could become Facebook friends again in the future, either now (if you choose to re-friend me) or sometime down the line.

3) We could create a different path for our relationship in this world, to be determined by you, and, I guess, by me.

Thank you for your friendship, past, present and (I hope) future.

warmly, Brian

*Grant*

After Grant died, I began compiling all of our emails into a single document, an attempt somehow to archive our tumultuous relationship from first loves, to first heartbreaks, to something that was difficult to describe in words.

But our very first electronic exchange was not via email, but rather on Friendster message. Friendster was a pre-Facebook/Myspace social networking tool that whet my appetite for online social networking. In 2003, Friendster rejected a $30million buyout offer from Google, which began a slow spiral to irrelevance for users in the USA (where I was living at the time) and users in the UK and Europe. I tried to hold on to my Friendsters but by 2006, most of my friends had migrated to Facebook or Myspace.

Grant and I only shared two exchanges on Friendster, each heavy with geek-love-wordplay that were intended to impress the other with our wit and to hint at our romantic interest. He was a magnificent writer. When I went to find those first Friendster messages, I noticed something: ‘Add As Friend’, it said. Add As Friend. Why would I have to Add Grant as a Friend? We were friends. Or were we?

This was the moment that I realized that Grant had de-friended me on Friendster. We had become Myspace Friends and Facebook Friends, and when he died we were still best friends - but apparently, at some point along the way, in 2006, Grant had decided that we shouldn’t be friends. Perhaps it was too hard post-break-up. Perhaps he just didn’t like me very much at the time. I hadn’t been on Friendster in over four years, but the severing of this electronic relationship left me bereft. And searching for answers.

*Purge Logo*

You’ve wanted to do it for so long. Every time you see their face in this digital space, you cringe, you sweat, you lose a little piece of yourself. But would they notice? Do you care if they would? Why did you ever have this connection in the first place? Why are we here, together?

*At this point in PURGE, audience members shout out the kinds of people they would delete from their social network right now, if they could*

(The lights in the audience turn on quickly, and the audience will remain well-lit until the end of the show. Audience members shout out the kinds of people they want to delete, while Brian facilitates their participation.)⁸

*1:00 Countdown (featuring a digital alarm at :00)*

In 2005, I was directing a play — a very bad play. Marc was working in the front room, while I was in the back. The studio space was weird at night — people would work late, work loudly, or it would be completely silent. It was very unpredictable.

On this day in particular, I was talking on the phone to Grant, my new favorite person in the entire world. I had met Grant a few weeks earlier at a performance that I gave in his home town — East Lansing, Michigan, a 5-hour drive from Chicago — and was out of my mind with excitement at how he was going to be moving to the city in September to start law school. We emailed the most beautiful emails to each other three times a day, and talked on the phone the rest of the time. He was witty, dark-humoured and described how he felt through the lyrics of Prince songs... not romantic songs like

Stevie Wonder songs, but nasty, sexy Prince songs. Although he hated talking on the phone, I had convinced him to speak nightly and he did so begrudgingly. It’s about 2am Chicago time, 3am Michigan time, and Grant was worried about how late I was working.

‘It’s no problem, the show opens in a few days,’ I said, ‘but what I’m really concerned about is the shrieking studio neighbor. If you don’t hear from me in the morning, I’ve probably been axe-murdered.’ The banging continued to happen in the studio next door to mine, and while I hated not knowing exactly what that horrifying noise was, I mostly just thought it was someone wielding a hard-to-manage sledgehammer or something art-creation related.

*Email to 1342 Facebook friends*

Dear Friend:

This is, purposefully, a form letter.

I am writing because a new show that I’m doing, entitled Purge, will involve you and the rest of my Facebook community. I will be inviting strangers to decide whether to keep or delete each of my individual Facebook friends. Here’s how it will work:

1) The show will run 6 hours each day, with 5 minute breaks each hour.

2) Going in alphabetical order, each Facebook friend will be considered for one minute. Inside this minute, I will Describe my relationship with each person, Defend having them as a Facebook friend, and then it will be Decided whether to keep that relationship or not. I am well aware that one minute is a woefully short amount of time, but it will allow me to perform the work and talk about each friend equally. It will also prove an exhausting experience, and allow me to speak most from the gut where, I believe, friendships may be best evaluated.

3) Three audience members at a time will vote to KEEP or DELETE. If deleted, I will send the contact a form letter (much like this) describing that three strangers, based on the information I discussed with them, have decided that we should not be friends, or that we should not be Facebook friends.

4) Because the audience members on the three-person panel will change constantly, each new panel will bring to the voting its own ethics about who should be one’s Facebook friend and who should not be.

5) The atmosphere will be a combination of casual coffee with friends and high-octane game show.

I will be making a few assurances to you, my friends, my Facebook friends, and all those in between.

1) I will not say anything untrue.

2) I will have a livestream of the event available to be watched. This will evidence that I am not acting in bad faith, lying, or doing anything otherwise unethical.

3) I will discuss each person for only 60 seconds.

4) If you are still uncomfortable with Purge, but still want to be my Facebook friend, email me, we can find a way for you to be comfortable.

As I see it, you have a few options for how to proceed ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chronology and Performance History
• Introduction
• Response from Season Butler, Purge Associate Artist
• A Note about Performing Purge
• Purge
• Sample Opening Status Updates
• Additional Emails from Purge
• Q&As with Purge Installation Artists
• The Purge by Purge Artist Jeff Mills
• ‘Delete’ Email by Purge Artist Kymberlie Quong Charles