2025 A S S E M B L E
Performance Instructions For Public Arrangements
Sept 18 - Oct 5 Performance Instructions via QR Codes in Boston Common
Oct 3-5 Guided Interactive Performance
A S S E M B L E is a collection of instructions for participatory performance that reflect on the ways we gather in public space—particularly the historic Boston Common—through the objects we bring with us or discover there. It is a guided, interactive experience that unfolds across the landscape, inviting participants into temporary arrangements shaped by memory, proximity, and shared attention.
As the city embarks on a 5–7 year master plan to redesign the Common, ASSEMBLE pauses to honor how the park has existed for recent generations—accumulating its own layered history of protest, play, leisure, and chance encounter. This work is both a reflection and a reminder: that in an era marked by increasing loneliness and social fragmentation, free and open “third spaces” are essential—not just for connection and recreation, but as vital arenas for civic engagement and collective expression.
ASSEMBLE is a quiet spectacle on how we orient to one another in public, how shared movement shapes social space, and how the objects and rituals of daily life can become gestures of belonging. By creating ephemeral constellations of people and things, it asks us to consider how we inhabit public space together, now and into the future.
Curated by Leonie Bradbury and Shana Dumont Garr
This project is funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-monument initiative, supported by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
