“If I told you the location, it would ruin the surprise,” said Emily Hollander, a second-year psychology student at Carleton who organized a freeze flash mob Feb. 12.
A flash mob is a group of people who get together and perform a spontaneous action then quickly disperse as if nothing happened.
The term, coined by Bill Wasik in 2003, “was originally an assault on hip culture,” said Kevin Bracken, the creator of interactive public art group Newmindspace.
The idea for an Ottawa flash mob, which began two months ago between Hollander and a small group of her friends, quickly drew attention on Facebook. The plan was to freeze for three minutes against the backdrop of ice sculptures in Confederation Park.
On the day of the event, roughly 200 participants gathered at the foot of the Unknown Soldier Memorial as Hollander shouted instructions to the crowd through a megaphone.
“I’ve never organized, let alone participated in a flash mob,” said Hollander, who was inspired to bring a similar event to Ottawa after watching a video of the Paris flash mob on YouTube.
While it may be difficult for people to hold the same position for a long period of time, the appeal of a flash mob is that everyone can participate, Hollander said.
Chelsea Renaud, a second-year social work student at Carleton, attended the event and said she was persuaded to join after seeing the improvisation group Improv Everywhere.
“I can hold a pose for five minutes unless I have to sneeze,” Renaud said before the event. “But I’m especially pumped since we are actually going to freeze during our harsh Canadian winter.”
The most important part of the flash mob is the cuers. Their job is to start the domino effect by giving the signal for everyone else to freeze. In order for the effect to work, cuers need to be as subtle as possible to the public, but easily identifiable by the participants, many of which, wore lime green armbands and were scattered throughout the crowd.
At first, the method was to text all the cuers at once to freeze, Hollander said, but since cuers weren’t as spread out as she thought they would be the freezing happened more spontaneously.
When asked why people participate in these large social gatherings, Bracken said there are few places where young people can gather in large numbers for playful social activities, while others think of it as an opportunity to reclaim public space.
“For the public it’s strange, but it’s also a lot of fun,” Hollander said.
Organizing this event was very time-consuming, said Hollander, who was both scared and excited about the turnout. But she said she shouldn’t have stressed herself out about it.
“Everything went well, everyone co-operated, listened and it was straight to the point and the turn out was exactly what I expected it to be,” she said.
It’s captivating to watch, participant Renaud said.
“It’s kind of like art, using people,” Renaud said.