Learning Agreement- re-thought: STORYTELLING

OK- so too much is filling up my sketchbook/ head and not enough in this blog, hmmm......

here goes next attempt to try to help me make a sense of the chaos i am feeling and so have come back to the learning agreement; am very excited about the storytelling idea as a way of exploring photography, my practice needs cementing and to become less tangential;)

so, back to the dreaded learning agreement....
1 Aims ( outline the purpose, scope, visions and ambition of your plan of work)
Overall aim at this stage-
To examine the relationship through the theme of storytelling, between photography and participatory performance.

• To explore what photography is to me and can become- photography existing entirely as process, and also as a process in which a created photograph, as documentary evidence, survives the live action, existing as an aid memoire or evidence it took place. To communicate ideas through experiences utilising photography, through adding visual interplay.
• To examine the relationship between traditional and digital photography, when to select which or a combination of methods according to concept, for example in exploring the experience of the process of forming a photographic image as a performative event in a staged darkroom.
• Exploring the role of time based media in the collapsing of audience-performer boundaries through audience participation in the telling and re-telling of stories.
  
• To take my visuals for performance screen based work to a much more interactive and less illustrative level within performance, where photography can become more about subject, performer, action, and less backdrop, decorative tradtional 'vj' object.
• To test the water at this exploratory stage by creating a series of experiments around storytelling and other narrative means, both individually and in collaboration with others.
• Developing greater knowledge and expertise about performance theory and ideas to make more purposeful connections with my photographic and moving image practice.
  

2. Objectives (The expected objectives leading towards the learning outcomes of the unit)
Carrying out a series of experiments. To look at what’s possible in photo-performance relationships and work with other’s whose practice has perhaps been more live art/theatre based to this point so that project work is mutually beneficial.

Part 1.STORIES

• Explore history and use of stories in culture, what makes a good story? What makes a bad story? Story telling methods, arenas, urban myths, fables and fairy tales, legends, personal stories told from the heart, the embellished, the old wives tale, the deceitful, the extract, the ear-wigged or overheard, the out of context, fictional, factual, manipulated, rehearsed, spontaneous, etc. Use of stories in historical and contemporary performance. How do we pull in the listeners intimately or unwittingly, and also leave them tetering on the edge of a cliff hanger..... Contextual references- Bobby Baker, Cindy Sherman, Julia Bardsley, Caroline Smith, Stand up comedy.
  

Part 2. PHOTOGRAPHY AS PROCESS AS PERFORMANCE.
WORKING PHOTOGRAPHIC METHODS TO EXPLORE:

• Developing darkroom processes into performance- using footprints created by the audience stepping in moisturising cream, through process of traditional darkroom based special effect- photo-batik, as well as torches for light trails, photograms. Use objects and participants in the process that tell and re-tell stories.Contextual references- Julia Bardsley, Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy, Sigmar Polke, Adam Fuss, Scott McMahon.
• Exploring using time based media as a device where high and low technology (traditional and digital photography/video) and performer/spectator interact directly. Build into staged darkoom work using objects and participants.Contextual references- OFF 2006+7, Zach Lieberman, Golan Levin, Theodore Watson, Caroline Smith, Curious (re)actor2- performers, No-Domain, Paper Cinema, Plan B (Berlin)
• Exploring pinhole cameras as hidden surveillance cameras- e.g. objects with a non-camera identity, eg suitcase camera and an (invisible) performance as a storytelling (or photo-story capturing) prompt - telling story whilst doing the act of recording using pinhole - or tool hidden in an everyday happening, re-told later. Try this in the old school butchers in Morden Hall road? Or radiators as cameras?? When is the camera a participant- telling stories to camera either explicitly or secretly, camera is implicated within the story. Contextual references-Barabara Ess, Adam Fuss, Stephen Pippin, Justin Quinnell, Scott McMahon, 'What the Butler saw'.
• Sourcing stories- Exploring hidden camera in camcorder headset linked to portable multi media player, and camera phone- looking like texting for example, maybe as research or as a starting point for later re-telling. Try this in Laura’s Tube performance. Look at online performance possibilities. Contextual references- Surveillance manuals, Merry Alpern, ?? others?
  
• Photography within Participation project- how do others behave and react to cameras, process of making work as the work itself, removal of author, collapsing of audience-performer boundaries, democratising performance? How can the work be created.Contextual refs- Marysa Dowling, French and Mottershead, Spencer Tunik, Ann-Marie Lequesne, Gillian Wearing.

MORE CONTEXTUAL
Read and gain more knowledge about theory of performance work, go to shows exploring site-specific / technological/storytelling approaches- Masque of Red Death, Water, A Disappearing Number, Matthew Barney, Playback theatre.
Books- e.g. Camera Lucida by Barthes, Ways of seeing, Berger, Participation by Whitechapel Gallery. Responsive Environments: Architecture, Art and Design (V&A Contemporaries) by Lucy Bullivant.

3. The Plan of Work describing the principal stages and timescale of the work
1. PHOTOGRAPHY AS PROCESS
Devise series of workshops, developing around the theme of storytelling. Testing ideas on members of the VLP group, using the Observatory space in December.
Utilise methods explored in Participation project with French Mottershead, working technniques to get audiences participating in the work


blahblahblah the planning bit always stumps me...the how to do it, tbc