Draft handout for Cross-MA Post grad forum 19th june 08

Harriet Poole: MA VLP Post Grad Forum 19 June 08

Main MA project aims and objectives:

Overall aim: Marrying the temporal nature of photography with the temporal nature of performance

Objectives:
• Challenging the conventions of photographic practice making the process of image making central to the experience of the work and not the traditions of the photographic object

• Investigating the duality between storytelling and memory, and photography and memory

• Exploring relational art ideas- social art derived from physically engaging with the work, responding to environment and interpretations of the audience, making work which is participatory and open to chance

• Exploring the anecdotal through sharing personal stories as an intimate participatory experience

Contextual connections:

In Camera Lucida, Barthes describes what is unique about the experience of viewing photographs, using the notion of the ‘trace’ to discuss photographs as witnesses of ‘what has been’, and his issues of, “Life/Death: the paradigm [of picture taking] is reduced to a simple click, the one separating the initial pose from the final print.” (Barthes, 1980:92 ) The photographic image, being that it uses paper and that paper is perishable, it is mortal and is, “…Attacked by light, by humidity, it fades, weakens, vanishes, there is nothing left to do but throw it away.” (Barthes, 1980: 93)

“For too long now we have been exhausting the medium in it’s potential to make sense of the world by insisting on a pre-occupation with spatial concerns, or the pictorial at the expense of a proper critique of time and the temporal, and the full recognition that the medium is absolutely a spatio/ temporal concern in equal measure.” Paul Jeff, writing on his Performed Photography, www.morebeautifulthangod.com (2007)

“Clearly, performance art and photography are radically different mediums, but both define a non-ordinary space by imposing parameters on it — a space that depends on the viewer to make it come alive.” Karen Irvine, 2004, MOCP exhibition Camera/Action, Performance and Photography, Chicago.

Peggy Phelan’s accounts in the Politics of Performance (2003) that performance “plunges into visibility - in a manically charged present - and disappears into memory." (Phelan, 2003:146)

Lyn Gardner in, In the theatrical confession box, Guardian arts blog (June 08) writing about recent trends in intimate performance, “….what a great number of these performances are exploring is not intimacy, but the illusion of intimacy and the loneliness of a world where communication is easy but real intimacy very hard. But I wonder about the ethical issues around such performances, particularly when they are set up in such a way that the power lies entirely with the performers and the risk seems to lie entirely with the audience. “

Areas of discussion:

• Perceptions of the use of the photographic medium within the work in the mode of reception by the viewer/participant

• Different uses of photography - manipulated , digital and traditional

• Lyn Gardner quote and Intimacy in my work – real or illusionary? Taking risks with personal information offered? Is this work non-matrixed, non-acting (like a Happening?)

• Issues of co-authorship, democratic work- we make it together with open endings ? Is it interactive or participatory?






Plus- Thanks to Laura for the blog post article from Lyn Gardner-see laura's blog post here