Professional development interviews for my MA assessment

(above image) paul jeff, Polis


(single image above and all below)
emma hart and benedict drew at ica (photos here are my own)










am interviewing paul jeff (18th august) whom I wrote about in my dissertation for his Polis project and notions of Performed Photography in his phd project- the participant experiencing the act of photography, within an event, although in a different way to my interpretation. am also interviewing- emma hart (sometime during week of 18th august) for the way she works with low tech time based media, and the process of image making as performance. i saw her show alongside jordan mckenzie in rules and regs, southampton and also at the ICA with benedict drew.

paul jeff has given me sections of his phd to read that he felt reflected my areas of interest.i will be posting questions for the interviews shortly.

i was hoping to interview david harradine as an artist who has just completed a phd in the relationship between photography, light and performance. i wrote about david herebut he is unavailable for interview at the moment. however, he suggested to email him questions, which i emailed this week as follows;

• What do you see as the relationship between photography and performance and how has this influenced or directed your work and PHD?
  

• How and why do you use the process of photographic image making in your practice?
  

• How and why do you explore temporality in your work?

• What practitioners/theorists have influenced your work and how?
  

• Dancing with time project.
  

I wrote about it here on my MA blog: http://harrietvizlang.blogspot.com/2008/07/david-harradine-live-pinhole.html I only had the Wellcome Trust leaflet and my own observations so if there are inaccuracies please do let me know. I also wanted to know more about the development of the project, including timescale, and how the project came about with the Wellcome Trust. From a technical perspective, how you worked with white light, exposure timings, what you were writing in your book, systems and ideas you used for the pinhole side of performance, the use of the red light, the placing of images on the walls, use of tape and grids. In addition to this, how and why did you work collaboratively with others, (are you a pinhole photographer yourself or what was your specific role as I see you collaborated with Suna) and other art forms? What instructions/guidance/sequence were the dancers and sound designers following?

• The Camera Obscura project at BAC
  

I found this article- http://londonist.com/2007/05/camera_obscura_at_bac.php Is this the only use of the Camera Obscura (your website talks about a performance with the camera obscura, if so can you outline the project.) I also wanted to know a little more about the project- is this a good description on the Londonist? (how it ran, the ideas behind it) spectral imaging idea within the piece- why this technology was important photographically and how the shoot was actually carried out.

binh danh- photosynthesis and photography

One Week's Dead
this photographer uses photosynthesis to imbed photographs of the vietnam war into the cells and leaves of plants- interesting in the floral/shed/lifecycle connection- and for my Research paper- how the image is grown of out images that are dead-memories that live on? thanks justine for the link!

Is this my Research question??!!

Photography and present-ness: Can challenging the duration and temporality of photography shift it beyond its' document tradition into a live experience for the spectator?

tony conrad at turbine hall, tate modern, saturday 14th june

tony conrad at tate
to help me in my essay (and this is fantastic for this) and practical explorations of process as performance, temporality using time based media and responding to site- went to see tony conrad's Unprojectable: Projection and Perspective. this 60s audio-visual pioneer explores experimental process as performance and was great visually responding to the old industrial site and his own film and music history- but sound wise the drone was just too loud to really be able to watch the performance for the 1 1/2 hr duration.
you are sitting on the floor of the turbine hall, below cloth screen billowing in the wind, the light-projected image of the activity on the raised stage arena, contours, enlarges, shrinks as it moves. you can see the real people as the screen blows around making the visuals you can simulanteously see projected giant. the performance is in 3 parts; films in run through reels and drill sounds are heard as though something is being manufactured/repaired, then industrial parts appear with film again running through, and finally an string quartet appears speciailising in drone. the vantage point is interesting, you can sit either side, and the images differ, some are sharper or more gestural figurative imagery- depending on how close they are to the light source. the string instruments when sharp have a strong elegance in contrast to the wires, block shapes of the industrial objects earlier projected.

for my work- the snatching and elongating of the image, working with another sense other than purely visual and beyond dialogue, experiments with scale

in the booklet they handed out afterwards (which made me think how much do you need to know beforehand) it talked about a piece of his work, Curried 7302, 1973 in which he cooked substituting onions in a recipe, for film.

Hackney Archives research 16/5/08

(from hackney archives) view of curtain road, the shoreditch area was the centre of the london furniture trade. i like the portable,things on wheels in these images- possible link to the portable pinhole cameras for the shedscientist event- wheel them round taking photos?

(from hackney archives ) there was a theatre on curtain road- above, from 1577 to 1598.

looked at around 40 images of curtain road, not of which seem to reference the actual site.need to look at the directories of businesses to ascertain former land use.

a brief initial visit, need longer there.....

MA Research Paper- Diploma stage assessment- Bibliography

Annotated bibliography- Articles, books, websites

Bardsley, J., 19/11/07 lecture at Wimbledon College of Art.
Bardsley discussed chronologically a range of issues and projects she has explored.

Bardsley, J., 2007. Julia Bardsley website
http://www.juliabardsley.net/ accessed on 30/4/08

Barthes, R., 1980. Vintage ed. Camera Lucida, London: Vintage.
- theoretical and critical examination of photography exploring the nature and thus inherent problems and interpretations of photography being cited a model of objective truth, including examining the relationship between photography and theatre, temporality and the ‘death of the image.’
-
Bishop, C., 2006, Participation, Whitechapel MIT Press, London
Book exploring theorists and practioners work surrounding Participation.

Berghaus, G., 2005, Avant-Garde Performance: Live events and electronic technologies, Palgrave MacMillan, UK
Book discussing approaches to non-matrixed and theatre performance which use technology.

Burgess, M, 23 August 2007. Trachtenberg Family Slideshow players
http://www.list.co.uk/article/4331-trachtenburg-family-slideshow-players/ accessed on 3/1/08
Article reviewing a performance of their work and explaining their concepts.

DIA website, Introduction to Present, David Claerbout.
http://www.diaart.org/claerbout/intro.html accessed on 1/5/08
Article discussing Claerbout’s work and ideas.

FrenchMottershead- 2007, FrenchMottershead website
http://www.frenchmottershead.com/ accessed on 29/4/08
Information about all their participation projects exploring their live ‘micro-perfromance’ work.

Gilles M., 1997. Photo Speak, Abbeville Press, London.
Guide to the ideas, techniques, and movements of photography 1839 to the present day.

Hall, J., 15 December 2004. The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, Soho Theatre, London
http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article24783.ece accessed on 29/4/08
Discusses the band who are "an indie-vaudeville conceptual art-rock pop band" who "take vintage slide-collections found at estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores etc, and turn the lives of anonymous strangers into pop-rock musical exposés."

Heathfield, A., 2004, Live Art and Performance, Tate, London
Survey of issues and ideas in contemporary practice.


Kaye, N., 1998, Art into theatre, Harwood academic Publishers, Singapore.
Exploring how art fuses with theatre including experimental practitioners Station House Opera.


Kirby, M, Winter 1965, The New Theatre, in The Tulane Drama Review, MIT Press, USA
Essay discussing non-matrixed theatre with reference to key practitioners in happenings and fluxus, e.g. John Cage, Allan Kaprow.

MIT List Visual Arts Center website. David Claerbout exhibition 2008.
http://listart.mit.edu/node/310 accessed on 1/5/08



Sandbye, M., 2005, Performing the everyday, found in Gade, R., Jerslev, A., 2005. Performative Realism, Interdisciplinary studies in Art and Media, Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Article discussing Performative realism in photography.

Sayre, H.M, 1989, The Object of Performance, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Includes discussion of the work of Nicholas Nixon.

Speed, L., March 2005, Tino Sehgal, Art Monthly, London, UK
http://www.artmonthly.co.uk/seghal.htm accessed on 3/1/08
Article about Tino Sehgal- Devises instructions for others to perform, visual artist with no visual outcome. Work entirely exists only as an experience- no documentation

Annotated bibliography- Performances/Exhibitions/Conferences


Bardsley, Julia.-Trans-Acts, April 2007, Spill Festival, Shunt Vaults, London. “Trans-Acts forges an intimate dialogue between the audience & the performer, the artist & the creative process, live presence & the visual art object.” Exploring using pinhole photography in different ways and live presence and video thorough dialogue.
Bardsley, Julia. –Almost the same, February 2008, NRLA, Glasgow. Large scale performance explore exhibition and interaction, film, costume, and non-verbal communication.

Fry, Katharine- Home suite, Camberwell, London, April 2008. Performance exploring creating intimacy in personal domestic spaces.

Green, Nic, Cloud piece, BAC, London, February 2008. Performance exploring humour, storytelling, use of fun, playful, portable props.

Smith, Caroline. Spank, Antenna Studios, Crystal Palace, UK, September 2007, and Intimacy Symposium, Goldsmiths College, December 2007, NRLA February 2008, The Space-in-between, Bermondsey, April 2008. Real and virtual performer storytelling bringing together the autobiographical and the historical, using objects to tell stories.

Playback theatre- Untitled, Candid Arts café, Islington, November 2007.
Storytelling as therapy inviting audience members to share stories to then be played back by a team of actors. Focuses on the feelings and uses metaphors to aid depicting emotions. This event asked for short and then longer stories about what people were doing at 10o’clock that morning.

Playback theatre- In the blink of an eye, Newtown theatre, Sydney, November 2007.
Same idea as at Candid Arts but with a set theme and longer storytelling. Stories revealed included one audience member telling the story of, “the day I got my diagnosis aged 18 for MS.”

Starr, Georgina, Visit to a small planet, 1994-5, Tate collection
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=92676 accessed on 1/5/08

Theatre Materials/Materials Theatre conference. Central School of Speech and Drama,London, April 2008. Included Audience’s body as theatre material panel discussion with FrenchMottershead.

Uninvited Guests, Love letters straight from the heart, NRLA, Glasgow, February 2008. performance exploring participation and intimacy amongst strangers.

World as a Stage, Tate Modern, London, November 2007.
Included work exploring theatre and art practice, including Tino Sehgal, Jeremy Deller.



Intended Bibliography

Auslander, P., 1999, Liveness Performance in a Mediatized Culture Routledge, UK

Baker, B. & Barrett, M., Bobby Baker: Redeeming features of daily life, (London, Routledge, 2007) Uses stories to play out everyday life events.

Chapple, F., and Kattenbelt, C., 2007, Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Rodopi, New York

Dixon, S., 2007, Digital Performance, MIT Press, Massachusetts

Gray, S., 1985, Swimming to Cambodia, the Collected works of Spalding Gray, Picador, Pan Books, London.
Ideas about hyped up storytelling

Green, D., 2004, Visible Time, The work of David Claerbout, Photoworks, UK

Pippin, Steven 1999 Turner Prize shortlist announced, Steven Pippin, 3/6/99.
http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressreleases/pippin.htm
accessed on 3/1/08
Web page discussing Pippin’s work in the context of being a Turner prize nominee in 1999, including looking at the pinhole camera container matching the nature of the subject photographed.

Stand up comedy- storytelling exploring tools and techniques in subversive and hyped up storytelling.

Starr, G., 1988, Georgina Starr, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK
Exhibition catalogue surveying Starr’s projects using digital storytelling.

MA Research Paper- Diploma stage assessment

Harriet Norwood Poole


MA Theatre: Visual Language of Performance
Full Time, Diploma Stage
April 2008


VLP Tutor: Douglas O’Connell
Critical Studies Tutor: Sean Ashton


Research Paper

Working Title:

The temporality of photography as an intimate participatory experience

Preface

A storeroom closet full of mops, tools, and ladders, within an art gallery had been modified slightly to accommodate becoming a temporary photographic darkroom in low light. The small closet was chosen as a place of intimacy or privacy, like a child’s den or an inventor’s secret workroom. People individually entered through knocking on the door, and were invited inside. Personal stories were shared through objects from the artist’s own pocket, and if the participants wanted to discuss, their own pockets. The objects were laid onto photographic paper and exposed and developed; they surfaced fleetingly through a photogrammed trace of the object, but the images were not then fixed, as is usual photographic practice. This was intended as a dual narrative with the stories momentarily shared. This performance culminated in marking this fact through the ultimate ‘death’ of the photographs created; there were options including for the image being either displayed, still seen as photographic prints on the gallery wall, or to emerge pushed out under the door as a relic of the performance. Two strangers, the artist and the participant, then leave one another taking away with them only their memories of the exchange as the images, attacked by light, continue to dematerialise and become entirely invisible in their final location.

Description of (in)visible exchange performance, Harriet Poole, Nunnery, Bow, March 2008.



The central core of my research is concerned with the relationship between photography and performance, focusing on the performativity and temporality of photography through an intimate participatory experience. To develop these ideas within performance I am examining storytelling and theories about participation between the artist, photographic process, and spectator. The Preface is intended as a means to demonstrate an example of how I have interlinked these purposefully to aid understanding of the chosen discourse.

In my previous Research Proposal, I identified my theoretical framework within Michael Kirby’s (Kirby, 1965) ideas about the non-matrixed theatre model. This was where, in The New Theatre (Kirby, 1965), Kirby describes Allan Kaprow’s Happenings as emphasising time, and using a variety of art materials, elements of chance, flexibility between performer and spectator roles, and are overall less concerned with narrative and character. I still draw parallels here with ideals about incorporating art (photography) materials, and less character based theatre, however, in exploring personal storytelling am moving away from what Gunter Berghaus defines as a key feature of a Happening, “…performers [are not] expressing their inner feelings, but carry out allotted tasks without active engagement of the Ego.” (Berghaus, 2005.) Another performance model which offers me a way to examine the real and personal, is seen through the ‘micro-performance’ ethos in the work of artists Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead (known as FrenchMottershead.) This is for their co-authorship approach through transforming daily life in engaging in an activity with participants. They describe their practice as, “live work specifically exploring ideas of human identity, physicality, interaction, social ritual and the everyday public and private realms in which they are played out.” (FrenchMottershead website, 2008.) The Uninvited Guests, Love letters straight from your heart performance at NRLA in February this year, invited participation, via an email list. People wrote a personal song dedication to someone they love, and impersonally emailed it to the performers. These people were then invited as the sole audience members in the show. The dedications were then woven into the performance; read out as written from the printed emails they were holding, the performers “… make [the] romantic declarations [their] own.” (Uninvited Guests website, 2008.) From personal experience of this performance, the resultant show was a very cleverly constructed and odd mix of being an intensely intimate encounter, yet amongst strangers.

The intimacy of photography can lie in the image-viewer level of reception, for example, as according to Mette Sandbye, in Performing the Everyday (Sandbye, 2005) when a viewer holds a photo book they can carry it around with them in their bag, and read wherever they like. There is a tactile, nurtured quality, a “.. performative play between work and viewer.”(Sandbye, 2005: 118.) When looking at the Brown sisters series of photographer Nicholas Nixon, in which every year since 1975 he has photographed his wife and her sisters standing in a line, we are aware of even though they are someone else’s family, how familiar they seem when looking at them- they appear universal, we all have photographs like these in family albums, or know people ‘like them’, so can place our own or imagined life stories to them to ‘identify them.’ Henry M. Sayre writes, in The Rhetoric of the Pose, Photography and the Portrait as Performance, (Sayre, 1989) how the complexities of the dynamics of the relationships between the relatives are not known, in that, “how thoroughly and necessarily this personal and private narrative is lost, leaving the viewer only with intimations of the family ties that bind these women together.” (Sayre, 1989: 40) I connect this series to the work of Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players whom I mentioned in my previous proposal, who create performances that, “Interpret the Lives of the Strangers [within found vintage slide collections.]” (Burgess, 2007.) What I find fascinating about the connection here between Nixon’s Brown Sisters photos and the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Player’s performances is the way there is an invention of a perceived reality, the once private being made public (former in exhibition and individually in the viewer, latter in performance and announced/sung by the performer.) There also seems to be a ‘disposable’ amateur quality about both, being quite generic family photos in Nixon’s case and the fact that the Trachtenberg’s find their often everyday family ‘snapshot’ images as discarded and bought in car boot sales, until you think about their context that gives them a kind of status and reference, former being a gallery and the latter a theatre. The Trachtenberg’s ‘disposability’ of their images is further reinforced by the temporal qualities of the photographs as low tech, hand controlled slide projections on an outdated, film based, projector; as well as only ever existing virtually in a performance for the duration the story about them is told, snatched away a moment later onto the next slide.

As discussed in my previous proposal, in Camera Lucida (Barthes, 1980), Roland 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) He goes on to describe how the photographic image is only ever temporal, 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). Barthes demonstrates how a photograph exists only to represent the moment, which has already passed, an impossible record of ‘now.’ Whilst Barthes was writing in a time of purely analogue photography, now in a digital age, the issues are still current concerns, with the ‘impossibility’ of a camera’s ‘objectivity’ in the hands of a photographer ‘subjectively’ controlling it, or computer software to manipulate its ‘truth to nature’; “ This realism has always been photography’s force and at the same time its Achilles’ heel.” (Sandbye: 2005.)

David Claerbout is a contemporary artist who challenges the photographs static, frozen ‘snapshot’ of time contained in a 2D surface, by pushing it into the 4D durational time arena. This is through investigating the temporal nature of photography in fusing photography with video. He subtly digitally manipulates photographs within virtual, digitally projected installations that fool our visual perceptions through optical illusions. He, “…introduces moving elements, and with them, time.” (MIT List Visual Arts center website, 2008.) One work is described as;
“Kindergarten Antonio Sant'Elia, 1932, a 1998 installation, is a large projected image of a found, historic photograph showing children playing in a schoolyard, interesting in itself for its formal composition and the narratives it implies, and even more compelling when one notices the gentle motion of the leaves on the tree - fluidity in an image that supposedly records a moment fixed in time.” (DIA Art website, 2008.) The ‘objective’ document of ‘now’ clearly reinforcing its’ ‘subjectivity,’ through a doctoring, in part, of the passage of time. The Stack (2002), is a 36 minutes of video of the light changing though twilight and moving combined with a still image of a homeless man sleeping, “…here, the sun, daylight, and the mere passage of time become the major elements, allowing an escape from the ostensible subjects.” (MIT List Visual Arts center website, 2008.)

As discussed in my previous paper, and to re-contexualise into my current thinking, Tino Sehgal’s work as a visual artist is still central to my thinking about temporality. There is no physical artwork, i.e. no visual documentation, no materiality, only the memories of the participants based on a singular or collective experience as relayed by actors on behalf of Sehgal. Lucy Steeds (Steeds, 2005) in Art Monthly, describes how Sehgal's artwork never becomes, “….enduring traces.” The artwork concerns the viewer as participant to exist, explores social interactions within processes, drawing links back to the work of FrenchMottershead surrounding interactive engagement.

I am still also investigating the theories and practice of Julia Bardsley, for her Trans-Acts performance, she, “…forges an intimate dialogue between the audience and the performer, the artist and the creative process, live presence and the visual art object.” (Julia Bardsley website, 2008.) I feel that Bardsley’s performative exploration of film and the long exposures of pinhole photography, particularly in her recent work, Almost the same, (NRLA, 2008) links partly to the work of Claerbout, in the unusual displaying of different periods of time simultaneously. Additionally, Bardsley’s use of time in the real time live performer alongside the virtual pre-recorded video projections and pinhole images exhibited, are all supporting my research into ways practitioners use the more ‘theatrical’ and playback, versus real time.

Noble and Silver- stand up-multi-media-theatre

ok so two completely unconnected people have now mentioned these guys when i have talked about my storytelling photography work and my forthcoming stand up evening class.both coming form fine art backgrounds, kim noble works on the photography, video and performance and stuart silver on text and performance. guardian review describes it as a 'fluid multi-media happening.' they also undertook a residency at the beaconsfield gallery

i am particularly interested in how they work with irony, projections (sometimes arguing with projections of themselves, and also what else) and audiences- unfortunately i can't find any film documentation of their shows to see what i'm missing out on- so need to look at if they have any gigs coming up.

this interests me;(from above link to beaconsfield gallery website)
"the performance looped around itself, spliced with video images that were seldom quite as they seemed and meticulously timed conversations between Noble and Silver and their recorded selves. "Its about putting something funny next to something that deconstructs itself, next to something quite tragic."

in my nunnery performance, the sense of loss of the over developed image dying, set against the many amusing exchanges of funny stories was a striking contrast which i could push further.i'm also keen on the review on the beaconsfield website which says, 'video images that were seldom quite what they seemed.' How do you make an image not quite what it seemed? How can an image be changed- changing content/context, use of different technology. was it the visuals and/or the sound/words that changed? why did they use this? how did this work with the live action? how does live self work with mediated self and why?
i think the question i should investigate with their work is from the Digital Arts conference post I made earlier today;

"How does the increasing digitalisation of media affect the experience of seeing?"

laura and i will be exploring live and mediated self alongside writing workshops shortly to support one another. i think noble and silver's work could be a useful contextual reference.

spalding gray- swimming to cambodia extract

looking at ways of re-telling personal stories, using a soundtrack, minimal props/set- mic and glass of water, monologue.keeping the attention on the real life story- not 'dressing it.' not being someone else.

links to the closet for my nunnery performance- pretty much used closet as found- mops and screws and all- a simple real life backdrop, non theatrical, amateur darkroom, cupboard, den. soundtrack to immerse you in this closet- radio in background- working atmosphere. my story from childhood- more engaging/humorous/relaxed nature depending on whether i knew the participant and how comfortable i felt in this intimate space with them. how would this change in an open space- retaining the intimacy of storytelling without the physical spacing/environment a closet encourages?

sian robinson davies video/performance/objects

artists who explores language and objects through performance, like the above ground video making a boat out of the word boat and setting it sail....

Research Proposal - Performing Stories: Disruption of time based media practice

Research Proposal

Working Title:

Performing Stories: Disruption of time based media practice

According to Michael Kirby, in The New Theatre, (Kirby, 1965) the non-matrixed theatre performance model places emphasis on time and not on the traditional theatre of narrative and character, allowing for performances using a variety of materials borrowed from art, most commonly witnessed in the Happenings of Allan Kaprow, (1958-66.) Happenings drew from real life and unfold peformatively in compartments or discrete alogical events; the spectators are participants performing within a given frame work experiencing the act of making. (Kirby, 1965.)

It is understood that the exploration of time in photography, through exposure, is a necessity to achieve a desired tonal balance in a photographic image. However, in considering photography performing interdisciplinarily within the remit of non-matrixed theatre, there is traditionally a technical emphasis on a frozen moment creating a photograph, set against a duration over a given period for a performance. This gives rise to the issues of documenting liveness, they cannot be one and the same thing; the work of Hayley Newman, Connotations-Performance Images (1994-1998) exploits this by exhibiting photographs of performances that actually never happened, adopting the “mannerisms of an archive” (Heathfield, 2004). In looking at interdisciplinary visual non-matrixed performance, the issues of mediated liveness I wish to pursue further and relate to the work of Phillip Auslander, Gunter Berghaus and others in addressing the synthetic presence of absence in the, according to Auslander, relationship between the Live and Mediatized within a performance, specifically when using different forms of time based media (Auslander, 1999.)

In the Performed Photography work of Paul Jeff, in which he feels he is, “Bored of the ‘spatial’ picture making that has thus far mainly defined photographic practice,” (Jeff, 2007) he concerns himself with a merging of the traditional artefact ‘image’ of photography as the sole viewer experience of this medium, with a witness to and/or participation in, the photographic act inherent in the process, displaying how he, ”…makes a subtle and also contemporary shift towards intervention and fiction and away from the phenomenon of empirical observation.” (Jeff, 2007). This also demonstrates Jeff’s’ desire to extend the time taken for the act of photography through a prolonged engagement with it, making it a durational performative event. In Polis, (2006) audience members are invited as witnesses to performances in a series of night time events in bars and clubs around Cardiff, UK recording staged encounters and situations based on normal club activities, themselves on their cameras, but also receiving a copy of the Polaroids that Jeff takes. Witnesses are then taken back to studios to assemble all the photos taken and thus reveal the visual slippage of the same event through subjective responses to it. The witnesses become strangers to places once possibly familiar, taking photos of people they don’t know as if they did. Audience members and Jeff are therefore co-authors in the performative act of recording, the experience and relayed memories of the taking photos and the resultant outcome becomes, as Jeff explains, singularly the artwork.

In contrast, in Tino Sehgals work as a visual artist there is no physical artwork, i.e. no visual documentation, no materiality, only the memories of the participants based on a singular or collective experience as relayed by actors on behalf of Sehgal. In his work This objective of that object (2004, ICA) a viewer in an empty gallery space is surrounded by 5 people talking to the viewer to prompt a discussion, failure to do this or the entrance of another viewer and the work ends and moves to the next person. Lucy Steeds (Steeds, 2005) in Art Monthly, describes how Sehgal's artwork never becomes, “….enduring traces.” The artwork, like in Jeff’s work, concerns the viewer as participant to exist, explores social interactions within process, but with the marked difference being no art object ever exists in Sehgal's work.

To look at how both Sehgal and Jeff (and the others to follow) are intrinsic in my critical thinking, I need to look first to Barthes in Camera Lucida (Barthes, 1980) to see how he 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 ) He goes on to describe how 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). So here we see how Barthes understands photography as temporal, existing only to represent the moment, which has already passed.

Other key photographers directly exploring photography-performance relationships include Peter Richards and Julia Bardsley, both exploring the early image making technique of pinhole photography in very different performative ways. In Bardsleys work, Trans-Acts, she, “…forges an intimate dialogue between the audience and the performer, the artist and the creative process, live presence and the visual art object.”( Julia Bardsley website, 2006) This performance staged at Shunt Vaults, London, Spill Festival 2007, described as an exhibition, installation and performance in three acts, using pinhole photography as, according to Bardsley, “little theatres, little shows,” as exhibit and installation. This is to represent the passing of time in her Foolish suicide attempts in Act One, allowed by the long exposures pinhole image making requires, leaving a ghostly trace of the body moving through space. This was used alongside film both pre-recorded and live and the notion of ‘self as double’. (Bardsley lecture, 2007).

In Peter Richards Pinhole photography work, The History of Performance Art, in 1998, in which he which he builds a giant Pinhole Camera to record invited participants dressed for the camera as a key figure of choice from the history of performance art, Richards examines the dissolving of boundaries between photography and performance where, according to Sofaer, in Conflict of interest, Performance as a Spectator Sport, (Soafer website, 2007) Richards presents photographic image as artefact that is made during performance and which survives it to be viewed in the site of the event a day later. Sofaer states, “The giant cardboard obscura [is]site (as the stage in theatre) and source (the text - the actors) of the work.”

In a digital age and thus changing face of photographic practice giving rise to the closure of many traditional darkrooms, the reinvention of, for example, traditional wet photographic processing through non-matrixed theatre gives to me many possibilities; the entire consumption of the photograph for example testing Sehgals and Barthes methodologies. How does high and low media arts technology work within non-matrixed performance (Happenings, Fluxus?), both together and alone? Referencing technological advancements, how can digital processes destroy traditional ones? In looking for a theme to explore beyond mere disruption or subversion of photography and time based media that works with the same structure and ideals, I am potentially interested in Fractured narratives in Storytelling (orally, and as mediated through objects and images)- both photography and storytelling are commonplace in working with the denoting of fact from fiction; the fictitious Untitled Film Stills of Cindy Sherman (circa 1977) posed as real life film photographic stills, as well as Hayley Newman mentioned previously and the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players who create performances that, “Interpret the Lives of the Strangers [within found vintage slide collections.]” (Burgess, 2007.)

In conclusion, my research areas are identified through the intended rubric for my practice below;

1. A viewer/participant who offers their subjectivity (personal artefact, story etc) as material for the work

2. An artist/performer (me and participants in co-authorship or participants via instructions) who articulates this subjectivity through time based media

3. An object, artwork, outcome is created, OR the participants sense that their experience has been objectified.

Annotated bibliography for research proposal

Annotated bibliography- Articles, books, websites

Bardsley, J., 19/11/07 lecture at Wimbledon College of Art.

Bardsley discussed chronologically a range of issues and projects she has explored.

Bardsley, J., 2007. Julia Bardsley website

http://www.juliabardsley.net/ accessed on 3/1/08

Barthes, R., 1980. Vintage ed. Camera Lucida, London: Vintage.

• theoretical and critical examination of photography exploring the nature and thus inherent problems and interpretations of photography being cited a model of objective truth, including examining the relationship between photography and theatre and the ‘death of the image.’

Burgess, M, 23 August 2007. Trachtenberg Family Slideshow players

http://www.list.co.uk/article/4331-trachtenburg-family-slideshow-players/ accessed on 3/1/08

Article reviewing a performance of their work and explaining their concepts.

FrenchMottershead- 2007, FrenchMottershead website

http://www.frenchmottershead.com/ accessed on 1/2/08

Information about all their participation projects exploring social engagements, such as Borrow Me, and Shops.

Gilles M., 1997. Photo Speak, Abbeville Press, London.

Guide to the ideas, techniques, and movements of photography 1839 to the present day.

Hall, J., 15 December 2004. The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, Soho Theatre, London

http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article24783.ece accessed on 3/1/08

Discusses the band who are "an indie-vaudeville conceptual art-rock pop band" who "take vintage slide-collections found at estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores etc, and turn the lives of anonymous strangers into pop-rock musical exposés."

Heathfield, A., 2004, Live Art and Performance, Tate, London

Survey of issues and ideas in contemporary practice. Includes Hayley Newman who fabricates performance by creating photos of a non-existent event.

Jeff, P., 2007, Paul Jeff website

http://www.morebeautifulthangod.com/ accessed on 3/1/08

Kaye, N., 1998, Art into theatre, Harwood academic Publishers, Singapore.

Exploring how art fuses with theatre including experimental practitioners Station House Opera.

Kirby, M, Winter 1965, The New Theatre, in The Tulane Drama Review, MIT Press, USA

Essay discussing non-matrixed theatre with reference to key practitioners in happenings and fluxus, e.g. John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg.

Speed, L., March 2005, Tino Sehgal, Art Monthly, London, UK

http://www.artmonthly.co.uk/seghal.htm accessed on 3/1/08

Article about Tino Sehgal- Devises instructions for others to perform, visual artist with no visual outcome. Work entirely exists only as an experience- no documentation

Sofaer, J., Spring 2000, Conflict of interest, Performance as a Spectator Sport

http://www.joshuasofaer.com/texts/write_coi.html accessed on 3/1/08

Article discussing the theatricality within the pinhole performance work of Peter Richards which Sofaer took part in.

Annotated bibliography- Performances/Exhibitions

Adamsdale, Will. Human Computer BAC, November 2007- “Cardboard cabaret stories.”

Bardsley, Julia.-Trans-Acts, April 2007, Spill Festival, Shunt Vaults, London. “Trans-Acts forges an intimate dialogue between the audience & the performer, the artist & the creative process, live presence & the visual art object.” Exploring using pinhole photography in different ways and live presence and video thorough dialogue.

Complicite- A Disappearing Number, Barbican, London, September 2007.

Exploration of the real and virtual, screen based image telling stories through becoming performer/action.

Smith, Caroline. Spank, Antenna Studios, Crystal Palace, UK, September 2007, and Intimacy Symposium, Goldsmiths College, December 2007. Real and virtual performer storytelling bringing together the autobiographical and the historical, using objects to tell stories.

Playback theatre- Untitled, Candid Arts café, Islington, November 2007.

Storytelling as therapy inviting audience members to share stories to then be played back by a team of actors. Focuses on the feelings and uses metaphors to aid depicting emotions. This event asked for short and then longer stories about what people were doing at 10o’clock that morning.

Playback theatre- In the blink of an eye, Newtown theatre, Sydney, November 2007.

Same idea as at Candid Arts but with a set theme and longer storytelling. Stories revealed included one audience member telling the story of, “the day I got my diagnosis aged 18 for MS.”

World as a Stage, Tate Modern, London, November 2007.

Included work exploring theatre and art practice, including Tino Sehgal, Jeremy Deller.

Intended bibliography Research proposal

Intended Bibliography

Auslander, P., 1999, Liveness Performance in a Mediatized Culture Routledge, UK

Baker, B. & Barrett, M., Bobby Baker: Redeeming features of daily life, (London, Routledge, 2007) Uses stories to play out everyday life events.

Bishop, C., 2006, Participation, Whitechapel MIT Press, London

Berghaus, G., 2005, Avant-Garde Performance: Live events and electronic technologies, Palgrave MacMillan, UK

Chapple, F., and Kattenbelt, C., 2007, Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Rodopi, New York

Dixon, S., 2007, Digital Performance, MIT Press, Massachusetts

Gade, R., Jerslev, A., 2005. Performative Realism, Interdisciplinary studies in Art and Media, Museum Tusculanum Press, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Pippin, Steven 1999 Turner Prize shortlist announced, Steven Pippin, 3/6/99.

http://www.tate.org.uk/about/pressoffice/pressreleases/pippin.htm

accessed on 3/1/08

Web page discussing Pippin’s work in the context of being a Turner prize nominee in 1999, including looking at the pinhole camera container matching the nature of the subject photographed.

Paper Cinema- www.papercinema.com

Shadow puppets telling mythical stories, adopted through, tales of Edward Allen Poe in Masque of the Red Death, Punch Drunk., and 18/1/08, at the Luminaire, Kilburn.

Stand up comedy+ Cabaret- hyped up/embellished storytelling

Plan B, 2007 Plan B website

http://www.planbperformance.net/projects.htm Accessed on 3/1/08

Performance group exploring stories and video.

Critical studies- notes from Tutorial

this tutorial was really helpful going through my critical research draft outline of ideas with sean- gave clarity to my wooly thoughts...

just to note a few things about areas for performance research;

research areas;the rubric-
1- a viewer/participant who offers their subjectivity (object, rayograph,story etc) as material for the work
2. an artist/performer who articulates this subjectivity
3.an object, artwork, outcome is created, OR the participant sense that their experience has been objectified

artists-

• tino sehgal- a GREAT one for me as has no documentation no material work (sharp intake of breath...it'll be good for me ;)

• allan kaprow and happenings, michal kirby and non-matrixed theatre

• aernout mix- recent show at camden arts centre

i think i felt happier as it went through my outline of research and re-presented common ideas in a more succint and developed fashion. lots to go away and find out more about :)

Critical studies Tutorial preparation (pre tutorial)

Ok- so here it goes- CRITICAL STUDIES RESEARCH IDEAS

My research proposal is to investigate storytelling through time based media within performance, shifting my photographic practice to a physically and virtually interactive level where it becomes subject/performer/action and less decorative object/illustrative backdrop.

The questions I aim to explore include;

• What is storytelling? How has it been used in theatre and visual arts practice?
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. How do we pull in the listeners intimately or unwittingly, and also leave them teetering on the edge of a cliff hanger....
Contextual references- Investigating use of stories in historical and contemporary performance using these ideas-
Bobby Baker, Uses stories to play out everyday life happenings.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film stills, invented characters in stereotyped stories within photographs
Will Adamsdale, Human Computer BAC, November 2007- “Cardboard cabaret stories.”
Caroline Smith- Spank, September 2007,real and virtual performer storytelling bringing together the autobiographical and the historical, using objects to tell stories
Stand up comedy+ Cabaret- hyped up/embellished storytelling
Playback theatre- storytelling as therapy, using participants in an audience and playing out their stories
Shadow puppets telling mythical stories, adopted through Paper Cinema, tales of Edward Allen Poe in Masque of the Red Death, Punch Drunk.

• How can time based media become performative, entirely consumed within the performance and less about pure documentation?

Looking at using real or invented autobiographical objects as aid memoire, props evoking stories, or as pinhole or hidden surveillance cameras, participants or self using these to ‘capture stories’ in the everyday to playback in a performance. Possibly a nostalgic object that poses just as that but secretly records, through video hidden inside, accounts given of reactions to it- what does it remind you of?
Contextual references-
Julia Bardsley-Trans-Acts, April 2007, “Trans-Acts forges an intimate dialogue between the audience & the performer, the artist & the creative process, live presence & the visual art object.” Exploring using pinhole photography in different ways and live presence and video thorough dialogue.
Peter Richards-History of Performance art- Group Pinhole photograph, dissolving boundaries between photography and performance, image as artifact that is made during performance and which survives it. “The giant cardboard obscura [is]site (as the stage in theatre) and source (the text - the actors) of the work.’ Sofaer
Curious- Camera as Participant, videos a performer performing to camera, a possible mechanism for storytelling
Sigmar Polke/Scott McMahon- experimental photographs abusing photographic processing norms
Zach Liberman+Theodore Watson- technique in Computer Processing-Virtual interaction with projected media

Practical context- Work underway
• Stories from participants objects that they couldn’t bear to throw away
Looking at the process of creating an image in a darkroom and exploiting the photographic ‘correct way to do things’ within an auditorium as a darkroom, photogram technique exploring objects and video projection of participants sharing their stories to camera will be employed to reveal and then destroy the photographic photogram image and at end encourage people to surrender their objects to charity or dustbin- the death of an object through the death of its shadowed image.

Reading- needs developing- Camera Lucida, Barthes, Joshua Sofaer, Conflict of Interest, Performance as a Spectator Sport.