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this conference at central school of speech and drama was excellent- apart from the horrific scheduling which meant you could hardly see that much of it :( starting with an opening address by anne bogart examining her ideas about the theme of the conference. i have made copious notes about the whole day but am just extracting (she says) key thoughts that i found interesting;
anne bogart said that you mustn't over technolgize theatre as it makes it in danger of losing its spirit, and that its the materiality of theatre that wants to kill it. (temporality- as in my practice i sit between the fine art ethos of 'object' and the theatre ethos of ephemerality...)
the object presence absence panel discussions looking at rich allen's case- at the performing bio-object- objects embodying emotion. good to meet rich and kasia :) there was also a speaker, nesreen hussein who was talking about a piece called body parts, 2001 that i can't find any images or references to online. interesting idea like the headless pier family you can put yourself into at the seaside- except this was in a gallery with bodies pushed through sections of a wall making an apparent unified whole on the otherside. raised issue of interaction- don't touch when bodies become sculptures in a gallery but people think they can as its a live body.
the part most related to my practice (and to help me as i'm currently writing my research paper) was the audience members body as theatre material panel discussion, described as being about participation, non-proscenium arch theatre, and how this is a big feature of my work i popped along..to find rebecca and andrew (french mottershead (their own site is down?) we did the group project with last term) on the panel, nice surprise to see them, and to be honest much needed as the camp was very centred on theatre practioners dissolving the 'arch' whereas rebecca and andrew have an art practice in which it never existed.
there were questions the chair posed; (its was very difficult to work out who was who in this discussion so these notes will have to be rough and are only what i understood from the discussion-disclaimer! and purely written here for my research)
- why collapse the distance between the audience and performer- why not have the proscenium arch?
answers ranged from rebecca saying they don't collapse it, the only performers are participants transforming social rituals, added by andrew that the work is democratic.
a dance-theatre practioner talked about using participation as a form of theatre which embarks on a thematic exploration of body language, bored with audiences sat on chairs, and allowing for a more direct gaze with each audience member through collapsing the physical boundaries with strangers. thinking about what happens when the performer now does the watching.this was more at the softer end of participation they said, absorbing the audience member into the work, manipulating their body?
qs came up about why its happening, now. political and cultural climate of social networking, asking for feedback, cultural resonance of widening participation. we are being, and getting more involved in culture generally and arts practice is showing this trend?
participatory work is becoming both physically and mentally participatory. one person talked about the notion of performance over workshop- people pay more for a workshop than a show- should we do more workshops?!
2. What skills do performers who work in this field need that is different to normal performances?
punchdrunk- one-to one- intimate performances. this is a different quality of performance-perfomers need to be open and inviting and be physically close than projecting.performer is more vulnerable. performers needing to be clear with touch and what its means, be able to respond to confrontation.
others- why do it? its fun. it doesn't feel like theatre but a really special workshop, or maybe its the space in between a workshop and a performance.
andrew- often work with epople with no performance skills, so using skills from the everyday- people are already experts. exaggerating, subverting the everyday making people more aware.
others- have to be able to read people well, handle the unexpected, accidental, proposed, making it true to the dramaturgy.have to place a mental proscenium arch bach sometimes. you have to be able get people to trust you.manipulating the audience member, reversing the process, bodies entering a landscape (dancers)
3. How do you work with space? Where's the theatre?
the space dictates the text- audience takes same journey as actors in the text. difficult to go back into a black box once gone out to site.
rebecca- work in daily life, meeting places.
punchdrunk- site becomes a set as real as possible like BAC, theatrical, entering a world on a giant scale.heightened space. people stop paying attention to each other- masks, eliminate audience on mass as social presence- don't notice self but the space and performers- (unless unmasked in an individual performance where you become yourself again.)
andrew+rebecca- difference between interaction and participation.is being led down a corridor participatory- isnt this still like a seated audience? participation involves subjective engagement, collaboration, chance to re-invent.
[my note- is punchdrunk participatory? one way v two way street= with me it felt like a one way street- i wholeheartedly agree with rebecca and andrew on this interaction v participation debate]
much of this discussion seemed more about manipulation interaction, and a mis-use of the term participation. isn't this theatre puppetry?? also-sensory rather than mental alert. participation is about the individual.
my thoughts;
this panel discussion seemed to me, lack a balanced view across the subject and seemed to vastly mis-understand what the term participation actually means.but the focus of the panel discussion was about theatre..i would very much like to find out if there truly is practice that is participatory within theatre or its more about art practice (tim crouch- although actors read their script in oak tree , do they have input to change it?)
need to think about this issues discussed here. about finalising ideas about site of my MA show, level of participation and why. am in blog overload today!
ok, so after walking into shops looking for eager participants, i decided to try knocking on doors, er in fact this just turned out to be one door, ran out of time and paper:( andrew kindly agreed to be my bodyguard in case i got whisked inside never to return. i chose this house as there was an interesting screen with 50s pinups on it and an artistic eyeball thing suspended in the net curtain viewed through the downstairs window.the thing is i approached this all wrong, as the door opened i said hello i'm an artist from wimbledon college of art, which then directed the whole sign he then wrote- he did ask me if it was ok to write that his daughter was a student there, i could hardly say it wasn't though:( he was very warm and friendly, lots of time to chat, asked me inside to which i said thanks but i had a colleague waiting, he invited him in too but i politely declined saying he was on his phone...he also wanted to give me his daughters address to involve her in the project but thought this as this wasn't the angle i was looking at i left it.
made me think that people behaved differently out on the street, at work and in their own homes, which is obvious, but i also saw how they behaved differently. and how i behaved differently in each venue? mentioning wimbledon college to passers by, saying i was a student there, an artist, people reacted in different ways, some how being a student people may have been more willing to help? but what about when i'm practising away from the connections with being a student at wimbledon? my invisible performance give me a new look where no one knew i was an artist, a student, performing or anything, made me think should there be a level of honesty or that that would change the direction of the piece? how public or private do i want to be....would i have got a different reponse if action man camera/ holga/mobile phone camera/ pinhole etc had been my image capturing device rather that the DSLR??? goes back to being (in)visible....
in the afternoon, we started playing around with taking gillian wearing's work off in our own way. i started to think about the idea of framing in a frame, giving a greater sense of context that the person was encountered. first stop was the high street. chain shops were less happy on the whole, wanted me to write to their head office (kinda loses the spontaneity) so i approached this local shop....again like in my give me a new look piece, shop workers passed me around before one sucker says yes....this says' i wish i was rich' the fact that you can't see the sign it calls into question lots of things about photography...the exposure was incorrect i.e. by this i mean his face was in shadow, in gillians work you can clearly see participants faces and the writing in the signs, but now he becomes more anonymous..and his sign which can unfortunately only be seen a bit in the top photo, is representing a message shared by many so this may suit it. he was also wanting me to be really quick as people in the street were stopping and looking at him as well as creating an obstruction for those entering and leaving his shop...
this is my favourite image, which was from the gardener in the park as it made me think about how i communicate and when to move on. he was partially deaf and after writing the message leaning on my back (made me think of the sensory performance with jordan mckenzie am embarking on shortly) he didn't want to hold up his sign and be photographed...had i not explained this bit clearly enough? i wasn't sure of his level of hearing impairment, he did share with me that he was partially deaf voluntarily and was trippign over himself to tell me he wasn't normally here on thursdays, i felt he thought i was checking up on him, maybe from the council? so i decided after first thinking i had failed to make something out of this and photographed it laid on the grass- would have been better perhaps if this had been in the flower bed he had been digging, with his gloves and fork (but then its too staged)but decided once he had said no, needed to move on and respect his wish.
the atmosphere in the park was so chilled in the gorgeous blast of sunshine it was all too easy to sit and relax basking in the sun...funny how the atmosphere here deviated us off on a tangent a bit,talking about other projects, where as the frenzied high street i had felt constant need to keep recording in approaching passers by....
he was quick to point out that he wasn't eating a chocolate bar but a six-pack-builder-bar.....
ok, so my site was around the entrance to centre court shopping centre, people were coming in and out of the station,tescos, pausing to talk on phones, have a ciggie, take a break, or also sweeping past you late for a train.i made a big mistake with my first victim, he was standing here, lost in thought it appeared...so i approached him he was quite shy and unsure how to take me, and said he hadn't a clue what he wanted to write so asked my opinion, and i said 'what's important to you' thus guiding the response, and not his own independent thought :( doh!
extract from tate online about gillian wearings work we re-enacted thursday 11th october out and about in wimbledon...... re enacting this work i have used before with students,involving perceptions of school uniform, not asking stangers though. it was really important now for me to try it myself within a group gaining confidence in interacting. assigned to the boys group, andrew and neil and i set off to explore participatory responses along local railside footpaths, park, shopping centre- how would the location affect different experiences and outcomes? andrew was the first to take the plunge, neil and i hanging back at a distance watching.....posts which follow are about the responses.
ok, so i'm getting behind on blogging, so much is happening so fast and all....so things a little out of sych :(
PARTICIPATION- PART ONE-11th oct morning discussions- notes i made about the post 'echo' project
feeling slightly anxious about now putting my whole foot into the world of performing (or is this what it was to be?) but also quite excited. i enjoyed our morning discussions about other's work which involved social engagement practices, including andrew and rebecca' s The Post 'Echo' project commanding passersby to recreate headlines through staged re enactions. the project took place over 5 days, created 120 photographs, with 177 people and a full colour 20 page paper.at the paper launch at borders in leeds, 40/120 participants turned up. they tracked key captions from stories (eg black man in his fifties found dead)across a 5 day period in the yorkshire post, printing the resultant paper at the same printers. they used the same ratio of content in choosing stories, eg front pape- had a death item, politics, human interest. equipment- dslr to indicate 'proper photographer' to passers by. used model release forms. worked witn 5 or 6 people an hour, few minutes with each. participants could choose their own caption from a list and then how they wanted to re enact it. issue of possibly trivialising horrific events? project is a comment on the sensationalising through trivialising horrific events. they were drawign attention to things that migth norammly not be noticed and hidden withi a paper so things gieven equal weighting. no names, snippets, flattening the tradtion in the media of giving one event more coverage than another; dinner lady retiring same prescence in paper as tony blair retiring.they thought a lots about ethics. a short term engagement project- stopping passersby. Also did their shops project which is a collaboration with shop keepers following every exchange of money for goods gave out an invitatioon to return for a group photography- norwich east 2007, and finland.
Other references- SPENCER TUNIK- says his practice is not performative,' the photo is the art'- naked people in public venues, mass engagement, vaseline ads stole idea?
made me think of my experiences in annual group photograph, ann marie- lequesne, on stage in the roundhouse last year with mass participants taking a bow, applauding selves. also vanessa beecroft, who selects particpants by a certain criteria eg colour of hair.
discussions also made me think of the marysa dowling, movement of an object and what information/instructions are given in social engaement projects, how immediate is the response in the creation of an artwork eg photo?
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