Reflections on recent events part two- Assessment

in an attempt to try to achieve clarity of vision to take me forward into the new and final MA term, i need to reflect more fully on the assessment and not get racing away into the world of sheds without a solid structure set for me to follow. in the assessment i overall did much better for my studio practice this term than the research paper- which i am not too worried about as my practice last term was of most importance to me in defining myself- laying foundations, experimenting, asking questions, revising methods, re-lauching them in new ways.

whilst i am still reading around my subject, i will need to come back more fully to the critical studies, shape up my central research question more clearly through tutorials and presentations this week.i have studied examples of structure, style, research question to gain a sense of more fully how the debate can be laid out and argued over 5000 words. i know i need to move my writing beyond the survey into the critical and work out whats the most important of temporality, photography, intimacy, participation- do i need to be selective or can i continue as i started in the diploma research paper across these 4 areas but cement them more critically or think back to the certificate stage research paper which was focused purely on photography? anyway, more to come on this.

studio practice- the feedback was very positive for the level of experimentation, progression of ideas, reflective understanding of historical and contemporary framework, presentation of work and planning, and the lower area was critical self-reflection (includes ambition.) have realised in writing this i need to establish what is meant here by ambition in terms of my work or whether this is more about the need for self-reflection as i feel i am very ambitious- possible too so! the comments centred on the need for me to now tease out the areas of high importance, why i make the choices i do, and their relationship to the spectator- through analysing the body of work i have now created.

so....in looking back at my blog posts i have realised that the pace of my projects has meant i haven't really analysed them enough myself before swiftly moving on (partly due to event dates not set by myself, there was only 4 weeks and an assessment between the space-in-between and the EEC i might add, but also my constant thirst for the where next? ) and need to do this to consolidate my thinking and identify key areas of interest. that being said, i like layering my work with many facets of temporality but need to address this in terms of the participatory experience- what's in it for others- why bother taking part?

so...now need to take stock more of each of the 3 projects- nunnery, space-in-between and EEC....

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.

Home Suite- domestic performance

image from www.katherinewheel.com website

this Home Suite performance by the collective , i have emailed to go see- people have paid the collective to have it staged in their homes....hmmm...this makes me think of the idea i had for a portable performance coming from a suitcase/box- in a participants own home, staged darkroom and projections in a den/closet/shed type performance. or- i create a light tight portable darkroom tent which i take an erect in a participants home/garden/etc

am still unsure about whether my work is continuing to be one-to -one, the space-in-between will be good to try this out in small numbers- threes and fours, and how this changes to nature of the performance.

would participants have to have a particular thing in common, which is explored in the performance?- like uninvited guests at nrla- song dedications to someone you love

eg same secret to share- 'something you wouldn't tell your mum'
all got an older brother? and bring a photo of them and their brother?
story of 'loss of innocence'??
all bring a box of secrets/memory box?

how would i establish this commonality?

Theatre Materials/Materials Theatre conference- Central School, 17/4/08

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)

1. 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!

stand up workshop- a new departure- or always been there?!

image above-with thanks to flickr

my CSM evening in class stand up was cancelled...and still raring to dangle a toe into the murky waters of comedy to either help simply boost my confidence in my performance persona or develop some new humourous storytelling ideas...i found a one dayer on saturday 19th april with bull comedy, run by brian luff and georgina sowerby....so having walked into the room a nervous blob (everyone i spoke to about this said, my- you've got balls...)i then found myself sitting shiftily waiting to have to go up and simply say my name into the mic and get others to guess what i do for a living, at the weekend, car i drive (!), based on my appearance(usual floral vintage dress), body language and voice. this was really revealing- first guess drama teacher and second person said- no- she's pretty geeky, i think she's a librarian! also- nah, she works in fashion, or advertising.
pretty interesting, huh! i like the librarian idea...hmmm. alter ego? the point of this was in considering your BRAND- either dress neutrally so everyone has to visualise entirely by your voice, story/body language or set the scene as it was, through your walking on stage. we talked a lot about mic technique and had to practice coming on stage (running), on the wave of the applause as it was to keep the momentum high, and tell a joke- i was so nervous i told my what do you call a sheep with no legs joke, (a cloud *if you care*) which fell flat as it is asking a question directly you walk on stage...ooops.

anyway, the rest of the morning analysed a range of comedians styles and brands, and how brian felt the best type of acts were confessional, anecdotal, observational, as well as tips and techniques for writing material.
we talked about tools/formulas to try out;

• comedy lists- like cheese shop scene in monty python;

• use of opposites; mad man v sane man, noisy v quiet man, big v small. old v new- it was important to think the more extreme opposite the better- eg ancient v latest modern.

• PAIN- people love watching other's pain- so getting to build to this is good. laughing at other people's torture.
  

• substitution- remove the most important item in a story and substitute it for the most extreme opposite- eg big train; taking out the buffalo replacing with jockeys
  

we were then asked to develop a story based on something we wouldn't tell our mothers. having talked about my nan's unfortunate cat floral tribute at her funeral to others recently, i though this might make a good subject to start with, to develop using the tools we had discussed. we had to take it in turns to come on stage and tell our story. am debating whether to record mine and post on here..hmm, would be good to see what i looked like- i think this has always been my problem- i get so nervous and feel like am really shaking but to others this might not be apparent.it roughly went like this;

brian as compere bigs up the crowd, and brings on a chair at my request (partly as i asked for it due to wanting to be more intimate and was feeling faint!), announcing me, and everyone applaudes. i calmly and slowly walk on, sit down and take the mic, sit still and look across the front row. i then say;

my nans' last request was to have a cat wreath for her funeral. nanny had 14 cats....

and then i go onto talk about this story, embellishing with intricate details, using lists, subversion, opposites, building the story with an unexpected twist. and people seemed drawn in and laughed with the story. i felt even light years away form my nunnery story telling- i love humour and had found some tools to tailor it to suit me.

the feedback was really great and i loved sitting there telling the story. the story worked, it was quite bizarre, eccentric even. and i feel that i found a potential brand i like;

CONFESSIONAL
INTIMATE
QUIRKY
NOSTALGIC

stand up gave me a very confident voice for my obsessive loves with subversive-ironic-star-martin-parr and minute-attention-to-mundane-detail-douglas coupland!! i have been thinking for a while about the jilly cooper novel, harriet poole (i used this in a leaving speech from a job 7 years ago)...might be good material for some kind of ironic playfulness? brian luff did however say i reminded him a lot of the comedian josie long- so need to be aware of this; any thoughts? (i'd never heard of her); i also think that photography is very important to me so incorporation of this would be different;





i need to think about what i got out of this and the direction it takes me- i now have a real interest in stand up and think it would be good to persue two different practices, with tools and formulae for story telling to feed into my live art MA work. i can see the georgina starr photo still clearly in my head in either worlds, projections of photo (flickr is a great source of ideas for a performance slide show lecture style set) . i also think the funny thing is so much about the relationship between what you say, the way you say it, body language, timing, and non-verbal- devloping ideas purely on gesturing with body/objects to generate humour could be funny (mary poppins bag pulling out the very long lampshade )

i have (nervously) booked a stand up open spot in a pub ( 5 mins) in august and entered a competiton in june. but i won't post where yet...yikes. that'll be the test i guess.

SEEING... VISION AND PERCEPTION IN A DIGITAL CULTURE- conference

although unsure as to whether i am interested in submitting a proposal, this looks intriguing in the following phrases in relation to my research;

"How have ....developments in technology altered our understanding of vision and perception?

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

What and who might be rendered invisible by the processes of digital culture?"

From Live Art mailing list;

- CALL FOR PAPERS - CALL FOR PAPERS - CALL FOR PAPERS -

SEEING... VISION AND PERCEPTION IN A DIGITAL CULTURE

CHArt (Computers and the History of Art) 2008 Conference

Thursday 6 - Friday 7 November 2008 (central London venue to be confirmed)

This year's CHArt conference takes seeing as its theme and the associated questions of vision, perception, visibility and invisibility, blindness and insight - all in the context of our contemporary digital culture in which our eyes are assaulted by ever greater amounts of visual stimulus, while we are also increasingly being surveyed, on a continual basis.

What does it mean to see and be seen nowadays? How have advances in neuroscience or developments in technology altered our understanding of vision and perception? What kind of visual spaces do we now inhabit? What new kinds of visual experiences are now available? And what are now lost or no longer possible? How does the increasing digitalisation of media affect the experience of seeing? What and who might be rendered invisible by the processes of digital culture? What are our current digital culture's blindspots? What are its politics of seeing?

For the twenty-forth CHArt conference we are looking for papers that reflect upon these issues. We welcome contributions from all sections of the CHArt community: art historians, artists, architects and architectural theorists and historians, curators, museum professionals, scientists, cultural and media theorists, archivists, technologists, software developers, educationalists, philosophers and any others who have a stake in the question of seeing in a digital culture.

Please email a three to four hundred word synopsis of the proposed paper with brief CV of presenter/s by 30 May 2008 to Hazel Gardiner (hazel.gardiner@kcl.ac.uk).

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.