Month: February 2013

Are we ever private?

Jake Robinson / / CCTV, Home, Rooms

Our homes are the most private place which we inhabit. At home we can act as we please without the fear of being watched or judged. But what happens if a house stops being a private space, and becomes a space in which you are watched more than any other. Does it stop being a home? This is what has happened in our house on West Parade. The whole house is fitted with CCTV cameras. From the moment you walk in until the moment you leave you are under surveillance. The house is not private. Is this wrong, are there some places which should not be intruded upon and is a house, a home, one of them?

Perhaps some rooms in a house such as the living room and kitchen are not as personal, not as private as other rooms; such as the bedroom and bathroom. Perhaps it is possible to be under surveillance in the more communal rooms of the house without feeling invaded. Whereas being watched while “you are most vulnerable, asleep and unaware” ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning of Home,London:Frances Lincoln p.71 )) in the bedroom is simply a step too far. There are groups who feel that being under surveillance at all is wrong. The Surveillance Camera players are a group based in New York who believe that surveillance cameras of any kind “violate our constitutional protected right to privacy” ((Surveillance Camera Players (2001) Who We Are & Why We’re Here, online: http://www.notbored.org/generic.jpg (accessed 25/02/2013))). They express these views by carrying out silent performances in front of surveillance cameras. These performances are rehearsed but are not announced or advertised.

The right to privacy which the Surveillance Camera Players talk about is most definitely broken in our house. It is impossible to get away from the surveillance and have a private space. Or is it? There are places which the cameras do not cover. For example both the toilet and the bathroom are not covered by the CCTV cameras. These spaces are ones which you would expect to be completely private, to film these areas of a house would certainly bring up an ethical debate. However there are also other, less obvious, areas which the CCTV cameras do not cover. There are black spots which the cameras do not pick up. For example in the bedroom if you sit or stand directly underneath the camera in the corner of the room the camera does not pick you up.

These areas away from the gaze of the CCTV could be very interesting for us to use in our performance. We may be able to demonstrate to the audience just how much they are being watched, this could make them feel on edge. I do not expect the audience to be pleased about being observed throughout the performance. It may therefore be interesting to introduce them to these places where they are away from the cameras. Whether they would feel more comfortable in areas where they know for definite that they are not being watched by anyone outside of the room they are currently occupying.

We have decided in the bedroom to seat our Voyeur in one of these black spots. They sit directly underneath the CCTV camera – they are therefore seen by nobody. We think this increases the power which the Voyeur holds, they are observing three people in a vunerable situation, two in bed and one in a cupboard and there is no understanding of that shown outside of the room. They are watching but in no way being watched.

Through this process I think they, the audience, will gain a new sense of appreciation for the privacy which we have become accustomed to, and now expect, inside our own homes.

Our House, a Home?

Jake Robinson / / Home

A home, although a simple concept, has many different definitions and connotations. Some which our house on West Parade meets and others which it does not; “a dwelling place” ((Oxford Dictionary)) for example fits our house. A “fixed residence of a family” ((Oxford Dictionary)) however does not. In my opinion, a home is a place of safety, we as humans “feel at ease in this space” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) Human Space, London: Htyhen Press)), further a home is a place where the inhabitants feel completely safe, therefore our house is not a natural home. It is uninhabited, not a single individual returns to that house of an evening, no one calls it home.  This leaves us in an awkward position, do we want to approach the house simply as a building with no emotional ties or do we want to create a fake home? This choice will greatly affect how our audience feels once inside our house, at ease or on edge, which demonstrates the severity of the decision. Do we want to make our house a home?

The audience will, in the majority of rooms, become a key part of the performance and not just an observer in the style of a traditional audience member. This, I expect, will make the majority of our audience feel, to a greater of lesser extent, uncomfortable. We are here faced with a dilemma, do we want to encourage this feeling of discomfort? In the bedroom we have made decisions unconiously which we expect will encourage the discomfort. We have incorporated constant twists into our performance which ensure that the audience member never settles, never allowing them to feel at ease, causing their discomfort to stay or perhaps increase.

On the other hand, would an audience member who was completely comfortable be more willing to partake in the active, inclusive parts of the performance? This is a question that I doubt we will be able to answer until we have our first audience. It is though a question we can explore, depending on the extent we want the audience to participate. In this sense we can refer to Govern’s idea of who goes; do we, as the performers, choose to take our audience with us. To join us in the performance which we have created along with the house or do we leave them simply to view the piece as outsiders? What if we take half the audience with us and leave half behind?

This is an idea which we are toying with in the bedroom. If the audience enter in pairs we immediately separate them, sitting one in a chair in a corner of the room whilst the other is put to bed. These audience members are bound to have a different experience of the same events. Perhaps one will feel more uncomfortable than the other, but more interestingly perhaps the house will start to become a home for one but still exist only as a stage for the other.

Bollnow says that “it is the family that brings out the homeliness of a dwelling space” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) Human Space, London: Htyhen Press)), in the case of our house, we as performers are the family. We have the task and/or the opportunity to bring out the homeliness of the house and with this comes the control over the audience’s feelings toward this house.

We may have control over the audience’s reacts toward the house however we do not have control over the house becoming a home. A home is deeply personal with a different meaning to everyone. It is impossible to consciously build a home; a home is created through time as people become increasing at ease in a space. Through this definition it is possible to see our house becoming a form of home. All of us performers are far more at ease in the house now than we were upon our first visit. The house, whether we like it or not, is becoming some form of home to us.

CCTV screen shotPhoto taken 15/03/2013

I wonder whether this is going to change our performance and if it does how, and to what extent. It will be almost impossible for us to have the same emotions towards the house as we did. The unsettling nature of the house has subsided for us, and will undoubtedly be stronger for the audience than us during performance. But do we want to bring back the unsettling feel? I doubt it. I think we can created a very interesting parallel inside the house. A house which is grotty and unpleasant to spend time in filled with people who are comfortable and enjoying their time there will be much more powerful than a grotty house filled with people who do not want to be there.

Our house is becoming a home, whether we like it or not. And I believe this is best to be embraced rather than fought.

From cowboys in the street to rabbits in the kitchen

Elizabeth Soper / / Performance process, Research

Lone Twin’s performances are public involved, and performances are built on the interaction they have with their audiences and the reactions they get from them. Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan, who were the founders of Lone Twin, are not actors, and do not use acting in their work, they perform as themselves. When discussing their work, Gregg spoke; “So it’s not at all an actorly thing; it’s just a reporting back, and trying to give it some space.” ((Williams, David and Carl Lavery (2011) Good Luck Everybody: Lone Twin: Journeys, Performances, Conversations, Wales: Cambrian Printers)). This is something I have mentioned before that I will be doing – not acting as if I am a rabbit, but just being myself in a rabbit costume.

One of their performances called ‘Totem’ involved them dressed as cowboys carrying a full sized telegraph pole in a straight line through the city of Colchester. Some members of the public would stop and ask them what they were doing and others would even join in and help them carry it for a while. Their work includes the public and that helps them structure their performances: “The first times that it happened people were suddenly, without any framing of it, inside the piece, doing what it was we were doing.” ((Williams, David and Carl Lavery (2011) Good Luck Everybody: Lone Twin: Journeys, Performances, Conversations, Wales: Cambrian Printers)). The notion of interacting with the audience, their lives and their stories over a cup of tea in the kitchen while dressed as a rabbit I think will be very interesting to see how they actually do respond.

Pinocchio Pipenose Household Dilemma

Another idea that could be incorporated is having some sort of installation piece, which would be interesting as some of my ideas were to completely change the purpose of the space, which is the concept of installation art. Paul McCarthy’s works show the way he used fairy tale like characters and changed how they are viewed, making them absurd and shocking. One example would be in 1994 when he dressed in a Pinocchio costume with a mask and a long plastic nose attached to it, in a house like setting. In the piece he uses the nose to blow bubbles in a bowl of ketchup and force feeds chocolate spread through another Pinocchio nose and then covers himself in it. It is something to be watched and doesn’t include interaction with audience members. The idea of using fairy tale characters works well with my performance as my idea came from The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Perhaps creating something absurd could also work as the dislocation of having a giant rabbit in a kitchen is initially quite surprising and this concept could be played around with.

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McCarthy, Paul (1994) Pinocchio Pipenose Household Dilemma, Online: “http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Pinocchio-Pipenose-Household-Dilemma/7CACBC3406FEFD05” (accessed: 24 February 2013)

Safe House

Lizzy Hayes / / CCTV, Home, Rooms, Uncategorized

In getting a ticket for our performance our audience members fall subject to a false sense of security- they are welcome in the house because we have allowed them to be there but we do not actually live there. Is it really our home to invite them into? Are they really welcome? And are they really safe?

When I think of a ‘safe house’ I think of a discreet property that houses an occupant who needs to be kept safe from something or one. It is a temporary base for a hidden person. It is structurally a house, but very rarely a home, just as our property is, blending in nicely with the surrounding area.

Performance Process

Image by Jozey Wade 2013

In my experience of fictional ‘safe houses’ on television or in film the houses are very rarely safe and are often infiltrated by the enemy. While this is obviously for entertainment purposes the characters responsible for the victim are left shocked and confused as to how anyone could have seen past their high security system. But the answer is clear to me: a safe house is only as safe as or maybe even less safe than any other house on the street: it is just as easy to break into, just as likely to be burgled and because of its ‘secret’ resident, a much higher target of crime.

It is also easy to assume that those kept in safe houses are there under the protection of the law: someone in danger, someone on parole, someone whose identity is too precious to be introducing themselves to their neighbours without an alias. However, research has shown that ‘safe houses’ are often used against the legal system for other purposes. Human smuggling and trafficking for example require safe houses in which illegal migrants can be housed without being discovered.  Leman and Jansses state that in some countries “large smuggling networks in which the victims have a long way to travel need safe houses to conduct their business.” (( Leman, J, & Jansses, S “The Various ‘Safe’-House Profiles in East-European Human Smuggling and Trafficking.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies Vol. 33, No. 8, November 2007, pp. 1380 )). It has been found that in these situations the safe houses may not only be used for temporary accommodation, but as a prison in which the migrants are held as hostage while their families are forced to pay more money for their safety or a brothel like establishment. Statistics suggest “that a minimum of 50 percent and upward of 80 percent of human trafficking victims worldwide are women (U.S. Department of State 2005; U.S. Department of State 2010). Seventy percent of female victims are trafficked into the sex trade…” (( Perdue, T, Williamson, C, Billings, M, Schart, J, & Boston-Gromer, R 2011, ‘In the Matter of Human Trafficking in Ohio: The Pursuit for Justice Continues’, Women’s Policy Journal Of Harvard, 8, pp. 4, viewed 17 April 2013. )).

While this statistic is disturbing, it appears that one room in our house has accidentally created a performance that could, when paired with the title of our piece, have a deeper meaning than was previously intended. The set up of the sexual element of the bedroom piece could easily represent not only a sex slave in terms of a BDSM arrangement but also a hostage situation in which a woman kept as a sex slave in a ‘safe house’.

While the bedroom is perhaps the most controversial room in our house, I’m not sure our audience will feel safe in the hostile living room environment or the peculiar child’s room environment either, especially considering that the technology normally used for a persons security is being used to scrutinise their every move.

The Art of the Eavesdropper

Lauren Simpson / / CCTV, Performance process

It is proposed that the ‘eavesdropper, perhaps, would be the auditory equivalent of the voyeur’ ((Fitzgerald in Iddon, Martin (2010) “Plato’s Chamber of Secrets On Eavesdropping and Truth(s)”, Performance Research, Vol 15, Issue 3 p. 6-10)). The voyeur seems to be a common theme emerging through our performance so it would be nice to extend that theme to listening. Making it clear to the audience that they are not only being watched but also heard in specific rooms could be interesting. They would act differently in those rooms to how they would when they think there is no surveillance e.g. the bathroom and toilet.

The act of ‘listening in’ implies that there is something to overhear. So, ‘to be, listening, is to be aware that there is a secret:’ ((Iddon, Martin (2010) “Plato’s Chamber of Secrets On Eavesdropping and Truth(s)”, Performance Research, Vol 15, Issue 3 p. 6-10)). This implies a breach of privacy, which is something we would have to take into consideration with our performance. The audience would probably have to be made slightly mindful that the CCTV is in operation. This doesn’t have to be a hindrance to performance, however. We could make them slightly knowledgeable without overdoing it, in the hope that they forget about the cameras during the performance. Or, we can make them too aware and monitor their reactions. A couple of ways to do this could be put a poster of Banksy’s iconic image in the waiting area for them to subconsciously notice.

one nation under cctv

http://www.adambowie.com/weblog/archive/2008_04.html (accessed 23/02/13)

Another possibility is to highlight the CCTV camera in every room. This could be done with signs or lights. It could be as obvious as arrows pointing towards the camera or just subtle signs.

cctv camera SSP

http://snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/top-11-ways-big-brother-or-sister-loves.html (accessed 23/02/13)

This idea could spark many reactions depending on the audience member, which will mean every performance is radically different. We won’t know until the performance happens.