Month: March 2013

The Kitchen Show

Elizabeth Soper / / Performance process, Research, Rooms

“Perhaps what is most interesting in Baker’s work, an ingredient of the adjective ‘incomparable’, is that her work cuts across any strong distinction between the visual and the performing arts.” ((Barrett, Michele and Bobby Baker (2007), Bobby Baker: Redeeming Features of Daily Life, USA: Routledge, p.3)).

Bobby Baker’s, The Kitchen Show was something I found particularly interesting to watch. Her performance was of her in a kitchen with a commentary over the top explaining what she is doing, why she is doing it, and how it makes her feel – in the style of a cooking programme. The only difference was it wasn’t about cooking in her kitchen; she was using the kitchen and items in it to create something unusual and absurd. It starts with her stirring a pan of soup with a wooden spoon. In order for her to hold the wooden spoon she decides to tape her hand in that shape so she can grip it easier. As she does this she describes it so naturally, as if it is a completely normal thing to do in a kitchen. This I found quite humorous, and as the show goes on the ‘tasks’ she does become even more outrageous. Below shows a clip of some of her activities:

dailylifeltd (2012) Kitchen Show by Bobby Baker, Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIbzhmljz_k (assessed 3 March 2012).

Previously I have discussed ideas to change the kitchen completely, having objects in the space that aren’t meant to be in there. After watching The Kitchen Show, I very much like the idea of actually using the kitchen for what it is, with the absurdity of the rabbit being enough. I will experiment with what Bobby Baker did, using kitchen utensils in different ways, for example she tied a wooden spoon in her hair and wore a cheese grater on a piece of string around her neck, and talked about it like its normal. Someone dressed as a rabbit doing everyday tasks like making the audience cups of tea or getting them a snack to eat isn’t normal to watch, similarly to Bobby Baker’s work. It would also be quite a struggle to do everyday tasks with mitten-like hands, big rubbery feet and a giant head with limited space to see out of, and would therefore be very interesting to watch the struggle I would have to endure just to do a simple task.

Cot room Growing up

Angela Michelle Graham / / Rooms

Freud discusses the “yield of pleasure involved” ((Freud, S (1991) On Metapsychology. London: Penguin. p, 283.)) in play. He looks past the fun factor and into the reasons that we play. In his example he looks into a young boy who has invented a game in which he throws his toys away in the hope that they will be returned, he also chucked a wooden reel with string tied around it out of his cot and then pulled it back in. Freud had decided this was due to his “instinctual renunciation … which he had made in allowing his mother to go away without protesting” ((Freud, S (1991) On Metapsychology. London: Penguin. p, 285.)). I am myself playing with the idea of looking into to how play is preparing us for when we grow up, specifically girls becoming women.

This is very obvious when we look at children’s toys, such as in the Argos catalogue in the girls toy section you will find dolls and pretend kitchens,

dolls and pretend kitchens, cot room girl “Chad Valley Pretend Play Electronic mini Kitchen” ((Argos.co.uk (2013) Buy Chad Valley Pretend Play Electronic Mini Kitchen at Argos.co.uk – Your Online Shop for Toys under 10 pounds, Cooking role play, 2 for 15 pounds on Toys.. [online] Available at: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/9059430.htm [Accessed: 2 Mar 2013].)) where as in the boys section you will find cars, and toy work benches, cot room boy “JCB Pack Away Workbench” ((Argos.co.uk (n.d.) Buy JCB Pack Away Workbench at Argos.co.uk – Your Online Shop for Building role play.. [online] Available at: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3888559.htm [Accessed: 2 Mar 2013].)). This shows how even from a young age we are pushed to be a specific type of person, girls to become women with strong maternal instincts and to be the cleaner and cook for a male hunter gatherer type, and boys pushed to be masculine and provide for women. Even with the feminist movement beginning in the mid 18th century and still going strong now, gender stereotypes are still common today.

There is a pressure on women to want children and a husband, it is expected for a woman to put her career on hold and raise a family; less than a century ago most women didn’t have jobs but were simply home and baby makers. Many men believe that the perfect woman will be waiting at the door with a sandwich and in sexy underwear. This ideal is perpetuated by the continuation to believe that girls should be dressed in pink and have toy vacuums, were as boys should be running around fields in mud and wrestling. Dorothy Allison states “Class, race, sexuality, gender-and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other- need to be excavated from the inside” ((Eagly, A. and Beall, A., et al. 2004, The Psychology of gender. New York (N.Y.) [etc.]: Guilford Press, p.1.)) It is becoming more and more acceptable for girls to join in typical boyish activities and boys to do girly activities. Although this has created a new genre of gender, such as a girl that enjoys sports rather than playing princess’s is a tomboy, and boys that enjoy playing with dolls rather than climbing trees are camp these terms which are regularly used in derogative manner between children.

I remember my parents not pushing me to be a feminine girl and I became a tom boy there’s no issue with that and in primary school people were very accepting of this. I mainly had male friends and when I started secondary school this became an issue with other girls they began to suggest to people that I was a slag and this was a turning point for me. I began to make more of an effort to be friends with girls and become more girly, I started wearing make-up and dresses and skirts. This was me acting to fit in and eventually it’s just became natural and a part of who I am.  

In Kira O’Reilly’s “Cut Piece” she asked the audience to cut her with a scalpel, and those that refused would then put plasters on cuts created by other audience members. This gives the audience the feel of creating something themselves as well as them leaving their mark. She used this in a durational way that built a bank of cuts and plasters all over her body, leaving physical evidence that she had performed. I’m looking to use myself as a canvas in a durational way, as Tracey Warr looks at a “significant shift in artists’ perceptions of the body, which has been used not simply as the ‘content’ of the work, but also as canvas, brush, frame and platform.” ((Warr, T., & Jones, A. (2000). The artist’s body. London, Phaidon. p, 11.)).. I am going to combine both the child and adult. I will create this by using both children’s make-up (that cheap sticky cream stuff) and my own make-up, only applying the children’s make-up with my left hand (non-writing hand) and the adult’s make-up with my right hand. This will hopefully create the affect of a child playing dress-up, rather than an adult pretending to be a child. I will apply the make-up to a specific side of my face and build on it throughout the 4 hours. I will offer to do the make-up of the audience and if they refuse will allow them to apply make-up on me.

I am hoping the audience will leave with the sense of creating something and leaving something behind for others to find. Can we create this sense elsewhere as I know other groups are giving things to their audience? But what can we allow them to leave as there are obvious limitations such as graffiti, but can we create a guest book like you would find in hotel for them leave a message in for others to find?

 

Research and Performance ideas

Lauren Hughes / / Research

After reading about Fiona Templeton and Michael Ramtomski’s performance Recognition it triggered some thoughts for me about how we could use the multimedia in our performance. We have discussed using pre recordings and projections but how close can we cut that line between the solid performance happening for the audience and the multimedia? I was touched how Ramtomski lived on through this performance after his death through the power of multimedia in performance.

Recognition 7

Image: Online: http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/352 (accessed: 3rd March 2013).

The piece involves Templeton interacting with a video of her late collaborator Ramtomski and a woman you cannot see which is presumably her. “She speaks words that are repeated moments later by the man in the video, or by her own voice recorded on the video; she turns the sound down and speaks words aloud as the man mouths them; she speaks in time with her own voice on the video and she speaks in his voice.” ((Baker, Clive (2000) New Theatre Quarterly 63, Cambridge: University Press p.208)). In the book New Theatre Quarterly 63 they describe the performance and how Templeton made the absent present through multimedia not only by playing a video of Michael Ramtomski but interacting with the media to make that presence much more real. A similar piece I saw was a third year student’s solo performance which I assume was inspired by Templeton’s work, where he used 3 different videos of himself and interacted with each one individually, each represented him in the past, one within hours, one within days and one slightly more. As he had this very convincing conversation with them he proceeded to inform them of the performance they will be taking part in (the one he was currently in). This type of performance evidently takes a vast amount of time and dedication however it could be used within our piece as due to health and safety reasons not all performers can be present for each performance.

 

Purging.

Jozey Wade / / Performance process, Research, Rooms

Performance artist Andre Stitt here talks about how he uses certain substances in is performances as representation for feelings/ emotions etc. Some of the substances he uses are chosen based on personal memories of his, like the use of tar and feathers. At the end, as the narrator points out, he pushes the boat he has covered in certain substances out into the sea and it can be seen as a release or “letting go” of the dark memories he and/ or the audience possess. Straight away this struck me, in relation to what I have been working on in the bathroom.

In his book, At Home: A short history of private life, Bill Bryson talks extensively about plague and disease in history and how a great deal of it has related to being unclean and not washing. In his chapter about the bathroom, he discusses how people in the Middle Ages thought that to “plug the pores with dirt” ((Bryson, Bill (2010) At Home: A short history of private life, London: Black Swan))  was the best way to protect themselves from plague. “Most people didn’t wash, or even get wet, if they could help it – and in consequence… Infections became part of every day life… serious illness accepted with resignation” ((Bryson, Bill (2010) At Home: A short history of private life, London: Black Swan)). Nowadays, obviously, we are aware of the fact that quite the opposite of this is true. We wash daily, to clean – or purge – ourselves of dirt and grime gathered through the day, and to prevent ourselves from smelling and getting ill.

This idea of purging made me think of Andre Stitt’s work as a kind of purge also – like in his performance Where the Grass is Greener as seen in the video above. How the ritualistic aspects of his performances – with the feathers and pushing the boat out into the sea – help him let go or purge himself of unpleasant memories or feelings. How could I apply this to the bathroom?

forsite

After spending some time in there and sketching out some thoughts (as can be seen above), I tried to apply my previous ideas of how home life, or people within your home life can make you feel suffocated there. And how, more often than not, it is impossible for us to talk about these issues because we are just supposed to put up with them, or we think we are, if the people involved are family or people we love. Examples of this include overbearing/ strict parents (not necessarily physically abusive but perhaps), children with behavioural problems, loved ones with long term illnesses or even mental illnesses (like depression etc). I played with this idea of things we can’t say that grate on the inside of us, and how some sort of action or ritual within the bathroom could help us release this, or purge ourselves of it. (after all, as we have discussed, the bathroom is a place of purging anyway).

Everyone’s a Performer

Lauren Hughes / / CCTV, Performance process, Uncategorized

                                                                           DESAbigbrother

Image:Online-https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=big+brother&hl=en&rlz=1C1SKPL_enGB453GB494&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=LG5AUZ-DPfS00QXdoYG4Aw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=643(Accessed 20/02/2013).

“There is no single ‘Big Brother’ who is watching over us but lots of little brothers each with their own agendas.” ((Norris and Armstrong (1999) The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise Of CCTV, New York: Berg p.7)). We are always being watched,  when leaving our homes each day for work, college or university it is more than likely you will be filmed or photographed through CCTV.

“Studies by Honess and Charman (1992), Squires and Measor (1996) indicate that only between one third and two thirds of the population using streets with CCTV actually know they are being monitored.” ((Norris and Armstrong (1999) The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise Of CCTV, New York: Berg p.92)). With this gaze constantly over them, are they performing? When we trip over in the street a rush of embarrassment takes over where our minds are telling us we are hurt however we find ourselves laughing as were all this this performance together, everyone’s watching.  When walking down a street we are always aware eyes are on us not only cameras but people in windows, across the road and in cars. When our audience enter the house on West Parade will they become aware of the cameras straight away or will they spend the whole experience thinking they are aware of whom and when people are watching them?  We can use this to our advantage and show the audience they can be part of the performance as well. As the CCTV group we have discussed how we will be involved in the performance and how the audience could discover our room and then watch us as we roam the house performing as they have for us. Through this performance we can portray how people always know they’re being watched, with subtle glances at the cameras to eventually holding signs to signify our knowledge of the cameras, similar to The Surveillance Camera Players. Another way of incorporating this into the performance is interrupting the mini performances in each room and handing a sign/ placard to an audience member or performer and asking them to hold it to the camera.

“The real power of site-specific work is that it somehow activates, or engages with, the narratives of the site in some kind of way. That might be with its formal architecture, or it might be with the character of the building.” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, London:Macmillan p.35)). When entering the house other than there being a television in the front room, it’s very bear and uninviting, it’s not an ideological notion of a modern home. The architectural design of the house makes the CCTV room one of the last rooms you may see which changes your whole outlook on the house when discovering it and extends that feeling of it being unappealing even more. It crosses the boundary between the outside world and the privacy within a home with inhabitants being aware they’re always being watched which you shouldn’t feel within a home. This ‘Big Brother’ feel the house has is a great characteristic we can work with for our performance. The most eerie room for most of us in the house is the cot room mainly as it’s the coldest room and the fact it has a cot gives it a lot of potential to play on that creepiness for the performance and we have incorporated this room into both our trailers so far. The character of the house instantly triggers narratives for performance ideas as you explore all its rooms.

As the CCTV group we have decided to take our filming to other people’s homes and interview them on their thoughts of home. What is ‘home’ to them? Starting by asking them to take us to the room/ place in which they feel most comfortable and asking them why they feel so attached to that part of their home. And if they’re a student whether their ‘home from home’ feels homely or just a place to stay. Then we suggested the idea of making negative comments about aspects of their home to see if they would defend it or agree, filming their reaction to this. These recordings will either be used for a trailer or within the piece or just for our own research.