Category: Documentation

The ‘blinding’ performance

Andrew Tinley / / Documentation, Performance process, Research, Rooms

We use lighting all the time, whether it be to light up our house, to explore our surroundings or just simply to see. 

Has light become a mundane feature of our lives?

Anthony McCall’s light project You and I, Horizontal (2005), which was performed as an installation piece at the Hayward Gallery’s Light Show (2013) exhibition, explores the reality of light by literally showing the beams glaring across a plain black boxed studio room. These beams enabled audience members to change, adapt and become physically involved within the exhibition through being able to touch the rays and if felt the need stand in front of the light potentially creating moments of temporary darkness. Seeing as the projection was the only source of light in the room, the site appeared very surreal, this made the light, however slowly it moved the focal part of the performance. This changed the atmosphere and therefore took the conventional aid of light to another level.

Anthony McCall. You and I, Horizontal (III) (2007). Installation view at the Serpentine Gallery, London, 2007  _65575980_anthony_mccall
Left: Artnet Galleries: The Light Show (2013) Accessed 5th April 2013
Right: BBC News in pictures: The Light Show (2013) – Accessed 5th April 2013

This exhibition used familiar and simple materials and ingredients but combined them to present a new creation. During the exhibition different audience members perceived the light differently, some seemed to be afraid, some were quite confident. This unusual behaviour created a sense of unknowing and difference in perception. Anthony McCall tends to strip back the environment to the bare essentials and due to his previous work using film projection he has said to “deconstruct cinema by reducing film to its principle components of time and light and removing the screen entirely as the prescribed surface for projection” ((Artabase (2007) ‘Anthony McCall’, online: http://www.artabase.net/exhibition/1530-anthony-mccall (accessed 4th April 2013). )) To discover that this artist had begun his work in cinema suggests that his works perhaps create a type of narrative. These narratives, as seen also in You and I, Horizontal , can be as vague as an emotion or idea that becomes something potentially more substantial as the performance continues. The fact that the site of performance is stripped back of all the components means that the audience can focus primarily on the meaning of the performance and their own interpretation of what it may be. The fact that each audience members’ experience of this installation can be different is very exciting and has a similar desired outcome to my work in Safe House.

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Left: Tumblr; Anthony McCall (2013) – Accessed 3rd April 2013
Right: Anthony McCall: Installation view at Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2009) – Accessed 3rd April 2013

Anthony McCall’s “work in the Seventies had a more conceptual bent, nowadays McCall says that he wants to evoke the human figure — an effect underlined by the titles” ((Sooke, Alistair (2011) ‘Anthony McCall: Vertical Works, Ambika P3, London, review’, The Telegrpah, 4th March: p. 3. )  )) I feel as though his work evokes a potential abstract human essence within the space giving the site an unknowingly presence. Also I felt simultaneously that the art created a personal relationship with the audience through communication within the piece. This feature supported the personal individual response to the installation. I believe the real outcome of art is the response in which you have towards it. This reinforces the fact that the real piece of art, in this case, has intangible qualities which can rarely be shared from audience to audience.

The strange ability to touch the beams of light, due to a layer of aesthetic thin mist that filled the air, was a bizarre phenomenon. It felt as though the rules, conventions and traditional qualities of a light disappeared. The capability to see the beams for what they are and what they evoke inside of you as supposed to be used as a tool to view material vitalised the importance and the focus of the piece and therefore had a massive impact on your senses. Firstly your eyes were drawn to the projection. The focus on the room was very much the light but where in the room do you look? Do you wish to look on the wall where the light is projected or is there something about staring in to the hazy light that you would find appealing? Either way you look at this, separate performances appeared. For example as you stared in to the light you were ever so slightly blinded but due to the fact there were limited objects in the environment a feeling of harmony was achieved. Yes, occasional collisions occurred with other viewing audience members but all these emotions together created a sense of ‘a shared experience’. Another sense explored in this performance would be sound. The distorted sound of other audience members talking created quite an enjoyable backdrop to the performance. This sounds, however inaudible they were, made the piece feel connected with us as audience members as we could understand sections of text.


McCall, Anthony (2011) ‘Between You and I’, Ektoras Binikos, online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RpBPgWZQCw (accessed 4th April 2013. )

This sense is something I wish my audience to experience in Safe House – the ability to share an experience in such close proximity with an audience member but at the same time it be evoking completely separate ideas and emotions.

The notion that the audience are in control of the outcome is a main theme throughout my performance and research and this, similarly in McCall’s works, enables viewers to experience an individual performance and take from it separate ideas and emotions. This is great when analysing audience responses and letting the piece evolve in to something bigger and potentially new throughout the future.

Secrets of the Lost Room

Samuel Davis / / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Research, West Parade

After extensive research and from information that I have gathered, I can speculate that the house on West Parade was where a commissionaire may have lived. We also know from council records and the house itself that it was built in 1932. The notion that the history of the space can influence and seed into a performance is something I became interested in.

Using this as a stimulus, I intend to use found texts to generate the feel of ‘the past’; receipts, photos, TV guides, stories, newspapers, mail, shopping lists and leaflets will build up an extensive amount of material. My aim is that this will make it impossible for the audience to gather a full picture of what any of it means. This ambiguity is not to confuse or trick the audience but to create the feel of a room that has been left untouched for many years. If someone were to open it, they would have to sift through the material to work out what happened in the space. Rather than looking for what has happened in the space, it is instead what hasn’t happened here – ‘things’ haven’t been thrown away.

This has largely been influenced by a guidebook called Rodinsky’s Whitechapel – this guides readers around London’s Jewish East End.

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“Workmen refurbishing one of Spitalfields historic buildings have revealed a twenty year old secret. They have uncovered a lost room in a weaver’s attic room on Princelet Street. The room was the home of a reclusive Jew called David Rodinsky.” ((Lichtenstein, R. (1999). Rodinsky’s Whitechapel. London, Artangel.))

This exposed and ‘lost’ room had been an undiscovered time capsule for over 20 years; a thick layer of dust, spectacles, a cup of tea and a pan of porridge left on a stove were just some of the objects that had been left in 1969 when Rodinsky suddenly disappeared. A plethora of his work, personal and miscellaneous objects were scattered in the attic room.

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A photo showing Rodinsky’s Room as it was found in 1980. ((Forum.casebook.org (2012) East End Photographs and Drawings – Page 122 – Casebook Forums. [online] Available at: http://forum.casebook.org/showthread.php?p=63682 [Accessed: 7 Apr 2013].))

Rodinsky was known by the locals at the time and some people from the street even grew up with him as a child. Lichtenstein herself had a direct connection to Princelet Street as she was the granddaughter of Polish immigrants who had settled there in the 1930s. She became obsessed with Rodinsky, trying to find out who this man was and why he mysteriously vanished in 1969 “Overtime, my obsession with the story grew. I began to excavate the boxed-up remains in his room. At first this arbitrary archaeology revealed little, the objects seemingly mute with the loss of their originators voice. But slowly, through careful examination of his vast collection a faint image of a man began to emerge” ((Lichtenstein, R. (1999). Rodinsky’s Whitechapel. London, Artangel.))

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Photograph: Rachel Lichtenstein – A to Z taken from Rodinsky’s Room. ((Lichtenstein, R. (1999) AtoZ. [image online] Available at: http://www.rachellichtenstein.com/content/rodinsky%E2%80%99s-whitechapel-1999 [Accessed: Sunday 7th April 2013].))

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Photograph: Rachel Lichtenstein – A note found in Rodinsky’s Room. ((Lichtenstein, R. (2013) Note found in Rodinsky’s room.. [image online] Available at: http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/1999/rodinsky_s_whitechapel/statements/michael_morris [Accessed: Sunday 7th April 2013].))

Her growing obsession and personal relationship with the Jewish East End led Lichtenstein to create her own art and performances from it.  The huge amount of detritus she collected from a seemingly mysterious man formed part of these performances and art; this was reflected in her performances that were “themselves broken in nature”. ((Guardian, T. (1999) The lost spirit of Spitalfields. The Guardian, [online] 22 May. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1999/may/22/books.guardianreview9 [Accessed: Sunday 7th April 2013].))

Lichtenstein never managed to figure out exactly what Rodinsky was like. She had often heard conflicting and contradicting memories from people who knew him “He was, according to different witnesses, both very short and very tall. He was backward and he was a genius. He was rich and he was poor. He was painfully shy and he entertained others by playing the spoons in a local cafe. He was clean-shaven and he was bearded. There was no photo of him. At times he seemed like a man who did not exist.” ((Guardian, T. (1999) The lost spirit of Spitalfields. The Guardian, [online] 22 May. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1999/may/22/books.guardianreview9 [Accessed: Sunday 7th April 2013].)) Comparatively, our own performance is similar as I intend to gather a mixture of found texts that will not expose a specific event that has occurred. Of course, with the amount of material filling the space, it will perhaps create a broad and vague sense that something has happened in the space; something has happened, but no-one will know what. Currently in the space we are frozen and still, this sense of being frozen in time links to Rodinsky’s room on Princelet Street as it remained frozen for over two decades. What happens when a space that is frozen, still, motionless and unmoving is injected with bodies? This very notion is something I am going to explore, there will not only be these scraps of detritus and junk but a living presence that contrasts against this sense of a neglected static space.

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Our own detritus and material that has been collected. Photograph by Sam Davis

As mentioned earlier, Lichtenstein used “arbitrary archaeology” ((Guardian, T. (1999) The lost spirit of Spitalfields. The Guardian, [online] 22 May. Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/1999/may/22/books.guardianreview9 [Accessed: Sunday 7th April 2013].)) to uncover the material in Rodinsky’s room. A similar occurrence will happen in the house on West Parade, there will be no direct connection between one object and the next.

Rodinskys Grave

David Rodinsky’s headstone, 1999. Photograph by Rachel Lichtenstein

The Aesthetics of the Piece.

Lauren Hughes / / CCTV, Documentation, Performance process, Research

Discussing Fiona Templeton in my previous Blog post and how the performance Recognition influenced the idea of us being in the house through Multimedia on alternate performance evenings, we decided to do this through creating an installation piece with us videoed in and around the house. This meant we only needed one of us for each performance evening (solving the Health and Safety issues) to set up and man the equipment, which worked to our advantage as we still got to see the audiences reactions to our work.

The Invisible Man is a story based around a character and how he refers to himself as The Invisible Man as people refuse to acknowledge his presence due to the fact he is black. We chose to expand on this idea of feeling invisible and apply it to the house, however given the obvious fact we were a group of females we took the theme and alternated it to a feminism. Through this we decided to do filming after dark with torches lighting up each room in the house and see what affects this would create. We chose have a soundscape over this for example someone making a cup of tea in the kitchen, a news reel in the living room, brushing of teeth when a torch is shone from those rooms making them rooms come alive with the sounds. As well as this another layer of sound with our voices reading extracts from The Invisible Man narrating the piece.

When filming the rooms within the house at night, each room spoke its own aesthetic narrative. The footage had a layer of fuzz creating a grainy affect over it due to the resolution in the dark. With this totally new visual in the dark we decided the narrative idea could be taken so much further that the soundscape and torches idea wasn’t as necessary and focused on the aesthetics of the piece. In this we will give the audience a pair of headphones with our voices relaying a narrative to them while they absorb the imagery on the TV screen, some will be existing texts that complement the visuals and others will be our own pieces of writing. We decided to take 3 shots each and watch them repeatedly and simply write what we saw and felt.

“You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that your part of all the sound and anguish” ((Ellison, Ralph (1965) The Invisible Man, Great Britain: Penguin Books Ltd.)) This is taken from The Invisible Man, with so in depth descriptions of personal emotion we decided to still incorporate this as it sparked the idea as a whole and with most the imagery showing a shadow,

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Image by Lauren Hughes (2013)

silhouette

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Image by Lauren Hughes (2013)

or distorted face

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Image by Lauren Hughes (2013)

it linked in with that idea of having no identity, relating back to the title and also just giving that idea of feeling invisible and alone.

 

Safe house – definition; “a house in a secret location, used by spies or criminals in hiding” ((http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/safe%2Bhouse?q=safe+house Accessed; 25/03/13)), or “a house where someone can hide or shelter” ((http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/safe-house?q=safe+house, Accessed; 25/03.13)). The fact that when people are taken to a safe house they have their identity taken all links in with our contribution to the final performance. Also with the definition including shelter we did filming in other people’s homes to see what their definition of a home was, whether it’s the place or people etc. which we were going  to use within our piece before we came across The Invisible Man.

After recording the rooms at night we decided to have the CCTV room as the ‘room of screens’, with adding narratives to the videos, playing on a low volume when the audience enter filling the atmosphere with the ghostly whispers from the narratives. This project we decided to develop meant splitting the 1 minute clips of each room between us with 3 each sitting and watching these over and over…. And over again, we did this so the imagery could speak to us, even after watching one for 30 times unbelievably you would see something new or create a whole new narrative in your mind from these images. Giving that the three of us were female after reading the Invisible Man we chose to take the aspect of being invisible due to his ethnicity and use it through feminism and identity. Choosing to do so linked in really well with the Safe House which is all about identity.

Deciding to call the piece Safe House portrayed the essence of our piece as well as triggering ideas to enhance the feel of a Safe House, a safe homely feel, but also the authoritative aspects for example the agents, rules and regulations. “To start with, the dwelling space must give the impression of seclusion. If it is the task of the house to provide a refuge from the outside world, this must also find expression in the nature of the dwelling space” ((Bollnow, O.F (2011) “Human Space” London: Hyphen Press, p. 143)). A typical home for most of us is this way inclined and this is what the Safe House has… to a certain extent. The magic of our room being the last visited is for the audience to have explored the house knowing, but most likely forgetting for the majority of the piece that they are being watched, taking that idea of being secluded and keeping the private the private within a home is flipped on it’s head when they discover the CCTV screen.

When first hearing the term ‘Safe House’ I instantly envisaged films with characters being whisked away to a house in the country. However when researching into them it’s not all about the authorities keeping civilians safe, Safe Houses can be used to protect women who have been abused, foster children or hide illegal immigrants etc. When discovering the safe houses for women it linked in with our performance ideas, although our installation piece isn’t about being physically abused it still has that essence of oppression which is emphasised through the haunting atmosphere that fills the room when all the clips are playing in sync.

It’s okay, this has been done before.
…this however, is our first time.

Lauren Bethany Elouise Watson / / Documentation, Research, Rooms

Hotel Medea (2011) CHAPTER II – DRYLANDS –. Online, http://vimeo.com/18224931 (accessed 24 February 2013).

Hotel Medea “allow for a participatory, immersive and interactive perspective of the theatrical event” ((Hotel Medea (2011) Hotel Medea Online: http://vimeo.com/hotelmedea (accessed 24 February 2013). )) within their work, and it is this immersive and interactive experience which we are trying to create, for both audience members, despite the fact the two audience members will never experience both performances. An example of Hotel Medea’s immersive theatre is their performance, Drylands.

In this durational evening performance, the audience became part of, and were offered an intimate part within the performance and it is this immersive, intimate and safe atmosphere which we are trying to inhabit in the bedroom. The experience will still be immersive for the cupboard…but not necessary safe.

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Lauren Watson. Date taken: 22 March 2013.

As well as immersing the audience in the piece with spoken narratives and bed-time rituals, the room itself has been decorated and transformed by children’s drawings and paintings. The child’s room is safe and secure, with all the usual sexual context of the bedroom removed. We needed this essence of innocent and safety to be in the bedroom, as the cupboard which is built into the main wall holds none of these values. It subverts them, showing the true and heightened nature of what we associate with the bedroom. There is no safety or comfort to be found in the cupboard. You will find no bedtime story or hot chocolate to send you off to sleep to “the place in which we are allowed to dream” ((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd., p. 76.)).  What you will find is a narrative made to confuse, question and attempt to control you. It will put you in a position you would rather not be in, try and escape from, a place in which you wouldn’t want to stay.

“The remnants of site-specific performance can be extensive. It generates documents relating both the creation of performance and to the engagement with site before, during and after the event” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 191.)).

To let these two simultaneous events go undocumented would be a loss on our part as performers. The documentation “made during…often assert themselves to be the true record of what really happened, or else we ascribe that capacity to them” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 191-192.)), to be able to look back on what it felt like, and how we made people feel would  ensure that we would not lose the performance entirely after the performance had finished. How many performances have you been to which take place in a house? And how many had you wished you’d been to? With documentation you would be given the chance to glimpse into the world we had created in our ‘safe house’.

“Site-specific performance as an unlikely and fleeting moment in history of a place, known only through the  traveller’s [or audiences’] tales of those present” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 194.)).

Could we, as performer, document the performance and reactions during the periods in the performance where there were no audience members or visitors in our room? To have a note-pad and pen hidden in our space, at hand to record emotions, feelings, reflections and reactions would be invaluable.

Writing by tainted light, struggling to hold the pen in our greasy hands, struggling to move and see due to restraints. This would make the documentation as much part of the performance as we are. A living, breathing, active part of the performance. Just a part which no audience members will witness.

She Looks Back.

Lauren Bethany Elouise Watson / / Documentation, Performance process, Research, Rooms

“As in life, actors need to be aware when staring at others is and is not appropriate” ((Schiffman, Jean (2005) ‘Eye to Eye’, Back Stage West, XII (22), 1531572X, May: N.P.)).

Eye contact in performance is vital. It establishes relationships between performers whilst also forming a relationship between the audience and performer/s. But what happens when this eye contact deconstructs or challenges a pre-established relationship? Forced or prolonged eye contact alters the dynamics of a performance, often leaving either recipient or instigator feeling uncomfortable, scrutinised or even exposed.

In our performance, it this surprisingly, usually easy and expected convention of the theatre that is  becoming our biggest fear and ask.

“In the theatre, gesture appears typically in conjunction with spoken text, underlining, undermining or counterpointing it” ((Scolnicov, Hanna (2010) ‘Stripping as Gesture’, ASSAPH: Section C: Studies in the Theatre, XXIV, pp. 139-152, p. 140.)), however, in our performance we are playing with this convention. Subverting it, almost. The eye contact happens in silence. The performer is unable to speak, yet the eye contact becomes justified and essential. To hold eye contact is to hold the power within the scene or scenario. But when this scene is subverted, the eye contact becomes a challenge in itself. To create power where there was none through eye contact is an intimidating task, and to subvert a strong, dominating relationship through eye contact alone is empowering.

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Witness, UCLA (2011). Counesy of Allison Wyper.’Witness: Notes from the Artist’, Platform, VI (1), pp. 57-76, p.62.

When we are hidden behind the blindfold, we become an object to be viewed. Aspects of the ‘actor’ are stripped away, and we become a possession, as “beneath the mask the actor hides not merely his face but also his identity” ((Scolnicov, Hanna (2010) ‘Stripping as Gesture’, ASSAPH: Section C: Studies in the Theatre, XXIV, pp. 139-152, p. 142.)). The audience  knows us on merely an aesthetic level. A possession to be viewed. Although the identity of the performer is not known, the scene presented to the audience is still an intimate one. “Looking at someone is almost like touching them” ((Schiffman, Jean (2005) ‘Eye to Eye’, Back Stage West, XII (22), 1531572X, May: N.P.)), and when that person has no power to look back, this notion of touching them is heightened.

To subvert this power balance without the use of direct address is really an electric moment. “To deconstruct language is to deconstruct gender; to subvert the symbolic order is to subvert sexual difference” ((Showalter, Elaine (1989) Speaking of Gender, London and New York: Routledge, p. 3.)). Suddenly, through the abandon of language, our sexual difference has been subverted, with all the power handed over to us, the exposed performer. This “female self-unveiling substitutes power for castration” ((Showalter, Elaine (1992) Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siecle London: Virago Press, p. 156.)), castrating the voyeur (if male), removing all previous power he held. When we remove our blindfold, the male gaze becomes scrutinised and challenged and abhorred.

This transference of power, and a ‘one-on-one’ audience/performer situation is similar to Allison Wyper’s Witness (2010-2011). Witness is a “participatory performance for one audience member at a time in which the viewer is configured as accomplice to the performance event, a ritual in which power is borrowed, trafficked, and stolen” ((Wyper, Allison (2011) ‘Witness: Notes from the Artist’, Platform, VI (1), pp. 57-76, p.57.)). By participating in this transition of power and status, we make ourselves vulnerable, and question where we stand within the performance.

 “As we watch others we are also conscious of being watched” ((Wyper, Allison (2011) ‘Witness: Notes from the Artist’, Platform, VI (1), pp. 57-76, p.62.)).

The behaviour of both performer and voyeur changes throughout the performance. Although first making eye contact is intimidating and scary, once our gaze restored, the power balance shifts. Suddenly, the object looks back and takes on a persona. Challenging the roaming gaze of the voyeur. In our practical sessions, the voyeur has held our gaze. This is either out of respect or fear. Fear to be seen looking at you naked and totally exposed, but also because you are owed respect.