Category: Research

Sexual Fantasy

Lauren Simpson / / Performance process, Research, Rooms

The bedroom is typically thought of as a place for sleeping, dreaming and sexual activity. Combining all three in our performance will cause an interesting reaction. Sexual fantasy and dreaming is an interesting topic and very little is known about the relationship between them. Freud created the notion that all dreams could be considered to have sexual references within them; it is all down to the interpretation. However, not all psychologists share this view. “The typical male dreamer has 12 “sex dreams” per 100 dream reports.” ((Domhoff, G.William (1996) Finding Meaning in Dreams: A Quantitative Approach, New York: Plenum Publishing Corporation.)) This is a relatively high number, considering dreams are a fairly regular occurrence for most people. Freud “also claimed that much of dream imagery represents repressed sexual instincts or desires.” ((King, D, DeCicco, T, & Humphreys, T 2009, ‘Investigating sexual dream imagery in relation to daytime sexual behaviours and fantasies among Canadian university students’, Canadian Journal Of Human Sexuality, 18, 3, pp. 135-146.)) Therefore, presenting a male voyeur with a sexually charged situation has the potential to make them conscious of their sexual fantasies.

Our performance separates the sleeping element and the dream content. The audience member in the bed is put to ‘sleep’ while the voyeur has the sexual ‘dream’ revealed in front of them. This shows a distortion between dreaming and sex. They are relevant and they can exist in the same place but people might not always remember a dream or it might not have an obvious meaning. This will only have this effect if the voyeur is a male. Males are reported to be “more likely to dream of someone other than their current partner.” ((King, D, DeCicco, T, & Humphreys, T 2009, ‘Investigating sexual dream imagery in relation to daytime sexual behaviours and fantasies among Canadian university students’, Canadian Journal Of Human Sexuality, 18, 3, pp. 135-146.)) Therefore, it will still be as effective seeing a naked stranger or acquaintance as it would be to see their own partner. It could be considered to be more effective as they might feel like they should be repressing their reaction.

Another interesting point to monitor on performance day would be the audience member’s interactions with each other. The person in the bed will be completely oblivious to anything else that would have happened and so will have to be informed by the voyeur. The voyeur might be very descriptive when describing what happened, or they might become embarrassed and leave out important details.

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.

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

The confessions of a hoarder

Lauren Elizabeth Walker / / Home, Performance process, Research, Uncategorized
A Hoarders front room

Hoarding is a form of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) it usually begins early in life, and can be seen in children. Children create extremely intense attachments to objects and have a tendency to personify things. Hoarding expands to become a modest problem in the 20’s and 30’s and becomes a severe problem in the 40’s and 50’s. Hoarders feel attached to their objects for several different reasons. These attachments take the form of attaching human- like qualities to lifeless possessions, feeling grief at the prospect of losing the objects, and deriving a sense of safety from being surrounded by objects. Other beliefs hoarders have are the necessity of saving things to keep memories and to appreciate the beauty of the objects. They also believe in not wasting objects or losing opportunities that are represented by them.  When researching hoarders I came across a survey comparing people with OCD who are hoarders and people who are non-hoarders.

 

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This grave shows the feelings and emotions of a hoarder and a non-hoarder.

“Living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to precluds for which those spaces were designed” ((Nedelisky, A, & Steele, M 2009, ‘Attachment to people and to objects in obsessive-compulsive disorder: an exploratory comparison of hoarders and non-hoarders’, Attachment & Human Development, 11, 4, pp. 365-383, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 April 2013.))

                This quote was taken from the survey/ article and I think it relates very closely to our performance, we are setting out to make our audience feel uncomfortable. Making it difficult for them to walk through a living room like you would in any other normal house. Giving them the feeling that they would actually experience in a home of a hoarder. They will walk into the room, and be in total shock at what they see, but try to not disturb and act as if nothing is it out of the ordinary. Something that most people would do when they are faced with something unexpected when they are guest in someone’s home, the experience we would like to give the audience is one they have never experienced or seen before. Our group do not want them to enter and us to perform and show them our room; we want them to take what they want from it whether that is disgust shock or fascination. The audience may understand the reasoning behind our performance, and why the room is full of pizza boxes and beer cans but they may not, but really it doesn’t matter we are there no one really knows why or what has occurred before they opened the door but that doesn’t matter. ((Etchells, T 2006, ‘Instructions for Forgetting’, TDR: The Drama Review, 50, 3, pp. 108-130, International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 April 2013)) ((Fugen, N, Steven, W, Jennifer, A, & Dean, M n.d., ‘Compulsive hoarders: How do they differ from individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder?’, Psychiatry Research, 200, pp. 35-40, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 April 2013.)) ((Fischer, S 2001, ‘A Room of Our Own: Rodinsky, Street Haunting and the Creative Mind’, Changing English: Studies In Reading & Culture, 8, 2, p. 119, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 7 April 2013.))

 

Oh My God are you Naked?

Lauren Simpson / / Performance process, Research, Rooms

Is it socially acceptable to be naked in a performance? Where does the line sit separating performance and real life? Does this line change when the performer is naked? These are all questions we have to deal with when creating this performance in the bedroom.

carolee schneemann

 

(http://artintelligence.net/review/?p=529 :accessed 06/04/13)

It would be “useful to distinguish among approved, liminal, and subversive spaces with regard to the acceptability of nude performance.” ((Jones, MT (2010) ‘Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space’, Sexuality & Culture, 14, 4, pp. 253-269.)) With regards to the cupboard, it is not a subversive space because no one has specifically denied the right to be naked in a cupboard. In an everyday society I doubt it would be considered an approved space for nudity.

It could be considered a liminal space. It has a purpose (storage) but it is never really considered to be a room of its own. “Liminal spaces are experimental zones where social roles and relationships are tested and redefined.” ((Jones, MT (2010) ‘Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space’, Sexuality & Culture, 14, 4, pp. 253-269.)) The socially established roles of performer and audience member are tested in our performance. The eye contact that is made while the narrative is playing through the headphones puts the audience member in a vulnerable position. They are used to being passive; simply sitting and watching others perform. A cupboard in a bedroom is usually there to store clothes, which implies the opposite of nakedness. Our aim is to shock the audience and so by taking a place not usually associated with nudity and filling it with a naked female should achieve this goal.

“Nudity is often associated with freedom from the constraints and demands of culture.” ((Jones, MT (2010) ‘Mediated Exhibitionism: The Naked Body in Performance and Virtual Space’, Sexuality & Culture, 14, 4, pp. 253-269.)) We also challenge this notion, by alluding to the prospect of bondage using ties and gags. Nudity in plays is often approached at a very domesticated level, so it seems normal to an audience and a lot less shocking. In an article by the BBC on nudity and performance one actor comments; “We were expecting a lot more guffaws and giggles and awkwardness, but because it’s so domesticated and so real the audience feels quite relaxed by that point.” ((Phoebe Waller-Bridge in: Masters, Tim (2013) ‘Actors Reveal Challenges of Stage Nudity’, BBC News, 6. March.)) Our performance aims for two different reactions. At no point, do we aim to make any audience member feel comfortable. However, it will be a very different experience for males and females. The females will sympathise with the vulnerable girl in the cupboard and there is no dominant power source. With the male audience members, we want to make them feel as uncomfortable as possible and want to reverse the power so the naked female is in control. This is an unexpected turn and so will prevent the viewer from relaxing into the situation.

Getting the correct balance of nudity and performance is important. The nudity must serve a purpose, whether it is to shock the audience or simply to make a scene more ‘real’. For example, you couldn’t perform a scene in a bath being fully clothed: it would look unrealistic. Using Carolee Schneemann as an example, her work was extremely avant garde and not always received well. In academic books, she doesn’t tend to be mentioned other than a few of her early works. She was considered a performance artist and nudity became like a trademark for her work.

“Often, her focus on the body, on sex, was seen as a problem both by feminists and by the (male) audience.” ((Sundberg, M (2011) ‘A One-Work-Artist? Carolee Schneemann and the Reception of her Work’, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 80, 3, pp. 168-179.))

This is a lot to do with the male and female gaze. It would be considered normal for the male audience to accept her work as it is more common to have a male gaze on the female form. However, her work was rejected and criticised by men as well as women. She wanted to break down the stereotype of women being the ‘image’. Trying to portray this message in a time where men were still very much the dominant figures in society would have provoked critique.

“The line is very fine between making this point clear to the audience, and once again being turned into an object by the still powerful male gaze.” ((Sundberg, M (2011) ‘A One-Work-Artist? Carolee Schneemann and the Reception of her Work’, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, 80, 3, pp. 168-179.))

This is something that we considered with our performance. We want to shift away from the male gaze and make this naked female form in the cupboard gain total control over the male viewer. When creating and recording the narrative we needed to make sure our voices were strong enough to gain instant control over the audience member. Our eyes once the blindfold is removed will also help this process.

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.