Research – Page 9 – ________-Safe House-_________

The brutally honest bathroom

Jozey Wade / February 11, 2013May 9, 2013 / Documentation, Performance process, Research, Rooms

Photo taken 01/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

Heathcote makes an interesting point in his book that the bathroom is “as brutally honest a reflection of our domestic concerns as the bathroom mirror (is) of our bodies” ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning Of Home, London: Frances Lincoln)). He rightly suggests that the bathroom is the only room in which there is no pretense; when you walk in you see a bath, you see a sink and (although in a separate room in our house) you see a toilet. There are no questions about what these things are used for; as raw and maybe even slightly unpleasant as these usages may be (particularly with the toilet), they are right in our faces as we enter. He says the bathroom is “fundamentally modest and unpretentious” (2012, p. 83); it is there and it is what it is because we need it. We need to wash and we need to relieve ourselves. Perhaps even more interestingly he says the bathroom is a place with “nothing to hide and nowhere to hide it” (2012, p. 83). I found this particularly interesting when applying his ideas to the performance ideas I have been considering. This idea that we go in the bathroom and we lock the door and we take our clothes off. We are away from judgmental eyes, away from embarrassment. Alone. And naked. Not just without clothes but, as a woman, without make up, without hair gel or any of these things. In the bath we wash all the pretenses off and we are just our bare, honest self. What happens if we let an audience in to this raw, private environment? Don’t interact with them. Just let them watch. It breaks those boundaries we are so used to associating with a bathroom.

Here is where I go on to discuss my 3 ideas…

1. My first idea also relates to Heathcote’s chapter, where he talks about how “The Roman’s famously used the bathhouse as a space… of socialising” (2012, p. 81). The bathroom as part of the house and as a private place is quite a modern concept. In the not too far distant past, let alone the Roman times, baths were taken in the bedroom or downstairs beside the fire, in front of other people. Despite the fact that this wasn’t long a go, to our generation and even a couple of generations before us, the idea of this is utterly alien to us. The idea of bathing being a social activity… well, even to me, it is a concept that is extremely difficult to imagine. I like to be alone when I bathe, as I’m sure the rest of you do. In fact, if one of us was in a bath with someone else in this day and age, as an adult, it would almost definitely be to do with sex. So, my idea was to revert back to this concept of bathing being social. I intended to invite the audience in, almost as though it was the lounge, while I washed myself, even get fellow cast members to join me and chat with them and the audience. I thought it would be interesting to see what their reaction was, if they found it uncomfortable. As you can see in the picture below, I have begun to experiment with this (wearing swimwear at the moment).

Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

2. My second idea was inspired by Lital Dotan’s Glasshouse. The idea that she uses her entire house as a performative “exhibition space” ((Ortiz, Jen (2013) ‘Life as a Glass House’, Narratively, 25 January, accessed 30 January 2013, http://narrative.ly/2013/01/life-as-a-glass-house/<a href="http://www.whatsonstage.com/reviews/theatre/london/E8831330082708/Romeo+and+Juliet+(Headlong+tour+%96+Guildford,+Yvonne+Arnaud+Theatre).html")) seems quite unimaginable in itself, as a home as a whole is quite a private place. But, the idea of using the bathroom specifically as an exhibition struck me, partly because of this idea of a bathroom being private and, as Heathcote said, "brutally honest" ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning Of Home, London: Frances Lincoln)). So I began to think of ways to turn the bathroom into an exhibition.

Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

The empty bath (as can be seen above), when I look at is, is almost asking to be filled. It is there to be filled. But what if it wasn’t filled with water but with memories? Memories of bathroom experiences… which of course are usually private, but for our performance, are put on exhibition. So, things like photographs of bath time memories (both “normal” and sinister), notes which contain snippets of bathroom memories, toys people play with in the bath (like rubber ducks, but maybe even adult toys) and more (I am trying to think of things all the time, and certainly open to suggestions). So the bath would be an exhibition of memories of a place that is usually so personal and private – full of them. I then thought about the idea of projecting something on the wall, perhaps snippets of video memories of the bath (which I am already in the process of filming – again both “normal” and sinister). Although, it might be interesting to project these videos onto the bath full of “junk” and see how it looks. I have decided, for now, that I will probably use this idea for two out of the four nights and the other two nights I will perform something live…

Here is an example of a “normal” and more sinister bathroom photograph I have been taking to build up a selection to fill the tub with:

Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

3. My third idea is still a work in progress. It wasn’t particularly originally inspired by anything other than the time I have spent in the bathroom, but it has now been enforced by what Heathcote said in his chapter, which I discussed at the start of this blog. It is the idea I touched upon of letting the audience into the bathroom (actually shutting them in – trapping them I suppose), not interacting with them or even acknowledging them, just letting them watch whatever it is that I do. I have been playing with different ideas of what I might do. I initially liked exploring the idea of madness, and the fact that bathrooms are places were many people commit suicide. The image of someone having cut their wrists in the bath, and also bathroom cabinets – often where the pills are kept, and the lock on the door, of course, meaning no one can get to the person should anything happen.

Photo taken 08/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

As in the picture above, I tried out saying snippets of Ophelia’s song from Hamlet (where she has gone mad, just before she drowns herself) under the water and also just lying there in the bath, with the intention of gathering bits of text from other sources (films, plays, personal experiences) and creating a mash up of text which I would say/ enact whilst in the bath. That was one idea. Other ideas have included me lying in the bath fully clothed, maybe not even having it full of water, but something else, or even nothing… so completely subverting what a bath is used for and creating that confusion/ unease for the audience. Another idea I like is to use the projector and project video onto the water… I would still be there and the performance would include more than just that but it was just a thought I liked for part of the performance. If I projected a video of me in the bath onto the bath water, would it create a ghost like image? I liked the idea of that. Any suggestions are welcome and I will continue to read around for inspiration, but also use the Tim Etchells technique of being in the space and seeing what happens/ comes out.

Play.

Samuel Mant / January 29, 2013May 10, 2013 / Performance process, Research

I had a lot of fun today in the house – I much prefer to work practically when I’m there and then reflect later, though the writing tasks we receive often unearth things I wouldn’t have thought of. However, today was a day of practical work and, to that end, I played.

Firstly, I was displaced from the Fisherman’s Shed by necessity of being caught on the camera, so I had to find an unpopulated space to unlock my writing from Friday. Partly out of practicality (as no one seemed to have chosen it) I chose one of the liminal spaces in the house – the stairs. Now, the memory which I was attempting to activate was that of playing on the stairs at my mum’s workplace so, I began experimenting, trying to find different ways to ascend and descend the staircase (bearing in mind the ideas of making strange the everyday that we had discussed earlier). First, I bumped down the stairs on my bum, which was slightly painful – Louise, who was working on the landing at the time, joined in on that one. Then I started to get a little more dangerous. As children, we are all told (I assume) not to play on the stairs, as it is a tad risky. I’m sure in the minds of most parents, if they see children playing on the stairs they immediately picture horrifying images of broken bones, concussions and trips to the hospital after a tumble down them. However, today, there were no parents – of course, there were doubters, wondering at the danger of what I was attempting but I (foolishly perhaps) refused to listen and went about my experimentation. I slid down the stairs on my front and back, jumped up the stairs, increasing the amount of steps I jumped up them every time, crawled up them (a rather pedestrian attempt), walked down them backwards and walked up and down them with my eyes closed (this after discussing with Louise and Angela the horrible feeling of thinking there’s another step and there not being one there, and lurching forward into the dark). Sliding down on my front is my new way of traversing the stairs, so none of you be alarmed if I do it again.

In the end though, the stairs couldn’t yield up any more interesting ways to use them so I went in search of something else. I found a feather duster.

Initially, I took the duster because it entertained me – it was large and inherently quite a ridiculous thing. But then, when I took it upstairs I had a bizarre urge to dust at all the cameras. In the beginning, it was just because the idea of a big feather duster slowly creeping up onto the camera amused me greatly. But, slowly, as I went round all the cameras grinning, I started to think through and rationalise my actions – there was a method to my madness. When we’re in the house, the CCTV tends to fade away into the background (as a few people have mentioned already). What I wanted to do, with my rituals of cleaning (first the duster, then spray and cloth, and finally the hoover) was to make obvious the cameras. With my escalating cleaning rituals, I separated the CCTV from the rest of the house, isolating it and inverting the focus in each room.

Eventually, however, I ran out of cleaning implements and had to find another way to amuse myself. This is when I truly settled on play. Before now I’d been playful in my exploration, but I’d not truly played as a child would. So I became a pirate.

The idea of setting sail on the seven seas and becoming a scurvy sea-dog came to me in the bathroom, when I was changing the toilet roll as I noticed the current one had been finished. Through the eyes of a grown-up, t’was but a simple cardboard tube. However, through the eyes of a child, it was a telescope! Next, I turned my child’s eye towards the bins just outside the toilet. Bins? No, they aren’t bins, they’re my pirate ship! (Though, size-wise, it was more like a little pirate dinghy) And what’s this? One of the flappy bin lids came of? Well, that looks rather like a pirate hat to me! Unfortunately, sailing the seven seas may be a bit hard without a sail… But, luckily, I found a handy oar in the form of a fire extinguisher!

You may be wondering what exactly the point was in all of this seemingly pointless play. Earlier, we talked a great deal about the idea of ‘making strange’ a place – mainly how Gob Squad’s Work ‘sought to ‘make strange’ the activity’ (Govan, n.d.). When you’re looking through the eyes of a child, mundane household objects can become magical, fun and strange. In that way, I played my pirate game to fully experience the making strange of the house and to observe the reactions of everyone else. First of all, I simply played on the landing in my bin-boat, but I wasn’t really engaging anyone that way. So I began a hunt for treasure. Understandably, considering where we are, treasure was hard to come by, even through the eyes of youth. I systematically went through each room (with my bin lid hat and cardboard telescope to make it quite clear I was a pirate) searching for the elusive treasure. Then, in the reception/waiting room, I found some shiny gold tacks! I even found a treasure-chest facsimile to put them all in (I haven’t a clue what it was, it was a strange folding silver thing). Now that I had succeeded in my pirate’s quest to find a buried treasure, I decided on philanthropy so that I could involve everyone in the house – I went room to room offering everyone some of my treasure. I was genuinely surprised by the result though – pretty much everyone accepted my offer of treasure, even though the treasure was clearly just drawing pins and a few other brass bits and bobs. The only people in the house who didn’t accept my offer were those in the CCTV room – except Lizzy, but she was outside the room at the time. This got me wondering, is there something about the CCTV room that separates you from the rest of the house? Because within the room you observe everyone else’s actions, do you feel apart from them – it’s an interesting idea that whenever you watch people through the CCTV you feel detached from the house.

That or they just didn’t want any of my treasure.

References:

Govan, n.d. Revisioning Space, The Place of the Artist, [e-journal] P. 123, Available through: Lincoln University Blackboard: http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk.

CCTV- Dance like no one’s watching

Lizzy Hayes / January 28, 2013May 10, 2013 / CCTV, Home, Performance process, Research

For me home is a place where you feel safe and comfortable, not only in your surroundings or company but also within yourself. It is a place where you can be yourself without fear of judgment, where you can do and say the things that others might not appreciate or understand…even if you are only saying them to yourself. I think this is why I am most drawn to the CCTV room on our site- because it breaches the contract of safety and privacy I associate with a home. As I mention in my ‘Meet the residents’ section, the CCTV room makes me feel slightly omniscient, and I’m not sure I like that. We have all heard stories or seen films where CCTV is used in a perverted manner to breach privacy or capture some horrific and disturbing ordeal. These influences make it very easy for us to see ourselves using the CCTV in our performance to create negative or disturbing scenes and use them to inject a sense of unease or fear into our audience.

Image by Jozey Wade 2013

But what if we contradicted the norm? What if we used the CCTV to capture the normal, funny, peculiar little things we all do when we think no one is watching. Again, as I mentioned in my ‘meet the residents’ section, “I have always found human behaviour fascinating, so having the opportunity to see how others behave in an environment where people watching is normally prohibited is exciting: especially when the environment is as intriguing as its inhabitants”. Because you can deny it all you want, but we all talk to ourselves, we all dance like no one is watching, sing like no one can hear you and apologize to inanimate objects for bumping into them. We all do these things when we are alone (and I have only listed a few things) and our guard is down. We do them in a place that we associate with safety and ONLY when we are sure no one is watching, because for others to see us act like that would make us vulnerable.

I believe that scene’s like this could be used very effectively used to create a mood or atmosphere in our performance. They are comic because every one can associate with them: but is it not also disturbing knowing that someone has seen you do those things that no one else is meant to see? Could it instil a sense of panic in the audience who hope no one has seen them like that? Could we watch and see how many people admit to having done the same thing once they know another person has? And would it not contrast nicely with a live performance of a completely different topic or nature?

I know I earlier spoke against using the CCTV for darker scenes but could it be shocking to see one innocent scene turn into one of domestic violence? What if the person on camera wasn’t just talking to themselves in a seemingly empty room?

The Room of Dreaming

Lauren Simpson / January 23, 2013May 8, 2013 / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms

My first impressions of the house were that it already had its own atmosphere. My favourite room, though, was the main bedroom for many reasons. It seemed like the most artificial of all the rooms. The décor was as drab as all the others, but the way it was furnished made it look false. The bedding was neatly made, and the bedside table and lamp were in pristine condition. I instantly thought that this room was hiding something. The distinct lack of furniture was unnerving. The room simply consisted of a bed in the centre, a bedside table with a lamp, and a built in cupboard on the wall.

The bedroom is considered a very familiar and secretive space. Cupboards are also renowned for this, “their doors open onto an ever more private realm of intimate things” ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p 77)). As a visitor in someone’s home you rarely open a cupboard unless instructed to. In my mind, this makes the cupboard in the bedroom twice as private as anywhere else.

There are three main concepts or feelings associated with a cupboard. The obvious one is for storage. Generally, clutter and mess can be hidden neatly away in a cupboard as long as nobody finds it. Secondly, as highlighted so cleverly by Pixar, children often believe that monsters hide in their wardrobes or cupboards. This immediately sparks the emotion of a fear of the unknown. Finally, thanks to C.S Lewis, they can be seen as a place for escapism. All three of these uses can be either portrayed through performance or they can be turned upside down and contradicted.

To portray storage you could simply clutter the wardrobe with either things you wouldn’t associate with a house or very familiar objects.

“Clothes, the contents of the wardrobe are, of course, intimate items” ((Heathcote, E (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p 78.))

What if we filled it with even more intimate items to make the audience feel uncomfortable or make them feel like they have breached their rights as a visitor?

The escapism aspect could be shown through dreaming. Once the audience member was in the bed the cupboard could be opened. Inside could be filled with dream like objects, fairy lights, tinsel etc. It could also be effective to have a projector inside that projects footage of a dream onto the wall opposite. This would create a huge contrast between the bedroom and the cupboard and highlight the fact that a cupboard is a hiding place for a person, objects or even for thoughts.

The work of Lital Dotan also gave me a lot of inspiration for performance ideas. She uses the technique of installation in her own home. She opens her own bedroom to the public. She lifts her mattress against the wall every day. “The underside reveals a “personal graffiti wall,” covered in loose colorful yarn stitched to form Dotan’s various notes to self:”(Ortiz 2013)

Dotan’s bed / art project (Photo by Emily Wilson) (accessed: 12/02/13) ((Ortiz, Jen (2013) ‘Life as a Glass House’ Narratively, 25 January. http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_67088_1%26url%3D))

This flips the notion of the bedroom being the most private room in the house on its head. Turning it into a form of gallery makes it the most public space. This is an intriguing notion to look at possibly using for a couple of the performance dates.

Reflections and first impressions

Jozey Wade / January 22, 2013May 12, 2013 / CCTV, Documentation, Home, Research, Rooms

Seeing and being in the house for the first time has filled me with all sorts of thoughts, ideas and excitement about the potential of our work here.

Firstly, with all the rooms, there is such opportunity to have so much going on for an audience or “visitors” to see and engage with. Personally, rather than looking at the house as a whole, I have been seeing individual performance spaces – what happens in a lounge is so different from what happens in a bathroom and so, performances in these spaces could and probably would be vastly different.

I’m generalising, but I just like the idea of something different going on in every room, perhaps even using the CCTV in every room but in different ways. For example, I love the thought of exploring the idea of voyeurism so that could be explored in one room, using the CCTV in that creepy/ stalker way – obviously, as someone suggested, using the audience in some way, with this idea of being watched. Also, I like the idea of contrasting images on the TV, showing what really happens in a particular room behind closed doors, with the audience being treated as visitors; I think the lounge would be an ideal place for this. I also like the idea that in another room, we could explore the very different experiences/ ideas people have in relation to home or that particular kind of room, and perhaps have something live happening, along with a variety of vastly different examples of peoples experiences in the same room, shown in loop on the TV.

Photo taken 01/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

One thing I wanted to mention about the reading, that we addressed in a way in class, is the idea, as Pearson suggests: “a places owes it’s character not only to the experiences it affords as sights, sounds etc. but also to what is done there…” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan)). I think this idea of a place having a character or an atmosphere related to what has happened there, on top of the actual physical look/ smell of the place, definitely directly relates to the house we are using.

As we discussed in the session today, the fact that we know the house is used for what it is used for, automatically creates certain images and feelings in our head when looking at or visiting certain rooms. For example, although a bathroom is usually a place I feel most safe or relaxed – due to door locks, being alone and undisturbed, nice hot baths etc – when I was in the bathroom at this particular house, horrible and extreme as it sounds, images of awful things like suicide, accidents with electrics popped into my head. Obviously, this is due to the atmosphere I feel there because of knowing the negative connotations related to what the house is used for. The marks on the wall and peeling paint (as can been in the picture below) add the that feeling of unease and remind me of the true usage of the house.

Photo taken 01/02/2013 by Jozey Wade

However, an audience may not know about the usage and history of the house, so will the house have the same atmosphere to them? Probably not. So what will an audience, with no knowledge of the house at all, feel when they enter and explore it? What will the atmosphere be like to them? It might be important to keep this in mind.