Category: Performance process

I’ll protect you from the night

Kayleigh Anne Brewster / / Home, Performance process

When writing the narrative for the audience member who would be put into bed we thought it would be good if we tried to make it somewhat dreamlike, and comforting. We want the audience member to be given a sense of security from the words that were spoken, and the tone. We want them to feel safe. So in order to do that we decided to base our narratives on the theme of safety, on thoughts of protecting someone, and so the two of us ended up basing our narratives on our younger siblings.

It’s said that “In a rapidly changing world, time and memory are key concerns for contemporary artists… our lives our punctuated by objects, feelings and ideas that are endlessly retrieved and re-used.” (de’oliveria 2010) So therefore it would make sense that Jake and I would use our own emotions and memories to fuel a narrative that designed specifically to make the audience members feel protected. The narrative that I’ve written on is based on experiences I had when my younger brother and I shared a bedroom, and the nightmares/terrors he used to experience.

“Many under[stand] caring as a sibling practice that was integrally related to practices shaped by their pre-determined position in the sibling birth order hierarchy.” (Edwards, 68, 2006) and in my case it was no different. I am 3 and a half years older then my brother, and that difference in our age made me protective of my brother. It was my job as an older to sister to make his life hell, but to also protect him from anyone or anything else.

My narrative was based on a time when we had first moved to Canada, we were in a different country, we didn’t have any friends other than each other to begin with; and Aaron didn’t like his room. He was only young back then, I think about three years old, maybe four. He didn’t like the sound that the wind would make against his window; it gave him nightmares that made him wake up screaming. So our mother decided that we would share a room with each other, during the day we would make each other crazy, annoying one another, but when it came to bedtime I would remember that Aaron didn’t like the night, hated what he thought was hiding in the dark. “The images and emotions associated with the dream may haunt us throughout the day, sometimes for years. Nightmares prompt us to seek others. Who prefers to be alone after a nightmare? The fear and sense of dread is so intense as to be palpable.” (McNamara 2008 P1) So I suppose its little wonder that no matter what fallouts we had during the day, when I saw how fearful he was after a nightmare I would try and comfort him. I told him that when I sang to him it was a spell of some kind, that it would protect him. I sang to him for years, when we lived in Canada, when we lived in Abingdon and then when we moved to Grantham. Actually the last memory I have of singing him to sleep was when we lived in Grantham, I’d just started High School and Aaron had just started a new primary school, and I think that he was nervous.

So, when writing my version of the narrative that the ‘parent’ performer would be saying I tried to think about all of these emotions, tried to base it on the how I felt as an older sibling trying to protect and comfort a younger one. It won’t be able to comfort everyone who is put into the bed, we’ve found that many find putting the blindfold on, and being in bed with someone else whilst you’re wearing a blindfold disconcerting. Unfortunately, we don’t want the people being placed in the bed to realise what is happening with regards to the cupboard, we want the two experiences to be as separated from each other as the can be. Some people who are put into the bed won’t be able to let go of the fear they have that’s the result of one of their senses being taken from them. They won’t be able to relax, or to listen to the words that are being whispered into their ears. But I’m hopeful that for those who embrace the experience they will be able to understand the emotions and memories that have gone into the narrative; that they will be able to feel the sincerity behind the words that are being spoken to them.

Works cited:

De Oliveira, Nicolas, Nicola Oxley, Michael Petry  (2003) Installation Art in the new millennium London: Thomas & Hudson. Ltd

Edwards Rosalind, Lucy Hadfield, Helen Lucey, Melanie Mauthner (2010) Sibling Identity and Relationships: Sisters and Brothers Abingdon: Routledge

McNamara, Patrick (2008) Nightmares: the science and solution of those frightening visions during sleep USA: Praeger Publishers.

In the dark we dream

Kayleigh Anne Brewster / / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Rooms

As we continue through the creation process of our piece we seem to keep coming back to the concept of dreams. As we are performing in the master bedroom, I suppose it is unsurprising that we keep circling back to this subject. After all it is in our bedrooms that we sleep, and in so doing it is where we dream. It is said that “the strangeness of our night time narratives is actually an essential feature, as our memories are remixed and reshuffled, a mash-up tape made by the mind.” (lehrer, 2010) So if dreams are an essential feature in our lives then perhaps it is only natural that that we keep returning to the thought, because it is essential to the bedroom.

But how do we use dreams in our performance? We’ve had many ideas of how to go about this for example, having our dreams written on pieces of paper and then sticking them to the outside of the cupboard.  Dreams are essential in the way that we grow, they help us commit necessary moments of our life to memory, and they help us work through emotional issues that we have. Therefore placing these fragments from our dreams on the outside of the cupboard would fit into our performance quite nicely. After putting one of the members of the audience to bed, in a childlike manner, and then forcing the voyeur to look at the image of a naked woman, bound in a cupboard would signify two extreme contrasts between childhood and adulthood.  

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Photo taken by Kayleigh Brewster

Therefore, by placing them in the cupboard door we could signify the process of growing up, the importance of dreams in that process and the connection between dreams and the bedroom. Placing the dream fragments there would also be significant as “according to Freud’s theory, dreams potentially communicated forbidden wishes and desires from the unconscious.” (Pick, 2004, 39) Whilst the naked body seems to be more frequent on the stage, the process of having that person naked, blindfolded, hand-cuffed and bound feels extremely taboo. Whilst books like 50 Shades of Grey written by E.L James or Sylvia Days Bared To You have brought other sexual practices to light, for example BDSM, the inclusion of these practices has given our piece a feeling of the ‘forbidden’ that fraud mentions.

In our performance the fact that the two female performers are hidden from view until a specific moment heightens the fact that what the ‘voyuer’ is watching something forbidden. When the ‘voyeur’ then realises the position that the two performers are in, that it connects with sexual practices that have only recently come to the forefront in literature heightens the link between fraud’s theory of forbidden desires in dreams, the visual aspects of having the dreams written out on the cupboard, and the vulnerable position of the performer in the cupboard.

However we decided we wanted to make the cupboard seem completely separate from the rest of the room in order to completely separate the aspects of adult and child, and to make the opening of the cupboard a more dramatic reveal. So, what if we could make the bedroom itself seem dream like, without the use of words or covering the cupboard? What if we take pictures drawn in a childlike manner and cover the walls with them? That would make the room seem something other than normal and would still link to the original set up of putting the child to bed. Also, we began to focus on what the ‘parent’ performer would be saying to the audience in member who was being put to bed. What If we could make the narrative that the ‘parent’ performer speaks to the audience member like a dream?

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Photo taken by Kayleigh Brewster

Works cited:

Lehrer, Jonah (2010) Why We Need To Dream http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/why-we-need-to-dream/  (last accessed 12/4/2013)

 

edited by Daniel Pick and Lyndal Roper Hove (2004) Dreams and history : the interpretation of dreams from ancient Greece to modern psychoanalysisNew York: Brunner-Routledge 

When you open the cupboard will you ask yourself, when did I grow into this?

Kayleigh Anne Brewster / / Performance process, Technical

With regards to the cupboard the four of us have had many ideas of how to approach it. Is it a space for a performance to take place? Is it a place that should just be viewed by the audience? The answer of how we should approach the cupboard seems to have alluded us so far, but recently we have been discussing the ideas of installation art. The function of the cupboard in its most basic form is to store the possessions of whoever resides in the bedroom. Therefore would it be effective to take that notion of storage and possessions and turn it into an art piece for our performance?

It would seem that “The final decade of the 20th century saw the passage of installation art form a relatively marginal art practice to the establishment in the current central role in contemporary art. ‘These days installation art seems to be everybody’s favourite medium,’ wrote the influential American critic Roberta Smith in 1993.” (2003, P.13) Thus the four of us have decided to experiment with converting the cupboard into an installation piece, using its function for storage in an artist way. If we mix objects from our childhood with objects that we own as adults will the mixture represent the different connotations of the bedroom?

A bedroom, as mentioned earlier, has two clear purposes, the child’s bedroom which seems so innocent, and an adult’s bedroom that is viewed with sexual connotations. “To create a piece of Installation is to make it with a direct correlation to the environment with which it exists. There must be a direct physical relationship to its location.” (Schaefer 1994) which is something we have considered when thinking about using the cupboard as a piece of installation art. By putting objects that are found in a typical bedroom, whether it is a child’s or adults, we are creating a physical relationship between the bedroom and the function of the cupboard in an artistic way. “A form of art that is not defined in terms of any traditional medium but in terms of the message it conveys by whatever means.” (2003, P.14) So we must now consider what message we are trying to send to the audience with our installation art.

As I seem to have mentioned in my previous posts, perhaps the mixing of adult and child like content is to signify the chaos that is associated with growing from a child into an adult. After all the book that we have chosen to read to our audience members, Alice in Wonderland, is often considered to be the story of the how the girl Alice is growing up, and how the author misses the innocent girl that she used to be. (Maata, 1997) Perhaps that is another of the messages that we would like to convey, the loss of innocence as we find ourselves growing up.

As each person grows they don’t notice the changes that occur within themselves. They look in the mirror every day, they think about different subjects’ everyday, and so the progress of time isn’t noted. They are unable to see themselves change because everyday they face all of their smallest changes head on. It isn’t until someone we haven’t seen for a long time, or spoken to for a long time, tells that we have changed do we notice it ourselves. We don’t necessarily realise we’re growing, both in mind and in body, until we specifically think about. So when you are faced with a cupboard filled with items from your childhood, and from your adulthood, will it make you think about how much you have changed? When you look into this cupboard where there is no middle ground between what you were as a child and what you are now. What happened to make you who are you are? What is the difference between who you were as a child and who you are in the present? Perhaps you will wonder when exactly you began to change. Will you wonder when you began to realise the world wasn’t black or white, but grey? Will you ask yourself, when did I grow into this?

 

Works cited:

 

De Oliveira Nicolas, Oxley Nicola, Petry Michael (2003) Installation Art in the new millennium London: Thomas & Hudson. Ltd

Maatta,Jerry, (1997) http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/explain/alice841.html Sweden; March. (last accessed 8/4/2013)

Schaefer, Janek (1994) 6 Elements of Installation http://www.audioh.com/press/6elements.html (last accessed 9/4/2013)

Waiting…

Hayley Misseldine / / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms

The waiting room – it is unique in itself concerning the other rooms in the house as it is not a room commonly associated with a home. My first impressions of it were not pleasant, its set up feels more corporate and judgemental somehow compared to any other room in the house.

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The first thing I felt when I entered the room was a sense of foreboding, it reminds me of the waiting room at school, where sadly I frequented often, usually because I had done something bad, and was awaiting my punishment. Another memory it triggered was the waiting room at hospital, another place I had waited, where the outcome had not been a good one, it reminded me of the long hours I had sat waiting for news, hoping and even praying at one point that the news would be good. So to sit in this room alone, with all the bad memories stirring up inside me, forcing me to be painfully aware of not only my feelings, but the room itself, although not pleasant, was infact productive.

With these memories, I can distinctly remember analysing every aspect of whatever waiting room I was in. When you have nothing but time, and nowhere else you can go, you are practically forced to observe your surroundings in a more scrutinising way. This is the first thing I did when beginning the research process was to just sit in the waiting room and analyse everything. I used an exercise I found in Pearson’s Site – Specific Performance – ‘Pay attention to detail. Later: (a) eyes closed, mentally reimagine your visit; (b) from memory, draw a map of the place – include significant features….’ ((Pearson, Mike, (2010), Site-Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan, P.84))

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This is the map I came up with that illustrates a portion of the room that I could directly see in non-peripheral vision. You can see its bareness, lacking all personality, what worried me most was how my room could possibly fit in with the rest, how it contributes to the house as a whole? “We identify so closely with our homes. They are so personal, so familiar and our relationships with them so intimate, that they become projections of ourselves. And any interference with them becomes unnerving and profoundly unsettling”. ((Heathcoate, Edwin, (2012) the Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd, P.186)) After reading this quote, it struck me that the fact that my room was not conforming to the notion of home could be a good thing – it sticks out, and it gives me the opportunity to do something, offer up a different experience to an audience that the other rooms cannot.

How do you create a home?

Hayley Misseldine / / Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms, West Parade

When I first stepped into the house that was to become our temporary home for the first time, despite the fact that it wasn’t so aesthetically pleasing, I couldn’t help but feel oddly comforted, for one it reminds me of the house I currently reside at in Lincoln, and two, its emptiness calls out to me. I see an empty space, and instantly all I want to do is decorate it, to make it feel ‘homey’ and it wasn’t until I visited this house on West Parade that I realised how strong this desire seems to be.

‘What does homeliness mean and how is it created?’ ((Bollnow, Otto, (2011) Human Space, Hyphen Press.)) To me, a house is not a home until it looks like one. This definition of how a house exactly can look like a home is up to the inhabitants, but you notice different examples in every home you have ever visited. You notice small objects, whether they are photographs, sentimental objects, even the decor, they all add up to make a space feel like a home, it feels like someone lives there. On the other hand there are homes which infact are inhabited, but it feels neglected, this is the case with the house on West Parade – it is set up this way, it is meant to feel like whomever lives there do not lead a happy home life, which brings me to my next point – home is not just about how it looks, it is also about who live there.

Personally, I can’t feel at home unless I am living with someone I am close to, family or friends, I won’t feel at home with strangers. It took several months for me to feel at home in Lincoln at first, due to the fact that the people I was living with were not close to me. Though contrary to how I felt in Lincoln, it was a different case when I lived in London for a month, I lived in a large house with 15 other people, and within the first week we had all grown close and made great connections, so in result I felt at home marginally faster than I have done here. In theory it comes down to human connection, ‘Home is wherever I’m with you’. ((Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s (2009) Home, Vagrant Records))

So this house, that we will work in for the next 5 months – will it become a home? Or will it become something else entirely? Thinking of all the possibilities this house possesses, especially knowing that there is a CCTV camera in almost every room, is quite daunting. There is so much we could do, we could – judging from some of the rooms interiors go to some dark places, the cot room for example, has got to be one of the creepiest and most unnerving rooms I have ever been in. Just from a simple piece of furniture and absolutely nothing else, makes the room practically scream neglect at you. The only room in the house I felt semi-comfortable in was the living room, and only because of the furniture, take that away and it would become just as uncomfortable as the other rooms. This proves my point – to make a house feel even remotely like a home, you need comforting objects inside of it, and you need people who care for one another, otherwise all you have left is a building.