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.

How do you build a dream without all of the pieces?

Tom Briggs / / Performance process

My performance has been concerned with the masculine, the need for a man to escape to an inner sanctum, and regards what he does when he is in there. For many the shed is not only a physical environment of distractions but is also a place where the imagination is allowed to thrive unhindered by the complexities of reality. The question that I’ve been attempting to tackle has been, for quite some time now, ‘How do you build a dream, without having all the pieces?’ because, of course, there are always pieces missing. In this case the pieces are literally missing from the jigsaw some have been lost in the mess of the shed, others taken by audience members seeking a souvenir and more were probably never there in the first place, it occurs to me now that jigsaws are an excellent metaphor for aspirations, we all have them, or at least think we do, but how many people realise them? How many people have the patience and how many have all the pieces? So we have to learn to do without. It could be said that making the best you can with the pieces you still have is the best any man can do in life. In the other shed the missing piece is veracity, because this is that other bastion of dreaming, sheer fantasy, finding within 10 yards of your shed an incredible hoard of artefacts and antiques of unknown worth, and being the only one capable exposing their true importance.

Takne by Tiffany Thompson, 01/05/2013
Takne by Tiffany Thompson, 01 May 2013

In a speech given in 1994 Tim Etchells sets the criteria for successful performance art, he does so with a series of questions that the artist must confront. “Will I carry this event with me tomorrow? Will it haunt me, will it change you, will it change me, will it change things?” (( Etchells, Tim (1999) Certain Fragments, Abingdon: Routledge. P. 49 )) .

Firstly and most superficially it did change things, in the most direct way it translated the ordinary momentarily into the extraordinary, the roll of wallpaper masquerading as part of an ancient 1:1 scale map of the Atlantic ocean. Along with over a hundred items in the extensive collections of misunderstood treasures and artefacts, these became part of a new history that I have dreamt in the last few months. The jigsaw became a metaphor for the dreams that all men have, as well as a particularly stylish suit.

 

Taken by Jozey Wade 1/3/2013
Taken by Jozey Wade, 1 March 2013.

Did it change you (meaning the performer)? It certainly did, it gave me an appreciation for a journey without end, it did not matter that at the end of 16 hours the suit of jigsaw pieces would never be complete, it was the journey, and the people that had contributed, mostly in the form of pieces glued in unreachable places, but also in company, laughs and even in a name with which to take my product to market, ‘Jigzeys’. The Process of building something with a completely unique logic of its own, and of having to repeatedly explain that logic, allowed me to engage with parts of masculinity that I might normally have avoided.

Did it change me? (the audience member) and to lesser extent will it haunt me?/will I remember this? These questions are more difficult as they can only rely on speaking to members of the audience afterwards. Some said they had a new appreciation for the phrase ‘one man’s junk is another man’s treasure’, but as I performer I hope they saw the nature of the ambitious and unending projects and did not pity me but were able to see the underlying idealism, I still believe, and this may appear to be heavy handed metaphor, that idealism and enthusiasm are the key to realising dreams in the long run even if it only piece by piece.

Which brings us back comfortably to dreams, how do you build a dream without having all the pieces? Well in one sense you don’t, the dream as aspiration will always require more, some are and have always been unachievable. But in another sense dreams are also daydreams and escape and the value of them should not be underestimated, they allow us to keep our idealism intact, though can be shed just as easily as a suit made of jigsaw pieces, which, as any man who has spent considerable in a shed can tell you, is easier than it looks after a little practice.

And of course in some ways the performance/dream isn’t over so if you see someone walking down Lincoln high-street wearing a jigsaw, perhaps it’s me on my way to model my product for some boutiques, or perhaps it will have already caught on.

Moving Out

Angela Michelle Graham / / Rooms

Well that was an exciting four days!!! Thanks to all those that came and supported our little family, as well as the council for allowing us to use such a diverse and interesting space, but mostly thank god it’s over.

Although having explored new ways of reacting to space that I would never have expected, and finding myself trapped within the web of life, I feel as if I am free from the mad house. I would not mind popping back for tea with the white rabbit or cheeky chat in the bathroom with Jozey, but after how me and the cot room left it I do not feel as if I would enjoy going back there.  Marina Abramovic states her works were based on discrepancies in perception: “You hear something but you see something else” (( Biesenbach, K. 2010, Marina Abramović. New York: Museum of Modern Art, p.14.)) and I feel I achieved this with sharp angular lines of wool countered by my softly spoken poem by Nicole Brossard. I have taken a lot of inspiration for my piece from Marina Abramovic, which may sound unlikely as many of her pieces include a lack of concern for the safety of herself, but the level of focus she demonstrates in pieces such as The Artist is Present in which she sat perfectly still in The Museum of Modern Art in New York from open to close, can be compared to my (although considerably shorter) focus with which I trace the wool.

In retrospect if I had not had the limitations of not being able to change the room’s cosmetics and having a budget I would have removed the carpet (as I am now sporting some lovely  carpet burns) as it ruined the silence and quiet of the room. I would also have not been performing at the same time as the kitchen group because of how well sound carried through the walls. Although Libby is a beautiful singer, hearing her sing One Direction whilst I was slowly tracing the threads and whispering was not the best thing that could have happened. Albeit I managed to change the rooms aesthetic by creating my web and setting lights that projected the shadows of me and the threads across the far wall by the door. I feel the shadows gave the piece a more transcendent feel  and as Edward Gordon Craig states “The masking effect of shadows… were designed to raise the action to this elemental but abstract plane” ((Innes, C. 1998, Edward Gordon Craig. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, p.93.)) if I could have I would have put these lights on the other side of the room to project the shadows against the cot and the wall behind it but due to limitations of space I could not.

I feel the house worked well with people being separated and reunited throughout the piece and every room having a different feel with one audience member commenting that “each room had its own smell” . I feel that each room allowed the audience member to take something different from it another audience member  commented she “enjoyed the diverse nature of the rooms, and how each room had a different feeling and emotion. Leaving me feeling drained as I left the safe house to return home” This fills me with confidence that our group managed to achieve something unique, individual and the likes Lincoln has never seen before. I hope we left all those that came to watch wanting more.