________-Safe House-__________ – Page 8 – Where living becomes a performance.

Less ketchup, more Howells.

Jozey Wade / April 15, 2013May 9, 2013 / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms

Having set my sights on the aspect of purging, involving both myself and the audience, I tested out my Andre Stitt inspired performance idea.

Picture taken 08/03/2013 by Angela Graham

Unfortunately, covering myself in a substance (which ended up being tomato ketchup – as can be seen above) was not as successful as I would have liked, and I decided that it did not fit well with the logistics of the entire performance in the house.

Since then, I have explored the work of other performance artists who explore the idea of purging and/ or audience involvement.

Adrian Howells work, while not directly described as purging, deals with confession – which is, in a way, a cleansing for the soul. As a matter of fact, as we see in the above video, one of his performances is actually called Foot Washing For The Sole. In this performance he washes and massages an audience member’s feet while partaking in a confessional exchange with them. In much the same way, in another of his performances, known as Salon Adrienne, he dresses in drag (which he explains – or confesses – makes him feel more comfortable in his own skin) within a hair salon and performs as the audience members hair dresser while conversing with them in a manner that one would not normally with a stranger but perhaps with a friend, confessing and encouraging them to confess to him things about themselves to him.

This idea of spending time with a stranger in a way that you would only usually do so with a close friend really rang true with a lot of exploration I had done and discussed within the bathroom. As Conan so eloquently put – What if you are just having a bath and you invite people in?

One thing that has remained in my head throughout all of my exploration and research has been that the bathroom is a private place. What we do in the bathroom, we generally don’t do in front of anyone. But even if there are people we do it in front of – it is close family or lovers. All along I have seen this privacy as an almost sacred thing and the idea of anyone invading it as somehow dangerous or perverted. However, inspired by Howells’ practises, I have come to look at it from another angle. Inviting a stranger into this private space is sharing something intimate with them; it evokes and highlights the importance and gratification of human interaction. Without trying to be corny, there is actually something quite beautiful about it. Undeniably, it would be frightening, for both audience member and performer, but that fear and overcoming it together adds to what it would achieve.

http://totaltheatrereview.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/l_any/reviews/adrian-howells-pleasure-being.jpg

Another aspect of Howell’s work which stands out as appropriate to my bathroom piece, is that it is one to one – as can be seen in the above picture of his performance, The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding. This “shift in the traditional performer/spectator divide” ((Heddon D, Iball H, Zerihan R. ‘Come Closer: Confessions of Intimate Spectators in One to One Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review. February 2012;22(1) pp. 120-133.)) before anything else, almost automatically makes the performance an interactive one. It turns “the audience’s role into one that receives (and) responds” ((Heddon D, Iball H, Zerihan R. ‘Come Closer: Confessions of Intimate Spectators in One to One Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review. February 2012;22(1) pp. 120-133.)) much more directly, and “is actively solicited, engendered as a participant” ((Heddon D, Iball H, Zerihan R. ‘Come Closer: Confessions of Intimate Spectators in One to One Performance’, Contemporary Theatre Review. February 2012;22(1) pp. 120-133.)). As I said previously, audience involvement in my piece is something I want. And although previously I was perhaps looking at having two audience members at a time (which may have worked just fine with the Adrian Stitt inspired idea), having explored Howells’ work, I feel that being one to one with each audience member that sees my piece would be much more effective. The intimacy that is created in is performances, largely due to them being one to one, is the kind of intimacy I wish to create in my bathroom.

The performance shown in the above picture – The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding – was actually done in a hotel bathroom. Interestingly, it is the first piece of performance art in a bathroom that I have managed to find at all, so I was quite excited to read about it. The bathroom was set up with “a bath full of bubbles and rose petals, candles in glass jars” ((Prior, D (2011)’ Adrian Howells: The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding’ Total Theatre Review, 22 August, accessed 20 March 2013, http://totaltheatrereview.com/reviews/pleasure-being-washing-feeding-holding)) which is just how intend to decorate my bathroom. I want to create that inviting, warm and relaxing atmosphere. I want the audience member to enjoy being there, despite how awkward a situation it is in reality. In her review, Dorothy Max Prior compares the bathroom scene in Howells’ performance to somewhere you would spend “an assignation with a new lover” ((Prior, D (2011)’ Adrian Howells: The Pleasure of Being: Washing, Feeding, Holding’ Total Theatre Review, 22 August, accessed 20 March 2013, http://totaltheatrereview.com/reviews/pleasure-being-washing-feeding-holding)), which goes back to what I have been saying all along – if there is anyone you would allow to see you in the bath, it would be close family or a lover. This is exactly the scene I want to create… and then invite a stranger in.

There is a key difference however, between what Howells’ piece involved and what mine will. As the performer, Howells puts the audience member in the bath, pampers and bathes them. I, on the other hand, intend the flip this around, in that I will be the one in the bath; I will be the one in the vulnerable and private situation and I will ask the audience member to help wash me. I am choosing to do it this way partly because my performance is merely part of a larger collective performance and I must always bare this in mind, so to let the audience know they may have to bring swim wear specifically for my part of the performance would be quite difficult (and the likelihood of many audience members willingly getting naked is remote). I am, however, also choosing to do it this way because of the importance of the room in my performance by comparison to Howells’. The bathroom and what it means to us is something I need and want to get across (as our performance is about home) and I think, for the audience member to walk in on someone bathing as they usually would in the comfort of their own home, relates to and represents this more than treating them as though they are at a spa day.

Façade

Tiffany Abatilda Thompson / April 14, 2013May 12, 2013 / Home, Performance process, Rooms, Uncategorized

“A Division between spaces that are used as a façade, and other spaces where a personal, hidden life takes place” ((Rechavi B. Taylor (2009) ‘A room for living: Private and public aspects in the experience of a living room’,A journal of environmental psychology, 29 (1) March: pp. 133-143. P.133.)). I would consider the living room to be less private out of all the rooms in a house, we always invite our guests into this room as it’s the most socially acceptable. “The living room, as such, is not where more secretive or personal aspects of the dweller manifests themselves” ((ibid, p. 134.)) that is left for the more intimate spaces such as the bedroom. In the Living room we tend to show off and perform a different face of reality, a mere perfect imitation of it when we have people around. Why do we do this? Do we do this to pretend we live in a perfect world?

We dress our living rooms on how we interpret our vision of home and the feeling of homeliness. Also, different people have different visions of home and what that looks like. As well as this, you can tell a lot about the person living there with how the living room is presented and styled. For example, if a person is disabled and or in a wheelchair the living room and house would be set out in a way where a wheelchair could navigate around easily.
I feel like our performance in the living room is a facade as we are showing the living rooms true face of reality. Whether we are on our own, with family or people we are comfortable with we tend to show a horrible side of reality that we are not sociable anymore and if we are it’s through virtual devices and in our performance we show this.

“Seems I’m talking my whole life, it’s time I listen now”

Lauren Elizabeth Walker / April 12, 2013May 13, 2013 / Home, Music / Sound, Performance process, Research

“Like his voice can’t deal with things it has to describe, That’s the thing you have to do with a voice after all – make it speak of the things you cannot deal with- makes it speak of the illegal ” ((Tim Etchells (1999). Certain Fragments. New york: Routledge. 98-176))

What if you take away all the voices? What if a performance has no words, no specific message and is completely open to the audience’s interpretation, but surely silence has meaning?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm_tTkHooZI

In this you tube video, the university student talks about the value of silence and quotes her professor he describes how “Every individual structures their attitudes, beliefs, lifestyle, and behaviours around a theme. What is the life philosophy by which you live, and how has it shaped you as a person?” She goes on to say that her theme is the value of silence and of a quiet mind, she explains that “It’s something that I think is particularly relevant to modern youth, because the observation of silence is not something that our generation engages in enough” What happens when we explore the diversity and difficulty of silence in different situations? People like to focus on words and sounds, because they are comfortable words make a house feel homely. People are scared of silence, they are obsessed with noise they find it difficult to be alone to just shut the curtains; lock there doors. People are afraid because it is unfamiliar, when you isolate yourself there is no where to run.

She also says “I don’t think that practicing silence is necessary for observing silence. It has to do more with having a quiet mind than physically immersing oneself in silence” In our performance as our piece is a durational performance and we are going to have to have a quiet mind and physically immerse our self into our performance in silence.

Tim etchells talks about the meaning of silence, he made a list of silence of different situations

“ These are some examples of the list of silences

The kind of silence you sometimes get in phone calls to a person that you love.

The kind of silence people only dream of.

The kind of silence that follows a car crash.

The kind of silence between waves at the ocean”

Some examples that really interested me and relate to our room are…

“The kind of silence after a big argument

The kind of silence that only happens at night

The kind of silence is only for waiting in” ((Tim Etchells (1999). Certain Fragments. New york: Routledge. 98-176))

What if you took the kind of silence that is only for waiting in, and put it in a homely environment? Would that make the audience feel uncomfortable would they feel like there waiting for something? Our audience may feel that they are waiting for something to happen in our performance but it never does.

What if you left a room waiting?

“The atmosphere still retained the oppressiveness of a religious space; it seemed natural to speak in whispers. I felt my way along the corridor and opened the door at the end. The peeling paintwork of the synagogue was lit by warm yellow candlelight” ((Rachel Linchtenstein and Iain Sinclair (1999) Rodinsky’s Room: an excerpt http://www.artangel.org.uk//projects/1999/rodinsky_s_whitechapel/excerpt/excerpt (acessed: 10 April 2013)))

Rondinskys Room is story of what became of the reclusive Jewish scholar David Rondinsky, whose room at 19 Princlet street London was discovered undisturbed and had been left for 20 years after. As I was reading and researching into the story I found myself asking the question what silence would you call the silence of a room left alone to gather dust for 20 years be? Going on from what I was saying earlier about “the silence of waiting” I feel that this is the silence that applies to his room. When we go on holiday our house is waiting for us to come back, to make it home again. I feel that when I come home after being on holiday my house seems different smells different, sometimes even looks different we have to adjust ourselves to that space and learn to live in it again. Rondinskys room was waiting for him to come back to come home but he never did, and was found by somebody else someone that it wasn’t familiar with. I feel that this added to the atomosphere in the room, and if we can create this kind of feeling for the audience in the living room it will be a very frightning and awkward situation for them to be in.

The ‘blinding’ performance

Andrew Tinley / April 11, 2013April 13, 2013 / 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.

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 4^th 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.

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, 4^th 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.

Sexual Fantasy

Lauren Simpson / April 10, 2013May 8, 2013 / 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.