Tag: Lizzy Hayes

Forkbeard Fantasy

Lizzy Hayes / / CCTV, Documentation, Performance process, Rooms

We have been toying with the potential performative use of the CCTV room, whether or not to have a performance occur in the room or only through the eyes of the camera’s in the rest of the house. It has been suggested to me that it could be an interesting idea to explore how we, the CCTV operatives, could interact with the technology to make an interesting performance.

This reminded me of a performance and workshop I took part in a few years ago. With my school we worked with a company called Forkbeard Fantasy- a company of two brothers who interacted with film and screens live on stage in a way that I had then never seen before.

All of their performances to date rely heavily on the projection of pre-recorded and live footage, as can be seen above. In The Colour of Nonsense (2010), among other pre-recordings and animations the company played pre-recorded footage of a woman entering an apartment in an elevator. The recording spoke to the actors and they responded to the screen as though the woman was actually on stage, though she was never physically present. The effect of the well rehearsed interaction was comical and fascinating. The actors explain, ““What we were doing was creating a living dynamic between stage & screen, where the filmed sequences become part of the world on stage into which and out of which the performers can move –from stage to screen and back again… and performers in film or on stage communicate and talk with one another across this Celluloid Divide”.” (( http://forkbeardfantasy.co.uk/new_ffs_use_of_film10.html  (Accessed 3rd March 2013) ))

Another example of artists using film and projection to create a performance is installation artist Gary Hill. Nick Kaye suggests when commenting on Gary Hills Standing Apart (1996) that video recordings add the ‘capacity of having and presence and a distance at the same time’ ((Kaye, Nick (2007) Multi-Media:Video Installation Performance. London: Routledge p. 135 )). I think that statement is true of any video recording in that the person on screen is in the room without being physically present, but it is particularly relevant to much of Forkbeard’s work.
While he uses recordings and projection Gary Hills work is very different from that of Forkbeards not only because the type of performance is different, but the ways in which they use the technology. Hills Installation piece The Viewer (1996) uses pre-recorded images but without sound.  For the piece seventeen men were captured on camera standing still (or barely moving) for ten minutes. These clips of footage were then projected onto a wall at the same time on a continuous loop. The use of video and projection was not to tell a story or to interact with or to represent a character, but was instead to suggest the presence of someone who is not there, to be “fully visible and absent” at the same time” (( Nick Kaye (2007) Multi Media: Video Installation Performance. London: Routledge. P. 131 )) . I think that is notion of omnipresence is one that the me and my fellow CCTV operatives can associate with. During exploration of the house we have communicated with other ‘residents’ about what they are doing or saying though we were never physically present with them.

CCTV- Dance like no one’s watching

Lizzy Hayes / / 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.

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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?