Tom Briggs – ________-Safe House-_________

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

Tom Briggs / May 12, 2013May 13, 2013 / 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.

This Item is of Great Value and Other Lies Told by Experts

Tom Briggs / April 9, 2013May 13, 2013 / Performance process, Rooms

It is completely normal to want to have a thorough understanding of the world around us and the way that most of us do this is to create categories, to organise things by function, appearance or by any number of unknown criteria in order to form neat groups. This building of taxonomies is part of our everyday lives, in fact my initial response to our site was to break it up into three such groups, The ‘Simulator’ includes rooms that have been made to simulate the feeling of home without actually being inhabited, the ‘Office’ category applies to those rooms that have no illusion of home and exist only to facilitate the illusion of the rest of the house and finally the ‘Home’ which can be used to describe those rooms that were left untouched as the house became a simulator and as such retained the traces of a true home. Each room in the house was then placed into one these three categories by its function.

Here we have the first point of interest the way we express this categorisation is through our only universal form of communication, language. For Saussure “Nothing is distinct before language” (( De Saussure, Ferdinand (1974) Course in General Linguistics, New York: Fontana Collins, p.111-112 )) so that part of our perception of an object is tied up in how we can describe that same object. You can only distinguish between things than can be described to be different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlN_EaEgPQ

The clip above (( DuckPlumberThe2nd (2011) The Two Ronnies – The Confusing Library. Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGlN_EaEgPQ (Accessed: 9^th April 2013) )) is the heart wrenching tale of the compulsion to classify gone horribly wrong, the man is completely unable to find his book because of the monstrous disregard the librarian appears to have for a logical taxonomy (though it must be remembered it was in fact the architect’s idea). This fable does however raise some serious questions, why is it absurd to order books by colour, size or thickness? It seems it is all a matter context, which is a quite vague answer and definitely requires further scrutiny. The aim here then is to challenge the pattern of classification, to ask which criteria we choose and why. Why is it any less valid to be looking for a large green book than for The Twisted Spur?

The most obvious answer is that we define things by function because that is the most immediate way in which they will relate to us. How can I use this item? It does not matter to us what colour the item is if we currently need it to mash potatoes (unless of course you are an architect).

What happens then when an item is rediscovered? I.e it’s use is unknown, then it is a matter for the historian or archaeologist to place it in a taxonomy, the first step towards this is describing the item, here the job of the historian/archaeologist seems reasonably simple they must “articulate it into a description acceptable to everyone: confronted with the same entity, everyone will be able to give the same description; and, inversely, given such a description everyone will be able to recognise the individual identities that correspond to it” (( Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Thing, London: Routledge, p. 134 )) . Obviously there are huge challenges in creating universal taxonomy and Foucault further advises historians/archaeologists to describe using only what can be observed as fact or by use of “by analogies that must be of the utmost clarity” (( Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Thing, London: Routledge, p. 134 )) .Then we go back to Saussure to the idea of the sign, signifier, signified which relies, as Foucault observes, upon “the common affinity of things and language with representation” (( Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Thing, London: Routledge, p. 132 )) he continues however “things and language happen to be separate” (( Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Thing, London: Routledge, p. 132 )) .

It is here, the space between signifier and signified, in which we can successfully incorporate the performer, for it is his (my) job to take the idiosyncrasies of the world and expose them. So if we take the job of classification away from the so called expert (the historian/archaeologist) and hand it over to the performer (who then becomes the performer/historian/archaeologist) what might we discover?
Let’s start with something as simple as the category of ‘things that were found in this garden’. While that is what binds each and every one of my exhibits together, can there be more to it than that? What happens when we throw off this context, take those items out of their immediate context and place them somewhere else, somewhere neutral, a museum perhaps? What links those objects now? I (performer/historian/archaeologist) know that these objects originate in the same place but if the language that accompanies the exhibits, the language that is responsible for their context refuses to supply it, the audience is forced to make their own taxonomies of the seemingly disparate. What connects the bird feeder and the plug socket, the cigarette lighter and the hat stand? These are the questions the audience must be encouraged to ask, and then logically the nature of our classifications as a whole.

The exhibits are connected by one abstract factor, none the less they belong in the same category according to this particular performer/historian/archaeologist. This should then ask, in societies quest for order and definitive answers, what are the possibilities we overlook?

This shed is like the office or lab it is a place in which to retreat into thought, it is a shrine, the domain of the expert, the place where he plies his trade, makes his assumptions with divine tunnel vision. If, as Saussure assures us, there is no distinction without language then what effect do the lies/mistakes of the performer/historian/archaeologist have on the nature of the object? That we will have to find out in performance.

Site & Sculpture: Physical manifestations of the things we cannot/do not see.

Tom Briggs / April 6, 2013May 13, 2013 / Performance process, Rooms

Every Sculptor , like every performer, must to some degree tackle the questions of site, ‘what am I creating?’ and ‘how will it interact with its surroundings?’. There are artists that put this concern at the forefront of their work, their site is their stimulus, their source of material and it defines their work.

Within these artists there is further distinction, which element of the site is it your sculpture aims to subvert/complement/interact with?

Red Incomplete neon circle — Taken by Greg Heins, 14 November 1980.

In 1979 a group of sculptors undertook a commission to create site inspired sculpture around the campus of the Wellesley College Museum, Stehpen Antonakos was one of the artists commissioned, his unique response was rooted in the pre-existing architecture “in terms of its formal stylistic features” (( Hoos Fox, Judith (1980), Aspects of the 1970s: Sitework, Boston: The Wellesley College Museum , p. 3 )) . His final piece Red Incomplete Neon Circle (pictured here) completely breaks up the straight oppressive geometry of the existing building, creating a new dialogue between the conflicting angles.

This dialogue between architect and sculptor then transforms the entire building into the art work, forcing the observer to re-assess what was took for granted before, this is then a prime example of site art; It both responds to and enhances the site on which it is built. Antonakos’s ideas, however, are somewhat distant from my own, he focuses on the finished product, assembling it in his own workshop off site. My work needs to take shape before the audiences eyes, the sculpting itself and the possibility of collaboration within that makes it not simply site art but also site performance. It is a single artists visual response to a visual stimulus, as such it is a simple piece, which hold resonance only if we wish to think about the structure, there is so much more to site which we can access however.

Another artist tackles the same question with a very different process. Lars Kordetzky travelled to a decommissioned psychiatric hospital shortly before it was to be demolished, in order to create an artistic response to the site. He began building sculptures that would suggest the psychological footprint of the isolation cells former inhabitant. Using the drawings of a former inmate Kordetzky began to understand that to this inhabitant the room was not as small as it seemed, instead he found complex mesh of worlds built in “a different scale for different mental dimensions” ((( Kordetzky, Lars (2001), Saw Only The Moon, New York: Springer-Verlag Wien, p. 80)) . In isolation the patient had created numerous worlds within his cell, invisible to all but himself, consisting of whole towns connected by an impossible network of tunnels. His sculptures (one of which is pictured below) start with a cuboid frame, then gradually he begins to build up each individual world of the patients imagination, the picture below (( Koredtsky, Lars (2010) Sequences: Saw Only the Moon Online: http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/lars-kordetzky-sequences/ (Accessed 6 April 2013) )) shows one such world which has clearly been ripped into three by the fragmented nature of the patients grasp on reality.

Kordetzky recognised that the worlds and towns that the patient had created were not fully formed, each one bled into the next, this “Architecture of blurredness” (( Kordetzky, Lars (2001), Saw Only The Moon, New York: Springer-Verlag Wien, p.86 )) as Kordetzky calls it is shown translated in to the sculpture as wood and plastic intersect and interrupt each breaking through the imagined barriers of the worlds, none are enclosed or separate, each is forced to interact with those around it. The Effect of looking through one of Kordetzky’s sculptures is then to perceive the world through the eyes of the patient, within the frame there is such a chaos of these intersecting worlds that the frame is no longer obvious, the observer like the patient can no longer see the physical boundaries, which form the metaphor for walls of the isolation chamber, but are enraptured by the contents, the insanity of the interior. Kordetzky then accurately recreates the psychological landscape of his site and most importantly for my own work, roughly half way-through the process he asks the inmate to come and assist with his work. This is of course the only person that can help Kordetzky, being the only person with any actual knowledge of what is being recreated.

The Shed is a place for thinking, “Spaces we construct in which to dream” ((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p.114)) and here is the similarity, the isolation cell serves to isolate the individual and confine his madness, while the shed exists to facilitate the thinking. They leave a somewhat similar psychological footprint, that of place which is a concentrated centre of thought, dreams and creativity, the only difference being that between the rational and the irrational, which is quite possibly, not such a huge distinction after all. Kordetzky when concluding his project explains that the inmates “eternal struggle for home, means creating structures of one’s own” (( Kordetzky, Lars (2001), Saw Only The Moon, New York: Springer-Verlag Wien, p. 24 )) these structures are psychological for the inmate but could just as easily be made physical. Indeed men in their hobbies often build models, jigsaws, spice racks or even as the patient does whole towns of their own, perhaps in as literal a form as a model railway. Both are spaces which exist primarily for thought and dreaming, the only difference is between the necessity of the isolation room and the luxury of the shed.

Because of these similarities there is more in my project to sympathise with the process of Kordetzky than Antonakos because like Kordetzky’s project, mine seeks to go beyond the physical remnants of site into something which is not immediately obvious, it calls upon the subjective experience of the individual co-inhabiting the site.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs the aim of this half of the performance was specifically to settle the question: ‘how are men perceived?’, but in light of the kind of work that was undertaken by Kordetsky, I feel it might be appropriate to focus the question a little more upon dreams, so for now the question is “How do we build a dream, from the comfort of home?” and these dreams belong to everyone, so it makes sense to invite anyone to to contribute to the sculpture as it slowly develops.

The Common Voyeur

Tom Briggs / February 5, 2013May 13, 2013 / Home, Performance process

images — Unknown Paramount Artist (1954) Rear View Window, poster.

In the past few weeks we’ve spoken extensively about the concept of voyeurism in our house, a word I was not perhaps entirely comfortable with. The official definitions of voyeurism I have found are lacking, most of them say something to the effect of ‘sexual stimulation derived from the act of intruding and observing’. This idea of sexual voyeurism is something of an anomaly for our class as we are considering our own everyday voyeurism, looking in the front windows we pass on the street. Not to mention what Jonathon Metzl calls “Voyeurism Television” (( Metzl, Jonathon (2004) ‘Voyeur Nation? Changing definitions of voyeurism, 1950-2004’, Harvard Review of Psychiatry. XII (2) March: 127-131, p. 127 )) or reality tv to us. Big Brother and a raft of similar programs are based in watching people live, intruding on their privacy, the ‘Mass consumption of information about others” (( Metzl, Jonathon (2004) ‘Voyeur Nation? Changing definitions of voyeurism, 1950-2004’, Harvard Review of Psychiatry. XII (2) March: 127-131, p. 127 )). One stimulus that we keep returning to is Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) a film about a wheelchair bound man that takes to spying on his neighbours, slowly he begins to fill in the stories of their lives; He does not however receive sexual gratification for this act, can this mean that the seminal film about the voyeur is not in fact voyeurism at all?

Perhaps this discussion about the idea of voyeurism in its new context as everyday activity rather than “deviant psychopathology” (( Metzl, Jonathon (2004) ‘Voyeur Nation? Changing definitions of voyeurism, 1950-2004’, Harvard Review of Psychiatry. XII (2) March: 127-131, p. 127 )) is so interesting to me because we are performing in a house which is inescapably the domain of the private, the performative act in itself however is public. Our performance can’t help but open the private to the public, so that the audience may derive joy (admittedly not of a sexual nature) from the act of watching.

This leads to an interesting idea, the audience as voyeur, how do we exploit that feeling of intruding? As to that I have a few ideas. The front room of our house looks out across the front door, it is most likely that it is the first glimpse of the house’s interior our audience get. This space currently the least domestic of rooms used to “to project an image to the world” (((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p. 35 )) onto the street so that passersby would be impressed, a kind of trophy room of domestic life. It is past time that our front room was once again used for this purpose to be the centre of domestic life, a life that can only be observed through the window. What if this act is everyday like eating dinner but lit by a strobe light, or the act through the window could be more explicit or taboo evoking a more traditional form of voyeurism.

The most obvious voyeuristic opportunity in our particular house is provided by CCTV footage, there are nine cameras in the house covering most of the rooms, some from multiple angles, can we show the audience themselves on CCTV allowing them to see the other side, the violated rather than the violator. The footage of our audiences could be projected out into the public, that which the audience believed to be private, making audience into participant. Perhaps the audience are shown other audience members journey through the house allowing them to become implicit in the voyeuristic act. There could be another place where the CCTV footage is screened, separate from the house set out much like a cinema. With just one performer to illicit conversation and reaction from the audience, invite them to sit down chat casually then comment and speculate on the actions and intentions of others.

There is no doubt for me that our final performance will have clear voyeuristic overtones, the act of asking strangers into our house, watching them on cameras, recording their reaction to their setting and to us. It is a kind of mutual and multi-layered voyeurism typified if you like by the concept that perhaps we can record an audience member watching another audience member, as they walk in on a performer having a bath. Each observer unaware that they too are being watched, that the spectator in the act of watching has become a participant in the voyeuristic act. In the 21st century voyeurism is, to a point, a part of our everyday lives. The acceptable activity of people watching, the plethora of reality tv on offer every night of the week all contributes to a society that is deeply concerned with the private lives of others. It is time to test these boundaries, how can our homes be safe from this violation if that same violation has become what we all crave.

As to the question of whether it is voyeurism when it does not directly constitute a sexual act, Seth Blazer instead proposes that “Scopophilia” (( Blazer, S. M. (2006). Rear window ethics: Domestic privacy versus public responsibility in the evolution of voyeurism. Midwest Quarterly, 47(4), 379-392, p. 379 )) could replace the idea of the voyeur in a non-sexual context. He continues “Voyeurism is too narrow a term with too ugly a connotation to describe the full range of our own natural curiosities” (( Blazer, S. M. (2006). Rear window ethics: Domestic privacy versus public responsibility in the evolution of voyeurism. Midwest Quarterly, 47(4), 379-392, p. 379 )). Yet the word voyeur has its power, conjuring uncomfortable images of being observed against our will, that the privacy of our homes is being violated. So for now, at least for the purposes of our performance with its concern for the intimate and private sanctum of home, we’ll keep the word voyeur and all its negative connotations, they might just come in useful.

The Language of Sheds

Tom Briggs / January 28, 2013May 13, 2013 / Home, Performance process, Rooms

The Garden Shed is “an attempt to create a separate world within a world, over which we have control and the means not only to imagine but to shape” (( Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p. 114 )) .

Man has always sought refuge, originally from the elements, building huts over which he had complete control, more recently as huts developed into homes these became the domain of the woman, be it the matriarch or the housewife. The man required refuge from the home itself, an inner sanctum, for some this is the office or the study, but for the everyday man a slapdash construction of corrugated iron and broken down fence panels could become a shrine to all things masculine, a place “for retreating into and thinking” (( Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p.115)).

Our sheds stand opposite each other almost mirror images. Their measurements are almost identical a square of concrete 6ft X 6ft for a floor, a single window facing out onto the shared courtyard, a large porcelain basin against the wall that stands on two pillars bare brick like the walls.

Everywhere the sure signs of decay, chipped and peeling paint, years of dust and cobweb are mingled with long dead insects and their living relatives. These sheds do also have their own individual characteristics which distinguish them and their former inhabitants, show the inescapable signs of practical minds in these confined spaces.

Shed A (named solely because it is almost always the first seen) is a bright space, full of the marks of human habitation, the slightly shoddy handmade shelves show a man more interested in function than design, further evidenced by the range of colours that can be seen on the walls. Most interestingly there are pencil marks recording long forgotten measurements for some project or other. These reveal the workings of a practical man, one of precision and detail, the man who builds.

Which brings us to an interesting stand point, the perceptions of man, there has for some time been a dichotomy in the perception of the masculine and inherent contradiction whereby the male creature is equally expected to be builder, protector and all round knight in shining armour and at the same time being suspected a pervert, peeping tom and general sexual deviant.

It occurs to me that this contradiction, and these extremes are incompatible and a solution must be found to reconcile them. It does equally occur to me that a reasonable person is capable of comprehending that to a certain degree these traits exist in all men and equally in all people, but performers are by and large not reasonable people, so I think it’s about time we took these two extremes the peeping tom and handy man and the various materials of their trades/hobbies/perversions locked them all in a room for 16 hours and see what we can be built, what can be corrupted, and where is the balance? If sheds are “Spaces we construct in which to dream” ((Heathcote, Edwin (2012) The Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln, p.114)) what shape will this dream take? These are some big questions and will probably require some further thought, so I’ll be in the shed if you need me.