Month: March 2016

After walking around my site again today (a very busy Good Friday bank holiday), I decided to make a few but small changes to my piece.

First is where in my site I will perform, all if not majority of my performance, in the centre of the space, with a chair and two tables. By doing this I am creating myself a ‘performance space/stage’ similar to ones that the Suffragettes may have created, however the way in which I interact with my space and how my audience interacts with it, will (hopefully) be the complete opposite compared to the Suffragettes movement. I intend to start by handing out to drinks to people in as my normal self, then when I come to perform my scripted lines, I will sit down on the chair in a neutral manner and perform these lines, in a manner that is not myself, I really want to detach my own personality and self from these lines as the subject is a sensitive one and a subject which effects many people. Either side of me will be two tables, one with the drinks on and one with objects on that would either ‘help prevent rape’ or is the ’cause of rape’ according to victim blaming and our rape culture, for example date rape detecting nail polish, alcohol, clothing, ect. Also on this table will be a collage of posters created by authorities groups, such as the police or government to ‘tackle rape’ but actually blame the victims. These posters will remain untouched, where as on the other table the exact same collage will be present, but I intend to deface these posters, pointing out the wrongs with them, how they victim blame instead of teaching consent, ect. I decided to deface the posters on the table with the drinks, as these ‘anti-rape posters’ fail to mention consent yet I’m allowing my audience to decide whether they have a drink or not, choosing to give consent.

I’ve also decided to wear white for this performance and as I read out certain stats, facts, figures or victim blaming phrases I’m going to deface the dress by writing on it. For any stats, facts or figures, I’m going to right the percentage on my costume in red, as red is a colour often related to something of high alert and importance, then as I read the comments made that victim blame I’m going to write over it in black, once you write on something in a black permeant marker, you fix it, which relates to the victim blaming. As the media, “anti-rape” campaigns and society focus more on how the victim could have prevented their rape, instead of the alarming facts and figures, which in turn, can be seen to be destroying any hope victims may of being heard or helped. By blaming the victim instead of acknolging the facts and stats, then society and the local authorities are missing/ignoring the real causes of rape and how to approach it. This also ties into my site as has been a place of voice, empowerement and change for both men but espeically women since the first suffragette rallie took place there over a century ago. These women fought like wise for a change and to be heard, with an equally as topical subject to mine.

I’ve decided to edit my script a bit and add in a description/information about the speakers corner, from the speakers corner Website, adding it just before the end of my piece, as the Speakers Corner is a place for raising you’re voice and my performance is raising voices about the rape culture and victim blaming.

As I re-visted my site last week with Steve Fossey, it became clear that I hand’t gave that much thought as to where I would place my audience and how I would interact with them. As we walked around my space it became clear that this was also the case for the buildings and structures within my site. Currently my site has a lot of ‘alcoves’ and scaffolding which can be used within my performance, as Steve rightly said, I need to make sure I’m using my site to its greatest potential.

After much thought and through trial and error I have decided my audience should be free to walk about the site and watch my performance through their own choice. As my the themes and topic of my performance talks greatly about consent and by allowing my audience to decided where they stand and what they see, as their position will change their perspective, allows them to, metaphorically speaking, give consent.

I’ve been in my site times practically trialling out ideas and my script, however so far only a few things have worked. One idea which I am to keen with is the idea of Détournement. Détournemen is “an artistic practice conceived by the Situationists for transforming artworks by creatively disfiguring them” (Oxfordreference.com, 2016).
A massive part of today’s rape culture is the campaign material published by the police force and government. This campaign material is supposed to ‘fight rape’ but in fact blames women instead, telling them how they could ‘stop’ themselves from being attacked.

Like the Situationists, plan to ‘deface’ these posters, that suggest rape is a side effect of alcohol or that women are at fault for their friends being victims. This victim blaming is a regular occurrence in the campaign posters created by the police forces and government. I want to make it clear that instead of victim blaming and telling women what not to do, so that they don’t become a victim, we should be targeting the predators. I also think it’s important to note how these posters target women, though men can be and are also victims of sexual assault.

Another idea that I’ve tried practically, that i’m going to offer drinks or either water or juice to the audience. This touching upon the idea that if someone buys you a drink on a night out or offers you drinks at a party they expect sex or sexual favours in return. I’m planning to hand this out at the start of the performance and have the audience wonder why I’m giving them this drink as it wont be mentioned until further on. The when this point is raised I’m hoping the audience will realise how wrong this expectation is.

My next step forwards is to keep devising and trying out new ideas, as well as adding more theory to my performance in order to support it.

Today’s session was pretty straight forward and short. Each group was assigned to go and prepare their performances, and meet later to show their performances to the other groups. My and my group went into the Library to remind our self of each others roles. We discussed what inspired our performance, and we wrote down a list of site specific artist that influenced our performance. It was interesting watching the other groups performance, and listening to their idea. When it came to showing our performance, Me, Chris and Mary Jane stood on the high street shouting out the relationship information we had gathered, whilst the other groups stood and watched. We also explained our ideas, and showed them an example of the Elinor Cross we would be creating. At the end we was given constructive feedback. There seemed to be mixed views on the shouting in the street, with some people saying “it was intimidating” and others saying “it was really appealing, and would make the general public intrigued”. We couldn’t completely show our performance, since it’s mainly a non-per formative piece anyway. After this feedback, my group and I went away and discussed this feedback, reflecting on the things we could improve for next session.

Below is a list of site specific work that has inspired our performance.

Jake Seliger states, “non-places one cannot have any real recourse to common humanity: you can’t ask to borrow something, to be done a favour, or to expect to know the myriad of strangers you cross.” (Seliger, 2010)  a statement which we hope to challenge in our performance.  Principally our piece is based upon asking the audience for a  ‘favour’ and five minutes of their time.  In extension, we hope to parallel Seliger’s ideas of common humanity by placing a sitting room structure in the underpass of the Guildhall and asking passers by to ‘pop in’ for a cup of tea. Although simplistic offering tea is semiotic, representing the welcoming and acceptance of a new person in your home environment. We aim to make the process of offering, making and drinking tea a catalyst for an open confessional exchange. By utilising the underpass of the Guildhall to create a socially recognised environment, alongside promoting the exchange we are aiming to change people’s perception and feelings towards the underpass and create a positive memories towards the space. Therefore, taking a non-place and creating a place.

Our main challenge going forward is the theatricality of the performance. During our class discussion the point was raised over the costume and characterisation of performers as 1950’s tea ladies or housewives. However, a potential by-product of this decision would be to make the performance gender based; would the audience see the piece as a gender political statement of female repression, or could we be making a statement on the emancipation of women in modern society? Furthermore, the logistics and construction of the piece have caused concern as sourcing specific components have become challenging. As a group we have delegated responsibilities to insure the delivery of each aspect of the performance from the set to the running of appliances etc.

Today we were able to present to the class our performance idea and explain our intentions and process so far. We created a presentation that involved the videos and sounds that are in my previous blog posts, and we also created a miniature structure to view in detail what we intend the piece to look like.

In the presentation we discussed each of our main influences: Sophie Calle, Mark Auge and Adrian Howells. We also focused on explaining how we will use confessional exchange, how it surrounds place and non-place, and defining our historical reference.

We received the following feedback and had the following discussions:

John Newling can relate to our piece depending on the way we use lighting. He used lights in a site specific performance to create a safe place and which audiences/the public took comfort in. Because our intention is to use fairy lights and lamps to create a warm atmosphere, he can most certainly be an influence for us. We should also look into his intention for using lights and the full results of his piece.

We need to decide on what roles each person will be doing on the day. For example we can swap from being the hostess, to holding the signs, to making tea. We are going to meet in a group so that we can create distint roles. This will help our performance to run smoothly, and allow us not to crowd the single audience member when performing the confessional exchange.

We want to think about offering alternative refreshments for those who do not favour tea. This will also benefit us if we have a problem with the tea urn/getting constant hot water in order to make tea.

We want to think about what time we will be performing. If we perform early in the day will we get a different try  of audience to if we perform later in the day. We need to examine what time will be best to get a more willing audience with the spare time to talk to us.

We could consider creating characters and in particular experimenting with being stereotypical housewives. If we do this, it could very well change the aim of our piece – our current aim would be best represented if we were to act ourselves, as it surrounds us attempting to connect to the city through listening and responding to audience experiences and stories. Although acting as housewives may create a more detailed experience for our audience and could make it easier to draw audiences into our piece. We need to discuss whether doing this will be going against our aim and shifting the focus onto the audience experience throughout the performance. If this is the case, how can we as performers benefit in a way that is similar to our previous intention. As our aim changes, our practitioner/theorist influences will also alter and we need to keep this in consideration. An example of this change is using Adrian Howell’s not only with confessional exchange, but also the way he take on a persona of ‘Adrienne’. Is the housewives idea primarily to make our work aesthetically pleasing? Or could we create a more interesting performance that is more beneficial to both performers and audiences, and will we be able to connect to different practitioners to create an alternative clear aim in order to improve our piece.

Our use of tea – social structure, perhaps the roles can reverse and the audience member can make the cup of tea.

Look at Cloud cuckoo lander – hosting.

Do these things add to ‘nostalgia’?

Look at Bobby Baker and research him.