As with all practical performances and projects, we have been experimenting with ideas to see what works and can be used in our final piece. Trial and error is an important part of our practical development.
We watched footage of fruit decomposing, and liked the idea of how time can effect an object very visually, with photography and media as a means of recording time itself. The next stage of this was having to decide how we could do this ourselves in the simplest and most practical way. We discussed leaving a pineapple in a shed or somewhere uninterrupted, where we could focus a camera on it and film its decomposition. The significance of the pineapple is that it is a feature of our chosen performance space of Gallery 3.
However, this caused us practical concerns, and raised many questions over how long it would take to decompose and whether we could get a camera for that amount of time.
Instead we decided to cut a pineapple in half and see what would happen if we left it in a cupboard for a few days and took a few photos over the duration.
Would it change its appearance over one weekend? Or would it take weeks for any effects to take place?
This is the experiment I am recording so far. And this is the result after 3 days of a pineapple in my cupboard…….
This is a simple stop-frame style animation I have created of the decomposition process so far. As you can see, the pineapple has started to change texture and colour. Something visual such as this, could be used as an aid in our final performance piece to show the effects that time can have.
‘Clocks slay time; only when the clock stops does time come to life.’ ~William Faulkner
Time. It’s all around us. We can’t escape it. We can’t ignore it. It constricts, dictates and ages us as humans, but time is just a concept.
This is at the root of our performance, as we develop our piece in a gallery which is surrounded by instruments of time. We are presenting a whole working day in 6 hours, and our development has led us into ideas of routine and the repetition which time brings. The routine of our daily lives; sleeping, waking up, eating, going to work, going out, all in a cycle which continues as the clocks progress into each hour.
What do you expect to see when you walk into any Gallery? Paintings, artefacts and displays. Certainly not a group of people asleep on the floor, or doing their daily routine! Our work is going to be pushing the boundaries of expectation and the abstract element of time.
Our chosen space is Gallery 3, within our given site of the Usher Gallery. We were drawn to this as artists because of the aesthetics of the room which contrast those of the spaces around the building. The building’s stunning architecture reflects that of a Manor House, both exterior and interior, with the winding staircase and stone floors. However, this totally changes when the public enter Gallery 3. Carpeted floors and walls and a dramatic change to a colour midnight blue, makes you question whether you have wandered into a completely different building. As we develop and explore our work, it is clear that subtle things become enlarged and exaggerated because of this confined environment.
This leads me onto discussing what the terms of ‘site’, ‘space’ and ‘place’ really mean- concepts which have been scrutinised by the many practitioners of site specific studies. Joanne Tompkins and Anna Birch, state ‘place’ under 3 critical concepts:
‘place as geographical site, place which situates social or historical position and the place or location of performance’.
A space can be described in terms of being a ‘practised place’, as Jayne Rendell describes in her work Art and Architecture: A Place Between. Rendell uses the work of Michael Landy as an example of performance and its relationship between place and space. Landy performed a bold piece of performative work in 2001, with ‘Breakdown’, which took place in a vacant shop along Oxford Street in London, where he divested himself of all his possessions. A conveyor belt was installed on a circuit, overseen by men and women in blue overalls, including Landy himself. Over a durational period, every possession was circulated on this belt under categorized headings such as ‘clothing’ ‘electrical’ etc. This undoubtedly was a statement on capitalism due to the position of Oxford Street as being one of the busiest shopping locations in the country. But most importantly, Landy transformed a place using art intervention;
‘his work provided a ‘space’ of critical engagement in the ‘place’ of commodity consumption.’
(Jane Rendell, Art and Architecture: A Place Between, IB Tauris & Co, 2006)
With work such as this to inspire us, we too will be using art intervention to transform our place into a space; using Gallery 3 as a spatial practise to explore the concepts of time. Our work is also exploring the historical and cultural context of the artefacts that the room holds. The clocks are integral to the site as a whole, as they are to our piece. In its early origins, clock making was the most technically advanced job around, and during the 1800s and 1900s, was a means of flaunting wealth and status. Clockmakers would usually also be involved in making scientific instruments, due to their technical skills and knowledge. Focus, concentration and perseverance were needed in the art of clock making and these are traits which we will have to bring to our piece as performers, as our piece is durational and will be both mentally and physically exhausting.
The work we have been developing in workshops has led me to research further into other site specific performances by other companies. One that specifically interested me was a work entitled ‘Stop the Clocks’ by Tin Box theatre.
Tin Box theatre is a relatively newly established company, who performed a site specific work called ‘Stop the Clocks’ in 2011. Their piece took place in a disused coffin fitting factory in the centre of Birmingham, and presented the story of a fictional woman called Mary, at different stages of her life until her death. The work was inspired by the history of the factory and the testimonies of ex-employees. I think their chosen site is similar to the Collection and Usher Gallery due to its rich history.
Museums are all about preserving artefacts, and within Gallery 3 we noticed the two plastic pineapples amongst the crockery on display. This led us to explore the idea of decomposition and how time affects living organisms, as our piece focuses on the concept of time in many forms.
Whilst researching we discovered a video of a rabbit decomposing, and we found the concept of the video interesting due to the time lapse.
From this we researched fruit decomposition and how we could incorporate it into our piece and our space. It links well because of the pineapple on display and the notion of time in the room. We found a video of a strawberry decomposing which also involved a clock in the process, reinforcing the concept of the effect of time.
Our research has inspired us to create our own video of a pineapple decomposing and then projecting it onto the gallery wall. We think that this will be effective as it reminds the audience of the effects of time in a visual way adding an interesting dimension to our piece on time.
Authors: Stephanie Jackson, Chloe Doherty, Tabitha Hilton-Berry, George Creighton, James Barker, Shane Humberstone
During the development of our performance work, we explored our space through practical activities. This involved walking around Gallery 3, in different ways; firstly at our own paces naturalistically, then moving more mechanically to the sound of the gallery’s clocks, each time passing a small ball subtly between us only when our paths crossed.
Whilst carrying out this work, many members of the public came into our space as they visited the gallery. It was interesting to see how they reacted to what we were doing, as the gallery is a small space so everything in it is brought to an audiences attention. The members of the public not only became spectators of our work, but also became part of our work, as they walked amongst us. It raises the question of ‘who is the performer?’ as we were doing the same basic action of walking around a space, that the public were doing- albeit in a more structured way. This reminded me of the company Lone Twin and their work ‘Walk with Me’, in which their journeys were accompanied by local people who walked with them to various places. Obviously our work was confined to a much smaller and confined space.An interesting article I found during research states the following:
“It is a general term that the audience is co-present in a performance. The performer shares the same space, the same time and the same air with the present members of the audience. In a theatre piece these facts are similar but normally the actors have their “stage” or their character which they incorporate to distant themselves from the viewer. In performance art there is no distance: The performer is the subject and object of his or her own piece of art and also involves the audience into this multi-layered relationship.”
(Helge Meyer, Audience as Participant in Performance Art, 2009)
This demonstrates the difference between an audience in a more conventional theatrical experience to a performance art like site specific. With our work taking place in the Usher Gallery, our audience will be members of the public, some of whom will not be expecting us in the space. Some of the questions our group need to address include things like:
What kind of audience might there be on a Saturday in the Gallery? (more children? more families?) -This will change the reaction to our piece. Also if it becomes busier, then the space will become smaller for us to work with, which might pose a difficulty for us.
How will the audience enter our space? – two doors into the Gallery. But close one off to make it even more claustrophobic?
Will the audience be able to interact with our work? – are we manipulating the way they move around the space?
During our practical activity, some members of the public adopted a typical British approach of not acknowledging us at all. They accepted our movements in the space as ‘normal’, and focused their attentions solely on the gallerys display cabinets. Whereas others paused to observe us before entering the gallery, perhaps hesitant on whether they were allowed in, and intrigued by our silent exploration of the space.
It was interesting to observe how one lady, when stepping out of the gallery, raised her arms above her head, as if the gallery had contained her and she was now back in a space where she felt much more freedom. I asked several members of the public, how they felt when entering the gallery. Two ladies stated how they felt immediate discomfort because of the darkness of the room, and the low ceiling, that is so different to the rest of the Usher Gallery. However, they told me their attitude to the room soon changed with the longer they were in there. They accepted us into the space as though we were part of the display itself. What surprised me most about their response was how they didn’t notice the sound of the clocks, until I mentioned it and made them listen.
I learnt from these public responses, how each person has a different perception of a space and the things in it. Also duration seems to be an important part of the experience in that space, as the longer you are in there, then the more accustomed you come to its presence. As we add more performance elements to our piece and explore our ideas, I think we will begin to notice things in the space that initially we might have missed. Audience is vital and the sooner we identify how we want the audience to react or participate in our piece, then I think our work will become a lot more effective.
These are aspects which we can explore and develop as our research continues.
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