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After looking around our Site, what were most exciting for me were the spaces we had to play with and the design of the buildings. The Collection boasts a very modern feel, with its large windows creating a feeling of openness whereas the Usher Gallery felt more enclosed, a beautiful period building oozing nostalgia.
In our first lesson we spoke about the definitive aspects of ‘space’. Space is very much divorced from cultural connection and acts only as a functional component.
As a society do we appreciate the spaces we have? Personally I think we neglect the beauty of perhaps confined spaces, and from a theatrical point of view, spaces to perform in. For example spaces by toilets or even on stairs.
I wanted to get a feel for site specific performances in Museums or galleries; I was inspired by Stephen Goldblatt’s event called Surface:
To me this showed how much variety there was to responding to a site. Here he had taken the exterior of the building and incorporated visual effects and sound to make a statement. There was something unconventional about the way he had chosen to exploit the wall compared to all the artefacts and art that must be inside but that’s what I enjoyed most about this it got me thinking about the architecture of buildings.
A group consisting of 4 of us all really liked the idea of finding spaces for performance where we could reveal certain things to the audience and respond to the architecture of the building. Enclosed spaces, big spaces, playing with the atmospherics of the space will all aid our performance ideas.
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Works cited:
Goldblatt, Stephen (2009) QUIXOTIC – SURFACE, online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5aZy7futA (accessed: February 18 2013)