“Breaking the Silence…”

Kirsty Taylor / / Concealed Illusions, Public Responses, Space

At our site in the art museum, each building has its own environment and focus which stays constant each day. The Collection focuses mainly on educational exhibits for schools, however is adapted to cater to a wider audience range from young children to adults. Because of this, the space is loud, vibrant and full of voices both from the visitors and the sound wall stretching the width of the building.  In contrast to this is the Usher Gallery where we intend our performance to be based. The building has the feel of a ‘typical’ art museum set in a beautiful manor house with traditional paintings and artifacts being the central focus. Here, the atmosphere is much more hushed and serious. Even in the room holding more contemporary art, visitors still keep their voices to a whisper whilst the sound of footsteps and music echo through the rooms. In the room holding the paintings, this is particularly amplified with silence feeling naturally expected of you as a visitor.

Bearing in mind this natural urge to be quiet and respectful in the gallery, how would visitors feel when this traditional silence is broken by our performance and what impacts will it leave on the space? Considering the nature of the space we are to work in, as actors we will have to consider, “the possibility of the audience member moving through or past the performance“(Randle, 2001, p86). The nature of a site specific performance means that our audience will be much more involved than with a typical theatre based performance and so will be forced to acknowledge what we are doing and question it. However, considering the kind of people who are attracted to art galleries, I believe they may be open to new ideas about art through performance as when questioned, they are willing to talk about art and don’t shy away from seeing different interpretations of the art surrounding them. Some were interested in what the reality of our focal painting of the Lincoln Brayford would be by stripping away the idealised image. Hopefully when this is put into action, we will leave a lasting impression on the space and change the way in which paintings are viewed by the public. This will reflect Artaud’s idea to “fuse art with life” (Randle, 2001, p86) and also challenge the stereotypes and boundaries of what kinds of ‘art’ can be shown in a traditional gallery.

 

Randle, J (2001) ‘Theatre for the Interactive Age: Participatory Site-specific Productions’, International Journal of the Arts in Society, April: p83-93

Why do people choose to visit cafés?

Shellie-Ann Barrowcliffe / / People, Research

I thought it would be wise if we were to do our piece in the café then I would need to gain further understanding as to why people decide to visit cafes. After I started to pay more attention at The Collection, I began to notice how people seem to be in their own little bubble and didn’t pay much attention to their surroundings or the people around them. It made me begin to question things such as;

Do people choose to visit cafes for the coffee, the atmosphere, or for the company they keep?

 It seems that all these things merged together create an experience that makes people want to come back time and time again. People tend to visit cafes for different reasons, for some people it could be for a catch up with friends, others just to get away from their everyday life. For a lot of people it was another place to sit and do work. They go to do their work their because from personal experience the work load doesn’t seem so much when it is taken out of its normal surroundings, often a café is described as being a third place in a person’s life other than work and home.
Neeti Gupta has a theory that when we are alone in a public place, we have a fear of ‘having no purpose’ ((References:
Gupta, N 2004,’Grande Wi-Fi:Understanding what Wi-Fi users are doing in coffee-shops’. New Delhi, India, School of Planning and Architecture)). If we are in a public place and it looks like we have no business there, it may not seem socially appropriate. In contrast to this it is also suggested that ‘today’s coffee houses are less political settings than refuges from the stress of everyday life, where people can meet and talk, read, listen to music or poetry or simply watch the world go by’ ((Humboldt Bay Coffee Company, 2006 [Accessed: 24/02/2013] http://web.archive.org/web/20070915014128/http://www.humboldtcoffee.com/History.htm)). As these both give different perspectives it was decided that we needed to do research as to why people came and visited the café in The Collection to figure out who came to the café and for what purpose as I believe that our performance should be based around what we figure out through researching so we can gain a better understanding of the space.

Why do you choose to visit a cafe?

Press here for drama.

Fotini Efstathiou / / Cultural Terrorists, Video Research

After discussing our performance we decided that we want to make quite an impact on those in the gallery and be as dramatic as possible to emphasise this notion of smuggling London culture into Lincoln. We want to turn peoples heads and make them wonder what is going on, and hopefully grab their curiosity and attention. We want to do this with our actions but also our appearance. For example to incorporate London into our performance even more than just the construction of Big Ben we thought we could arrive at the gallery in a black taxi, just like those in London. We want to create quite a frantic atmosphere so our actions will be quick and energetic. In relation to our costume we thought to incorporate the era the gallery was built (the 20’s) we thought we could wear dresses from that era, for example a flapper dress but with balaclavas to emphasise this notion of smuggling and perhaps to show that it isn’t meant to be there.

I have been researching clips on YouTube and came across this video called ‘Press here for drama’ and in a way the atmosphere they create is similar to what we wish to create in the gallery. You see the spectators as quite baffled and confused as to what is happening but still very much intrigued and this is what we want from our performance…

 

 

 

Author: Fotini Efstathiou

Public Responses to our Explorations of Gallery 3

Stephanie Jackson / / Possessed Time, Public Responses

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:

  1. 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.
  2. How will the audience enter our space? – two doors into the Gallery. But close one off to make it even more claustrophobic?
  3. 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.

 

Works Cited

http://www.performance-art-research.de/texts/audience-as-participant_helge-meyer.pdf

Dipping into site specific

Daniela Scimeca / / Inspiration, Nova Inventa, Research, Space

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)