“And finally – putting pencil to paper…”

Tom Baines / / Concealed Illusions, Development, Evaluation, Experimentation, Research

My role in the performance was to draw the live art in front of me. I was using different shades of pencils and ordinary paper. In an extreme case it is possible that to say that I am drawing a ‘life drawing’. “The representation of a life-model – and the particular choice of a female model – generates socially and culturally specific associations” (Roberts 2012, p70). In this instant Amanda Roberts suggests that having a female model has significance in society. It certainly does in our piece. As I have said before I am the only male in my group and I am drawing a group of girls. Does this have some sort of patriarchal view on society? Or is it men’s eyes that I represent observing beauty and drawing it – similarly to what the artist did when he drew the Venus de Milo.

 

Here are the selection of drawings from past rehearsals and the final performance:

 

DSC_0061

It is clear that as the performance progressed the drawings became more erratic. These drawings are shown at the bottom of the photo. This happened as the girls became more frantic with their make-up. This could show men’s dominance over women or a power in art through live drawings or It could show elements of females able to exploit men’s need for a woman. But of course literally similarly to the artist who drew the Venus de Milo they are copies of beauty. Whether my drawings are accurate is irrelevant because it is quite possible the artist’s drawings at as accurate to the Venus de Milo statue; and of course the statue itself it a copy of the Ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite. How did the creator of the statue, Alexandros of Antioch, know that was what she looked like? The drawings themselves were they drawings of ‘true beauty’?  Or were they drawings of what was there? This of course leaves our project open as said before what is idealisation, the romantic era of paintings where it was painting for aesthetic sake, and what is true nowadays?…

 

 

Works Cited

 

Roberts, Amanda and Howard Riley (2012) ‘The social semiotic potential of gestural drawing’, Journal of Visual Art Practice, 11 (1) 63-73

“The final curtain…performance reflection”

Kirsty Taylor / / Concealed Illusions, Evaluation, Public Responses

Finally, after months of hard work and development our finished piece was performed to the public and overall I am thrilled with the end result. As both director and performer it was a proud moment watching our project come to life in such a beautiful setting and succeed.

Before stepping out of the education room to start our performance I was quite daunted by the prospect of our performance.  As we are dealing with site specific work, not all our audience would be expecting us so we were weary as to how the visitors to the Usher Gallery would perceive our piece and if we would just be ignored.  Because of this and due to the fact our piece is specific to the gallery and indeed Lincoln, there will in turn be, “A different kind of audience performer interaction” (Pearson, 2010, p9). I wondered how different it would be and even if we would have any audience at all. To our delight however, we drew in quite a large audience over the duration of our piece, with a mixture of expected audience, students and those completely unaware of who we were and why we were there. Although many of the viewers were members of the general public and unaware of our purpose, many still stopped and took time to watch our piece, intrigued as to what we were doing and why. Despite some hanging around the entrance to the room and not entering, some did venture inside and walked around our performance, watching the actions of both us girls and Tom and noting the video on the wall and our scattered photographs.

Over the last few months, our performance has developed so much and has grown in the elements which make up our ending piece but finally we finalised each element, using only the ones which truly benefit our piece and are not too obvious to the audience. Because of this, some elements were taken away and replaced with more developed ideas. The main being the use of sticky labels and applying them to each other as the piece progressed. Although it fitted in with our theme, after trying it out and discussing it with each other and our tutor, we all agreed it was too obvious and didn’t leave much to the imagination. Instead, we experimented with the use of voice clips which would be repeated throughout our performance. We researched tips and guides on how to apply perfect makeup and each of the girls read out a few paragraphs stating different techniques which tell women how to look their best:

“Learning how to apply make up properly is a small investment in time that will help you look your best and boost your self-confidence…the ideal foundation must give you the coverage you need for your skin condition, must perfectly match your skin tone, must perfectly match your undertone.”

site voice complete (1)

We also recorded information and tips on painting techniques which we added to the makeup recordings to create a five minute long sound clip. The two different elements worked really well together and at some points it is uncertain as to whether the tips are aimed at painting or the makeup, backing up how similar the act of applying makeup is to the act of painting. The sound clips fitted in with our performance perfectly and added to the absurdity as the piece progressed.  As our audience would be hearing tips on how makeup and paintings should be done, we were performing the complete opposite; Tom hastily sketching our actions without even looking to his paper and us randomly applying makeup without mirrors and no effort in creating the perfect ‘mask’.

The physical part of our performance was also a success, partly due to us having a strict time schedule so we knew how long each part of the process would take. We agreed on spending twenty minutes for the first two times and for our applications to be clinical in the sense of how perfect our makeup would look. The next application we did without a mirror which proved quite difficult. We allowed ourselves fifteen minutes in which to try and get the application as close to perfect as we could but some aspects proved more difficult than others, particularly in getting a smooth application of foundation and trying not to smudge our eyeliner and mascara. After this application however, our process broke down with the application of makeup only lasting five minutes and the makeup becoming messy and unnatural. We also changed position, moving from facing the centre to facing outwards to our audience. It was at this point when more visitors came to watch as they became fascinated seeing us absurdly applying makeup whilst staring out into the space. On our fifth and final application we changed position again, this time becoming even stranger. I laid flat on the floor whilst Sam lay across the seats and Jess slumped against it. This final time we only used foundation and used it to cover our bodies not just our faces. I laid on the floor getting more and more foundation and covered by face, arms and t-shirt with layer upon layer of foundation.

IMG_1669 Image from rehearsal, 22/4/2013

This surreal image accompanied by the sound of how to apply the perfect makeup, make an impressive final image for our piece and worked well demonstrating our point of how masking isn’t necessarily a positive process. Initially, this was meant to last for five minutes and then the sound of an alarm clock placed in the centre of our podium would ring giving us the signal to leave. However, it turned out that the alarm clock had not been set, meaning this last section lasted for fifteen minutes instead until Sam decided to stand and sound the alarm herself. Although not what we had planned, it worked to our advantage and visually looked more impressive for this process to last longer than we intended. It meant our bodies could become more covered and our application could become more elaborate as we stretched our arms up to cover them in a ritualistic kind of way. To bring our performance to a close, we removed our makeup covered t-shirts and wiped our faces with them for the final time before discarded them on the floor and walked out of the room, leaving traces of our performance behind for people to look at.

Another element of our performance was the video of the Brayford painting we originally based our ideas on. Although no longer with us physically, projecting the image above the Venus de Milo pictures worked well. Using Toms edited image of the Brayford which he changed to look as if more realistic and without the idealised mask it has, the original and newly edited image merge over a twenty minute period to show the difference between the romanticised and ‘real’ image and again reinforce how often both art and society feels the need to fake perfection.

worse Tom’s edited image, intended to simulate reality rather than romantacising the truth.

Overall I am really happy with our end performance and how our rehearsal process developed. We successfully put across our intentions to our audience after feedback from those who watched which is particularly rewarding. Our performance is not a closed one; it is a piece which could be developed even further if given time. It has been a vast learning process and it has been interesting creating a piece which if moved from its initial location, would lose a lot of impact and importance. We hope we have changed the way people view art and people and that perfection can still be achieved without having to create a mask.

 

Works Cited

Pearson, Mike (2010) Site Specific Performance. UK:Palgrave Macmillan

“Late additions…”

Tom Baines / / Concealed Illusions, Development, Experimentation, Research

Sound was a late addition into our piece and we believed it would help with the ambience of the room and the piece overall.  It was a sound collage consisting of statements written by ‘experts’ on the application of make-up as well as experts on painting. It was interesting how the two were very similar in how they were spoken and the techniques being used.

 

This is the clip:       site voice complete (1)

 

“immersive audio techniques that are often used in artistic sound disciplines offer complex multichannel solutions to enhance the listening environment for an audience” (Lauke 2010, pg1). This point by Lauke beautifully sums up why we added sound to our piece. It gives a depth to the performance space.  As the piece progresses and the make-up application becomes less ‘perfect’ it is an interesting contrast between that and the sound clip of the ‘correct’ application of make-up. It also breaks the silence within the room and allows for the contemporary to be brought into the old fashioned art gallery. It also a nice addition to the contemporary room opposite which is also using an interesting sound collage and our clip, I think, adds to the sound of the upstairs gallery as a whole.  It also adds to the video as of course the primary image of it is a painting and it is interesting how indistinguishable both make-up and paint application is.

 

Works Cited

 

Lauke, Karen (2010) ‘The placement of sound in artistic contexts’ Body, Space & Technology, 9(1) 1-10

Guerrilla Girls

Fotini Efstathiou / / Cultural Terrorists

After our performance we received feedback and it was interesting that our performance was interpreted from a feminist view and this brought a cause for thought. It seemed that we channelled a similar message to that of the Guerrilla Girls through our costume and powerful impact of our performance. The femininity of our 1920’s costume, through the use of stockings, elegant dresses, pearls and the red lipstick made it clear to our audience that we were women while the balaclavas hid our true identity. In a sense we were women disrupting a mans territory as The Usher Gallery was named and built for James Usher who was a man and a vast amount of the art displayed have been created by men, it could be said we were making a feminist statement against the over whelming amount of men who control , create and are praised for art.  The Guerrilla Girls are similar in the fact that they hide their identity through the use of gorilla masks and disrupt galleries just the way we did in our performance.

As Kathe Kollwitz explains how the Guerrilla Girls began: ‘In 1985, The Museum of Modern Art in New York opened an exhibition titled An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture. It was supposed to be an up-to-the minute summary of the most significant contemporary art in the world. Out of 169 artists, only 13 were women. All the artists were white, either from Europe or the US. That was bad enough, but the curator, Kynaston McShine, said any artist who wasn’t in the show should rethink “his” career. And that really annoyed a lot of artists because obviously the guy was completely prejudiced. Women demonstrated in front of the museum with the usual placards and picket line.’ (Guerrilla Girls 1995) It is evident from the statement that the reasoning behind the Guerrilla Girls is to protest against the lack of praise for women and the sexism in art, politics and pop culture. In a way us disrupting the gallery in the way we did and creating such an impact to the point where passers by would stop to see our performance shows how we raised a similar message through our use of costume but aggressive stature, focus and movement.

What perhaps diminished the feminist message from our performance  is the fact we smuggled in The Big Ben which could be seen as quite a phallic symbol due to it’s shape but also it’s association with Westminster which has a higher ratio of men to women. The reason behind smuggling The Big Ben into the gallery was not in relation to a feminist message but to smuggle a different cities culture into Lincoln and as The Big Ben is symbolic of London we thought it would befit the site.

If we were to do the performance again we would definitely look at it from more of a feminist point of view. The costume we had chosen and the use of sound scape were affective and had great impact on the gallery and our audience but we would have to re-think the object we would smuggle and if we’d smuggle anything in at all. I was thinking perhaps posters with a feminine message on them that could be stuck around a gallery, or perhaps a sculpture that was created by a woman of power, maybe one of Joan of Ark? It would be interesting to look into Guerrilla Girls as a source of inspiration  Even so we feel that our performance was a success and had the impact that we intended to create from the moment we sped up to the gallery in our get away car to us leaving the gallery as elegant ladies of the 1920’s.

Works Cited:

Girls,Guerilla (2011) Guerilla Girls, Online:

http://www.guerrillagirls.com/interview/index.shtml (assessed 10 May 2013).

 

“Time for reflection part two: The future for the project…”

Tom Baines / / Concealed Illusions, Evaluation

 

Our project will not die. The openness of our project has allowed for major development of our piece.

From feedback, it was apparent that the link between the video and the live performance was not clear. This then poses the question – does it need to be?

 

Let us look at how this project could be taken further:

First the Video: (Here is a smaller version)

 

 

There are many connotations with this. Firstly the image is being digitally manipulated or if you like ‘hacked’. The video is hacking a Victorian painting. It is almost as if a Victorian painting is getting a computer virus.  With this in mind I will now mention an earlier post.

 

bob

 

What if this was to happen but instead of it being different pieces of art, what if it was part of the performance. And what looks like a mobile phone getting ‘hacked’ would show a video of idealisation or to avoid the general term art that is more honest. What if the video was to show loads of different images? For example if the project was done again over a series of days and taking a picture on each day and composting those into a video.

 

Now to the live art. What were people’s reactions? From what I could see there was a range of different reactions. Some entered and looked at the performance for a while and left. Others came in looked at the performance and did not enter as there was ‘something different’ on. Others came in and looked around the performance and the room as if we were part of the room.   These responses link back to our original idea of art watching and people watching art. As the site was open to the public it also gives us a power in the room, as we are forcing members of the public to watch.  We were also creating art. (Obviously the drawings and the application of make-up) but the make-up wipes as well. When they were discarded they were a piece of art themselves almost like a painting. As it was paint on paper (sort of).  What if we photographed them and hanged them up in a gallery as a permanent memento to what we did?