Final Evaluation: Possessed Time

Stephanie Jackson / / Possessed Time

“So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person’s genius is confined to a very few hours.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson 

As with all performance based pieces, there are many things which could have been improved and should have been developed further in our final product. Our piece was far from perfect, however, I think that we explored our ideas effectively and presented our audience with visually interesting ideas, whilst transforming our chosen space in a unique and informative way.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Unfortunately the opening of our piece went wrong, with the irony of our own clock not working which meant we started out of time to our planned structure. That being said, we recovered quickly and efficiently and got back in time with each other.

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In my opinion, the projection of our human clock was the biggest strength of our work. It stood out within the darkness of the gallery, and drew much of the audiences attention.  Although this projection had a great impact, I don’t think the projection of the pineapple worked at all. Firstly, the image wasn’t clearly identifiable and this was down to the filming of the pineapple. We should have filmed it for a longer period to show the decomposition process in its entirety. Secondly, I think the positioning of the projection was wrong and we should have had the image projected underneath the human clock. If we had synchronised it with the timing of the clock, then it would have slowly decomposed over the course of the day, demonstrating the effects of time in a much more direct manner.

Another strength of our piece was the clock puzzle. It juxtaposed the two ideas of ‘work’ and ‘play’, because although it represented the ‘work’ part of our daily routine, we were ultimately doing a jigsaw puzzle, which is more ‘play’. This created an interesting dimension to our piece as it questioned the boundaries between these two actions. If we took that puzzle out of our chosen site, and put it in another space, would it have a different effect?

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Audience Reaction

This was the first time we had put all our performance elements together, and had a real audience to respond to. It was interesting how different groups of people reacted depending on where we were positioned within the room and what we were doing. During the process of creating the puzzle we had people intrigued by what the final image was, and one man kept coming back to watch our progress along with his two daughters.  It would be interesting to see how the dynamic of the space would have changed further if the puzzle had been bigger and filled the entire floor. I’m glad that we got a wide range of age groups witnessing our work because they all had a different approach. The children who entered our space got excited and looked eager to join in when we were creating the puzzle. However the moment we started miming, several children refused to enter and became fearful of the space, because our movements had become unnatural and mechanical. On the other hand, the older generation were more inquisitive and also nonchalant, with some members just waltzing right in and completely ignoring us! At one point, we were all sat in a line by the entrance watching the human clock, and you could see the audience were more wary of entering the space because of how we had positioned ourselves. We had manipulated the audience to feel like they were imposing and that the space solely belonged to us. This reminds me of the work of Susan Bennett whose work discusses the relationship between the audience and distance between performers:

‘Distance is intrinsic to art….the deliberate manipulation of distance is to a great extent, the underlying factor which determines theatrical style.’

(Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception, Susan Bennett, Routeledge London, 1990)

Indeed, this is relevant to our piece as our distance between our audience varied throughout the day, changing our space and even atmosphere of the room. Our chosen space was claustrophobic anyway so to have close proximity to our audience intensified this feeling of confinement, and our style switched between the natural and unnatural. Perhaps we should have rehearsed much more with an audience leading up to our final performance, in order to discover more ways in which to involve or distance our audience further.

Concluding Remarks

This performance process has developed over a long time, collaborating many ideas and exploring different techniques. I felt we portrayed our ideas on time quite effectively, both visually and practically. However, I think we over complicated our ideas, and it would have been more effective to have done something minimal and simple which progressed over the duration of the day, rather than having a set structure of many different things. As a performer, it was a challenge to be focused for 6 hours continually but this work has taught me many skills which I would like to develop in my next project.

 

Works Cited

Bennett Susan, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception, (Routeledge London, 1990)

Mirror, Mirror on the wall – Reflective Blog

Jessica Jarvis / / Concealed Illusions

Our performance today has been an overall success! From a good sized audience to a well rehearsed structured performance. Setting up today was a lengthly time due to the technical requirements needed for the performance. Ashleigh provided us with the projector for us to use for the John Charmicheal painting which slowly fades into a realistic, harsh, gritty picture of the Brayford water front. The reasoning behind us having this painting still projected on the wall above Venus de Milo drawing is because it reiterates the idealized society that we are in today.

The preparation behind this performance has been well rehearsed. Technology is used through out performance with the use of projection and sound both of which are on a loop. We had plenty of time to set up to make sure the volume of the recording was a good volume so that the audience could hear it. The sound scape was a recording of Kirsty, Sam and me  reading out make-up techniques found of the internet on make-up websites telling you how to apply make up in the perfect way. There is also a combination of painting techniques which interlinks make-up and art becoming a combined piece of masking. These recordings was to highlight the technique of how women are TOLD  to look their best emphasizing on key features in their face giving an extra definition of their face. The impact of these recordings were to show the difference between how we apply the make up in the beginning of our piece, neat, tidy, the “normal” way but the piece develops and how we apply the make up becomes abstract, which contrast with the recording. This heightens the effect of make up technique as what we are doing contradicts to what is being said. The use of understanding where the sheet (a white sheet that is draped along the top of the surface to give a simplistic and neat look) goes is vital for us so that no make up touches the surfaces in the usher gallery, the sheet gave a nice finished touch to the finalized image.

Having the clock in our performance was not only used for the timing and structure for our piece, it was also there to show the durational time of the on-going idealized effort that women/ artists go to make a perfect image of themselves or something else.  The ending of our piece is when the alarm goes off all of us just stand up and leave the room. Towards the ending the make-up is just all over our body, making a masking of ourselves so when the alarm goes its ironic that we just leave, allowing members of public to give their own interpretation of the piece very similar to how they would interetate a painting.

The connection between us and Tom was significant as we was showing the relationship between men and women. The idea of men watching women and women impressing men, power, status, which becomes a cycle just like our movement within the performance. His drawings draw upon the importance of the theme within our piece, as he is making ‘copies’ of us, again reiterating what we are doing, making an idealized copy of ourselves. Where Tom is sat throughout the piece is substantial  because he is sat in front of drawings that are idealized copies of faces, body and Lincoln which shows a strong correlation between the site and our theme.

I am very happy with the development of piece which has created a important, meaningful performance which can only be specifically performed in the Usher gallery. The process of this finalized performance has been a learning experience which has helped me understand the importance and reasoning behind the minor details of our piece.

 

Feminisim

Jessica Jarvis / / Concealed Illusions, Research

‘Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings’

Fisanick, Christina (2007) Feminism Opposing Viewpoints Series, Greenhaven Press

Our piece developed when we performed it to our fellow peers and Dan. The general feedback we had was questioning the relationship between us (Sam, Kirsty and myself) and Tom. The use of Tom sketching and making copies of us and him being makes him become a superior and the observer, watching the minor details that us (women) do to make ourselves look good.

The link between Tom and us in our performance shows the status and power that Tom has, him sitting on a chair watching us, implying the status that ‘men’ have on women. He is observing us, creating pictures and images of us with make up on, suggesting the illusion and the beauty that men see on women. Identifying the key features that women highlight when wearing make up, particularly when going on a night out, most women ‘dress to impress‘ making the opposite sex become attracted to them.

With us applying make up on, it suggests that we are applying a mask to make an idyllic representation of ourselves to be observed by other men. This is why we stand up and walk to the Venus de Milo drawing, and remove our mask highlighting that we are just copies of ourselves when we have make-up on, removing the make-up shows the true beauty and the naturalistic face, creating a honest picture of ourselves.

 The image of women to look good is pressurized by society through the use of magazines, television, radio etc. It becomes the ‘norm’ for women to to wear make-up. If a woman doesn’t wear make-up you tend to get the questions like ‘why are you not wearing make-up?‘. Why should we be questioned? Why is it, when we don’t wear make-up we feel naked? Because of the pressure to look good and to be an exhibition of ourselves we are creating the concealed illusion copies of ourselves.

 

 

 

So? How did it go?

Holly Rudd / / Evaluation, People

I have mixed emotions about how well our final performance went. I feel that some areas of the work really shined and showed off what we wanted people to see, but then I also feel that we lost momentum half way through and therefore lost the drive that was needed to push the performance and keep it going strong.

I feel that performance day itself could have gone better. The group did not seem to have the enthusiasm that you would hope for on performance day. Setting up the exhibit took longer than I had planned due to afore mentioned lack of enthusiasm. Another issue that presented us the morning of our exhibit was the weather, as our piece was outside we hoped for clear skies and glorious sunshine, instead we got the usual British rainy weather, by the time we began running our exhibition at 12pm it had stopped raining and began to warm up a bit, this meant more audience members wandered outside to see what we were up to. I feel if the weather had been sunny initially we may have had a better audience turn out than we actually did. Once we got the piece up and running I started to feel more confident about the group as a whole and the weather.

When we were in place I could see it being a slow start but as we got going the group seemed to work together as a team. As part of the window pair I feel that our performance was well noticed by the audience and received a good response. We had families waving at us for no apparent reason, I took this as a good thing as it meant that people were acknowledging what we were doing and came to get a closer look and see what it was all about. Because of this I think that the window position was a good one to use as it enabled us to attract an audience to the rest of the exhibit.

Our piece lasted for 1½ hours. We were hoping to perform for 2 but unfortunately that was interrupted by unavoidable circumstances. But the hour and a half was plenty of time to gage audience responses.

The audience reacted mostly as I hoped they would, we wanted our audience to come and experience what we had to offer. They could come along view our exhibit and make their own observations about our piece. I feel that this worked successfully due to the way that people responded whilst moving around the exhibition.

‘Audience need not be categorized, or even consider themselves, as ‘audience’’ (Pearson, 2010, pg 175) I feel this quote from Pearson applies to our piece, because we presented a gallery and not so much of a performance; our exhibition was for people to wander around and experience which people did. Therefore our audience could be described as a number of things, spectators, observers, participants, or indeed members of an audience. But because our performance was based around the actions of the public our ‘audience’ could be classed as part of the performance itself presenting everyday pedestrian actions much like we were as a group.

We did however have one couple ask the table groups to stop talking or quieten down. I think this was an interesting response as it’s not a normal response when a performance is going on. But I feel that the idea of site specific encourages these responses. We are coming into a space that is frequented by the general public and we have to be aware that these responses may be likely to occur.

In conclusion I think that our group passed on the messages that we wanted to but the delivery could have been met with more enthusiasm and commitment. If we were to develop the piece, I think that we would extend the opening times to allow more people to view it and have more exhibits for people to view.

 

Pearson, Mike (2010) site-specific performance, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

A reaction and reflection.

Gabriel / / Uncategorized

An audience’s reaction

 

 

 

I asked my partner and some friends to come to The Collection. I merely said we were going to look around the museum and meet them there, I said I would meet them in the café.

 

 

I wanted to find out their reactions without expecting some sort of performance.

 

 

When they spotted me outside of the café, I kept one eye on them. They looked at me in confusion and looked around the whole “exhibit” until they clocked that it was a performance.

 

 

I asked them after it was finished what did they think and did they understand what we were doing.

 

 

My partner agreed with Dan’s criticism and said the mimic up top didn’t seem to be part of it and she didn’t understand what was going. She did however once looking around notice it was an exhibit, and I was a piece of art.

 

 

When I asked my friends they agreed with the general observation and they said once they stared closely at Jennifer and I they noticed we were mimicking the people inside the café.

 

 

My partner as a person, who is not interested in drama in the slightest, said site specific was highly interesting.  They have never been drama people but they understood that what we were performing was the location.

 

 

As Kaye (2000, p220) said, “Finally, it is to this end that site-specific art so presciently works against its own final or definitive location, as, though this wide variety of forms and strategies, it speculates toward the performance of its places.”

 

 

Even people oblivious to drama and was site specific is understood that we were an art gallery showing café culture and understood perfectly what we were trying to do.

Bibliography:

Kaye, N., (2000). Site-specific Art. Oxton: Routledge p220.

Gabriel Davies