Katheryn Owens

Myself, Florence and Chris have submitted a collaborative proposal for DIY 9, for a specific event in the project that takes place in Manchester. The proposal combines all our research and practice; if we aren't accepted I'm hoping we can still do the workshop elsewhere or adapt the format because as an experiment I think it would be interesting. below is an edited version of our idea.

Ideally this project would take place in the North West, using Manchester as a base and extending into the region. Manchester is a cultural centre of the country and is easily accessible to areas outside of the city, and it is ideal to explore beyond the city centre. Its good transport links to other cities in the north facilitates this. We’ve specifically chosen to do this project outside of London due in part to the size of the city and because there is already a lot of focus on London. However, the project is designed so that it could be adapted to take place anywhere.

Our concept contains three strands.  1) Getting lost and failure as a creative means, 2) how do we define artist and the space of an artist, 3) collaboration beyond being a means of making a piece work together, where thinking is a collaborative practice.

Over the course of three days we will take together three journeys, culminating on the fourth day with a final journey, led collaboratively by the participants. Discussion and reflection will happen continually throughout the workshop.

We will jointly create a twitter account, to which everyone taking part will sign up to. This account will be private so the only people taking part in conversation are participants. Using pseudonyms, the participants will be able to communicate and discuss anonymously. Using this method we will also be able to set participants tasks. Democracy of the conversation is created and sustained by anonymity of authorship.

The journey forces the thinking space from the studio to situation; extending the space of creation. Focusing on the journey we will be exploring the concept of non-place. If suitable, in collaboration with the participants, aspects of the workshop could be live streamed to create a virtual journey, further exploring what the notion of space means.

The three journeys:

1.  Familiarising the city through sound. Beginning with a silent walk as an exercise in listening, this will develop into recording sounds which others can trace the city through.

2.    Participants agree on an activity that is carried out on public transport. Together all taking one journey, they will communicate non-verbally to carry out a private performance in a public sphere, connecting the participants and disrupting the normal order of the journey; in a manner that doesn’t necessarily identify that a performance is taking place.

3.    Using previously considered questions (e.g., things you would like to ask a stranger), participants take a journey together during which they interview one another. This can happen in a number of ways, such as in pairs or as a whole group. We will assess how well we are getting to know one another, or whether this is truly possible. We will discover whether this remains an exclusive activity in which only the group are participating, or whether members of the public begin to join in, further exploring questions around who is the artist, and collectivity and collaboration with this.

Our workshop is for artists of the everyday, and to confine this within the spectrum of the workshop participants will wear an item that identifies them as such, and as part of our temporary collective. In this manner we mean to explore who is an artist. As the work is publicly sited we are looking at the accidental collaboration between participants and public. 

On the fourth day the participants direct the journey based on discoveries/ideas made so far. I think another possibility could be participants designing audio walks for one another based on the collaborative experience so far.

Prior to the show there will be some sort of correspondence or information that instructs people to think of something/ a topic that maters to them. At the moment I intend this to be as open as possible, the aim is it gives the participant some direction over the performance and that they haven’t had to think of this under pressure; though I am not sure of exactly what theme/area to ask people to think about (or if it needs to be narrowed down to this). Logistically, this may not be possible until the day of the performance, unless I’m aware of people who will be coming – so in this case participants may have to take some time to do this and then come to the performance once they’ve done it.

The performance space consists of two rooms, connected by a door. In each room is half a meal (e.g., so if there is a sandwich it has been cut in half and placed in each room). For costs and practicality this can’t be an elaborate meal. The participant and performer connect remotely and talk and eat together, sharing the meal. We make small talk to establish a relationship or just eat together. After a few minutes of establishing this relationship they are offered as choice. They can either stay in their room and the performer in theirs (and talk about the subject they’ve chosen), or come into the same room and sit silently for a period of time. If they choose this they can’t eat and must sit away from the table so there aren’t distractions. They must use this time to think about this specific thing (and the presence between participant and performer?), after which they can write, either to someone external, each other, or to no one. In each room is a post-box, so they can ‘post’ what they have written, (e.g. if they have written to someone external), or they can give what they have written to each other, or keep it and so on. If the participant has decided to stay in their own room they can also write, and if they wish to exchange this then it can be slipped under the door. The various stages of the performance may have to be timed so that more than one participant can take place in an evening.

The aim of this is that the participants have choice, but hopefully not any kind of limited choice, but the process of thinking becomes performative and in the control of the participant. As discussed after the lab, environment etc. will impact how people think, so to keep this as much in the participants power as possible I have chosen that they spend time prior to the performance thinking too – thus beginning their performance externally to the two rooms. The meal is symbolic – it being in half so we are literally sharing it, and representing that the audience are being given the performance. It is also meant to represent the difficulty in the idea of authorship etc. – whether this is a process of sharing rather than owning wholly. Similarly the performance aims to give the participant time for reflection and privacy. If they choose to cross over in to the performers room, this is a symbolic crossing over from audience to performer in that the participant has exercised choice. (I believe this occurs anyway, but it is an illustration of it). Each performance then, hopefully, will be very different: as the agenda is set by the participant on an individual basis, and in what choices the audience choose to make.

I need to do various workshops and experiments to find ways to make each stage of it work. I’ll probably also need to find someone to help me during the degree show to let people in (or come up with some system so people know not to enter the room when a performance is in progress).

• Connection between us (getting to know one another – impossibility of this and falsity of this as it is staged).
• Choice
• An offering
• Connection to someone external
• Audience as subject YET removal of gaze
• Performative thinking.
•  Surrendering of both audience and performer. in exercising choice the audience become the performer and so have to take responsibility for those choices.
•  (examine own complicity)
• need real choices, not empty options – freedom in thinking
• restore self to self.
• Perhaps all info about what could occur and choices should be made upfront so participants are informed and with that information can make real decisions? Even to extent of warning about how alcohol etc. could effect choices?
• Find a way to not be forcing people to tell me private stuff (unless it is very clear they want to). E.g., if they start to, could just say ‘thank you for offering to share that but lets take a moment to be silent so you can think about it rather than tell me?’. So not manipulating, exploiting or being voyeuristic.
•  Individuality of performance/interpretation/multiplicity.

I was informed that this production previously ran on a larger scale. The audience would walk around a set of the village. I attended on the first night of a new version, that has reduced the performance in size so that it is contained in one small room, (the idea being that it can be toured more easily). Instead of set structures, the different locations (e.g., butchers shop, town hall etc.) are represented by tables.

Prior to attending, the company send you an email asking your thoughts about community and some basic questions about your personality. Answering these questions unlocks short chapters of a book about the village. Extending the performance beyond the theatre, to our daily lives prior the event was really effective: I was excited about the performance and already invested it. The village is divided in to longstanding townsfolk and newcomers; this situation is causing tension. When you arrive you are assigned a character and given information about your character. ‘Henri’ facilitates the performance, and then the audience take over: there are various loose narratives the audience can direct the performance in (and ultimately there are three potential outcomes); what direction the performance takes depends on what the audience does. You can write letters to one another, and post secrets that get announced by the town crier. You don’t know who to trust: someone on your side is betraying you.

Because I was there on the first night there were some teething problems. I saw one of the production team a couple of weeks later and he said the performance had improved a lot. I felt there wasn’t enough instruction or facilitation or information. I liked that the audience dictated what happened, but because we lacked information we were confused about what we were supposed to do, who we were supposed to talk to, and this hindered our interaction and the development of the narrate. I’d like to go again because apparently these problems have been overcome; the characters more fleshed out and the information made clearer.

This performance felt like a game; we played as we might have played as kids, a ready-made fantasy world was created for us. Coney have also made interactive computer games, here instead of role-playing through an avatar, we got to be in the game. We were given the scenario, and it became ours. Despite being confused as to what I was meant to be doing, I was invested in it. Within the world of the game the other side was the enemy, I didn’t want that side to control my side. Unfortunately, because we weren’t clear on our characters, or what our secrets were, the plot became very muddled. The characters as written were lost, where they came to life was where the audiences personalities took over.

During previous productions, the correspondence prior to the performance was to develop your character and backstory. I think this version could have benefited from this also. What the performance began to do however was give itself up to the unpredictable: it is interesting that for this to fully be achieved we needed rules and boundaries; without these the risk was that in the confusion nothing would happen. Within the space of a couple of hours though allegiances and communities had formed – it was fun and afterwards we all chatted amongst the different sides, but during the performance we felt committed to our side. What this throws up, despite the jovial atmosphere, is something actually quite disturbing; how quickly we form arbitrary sides, without all the facts, and how quickly we are willing to betray one another to preserve ourselves against the unknown.

http://www.youhavefoundconey.net/

Gardner, Lyn, ‘Join in the Murder Game at Battersea Arts Centre’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/oct/19/murder-game-battersea-arts-centre, The Guardian, 19/10/09, last accessed 10/5/12.

This performance unfolded in stages, and whilst there were touches that I enjoyed or found stimulating, as a whole the performance was lacking something, and felt disingenuous. The root of this feeling was the gap between form and content. The show developed and snowballed in a way that was entertaining, but as a performance it didn’t do what it claimed to do.

The performance used the day’s news and was built around responding to these stories. We begin by sitting around tea tables, reading the papers, and having a conversation. This was pleasantly informal. We were instructed to pick a headline from a news story that makes us angry, and then collectively choose one of these to discuss.  No one was pressured to speak, and generally the more confident people spoke. This is where my frustration with the performance begins. I liked this element of conversation, and felt it was OK if people didn’t want to speak. However, the Time Out review of the performance found this to be unsuccessful, stating “Perhaps my team were a placid bunch, perhaps after days of Murdoch/Leveson/omnishambles the papers themselves were a bit bland, but the first hour of this show simply didn't fire me up.”[1] Similarly, on Facebook Uninvited Guests have thanked certain audiences for joining in discussion and making the performance successful, which suggests that on nights where this isn’t the case responsibility lies with the audience: the performance is deemed unsuccessful if the audience are quieter. It is the performers role to engage the audience and encourage discussion where it is lacking, not to expect the audience to respond in the manner desired of them. Also, whilst we were able to pick headlines individually, at our table it was the performer who selected which one we would discuss in the group; perhaps this limited some people’s access to conversation if they either weren’t interested or felt ill informed in the topic chose. In itself, I felt a lack of conversation is OK, provided the performance utilises what has occurred. The decision not to ‘engage’ doesn’t mean that the performance isn’t happening, but rather this decision is the performance. However, for me it was after the discussion stage that things started to go wrong. We joined into a larger circle. A nominated spokesperson from each group reported back what we had discussed. There were moments of silence and contemplation. If anything, I would say these moments were too brief, that it didn’t really allow time to reflect. The performance was very busy, almost as if it was afraid of silence, afraid of things not constantly happening, people not constantly talking. The performers stated they were particular characters from the news such as David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt, etc.  And as an audience we were asked to say to these figures whatever we’d like to ask them. Some people joined in with this, most did not. I don’t think this was due to a lack of anger with these figures on the part of the audience, but rather that we didn’t need to ask the performers questions: we know they are pretending, they aren’t the people they say they are, we know they won’t answer us. It felt more like a competition as to who’s read the most news.

One of the performers then took on all these roles. He became an amalgamation of the grotesque. Gradually the performance descended into something giving the appearance of, but never quite achieving, anarchy. The actor removed his clothes; he had a giant newspaper penis attached to him. Tea was spat at him. He screamed at us to spit tea. As if this polite, reserved symbol of British culture was being subverted into one of vitriol, displaying the passion that runs underneath quiet appearances. But it didn’t work, because we were playing like we were told to, not how we chose to. I felt it was expected that just by us being there we’d be whipped up into a frenzy, like a riot; but we weren’t. Nothing happened. A lot was said, we were told a lot was happening, but these words weren’t translated into action. I felt that too much was reliant on us as an audience to feel a certain way; an attempt to manufacture something that can’t be manufactured.

We were given masks of people who died that day. The pianist played a song to the dead, a monotonous tune that got louder and louder. His head was wrapped in newspaper. He was a victim of torture. The naked man with the giant newspaper penis  - representing all the evil figures from the news – was forced out of the room. An exhausted calm descended. And the female performer, opening the window for air to breath shared a story of hope, that her children give her hope for the future. A woman, her children: a tired cliché. We were asked to share our stories of hope. This felt at odds with the rest of the performance; that we had to suddenly shift gears. We were led outside, where the headlines from the beginning were read out and burned, with the words, ‘make better please’. I don’t think this symbolic burning made anything better. It didn’t actually change anything, and if you left feeling something had changed then you had just appeased yourself; kidding ourselves into thinking we’ve purged the world of sin. Or was this gesture to point out it isn’t that easy to purge the world of sin? Yet neither did the performance motivate me into action – and at the time I didn’t feel either that the aim was to make us act. Almost as if the hopeful ending was saying ‘don’t worry, it’ll all work out’. What does this mean for the roll-call of dead?  The grotesque and absurd journey the performance took felt fitting, given the news, but for this my participation didn’t feel integral at all, instead the performance seemed more of an illustration rather than seeking to change anything.  

We were given the programme at the end. The programme had a guide on how to hold your own Make Better Please. This clarifies a little what the performance was working towards; in brief to foster a discussion about what’s happening in the world. Discussion is so important, but I don’t think this performance encouraged discussion so much as wanting members of the audience to make statements. There is already so much emphasis on people making statements, on sharing our opinions, expecting to be heard, without listening to the responses. In his essay ‘The Production of Sincerity’, Boris Groys discusses how the proliferation of our designed selves on the internet (our avatar, via Facebook, YouTube, twitter and so on) has led to the individual becoming an art-work, each of us in competition with one another, the result being the end of audience: as everyone has to shout louder and louder to be heard.[2] If you’re not shouting you appear apathetic. We have forgotten the value of listening and silence.

Ultimately, within the performance nothing can change because the next night the news needs to be symbolically burnt again. Burning the headlines doesn’t mean those headlines don’t exist. Perhaps it is less about the contents of the news, and more about how the news operates itself; that it is scaremongering. Perhaps the performance is a pastiche of this, and perhaps in burning the headlines they are burning the mechanisms of the news rather than the information the news conveys.

In the article ‘Uninvited Guests let the audience call the shots’ the company are quoted as being concerned with “democratising the authorship”.[3] The tight structure of the performance, and the reliance on the audience to behave a certain way (to not be placid; that the performance is deemed to have failed should this be the case) means that this process of democratisation is not achieved. The performance was a collaboration with the audience, requiring interaction, but it was not a process of democratising authorship because of the constraints in place. Similarly, where the performance was successful for one reviewer lay in the companies “assured ability as emotional manipulators”.[4] There was a lack of choice for the audience. The article goes on to state that they “wonder if fights might break out. ‘Anything could happen’ ”.[5] They “don't know if audiences will share their sense of injustice or inequality in the world”, but they have hope; a hope that the audience will "think about how they relate to the world, how you might make a difference".[6] The problem is the performance doesn’t facilitate this, and in requiring the audience to interact in a very specific and highly authored way the danger is that there is an assumption if this interaction does not take place then the audience don’t have any sense of injustice, or are instead apathetic. There isn’t really room for a fight to break out; the audience are instructed in a very polite fashion and then watch from a distance the highly performed chaos. I didn’t really get the point in people shouting their opinion briefly and not doing anything. That’s what twitter is for.

http://www.uninvited-guests.net/projects/make-better-please, last accessed 10/5/12.

Costa, Maddy, ‘Uninvited Guests let the audience call the shots’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/feb/21/uninvited-guests-audience-call-shots, The Guardian, published 21/2/12, last accessed 11/5/12.

Gardner, Lyn, ‘Make Better Please – review’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/may/04/make-better-please-review, 4/5/12, last accessed 10/5/12.

Groys, Boris, ‘The Production of Sincerity’, Going Public, e-flux/Sternberg Press (Berlin: 2010), pp 38 – 49.

Lukowski, Andrzej, http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/event/261970/make-better-please#.T6UIckQW2WI.twitter, Time Out, 4/5/12, last accessed 10/5/12.

Last night I went to see a scratch performance of Too Close to the Sun by Rhiannon Armstrong and Hannah Reade at the BAC. It uses the stories of Icarus and Amelia Earhart to explore risk, effort, endurance and I think heroic legend born out of failure. One aspect of the performance that I thought was really engaging was that it didn’t feel like they were acting. I don’t know if this was because the performance is in early stages and so isn’t polished yet, but little things like joining in one another’s sentences, helping each other with cues, moments where they looked at one another and giggled and so on. I felt their personalities come through and I think I invested in their performance more as a result of it; these things made it seem informal, an atmosphere of camaraderie. Another part I liked was in one section one of the performers lay on another one on the floor who then dragged her across the stage like this. I found this very effective, particularly as we were physically close to the performers, so we could see the effort and strain in performer doing the dragging, in contrast to the other performer who looked really peaceful. We didn’t know how long it would take to drag her like this from one side of the stage to the another, and it illustrated the stories they’d been discussing: the effort and endurance involved for no real reason (you don’t really need to fly around the world just to prove you can), and of course both Icarus and Amelia Earhart dies in their pursuits whereas here the performers made it to the other side of the stage – instead of flying remaining very grounded, weighed down to earth by the weight of one another. I think (had the room been bigger) they could have sustained this moment much longer.

I initially thought (when I first heard about the residency and applied for it) that it was about mapping your territory. I interpreted this as where you place your practice in relation to others. Now though, I don’t know what the aim of the residency was. It mainly took the form of conversation (which in itself is interesting to me), and a bit of networking. A lot of the time we mocked ‘art-speak’, but, ironically, never having been comfortable with ‘art-speak’ before because I’ve never learnt how to do it, I actually feel a lot more able to join in these conversations now. I think it’s helped me learn how to speak bollocks with confidence.

The first day we went to Arcadia-Missa in Peckham. We learnt about what they do and how they do it, and learnt a bit about one another’s practice. When it was my turn to speak, quite a lively discussion stemmed from me beginning to talk about authorship and our interim show; there were conflicting opinions but the discussion demonstrates how relevant certain theories are (whether you agree with them or not) – when we consider the role of authorship in power and hierarchies, and at the same time the risk in assuming autonomy of authorship as an audience (the fear of patronising) is that we won’t recognise exploitation; how do we recognise authorship? One person said that these theories (Barthes, Ranciere etc.) are an over-simplification of the world. This annoyed me at first until it occurred to me that in that case I hadn’t’ explained the research properly, because I think its actually complicated, and maybe even impossible to ever recognise authorship.

The gallery/studio has existed for a couple of years and is described as one of the successful/trendy spaces at the moment, and is an example of how graduates are continuing their own practice and research methodologies outside of education. Their approach to collaborative writing and publishing is particularly something that is keeping conversations they began at art-school going, and that I wish we could do too.

Another conversation that came out of this day was around community. Peckham is currently a bit of a focal point for young artists, and we discussed what this notion of community and culture is when it has moved into an area that already had an established community and culture. I felt some frustration was expressed by the artists at the idea that Peckham is a cultural centre right now in a way that dismisses/ignores the culture that pre-existed. It’s a funny coincidence that this idea of two separate cultures resembles a lot where I used to live – maybe it is inevitable in student communities. For me, this was quite a surreal conversation, because I live in Peckham. I didn’t know anything about the area before moving there, so it’s just chance that I’ve moved to an area full of art students and artists whilst I’m studying art. However, because I’m new, and because I’m not studying locally, I don’t know people there, so this is how (from a completely personal perspective) it was disorientating hearing about these two communities/cultures, and personally not belonging to either of them, though I suppose I am attempting to become part of the art-community; and for a few hours we established our own community based around this conversation.

The second day was the most interesting I think, and I think would have been useful for my course mates. We began at Wimbledon and travelled the district line the entire way, taking part in collaborative reading during the journey. We each read a chapter of a book whilst on the tube, and then discussed and fed back to the group about our chapter. In this way, as a group we read the entire book. The studio and library space was extended outside of their normal sites, and the journey was changed to a site of learning and sharing. It was also performative, as in a public space people were watching and listening to our conversation. Nobody else on the tube joined in though which would have been interesting (we didn’t invite people to join in, but it could have been interesting if people had cut in). We then went to a school that offers A-level, BTEC and foundation in art, and carried out ‘reciprocal interviews’ with the students.

On the last day the writer/artist sally O’Reilly came and talked to us. Her approach of presenting was a collaboration with the audience, she basically opened up her computer and let people select things to look at which she then spoke about. In the afternoon we began to make a joint artist statement. We took all the wanky art words we’d used over the three days and put them in a bag and selected them one-by-one to make sentences. The idea is we’ll each now take this away and work on it, and make a piece of work stemming from this which we’ll bring together again to further extend the conversation and develop links and make a collaborative work. 

A lot of the day involved discussion around the terminology of collaboration. This is very relevant to me, not just because it is currently a trend, but that participation is, of course, a collaboration. Two themes stood out for me; one around collaborations political relevance and one around the self in collaboration: when we consider the multiplicity of the self, then we have to consider that every action we make or thought we have is a collaborative one.

Laura Cull: “we find that immanent authorship is everywhere, even in the one who considers herself a sovereign author. It is all a matter of degree”

Alexandra Kolb ‘the call for collaboration is almost invariably accompanied by a rhetoric about democracy, and hence treated as politically significant”

(Both quotes from symposium guide)

Ideas raised/points made by speakers:

Collective: the idea that your individuality shows through but collectivity is stronger. E.g., think of a collective as a plait.

Can one inhabit multiple worlds through multiple identities? If we are thinking about multiplicity of self, where is the ‘I’ situated?

Collaboration can come about from artists with established relationships, and between those with minimal knowledge of each other.  This seems like stating the obvious, but it made me reconsider the recent collaboration we did with students in New York. Our main collaborator outside of our own group was Yanghee, who was dancing. She was our point of contact. We have not met her (apart from Youngshin), but more than this we have not even spoken to or communicated in any way with our other collaborators. They are unknown to us. We don’t know their response to the collaboration. At the end of the performance I caught a snippet of what the professor who was leading the students in New York said, something about ‘demonstrates possibilities for new ways of working”. We don’t know what this was referring to, though I assume it has something to do with the idea of performing simultaneously internationally in response to what is occurring in the other country. This project explored two cities which (in general) each group had never been to. It was a very interesting experience working with people who ere physically in another site, and whilst relying on technology caused problems and narrowed down the scope of what we could do from our intention, at the same time collaborating with little knowledge of who our collaborators were, and without an awareness of physical presence, was quite freeing.

Collaborating with people working outside your area of expertise; respecting one another’s skill set and seeing possibilities within interdisciplinarity, across fields to create new ways of working and new research: crossing a void of communication, where there is no common language but you are driven by shared will.

“The life of a work…(has) no fixed relationship with the self, with the performer, with the auditor-spectator. In order to write you must disregard the world. The text is returned to the author as another text”. (I think these points were made by Simon Jones).

Different modes of collaborating. If you have been instructed to do something it may not feel collaborative, however, you are re-imagining the instruction in your head and carrying it out through this rendering. On the one hand, when we think this way we are recognising how as individuals we are already emancipated because we are recognising our minds engagement with the world – thinking is a collaborative process (along the lines of Rancières argument that audiences don’t need to be pushed into action etc., to do so is intellectually patronising, and to hierarchically divide the world into the capable and incapable). On the other hand though, this way of thinking can be used to reinforce hierarchies, as it is assuming the individuals ability to be part of the collaborative process without taking in to account the potential for the person giving the instruction to be an oppressive figure: that whilst ones mind may be free, the options available may be few.

A redefinition of collaboration that is at odds with individualism and late –capitalism; a reaction to contemporary world; a desire for people to come together. OR a method of appeasing ourselves, making ourselves feel better and connected to others whilst around us everything gets worse?

Unknown directive - let go of ownership.

Does giving up responsibility mean we no longer invest?

Collaboration requires a vital degree of incompleteness in material shared.

Risk of collaboration becoming a vacuous term; it is everything and nothing. But without am expanded concept of collaboration we risk not acknowledging what collaboration can be and its potential for working with others.

The idea that we don’t criticise performance/art/politics if we are part of it/if we’re in it because that would be to self criticise (Groys), doesn’t take into account when/in what situations we are willing to self-criticise, or our ability to mentally remove ourselves from the thing (e.g.: where do we use the term ‘we’ and where do we use ‘I’?). If we consider ourselves to be participants but crucially, not authors, (so I suppose this is still a hierarchical experience rather than a truly participatory one in which everyone is equal), then it is easy to remove ourselves and criticise the experience. However, participation, rather than watching, can make the work feel more accessible through its empirical nature and therefore even if we don’t feel we truly have any ability to change something we can still feel integral to it, and understand what it is through the process of doing.

Solo making is still collaborative. Only one collaborative activity is to co-work with others with a view to make something.

Identity as collaborative is a standard idea now.

Wednesday 2/5/12 

We had to move from Trafalgar Square, our original planned site. There was a big event on – something to do with the Olympics I think. The issue wasn’t so much the space taken up but the sound; a man on a megaphone telling people to join in. This wasn’t an invitation though, it was forced on you, unavoidable, because the sound was invasive, too loud to have a conversation in or enjoy being in the square. We moved to the Southbank.

The problem with the Southbank is that people are used to seeing/avoiding people performing along there; it no longer becomes something unusual but instead is invisible, something to walk around. Initially we thought we should go in the middle of the path, so if people wanted to avoid us they’d have to walk around us. We didn’t do this because it made us nervous. In light of our feelings about Trafalgar Square I think we actually made the right decision. We didn’t want to be forceful, but didn’t want to be invisible either. Our role was to ask people if they’d like to join us. Generally the people that sat with us were the same age group, and studying similar subjects. One man suggested holding the breakfast in roads, as a disruptive political act. I find this idea interesting, but I think it becomes about something else. Our idea wasn’t politically or ideologically driven, but was to examine the breakfast as a performative act, to explore the roles of audience and performer, how accident facilitates these roles, how people engage with it, to explore what performance in a public space is. As we got there a little late there weren’t many people about and it wasn’t breakfast time, and like I mentioned before the people who stopped were people who had similar interests. This is OK though. Other people noticed us. They didn’t want to have breakfast but some people took photo’s. This is interesting for us as performers; being photographed, yet they were framing us so as photographers they were artists. And we were filming them. Documenting unintended audience who are documenting us, intended performers. The roles become indistinguishable. We would like to do it again and make it look better; have a table and chairs, a few more people facilitating it. Make it more comfortable. It’s not meant to be expensive, it’s not meant to be a big complicated meal, but something to gather people in. What worked well was that the people who did stop stayed to chat; as facilitators this was interesting and satisfying. 

(download)

Click here to download:

cluster-research-public-breakfast-odFukzAaIArcBxIlljCB.zip (9.38 MB)

Last Monday I repeated the experiment from my previous lab, but extended it over the course of a working day. The experience was really tiring; being in one room the whole day, talking the whole day. I wanted to stop and sleep. Gilly was really good at making sure we didn’t give in and take breaks and at making sure we didn’t seek distractions, so the experiment felt a lot more thorough than previously.  Gilly recorded part of the observation for her own research and practice. What was interesting for me was what was revealed about one another – we already know one another a little from being at college, so it was interesting to see how our preconceptions differed. What was also interesting was how we handled the tiredness. I was a little concerned when I got tired because I felt it was impolite of me. Though I find the experiment interesting and enjoyable, I am not sure how useful it is for me anymore without it altering in some way; either by doing it over the whole day as originally planned, thinking about how to document it and what to do with the documentation, or thinking about how to find/use a more suitable environment. The experiment is really research, and to develop my practice ideas.

We talked about how the situation felt very unreal – for Gilly I think this was to do with the room and its environment, emotionally quite a cold environment. Fir me I think this was more to do with how staged the situation was – that it isn’t normal to talk in this way, for this length of time, with this purpose in mind and with the rules we placed on ourselves.

On Monday 23 April, Katheryn Owens (on the Visual Language Performance MA course) and I spent seven and a half hours together as part of Katheryn’s research.  Her research, as I understand it, is all about getting to know one another, and how we never really know one another at all.

We spent the time together in a portakabin on site at Wimbledon College of Art.  The room wasn’t very enticing.  It was very cold for the majority of the day, then when it did eventually warm up it was very stuffy!  There were theatrical models, cameras and bit and pieces taking up a lot of the space.  We sat at a table, pulling it out so we could face one another.  It was next to a closed piano.  We had brought our own lunch so only needed to leave the room for toilet breaks.

I was looking forward to the day as I enjoy getting to know people.  Even though the environment wasn’t attractive or relaxing, or conducive to talking, we talked non-stop sharing our experience.  I was totally open (which does leave me feeling vulnerable but I think that is part of the cost of getting to know someone). Katheryn was open too, sharing her painful experience. I talked about my life, my previous jobs and my own experience of burn out and break down which I haven’t revealed to any of the people I share a studio with. 

My research and area of interest is in trying to capture moments of connection and compassionate encounter.  So Katheryn had already agreed to let me record some of our conversation.  I recorded Katheryn talking earlier on about her mother.  However, later in the day, when we were both exhausted, we had what I think was the most enriching time when Katheryn was talking about missing those friendships where you can talk freely and share everything, and in a way what she is searching for in her research about getting to know one another.  I talked about how in my work I was trying to capture that same feeling of deep connection that you have with another person and particularly in my work, when talking to another woman friend.   I knew as Katheryn was talking that this was one of those intense, profound conversations that I seek to capture.  I turned on the recorder without setting up the microphone as we were in mid conversation.  When Katheryn and I had finished talking, I was devastated to find that I had not pressed the button properly and none of the conversation had been captured digitally. (We had been talking for 6 hours and I was very tired but that is no excuse and I felt to disappointed and angry with myself for not double checking – it is not the first time that this has happened).  So I felt rather down about that.

I agree that in one way we can never get to know another person, however, I do believe that if people are courageous enough to allow the barriers to come down and share the vulnerable part of themselves, you do get an insight into someone and the process of getting to know the other begins properly.

By the end of the day, the room had become for me like an unlocatable place out of time.  Almost unreal.  But it was a real experience. The day felt a privilege. It was a rich, enjoyable, exhausting and special time.  

https://sites.google.com/site/gillypawson/

https://sites.google.com/site/gillypawson/art-practice/6-collaboration

(download)

Click here to download:

all-day-experiment-with-gilly-kHrdmfGyEcrHIxBsblpm.zip (4.38 MB)

We walked from approximately 10 pm until 2 am, fortunately the rain stopped. This went much slower than planned, because for the connection to work we needed to walk slowly, and our collaborators in New York told us it was interesting if we stopped and used Skype to show them buses, taxis, the river, us talking and so on. We still said our directions to begin with, but not following the route set by New York (explained in previous post) it felt fairly pointless, so in the end we abandoned this. Also, because of the speed we were walking at we weren’t able to get very far, and didn’t get lost as planned. We are waiting now to find how it went in New York. There was a general consensus amongst us in London that the tech rehearsal was more successful, because by the time of the performance we were so tired. This was a good experiment, but I think we’ve learnt a lot about how to make it more successful, so I would like to so it again. I think if we found a way to use the pico projector and improve the internet connection there would be a lot to explore; the cities would merge; not just through how technology is used to connect but in the liminal space created between the performers. To people passing by as well the projections would denote ‘performance’ creating interest as to what’s going on – finding new (accidental) audiences. 

(photo of theatre in New York I pinched from Youngshin)

(download)

Click here to download:

yesterdays-walk-london-ny-collaboration-hJIEeqbwcEifklHupCCH.zip (5.09 MB)