“Fundamentally, much performance cannot be written down. It is unwritable and unsayable and has to be communicated in other registers. And that is its fascination so far as the study of everyday life in the city goes; it is a living demonstration of those skills we have but cannot firmly cultivate in the linguistic domain, and it can – in the best work – provide a sense of new styles of urban living which might simultaneously produce new sense of how the world is.” (Thrift 2003: 406-7, cited in Lavery, 2005, 231)
I believe that what Thrift is trying to express here is that performance can be more effective when you use other means of speaking to an audience without only using spoken words. By allowing an audience to experience a performance in a way where they are not just spoken at and a way that allows them to explore, gives them the opportunity to create their own interpretations and relationships to the performance.
“Indeed in that performance is orientated towards relationally responsive events rather than referential forms of rationality, it can furnish us with methodologies which can banish the urge to mastery and control. […] In other words, the performative turn can help to plumb the meanings of democracy in which can be written into practice.” (Thrift 2003: 406-7, cited in Lavery, 2005, 231)
By allowing the audience to have a certain amount of control over a performance can provide new ways of thinking and personal outcomes which may have not been reached if restrictions had been used that allow the performance to rely solely on the ‘performers’ themselves. This type of performance technique I believe would be effective within the location we are creating a performance for and I think it would provide a more personal reflective experience for both the ‘audience’ and ‘performers’.
For the past two weeks we have been invited by our tutor to undertake a series of tasks outside of seminar and to carry out at our site. These tasks were taken from 25 instructions for performance in cities (Lavery, 2005, 233). One of the tasks that I chose was to list ten things you saw, heard and smelt on your way to class over the period of a week. With the short period of time I had to carry out the task, I decided to do this for one journey rather than for the weekly period as stated. Below are photographs that document my experience.
Photographs (Gibson, 2014)
These investigations allowed me to think more closely about questions that were raised in the previous seminars around truth claims, public engagement and public space. Using these methods has given me inspiration to explore deeper into the ideas of a task based performance, where the audience are the performers themselves “Visitors experience something fundamental to the context and are drawn into performing this themselves rather than watching others do it” (Davis, 1995, 16). I believe this will give the audience an opportunity to engage more with the site itself and to question the artefacts in the site as well as questioning what art is. This would include tasks that the audience receives at the performance, or prior to it that allows them to interact with the space and following the performance, a way to document this “Through the physical relationship to the artefacts the installation is constructed in such a way that a performance about the underlying meaning of the place occurs” (Davis, 1995, p.15) using this information I believe that by producing a performance that allows the audience to ‘perform’ directly with the artwork both physically and emotionally is key to successful engagement.
Works Cited:
Davis, T.C. (1995) Performing and the real thing in the Postmodern Museum. TDR, 39 (Autumn) 15-40.
Gibson, K. (2014) Ale at Narnia. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) Bacon ribs. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) Graffiti wall. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) Seagull wings. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) Through the traffic lights. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) The Face. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K (2014) Trains from a bridge. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) Traffic Traffic. Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) What will you discover? Taken 13 February.
Gibson, K. (2014) Which ways that way? Taken 13 February.
Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 25 (3) 229-238.