Showing the class a snippet of my performance was a great opportunity to receive feedback on what kinds of reactions people had towards my piece, and also to hear different idea’s on what would help make my message for the audience clearer and more evocative.
The space around the piece I am solely basing my performance on needs much more attention brought to it. There is a significance about the large cupboard that stands directly behind the artwork. To incorporate this in to my performance could be a way of embodying myself as the heart, and the cupboard as the box that has been opened, allowing me access in or out of it as I choose.
After performing and receiving my feedback, I realised that my piece would be a lot more hard-hitting if I were to interact on a closer level to the audience. For example, monitoring their heart rate for 1 minute, documenting it and pinning it on to them, creates a personal moment between myself and the spectator, and if I have this moment with more than one person, it creates a relatability from one spectator to another, bringing them closer together as an audience.
My performance has a focus on making something not typically visible to an audience, real and visible to them as presented through myself. “when we describe images as we are performing, we are conjuring, imagining. To understand this and everything else written here, you too are allowing in other ideas of what is real or not, and how it can affect us.” (Carey and Carey, 2011, 107)
Through representing the heart and its many different notions and functions, I am embodying a part of everybody that they may not have seen represented to them in such a way before. I feel that the performance has the ability to stir emotive reactions from spectators as there will be something within the performance that every person can relate to. Although the spectators will by no means observe the piece and all feel the same, I will be creating something that conjures speculative thoughts around the human heart. Having factual information displayed about the organ will give an audience member something informative that they can take away from the performance, whether or not they’ve had a personal connection with what I will be doing, there will a textual element brought to the performance so that there is something for anybody to take from the performance, whether that be an emotional connection, or factual information they may not have known or considered before.
Making a performance piece through creating something non-visible into something visible, in terms of myself humanly embodying a vital organ, allows a spectator to freely use their imagination, and therefore means that they cannot have a wrong way of perceiving or experiencing the performance. Creating something that gives the audience independence to interpret the performance however they wish to, allows them to consider things on their own, without having a right or wrong way of thinking told to them by the performer.
Works Cited:
- Carey, D. and Carey, B. (2011) The non-visible worlds of art and performance. A Journal of Performance & Art, 33 (3) 107.