A Framing Statement:
On Saturday the 10th of May at the Usher Gallery in Lincoln, I performed a four hour performance created using the piece Never Leave Home Without It as my stimulus. The aim established for creating my performance was to challenge an audience to consider the things in life that we feel that we cannot leave home without. Presenting spectators of my work with a visual collage of superficial items that I feel a lot of people have become dependent on in today’s society offered a contrasting element to the one to one moment I created with different people who entered the museum in which I asked them to share a story that had such personal importance to them, that these are the fragmented thoughts and moments that we cannot really leave home without. Audience participation was essentially the most important element to my performance as without the discussions I had between different people, there would have been no conversations for me to record and document, therefore I would have been unable to create the diary of stories, resulting in my performance becoming meaningless. During the process of studying Site Specific performance, I became much more aware of how a space can become a fundamentally crucial element of justification behind a performance.
An Analysis of Process:
Any form of a collection automatically finds itself within a particular category; whether it is: domestic, belonging, national, conceptual, or marking a time/place/ownership. My personal collection falls within the conceptualized category and also marking ownership. I collect rings that have been passed down through the generations in my family. When I wear a ring that belonged to somebody I lost from my family, I feel comforted and closer to the person of which they once belonged.Following on from introducing ourselves and our collections, we began to explore different Site Specific works and companies. One piece that we paid particular attention to was Martin Creed’s ‘Work No.850′. The performance consisted of athletes sprinting through the Tate Gallery every 30 seconds. One of his reasons behind creating this piece was to represent life. When we think of death, typically we think of stillness and serenity, however running is an exciting activity that requires adrenaline and swift, free movement. When creating a work such as this, the artist needs to consider his audience/spectators. “In anticipation of their visit, what is to be done? First, nothing: we leave it as it is, facilitating access, saying little, allowing the remains to ‘speak’ for themselves, letting visitors address them in their own ways” (Pearson, 2010, 24). As Pearson explains in his introduction to Site Specific performance, the artist needs to consider the audience in terms of accessibility, however not to feel that they must feed them information about the work they are witnessing, instead allowing them to make their own judgments and perceptions from it. Creed also believes that there isn’t a sole person who can define what ‘art’ is. “I’m actually not the person to ask about whether this is art, because it’s not me that decides if something is art or not…” (Creed, 2008).Finally, we considered the idea of what makes a certain place a site or not. Site specific work can test a performer’s comfortability as it is a performance that isn’t being delivered on a stage or in a theatre as they may be used to. When we visited the Usher Gallery and viewed the different collections, it was interesting to explore the different spaces and imagine what kind of work we could create from viewing different items of a collection that may mean a lot to one person, however mean nothing from a different person’s perspective.
Tasks set to Inspire Performance Material:
During the beginning process of being introduced to Site Specific Performance, we received an invitation with some individual and selective tasks to experiment with in our own time, but also tasks to complete within the Usher Gallery. The tasks were taken from Carl Lavery’s list of instructions of performance in cities (Lavery, 2005, 233). Before meeting at the gallery, I chose to take a walk at night and get lost in the city of Lincoln as my two chosen tasks from the list we were set from Lavery’s instructions. I was prepared to observe the performances of people walking the city streets, however was surprised to find that it was completely desolate and quiet. Finding myself alone in an unfamiliar area didn’t make me feel uneasy as I would have expected, instead it made me feel peaceful and I felt that I could focus and study my surroundings in precise detail, something that people never normally have the chance to do. At one point I found myself stood outside of a homely, traditional pub. I was on the outside looking in. On the outside it was cold, dark and desolate; however from the inside I could hear chatter and laughter and the contrast of atmosphere began to make me feel uncomfortably like an outsider. It made me realise that space and sound can have an enormous impact on how one feels within a situation, and so this could easily occur during a site specific performance. From completing these tasks I had to focus on creating a welcoming and inviting space for an audience to be a part of, otherwise the audience interaction would be unlikely to occur. In order to do this, I made my facial expressions, tone of voice and body language very open and enthusiastic.
Engaging in personal tasks at the Usher Gallery gave me the opportunity to consider artworks in a way I wouldn’t have looked at in the same way before. The task I occupied myself with was finding an object in the collection that reminded me of my Grandmother, and then telling the story of why it relates to my grandmother, and the actual story of that object. Whilst focusing on this task, I felt that every object I looked at was being considered in a new light. Whilst considering the works, I had the opportunity to reflect upon what the items meant to me, and whether I could relate this to something in my life or past. This also made me contemplate how an audience would perceive a performance they are walking in to without knowing what to expect. As human beings, we all prepare ourselves for tasks in different ways and although some people may be open minded to seeing something innovative and out of the ordinary, others may be much more closed minded. “Audience experiences the performance in a state of preparedness which derives from past experiences and the way in which they have chosen to order them and accord them significance.” (Pearson and Shanks, 2001, 64).
Influential Artists and Performances:
Later on in the process of developing our pieces, we had the opportunity to watch and consider a number of different Site Specific performances and make individual perceptions of these performances for ourselves. I took inspiration from a number of these performances and found many different aspects from individual works that I imagined incorporating together for a performance. Marina Abramovic particularly inspired me with her willingness to make herself completely vulnerable to an audience. Imponderabilia performed by Marina Abramovic and Ulay, struck me as an extremely thought-provoking performance. By facing the audience with two naked bodies of both genders and standing in a small doorway for the audience to pass through, the spectator is then challenged as to where they feel appropriate to avert their eyes to, and also whom they subconsciously face when walking between them. The audience is then faced with the question to themselves of why they faced who they did, and how it felt walking between two naked, completely exposed bodies. Visitors to a museum will engage with the art they are faced with, therefore the engagement between the spectator and Marina and Ulay is almost impossible not to be created. I feel that this piece relates strongly to mine in the sense that both performances are using a museum/gallery as the site for performance, and the audience is essentially left with the choice of whether or not to engage with the artist. Audience interaction was personally very challenging for me as I usually become anxious when communicating with unfamiliar people, however performing a Site Specific piece that entirely relied on encounters between myself and visitors to the museum challenged me to express myself freely and become as confident and approachable as possible, in order to manifest a comfortable and inviting experience for the audience to be a part of.
Marina Abramovic was particularly influential towards my working progress. Watching the video The Artist is Present, documenting Marina’s approach to her performances and how she justifies the reasoning behind her pieces, I was particularly struck by how boldly she uses her body to make statements. Often through performance, an audience is fed what they are supposed to believe and feel towards a piece; however the way Marina performs, challenges an audience over often very controversial topics. Originally I considered the idea of embodying 24 physical frames relating to different functions of the human heart. However, performing 24 statements with my body began to lose relevance as there was no reasoning behind the number 24 and creating something interactive would no longer work with the physical embodiment of the human heart and no dialogue. “Performing perception is to see what one is looking at, to be absorbed in its aesthetic qualities through empathetic projection” (Garoian, 2001, 240). By creating a collage of superficial items the majority of us use on a daily basis, I faced the audience with a challenging and debatable statement of how we prioritize these things over the experiences and relationships we’ve attained throughout our lives that effectively shape and alter who we are and our outlook on life itself. “Performance is all about state of mind.” (Akers and Dupre, 2012). This quote said directly by Marina Abramovic claims that to perform a successful piece of Site Specific performance, you need to be determined and have a clear understanding and commitment to what you are portraying and why you feel it is necessary. Site Specific performances often entail an emotionally or physically draining concept; therefore your state of mind during a performance needs to be at a considerable level of focus and strength. If the performer wants to portray something to a spectator, the artist themselves needs to be completely involved and enthused in what they are doing in order to attract an audience and achieve what they aim to achieve through their work. During the time in which I had a participator sharing a personal story with me, it felt necessary to record what they told me in order to retain every detail from them, as it wouldn’t feel appropriate to discard anything I was told. Eye contact and welcoming body language were presentable concepts that were necessary to engaging my audience and clearly displaying to them that they had my full attention and enthusiasm.
Performance Stimulus:
Never Leave Home Without It by Mark Woods was my first and only stimulus used in creating my final performance. It features a black heart resting on a clear stand next to an open black box with pink velvet material inside. When looking at the piece, it appears as though the box has been unlocked to let the heart out, and therefore something that is not usually visible to us, is now displayed for us to acknowledge. From reflecting on this presentation of the artwork, and considering the ways in which it had been displayed, I felt that it was significant to focus on the idea of hidden stories and memories that are not displayed from a person through first encounters.
It was vital to understand the stimulus of my performance to a point in which I was no longer only seeing what was represented at face value, but researched and analyzed different perspectives on the heart, and considered why it was displayed the way it has been. The black coloring of the heart led me to contemplate the idea of how society is slowly poisoning us into believing that technology, cosmetic appliances and social media are essential to our lives, and ultimately become objects that we believe we cannot leave home without. Therefore, I decided to create the collage of these objects alongside a text piece explaining why they were presented in this way as well as an intimate one to one setting prepared for personal encounters between myself and visitors to the museum who would be re-living key experiences or relationships from their lives that impacted the person they are at present, and how these are the moments we truly cannot leave home without. Overall I had seventeen encounters with different people, ranging from young children to the elderly. I noticed that the children initially seemed nervous and withheld when they first sat with me, however as soon as I asked them to describe something or someone that meant a lot to them, their faces lit up and they were enthused to tell me their stories in detail. Most people seemed reserved when I initially invited them to sit with me, however once I explained the reasoning behind asking them to sit with me, they noticeably relaxed. I feel that the offering of sweets was a great way to lighten the atmosphere between myself and the people that sat with me as it made the whole experience much more light-hearted and relaxed.
Walsh, A. One to one Encounters. 10th May 2014. The Usher Gallery, Lincoln.
The space around the piece I solely based my performance had a significance as it was essentially the heart of the museum because it was a space that everybody had to pass in order to enter and exit the gallery. The large wooden cupboard stood directly behind the piece ‘Never Leave Home Without it’ was something I was strongly interesting in incorporating into my piece. I felt that for me to have a one to one moment with the audience within that cupboard would physically embody me as the heart, protected by its cage. However, unfortunately due to the cupboard being part of the museum’s security system this was a non-negotiable element of my performance. Ultimately I decided to place myself next to the piece as this felt fitting as the audience could witness my performance and directly see the artwork that was my stimulus.
Reasoning behind Performance Ideas:
My performance had 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)My performance aimed to create an outlook on the human heart reflecting on it in an untypical way, and also stir emotive reactions from spectators as there was something within the performance that every person could relate to. The love heart sweets they were offered to choose from posed different messages which would stimulate a sharing of personal experiences in life. Although the participants by no means observed the piece and all felt the same way, I created something with the objective of conjuring speculative thoughts around the things different people feel that they can never leave home without.
Reflective Afterthoughts:
After performing my final piece I decided that it was necessary to discard all of the audio files that I had collected throughout the day once I had recorded their stories accordingly. Although the audience were willing to share their names with me and stories that had a significance to them, I feel that making the audio files available online would be displaying something that could fall into the hands of anyone at all to use, and is not something that the participants would all feel particularly comfortable with. I feel that the overall performance went well as personally I felt that I could learn something from all of the different stories I was told, ranging from opening my eyes to a new perspective of looking at things, to hearing sentimental stories that I feel could inspire the way I act in certain situations within the future.
A performance Evaluation:
Overall I feel that my performance went as well as it could have done with the time in which it was prepared in. Having constant audience involvement meant that I was either listening to the stories or documenting them during the entire performance period. The people I encountered throughout the museum all seemed enthusiastic and willing to be a part of my performance which was crucial in order for me to have a worthwhile documentation of stories. If I were to change something about my performance, I would make the link between what I was doing and the relation it had to the artwork clearer and more justified. Some of the people I interacted with during the day didn’t feel that there was a considerably worrying obsession with superficial things such as social media and technology, and I felt under-prepared as to how I could ask them why they thought this, and therefore what they were taking away from our one to one experience. Having to perform in a non-traditional venue challenged me into researching the meaning behind the space in which I perform and helped me to consider how just the space alone can have a fundamentally important impact on the meaning behind your performance and why it is necessary. For instance, the piece I performed in the Usher Gallery was presenting spectators with an ideology of superficial objects having a superior amount of importance over our lives, which is something that is often overlooked and unconsidered. This relates to the artworks themselves presented in the gallery as there are probably many pieces within the museum that often go unnoticed or unappreciated.
Works Cited:
- Akers, M. And Dupre, J. (dirs.) (2012) Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. [film] HBO Documentary Films.
- Carey, D. and Carey, B. (2011) The non-visible worlds of art and performance. A Journal of Performance & Art, 33 (3) 10.
- Garoian, C. (2001) Performing the Museum. Studies in Art Education, 42 (3) 240.
- Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 25 (3) 233.
- Pearson, M (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Palgrave Macmillan.
- Pearson, M and Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre/Archeology. London: Routledge.
- Walsh, A. One to one Encounters. 10th May 2014. The Usher Gallery, Lincoln.