Framing Statement:
During most visits to art galleries, you find yourself meandering through the exhibition reading what the curators and artists have allowed you to know, instantly accepting it as truth, without even questioning if there is more to know, however this is about to change. Voicing the Untold is a site specific performance in response to the Modern Masters exhibition at the Usher Gallery, in which women are identified through their appearance and the female body. The exhibition highlights
‘where physical traces of the buildings past operate metaphorically, to render absent present and function, to introduce the spectator into other worlds and dimensions of our world that are other.’ (Pearson, 2010, p.10)
We aim to re-install the previous material in a way that evokes ‘worlds that are intangible and unlocatable: worlds of memory, pleasure, sensation, imagination, affect and insight’ (Pearson, 2010, p.10) in which the women’s responses will finally be heard.
The performance consists of Anisha Bradley, Morgan Wills and I standing on individual plinths in Gallery 6, where the artwork of these modern masters were presented. We will be reading from scripts we have each created, with help from feminists Helen Cixous, Luce Igary, Julia Kristeva and the Guerrilla Girls. Alongside these feminists, we have researched the artwork, the artist and the women who are subject in the artwork, to incorporate any quotes and information that may help our text bring the past back into the present. We chose gallery 6 out of all the galleries rooms due to the recent exhibition on the Modern Masters; Warhol, Matisse, Picasso and Dali’s work predominately focusing on the appearance of the female figure. We felt performing our scripts in this space would allow audiences to re-imagine the artwork that was once present on the walls surrounding them, enabling us to create an intimate and intense atmosphere that would capture visitor’s attention. Both ‘museums and theatres present us with ourselves in different contexts, holding the mirror up and showing us what we have done and what we might do (Hughes 1998, P. 10) we aim for our textual responses on these women to reflect the on-going problem of feminism in society, particularly the idea of how women are supposed to follow these norms society issue them. We want not only the artists but visitors to feel a form of responsibility towards the objectification of these women, offering them the opportunity to make a change in the art world.
Initial Process:
In the early stages of our process we were asked to write a reflective textual response to a piece of artwork within the gallery that stood out to us and inspired interest. One piece that particularly stood out to me was Austin Garland’s work of The Woman in a Kimono. The artwork instantly sparked a resemblance to domestic violence and how the kimono is used as a cover up, not only to hide physical assault but to represent a form of protection. After writing the piece, I came back together with my group, who had ironically explored the representation of females in the gallery also; this made it all the more easier to link and perform our writing together in an attempt to highlight the depiction of women in art. We decided to perform our piece in the Modern Masters exhibition in Gallery 6 as much of the artwork within this room defined the female body through appearance, and through exploiting female nudity. By performing in a room full of nude women our texts made it apparent that we were in fact speaking on behalf of them, as Charles Garoian quotes ‘by putting visual images, into words they enable artworks to speak’ (Garoian, 2001, p.242), allowing us the opportunity to capture our audience with the illusion that the artwork is once again real.
It made it ever more prominent to me how important spectators are in museum and gallery spaces, as they add the hidden content and colour to artwork by conjoining their own memories and cultural histories, with the stories that already exist, seeing past its existence as object and allowing it to speak. ‘In this dialogical process, both the museum and viewer “give ear” and “give voice” to each other’ (Garoian, 2001, p.242), as stories are created and imagined by each spectator we begin to divert from the pre-existing historical context in attempt to ‘“write” on the body of history, to contribute to history that would otherwise remain silent’ (Garoian, 2001, p.244).
Going on from this task, we have decided to continue with this response to initiate the core starting point to our final performance. However instead of creating entirely fictional stories from our imagination, we will be coinciding research on feminism, the historical context behind the artist and artwork and societies response to women in a patriarchal society.
By giving the artwork an authoritative voice we are able to capture the ‘hidden content within [the] museum’ (Garoian, 2001,p.241) enabling us to generate a detailed account of the unspoken. ‘The performance of autobiography… represents the memories and cultural histories which viewers bring- to museum culture.. by which they create narratives to represent their experiences of art.’ (Garoian, 2001,p.241) To respond to art in this way is to unravel the hidden content of the artwork which is disruptive to the museums dominant historical pedagogy. The museum visitor plays a vital role in developing the story of the artwork, by layering their ‘performances of memory and cultural history’ (Garoian,2001,p.242) to the artwork the viewer allows themselves to transform within museum culture, creating an identity based on their respective cultural perspectives. In our performance we aim to already give an account of personal experiences through our individual research into feminism. Through incorporating our stories of the past with stories already apparent to us in the artwork we are able to create verbal analogies and metaphors to represent our perceptual experiences. We aim to create a durational piece, in which we will all stand on plinths, each taking it in turns to speak, as if we were the women previously on display in the room. We feel tackling such a controversial issue: (Feminism) in the museum gallery space will allow us to spark thought within the viewer and enable them to re-act, whether they agree with us or not. We feel by working in such an intimate and silent space, we have the opportunity to raise awareness of feminism within the gallery space, through invading personal space, and voicing the untold.
In Praxis The Non-visible worlds of art and performance, Tino Seghal creates a project where he experiments on drawing on the concept of things we cannot see. One of his performances bases itself on an exhibition without any art on the walls and just performers talking to the visitors. He leaves it solely for the spectator to imagine what would be there if there was art, allowing their imaginations to take over the gallery space rather than leaving it just over to the artist. “With non-visible works, the audience and the artists become very close by following the same path, taking the same risk.. in which each has probably experienced different realities” (Praxis, 2011, p.108), this is precisely what we will be hoping to achieve, as we create our own interpretations of the artwork, yet none of the artwork we will be discussing will be visible to the spectator. Instead we will be juxtaposing our script with the replaced exhibition establishing masculinity. As Praxis states “We are working on something that takes you inside the world you cannot see, a step forward in the direction of a world that can never be physically constructed” (Praxis, 2011, p.104). It is over to our own interpretations to re-create the space it once was, challenging us even further to attract passers-by attention through inviting them into our space and grabbing their attention. Allowing the role of the curator to be reversed, giving the viewer the opportunity to establish and conclude the truth in what we are saying and what is not.
Influences:
(Dear Art Collector, Guerrilla Girls, 1986)
The following quote taken from feminists; Guerrilla Girls, illuminated our thought process, and became the key stimulus to our performance. They take hard hitting text and ‘use a rapier [of] wit to fire volley after volley of carefully researched statistics at art world audiences, exposing individuals and institutions that under-represent or exclude women.. from exhibitions [and] collections.’ (Guerrilla Girls, 1995, p.7) Their tongue and cheek approach to alerting the public to an on-going issue in the art world ‘is a great, blunt edged weapon against evil’ (Chadwick, 1995, p.96) and we plan to continue this on a smaller scale within our own performance. We aim to do this by incorporating facts taken from their book Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls and keeping our appearance to a minimum, so that the attention is primarily on the text itself to juxtapose how initially we judge women on their appearance.
Another influence in which we took inspiration from was Antony Gormley’s participatory project One and Another where participants were able to do whatever they wished on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar square for however long they felt was necessary. ‘Through putting a person onto a plinth, the body becomes a metaphor, a symbol’ (Gormley, 2013, online) and this is exactly how we wish to be portrayed, as a symbols of the women that once existed in the space we are now inhabiting. We felt expressing yourself on a raised level was particularly interesting and granted us a sense of authority over the visitor.
Voicing the Untold, Rice, 2014)
(Voicing the Untold, Bradley, 2014)
(Voicing the Untold, Walsh, 2014)
Performative Texts:
With creating a text based performance it can be easy to fall into the trap of creating texts that show no variation and allowing no depth to be created within the writings. As our piece is based on the creation of the untold stories behind the artwork it is essential that we are able to produce texts that are able to invite spectators, hold their attention and inspire them to make a change. In trying to establish a balance between our texts we decided to look at Tim Etchells’ Certain Fragments. As our performance is open to the public it is vital our chosen texts are able to instantly draw them into watching the entirety of the performance. I decided to look at writing one of my texts as if telling a secret, as we are instantly allured into finding out the unknown and with it being a text that is spoken by a celebrity figure, visitors will instantly begin to speculate whether the text is fact or fiction. However through ‘mixing, matching, cutting, pasting’ (Etchells, 1999, p.101) I am able to incorporate works of other writers, journalists and the person themselves, to construct a text that becomes so indulged with quotes that it appears truth. By ‘collecting, sifting and using bits of other people’s stuff’ (Etchells, 1999, p.101), I am able to re-account the events in the first person attempting to answer the questions the gallery and the artists failed to do.
Through continuing to develop my feminist writings, I have often found myself referring to the women as objects that are solely for the male’s purpose. However after repeatedly using the words ‘object’ and ‘objectification’ in my work, it came to my attention ‘what does object really mean?’. In Papadaki’s Feminist Perspectives on Objectification I was able to investigate the social implications of women being objectified and explore feminists’ outcomes on why women are regarded as objects. Immanuel Kant’s concept of objectification argues that ‘due to men’s consumption of pornography, women as a group are reduced to the status of mere tools for men’s purpose’ (Papadaki, 2012, online). Whereas feminists such as ‘Bartky and Bordo have argued that women are objectified through being excessively pre-occupied with their appearance’ (Papadaki, 2012, online).
For Kant objectification involves the lowering of a person, through treating them as if they are an object of use and possession ‘[running]the risk of allowing the male to dominate the relationship and perform sexual activities, that can lead to the loss or sacrifice of humanity. Women are then ‘reduced to.. a mere sexual instrument’ (Papadaki, 2012, online) in which they are lowered to ‘a thing on which other satisfies their appetite’ (Papadaki, 2012, online). Labelling men with animalistic qualities in which I establish in my response to Matisse’s work.
Contradictory to Kant feminists Bartky and Bordo, believe women are objectified more so through their appearance than man as a needs to keep up with societies norms of feminine appearance. As Jennifer Saul reiterates in the text; ‘in order to gain social acceptability women are under constant pressure to ‘correct’ their bodies and appearance more generally, [to] make them conform to the ideals of feminine appearance of the time’ (Papadki, 2012, online). I took inspiration from this theory and applied it to my response of Warhol’s print of Marilyn Monroe, in which she becomes a representation of the perfect female ‘as [an] object to be decorated and gazed upon’ (Papadaki, 2012, online) by the male eye, yet she uses her looks as weapon to fool men and become the dominant figure. The constant pressure to fit into society is posed everywhere in the media through using what is known as Katz & Lazersfeld’s’ Hypodermic Needle Theory, suggesting it is not just men to blame for female objectification, and because of this ‘women’s constant preoccupation with appearance has come to be regarded as something natural and voluntary.. something women have internalised.’ (Papadaki, 2012, online). We wanted to destroy this by taking an object associated with women (Lipsticks) and using it to ruin our appearance by messily applying colours one on top of the other so we dismantle the norm of being judged on our looks. It also could reflect the battle of us constantly trying to fit into society’s norms through the struggle to apply properly.
Technical Rehearsal:
On entering our initial chosen gallery space we found that the description to how the new exhibition would be set up was a lot different to how we envisioned the space to be. The contemporary projection on display in the room of original choice, we felt did not highlight or contrast to the topic of feminism. The space as whole was bigger than we imagined, and we thought the projection would break up room, trapping the space more. After discussion we felt it would be more beneficial to our performance if we were to go in the room leading off from our initial space, where a projection was hung in the middle of the room, cutting it into two triangular halves. The room is still dark, yet the space itself is smaller, allowing us to create a personal and intimate atmosphere when acknowledging the artwork that was previously exhibited on the walls. Performing in such an intimate surrounding will enable us to invite the audience into our space, perform our pieces with such truth and clarity that they will have no escape from what we are forcing upon them.
As Nina Simon states ‘If the goal is to encourage visitors to engage deeply with objects, questions and response stations should be as close to the objects of interest as possible. Visitors can speak more comfortably and richly about objects that they are currently looking at.’ (Simone, 2010, online) However even though we are generating response once we have their attention, the challenge for us is to re-create the space as if the artwork we are talking about is still on the walls so that we are able to instantly spark recognition of what was previously around them. To achieve this we have created scripts that incorporate facts about the artwork and the artist itself, so that fact and fiction become inextricably intertwined, preventing any distinction between the two. This allows the spectator to not only believe what we are saying to be truth, but also to see the invisible become visible again right in front of them. Praxis describes this process as like ‘when we talk to the dead as if they are still alive, and not because we believe there are ghosts there but because we believe we are filling in the blanks’ (Praxis, 2011, p.108). Our scripts will be filling in the colour to the artwork by layering our scripts on top of one another; so that the stories are forced to meet and become fragmented texts just like the women they describe and metaphorically suggest the broken society we live in.
(Voicing the Untold, Bradley, 2014)
Performance Evaluation:
Overall I was very pleased with how our performance went and we even managed to receive positive feedback from the public, which made us feel as though we had exceeded our performance aims. One man in particular approached us after clearing away and congratulated us on the performance, stating ‘it was a very empowering and enjoyable piece of work, movements were well executed and captured my attention the moment I entered the room’. The response was instantly rewarding and we felt our performance concept had been acknowledged.
We performed twice during the day: 10-11pm and 1-2pm, with our piece lasting an hour per performance; this was so we didn’t interfere with the projection that was already on exhibition. As our first performance started at 10 it was difficult to attract public attention to come watch our piece due to the gallery just opening. Although we had no audience to begin with, I still felt moved when reading our work, as it was though we were talking to the walls were the artwork once was. Because much of the upstairs gallery was empty, our texts managed to echo through the room and across the corridors creating a tense and eerie atmosphere, as though the artwork were invading and haunting the gallery space in which they previously inhibited. Our second session was much more of a success in terms of inviting the audience, partly because it was peak visiting hours. We felt it necessary to use this to our advantage, by walking through the gallery abruptly stopping to observe the artwork in hopes it would gain visitor attention. We did this in unison to make them conscious of our presence and for them to question who we were. Hoping they would follow us to find out.
(Voicing the Untold, Walsh, 2014)
This in fact was the case and many visitors entered our space and stayed to listen to our stories. It was interesting to see that the majority of visitors who stayed for the duration of the piece were in fact men, though our scripts were acknowledging them as perpetrators to the women’s problems.
In terms of challenges raised during our performance, there were no significant problems. However we did have to be conscious of time and acquiring the right pace during our performance so not to run over our allocated slot, as it would interfere with Demi’s performance next door. To overcome this we asked Demi if she would be able to open the doors between the two spaces to signal the preparation to her performance, this would be a cue for us to continue with our page and to finish our performance. If we were to perform our piece again I would definitely have placed the lipsticks so they were more visible to the spectators when entering the space, immediately striking questions on the set and upon what our performance entails, triggering curiosity to findout why 30 lipsticks were lined up next to one another.
(Voicing the Untold, Rice, 2014)
(Voicing the Untold, Rice, 2014)
I would also re-consider the times in which we performed and possibly moved our first session later (11-12) allowing the gallery to become a bit busier before starting our piece, so that we were able to compare audience’s reaction and were able to invite our audience like how we did in the second session.
All in all site specific performance has helped me to acknowledge that ‘it’s location can work as a potent mnemonic trigger, helping to evoke specific past times related to the place and time of performance and facilitating a negotiation between the meanings of those times’ (Pearson, 2010, p.9). This is evident in the usher gallery with the artwork triggering memory and uniting past with present. Our textual responses are an example of ‘site specific performance [that] engages with site as symbol, site as story teller, site as structure’ (Pearson, 2010, p.8).
Bibliography:
Bradley, A (2014) Voicing the Untold [Taken] 10th May.
Carey, D and Carey, B. (2011) The Non-Visible Worlds of Art and Perfomance, A Journal of Performance and Art, 33, (3) 100-108.
Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments. London: Routledge. Garoian, R.C. (2001) Performing the Museum. Studies in Art Education, 42 (3) 234-248
Gormley, Antony. (2013) Antony Gormley- One and Another. [online] Available from: http://www.antonygormley.com/show/item-view/id/2277 [Accessed 29 April 2014].
Guerrilla Girls (1995) Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls London: Pandora.
Papadaki, E. (2012) Feminist Perceptions on Objectification. [online] Stanford. Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/[Accessed 2 May 2014]
Pearson, M (2010) ‘Site Specific Performance.’ Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Rice, K (2014) Voicing the Untold [Taken] 10th May.
Simon, N (2010) The Participatory Museum, Chapter 4: Social Objects. [online] Available from: http://www.participatorymuseum.org/chapter4/[Accessed 1 May 2014]
Walsh, A (2014) Voicing the Untold [Taken] 10th May.