This week we were invited back to the gallery to perform a full dress rehearsal in run up to next week’s final performance. 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 all 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 felt too spacious, as we had imagined the projection to break the room up and enclose the space more. We discussed this as a group and felt it 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 from the ceiling at diagonal angle, cutting the room in two triangular halves. The room is still dark, yet the space itself is smaller, allowing us to create a more personal and intimate atmosphere that will see us acknowledge 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 than objects they saw 30 minutes earlier in the exhibition.’ (Simone, 2010) However even though we are encouraging visitors 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 create scripts that not only tell the hidden stories the museum lacks to acknowledge, but we have to 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 blended within each other and become broken texts just like the women they are about and metaphorically suggest the broken society we live in.
Works Cited:
Carey, D and Carey, B. (2011) The Non-Visible Worlds of Art and Perfomance, A Journal of Performance and Art, 33, (3) 100-108.
Simon, N (2010) The Participatory Museum, Chapter 4: Social Objects. [online] Available from: http://www.participatorymuseum.org/chapter4/[Accessed 1 May 2014]