“Camp as defined by Babuscio, are the “elements in a person, situation or activity that express, or are created by a gay sensibility” (Adamson, 2015)

After presenting my ideas, it became evident that my original concept for this work had become lost, due to the changes that have been made. It was suggested that from the video footage that I presented, the ideas were quite provocative regarding ideas of sexuality. This sparked my interest because it reminded me of my initial reactions to Marina Abramovic’s work, which seem to have a similar provocative nature. Alli Maloney has said “Abramovic’s body is her medium and subject, and her work often reflects on gender sexuality and the tensions between male and female physicality and mind.” (2015)

In relation to this feedback, I began researching the characters of Alice from Alice in Wonderland and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Both of these characters have been used as icons within the LGBT community. Although I do not identify within this group of people, it is a constant topic within our news currently, with the battle for equality and gay rights. Prior to my research, I was not aware that from around the time of World War II, to ask if someone was a ‘Friend of Dorothy’, was a covert way to ask someone’s sexual orientation, especially during this time in which homosexuality was unlawful in the United States. It is also not a coincidence that the flag for gay rights is a rainbow. Some have conspired that this is because of the famous song which Dorothy sings about wanting to fly beyond the rainbow.

The entire film can be read in relation to the struggle of the gay minority;

(Semple, 2015)

I regards to Alice in Wonderland, it has been said of the 2010 film “A young girl travelling to a fantasyland of colourful characters, villains, helpful allies, questions of morality, and a giant fancy dinner party? This is practically the gay rights struggle – and every seven-year-old gay boy’s dream world – packaged into a single big screen adventure.”  (Queerty Staff, 2009).

This new research has lead me to a new concept. With the current politics of the World and its recent history, the oppression of the gay person is still a big issue. Therefore my new concept surrounds this. The costume will be a mixture of Alice and Dorothy, characters which have been illustrated together on several occasions, as two characters which is widely regarded within the LGBT community. The silks will represent the struggle that these people face. Trying to climb to reach the other side (of the rainbow) but being restricted along the way, which will be shown through the holds used within the aerial silks.

Although, the concept is mainly focused on this idea, and the concept may be clear to some, I feel like it could be taken in other ways by different people, depending on what journey they are facing and the struggles along the way. It has been said that people relate to fictional characters, even within their everyday life, often imagining how a character would react to a certain situation. “Nineteen per cent of those respondents said the voices of fictional characters stayed with them even when they weren’t reading, influencing the style and tone of their thoughts – or even speaking to them directly. For some participants it was as if a character “had started to narrate my world”, while others heard characters talking, or imagined them reacting to things going on in everyday life” (Lea, 2017) . Dorothy and Alice are two very popular characters, often imitated by people, both in fancy dress as well as fashion shoots, such as an Alice inspired dress created by Marks and Spencer and the headband that gained its name from the character. Marina Abramovic has stated the importance of appealing to a wide audience, by creating work with a multi-level approach, “Art is or has to be universal … [It] can’t just feminist, can’t just be political, can’t be just spiritual. The more elements that you have in your work, the longer that work lives because every society can take one layer at a time [that they] need at the moment.” (Abramovic in Maloney, 2015).

Photo: Google Images

Photo: Neatorama

Photo: allposters.com

My work, although it still has the same focus, has changed throughout the creative process. Due to the physical demand of the nature of silk work on the body, I have had to shorten the length of the piece. My original intention was for the work to have a duration of 3 hours. However I very quickly realised, that unless you are a professional aerialist, this is a very ambitious goal. Therefore I halved the time to an hour and a half. This may still be too much for my body to endure. I am currently working to a duration of 45 minutes (three 15 minute sections), with the side note that if the activity becomes too easy, and endurance is no longer so much of a problem, I will work towards the one hour 30 once again.

The Christian theme is still present, however it is more underlying, with more of a focus on the Alice in Wonderland concept. I have become more interested through the readings regarding scenography and interaction on how I can transform the traditional theatre setting into an interactive wonderland. I have included sound bites of quotes and poems from Alice in Wonderland, as well as mixing the moments of Alice finding the ‘EAT ME’ and ‘DRINK ME’ labels with the Christian ritual of eating the bread and the wine from communion. I have tried to interweave the two concepts so that both have a place and a meaning within the work.

After meeting with the LPAC technicians I have come to realise that it would not be safe to invite the audience to view from above the grid from which the silks will be suspended. Due to this, my audience viewpoints will have to change. However there could still be three options, in keeping with the original idea by playing with the proximity of the audience. On the ground level, the audience could either be close to the performance or view from the edges of the room, giving them two different perspectives, as well as allowing them to view from the existing balcony seating within the theatre.

The endurance within the piece is my ability to continually support my body weight. As with any task, the more tired you become the harder it is to succeed. Therefore will I be able to endure the full performance and still climb to the top by the end, when my muscles have started to become exhausted?

Some other questions I have been contemplating are:

What happens if over the next few weeks I am unable to successfully perform all that I intend to? Do I need to think of a contingency plan?

Does each of the 15 minute sections have a goal that I am trying to achieve? If so what? A Position? A hold? A drop?

What happens if I fall or become injured?

Do I need to have two themes running through the work, or should I just focus all of my attention on one idea?

Sounds or Silence?

Below is a video clip of some of the ideas I have been playing with. I am working on climbing higher and holding the poses, building up strength to endure the task.

One of Marina Abramovic’s main aims was to interact with her audience. In my opinion much of her work strives to cause a reaction from the audience, whether that is shock, discomfort, awe or empathy.

In arts such as television or film, there can be no instant connectivity or interaction with the audience. However with live work, the performance has this extra layer of interaction. Many performers speak of the instant gratification of the audience which can be felt in a live scenario. “It is this interactivity that provides the potential for new meaning-making” (Somers in Pitches and Popat, 2011). The instant reactions can help to guide the performance. If the work is touring, changes can be made in accordance with the feedback received from the live audience.

Although this interactivity has its benefits, there are also many ethical implications which must be taken into consideration. In asking the audience to interact, or to play a role within a piece, the performer must be aware of the implications of asking the audience member to participate. Whatever happens in the imaginary setting created in the work can also have an impact and be applied to real-life scenarios. Although we do not often consider the ethics of a situation in so much detail for events that take place in the real world, much more attention is given to those staged within the fabricated world of performance.

Brian Eno says that by definition, interactive work has to be unfinished. This is because of the unpredictability of interaction. The audience may react differently in each instance of the performance and therefore cannot be too finite in its creation. The performer as well as the content must be flexible to the situation. The audience may not be willing to interact at all, although a certain level of interaction or connectivity is expected in volunteering to watch a performance. However, work that breaks the fourth wall, as suggested by Boal, expects more from the audience, they are expected to engage, to become actors as opposed to just spectators.

All of these elements must be taken into consideration during the creation of a work; the type of interaction, the ethics of the situation, the multiple ways the audience may respond and what you want the audience to take away with them when they leave the performance.

Time governs every aspect of our life, whether we allow it to or not. Time still passes, we cannot stop it, slow it down, or reverse it.  As Henri Bergson states in Matter and Memory (1896) “What I call ‘my present’ has one foot in my past, and one in the future.” Our present is constantly changing and quickly becoming our past. However in performance we can play with time. We can choose how long a piece is going to last, what time it will start, how long each section will last and what speed the performers will move.

Unlike any other art form, live performance cannot usually be controlled by the audience. As discussed in Pitches and Popat (2011) we can decide at what speed we read a book. However we cannot choose the speed at which we watch a live work, we cannot rewind it or pause it if we need to go and powder our nose mid performance. This is only possible in rare cases, interactive performances which call for the audience to control the action.

With the use of technology we can travel through and distort time even more, with film we can slow movement down, speed it up, reverse it or pause it. This technology has been used within dance performance either focusing the attention to the film or as a means to play with time, layering different effects. For example you could have a performer dancing on stage at a normal speed. However behind them could be a projection of other people moving quicker, making the live performer appear to be moving in slow motion.

This video demonstrates the slowing down technique. As this performance was shown on television it has slightly different applications than a live performance as the editors can choose what the audience sees.

The Body As Archive: Will to Re-enact and the Afterlives of Dances – André Lepecki

“Rather than think of re-enactments as conceptual frames for a choreographer’s “inevitable” failed efforts to succeed in copying an original fully. I would like to propose the will to re-enact as a privileged mode to effectuate or actualise a work’s immanent field of inventiveness and creativity.” (Lepecki, 2010)

Lepecki talks of our willingness to re-enact former works, using our bodies as an archive in reinventing the work to present it to a new audience, who may appreciate it in a different way. This will to archive is an aim to bring something new to the work, in a cyclical manner there are always “impalpable possibilities” in that there is always something new which can be added or changed or explored within the work. This, however, brings up issues of authenticity, is the new work still authentic to the original? Or is it a new entity in itself?

Unmarked: the Politics of Performance – Peggy Phelan

Ontology is existence, but performance cannot be saved. Phelan argues that performance only comes into existence once is has disappeared. This means that because a performance happens at a certain time in a certain place, it can never be repeated. Even if the exact same content was performed identically, it is still entirely different. There may be a different audience, the performer may take a breath in a different place. “it can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different”” (Phelan, 1993). Any re-enactments or re-workings may be based on an original performance but every time is is redone it becomes something different.

Reconstructing the Dance: In Search of Authenticity. The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory. – Helen Thomas

Thomas talks of authentic vs interpretive. By this she refers to the authentic as an imitation of an original vs the interpretive as a generation.

In the same thinking as Phelan she quotes Siegel as saying “Dance exists at a perpetual vanishing point. At the moment of its creation it is gone… [it is] an event that disappears in the very act of materialising” (1986). She argues that some work should not be changed due to its historical ties whereas other work has a more universal underpinning which means that it can be made relevant to audiences over several different situations, be it variations in time and space.

Enduring Documents: Re-Documentation in Marina Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces – Lara Shalson

Marina Abramović relied on the documentation of the original works in order to create her Seven Easy Pieces. On many occasions this was simply photographs. This Shalson argues gives something from which to work, a glimpse of the original but nothing to definite that limits the imagination allowing the development. Although we assume these documentary photographs appear to prove the authenticity of a performance, it is not factual or a complete record of the performance. A picture captures a millisecond of a performance which in the case of Abramović lasted for 7 hours. However in contrast to the photographs which Abramović had to work from, each of the Seven Easy Pieces were documented in film, although not in their entirety. However these films give more of a glimpse of the work, as well as the reactions of some of the audience members and their responses to what they were seeing, hearing or witnessing.

Seven Easy Pieces and Performance Document(ation)s – Benjamin D. Powell

“Every act of writing about performance is an act of memory and of experimenting with different forms of narrating the experience of remembering.” (Powell, 2010) Every person who has seen a performance may remember it slightly differently, they may not all have witnessed every moment or responded to what they have seen in the same way. In this respect, their writing of their memories combined with that of others can help to create a more rich and colourful account of the work, where personal reflections and inputs help to single out certain moments or push the reader to empathise with a moment in a particular way. Powell describes how, through using a body to connect to the memory of a past work, Abramović is allowing the audience to exist in the past and the present simultaneously. The artist is almost a time portal between the two pieces, allowing the audience to be a part of a memory as well as a re-birth through the re-generation of the original piece.

Thomas McEvilley’s interview with Abramović revealed her desire to create and intense connection with her audience. Something which I have tried to carry across to my own re-work of her seventh piece. Abramović said “the only thing that’s necessary is that you create the space and time field” (1998).  Providing you give the audience these basic requirements, a connection can be made. You assume that the audience come with a willingness to accept what they are about to see. This willingness should then be translated into the connection between the artist and the audience as they are both appreciative of the other for either providing the entertainment or the desire to view it.

Body – Jonathan Pitches and Sita Popat

The body is a physical entity that we use and live in every day. The body does things without us noticing, we live, we breath, blood is carried around our veins and arteries, we inhale oxygen and expel carbon dioxide. However through performance, the body becomes something that we can use as a representation of something else. We can become another being, be it human or an imitation of another creature, animal or something entirely inhuman such as a physical object. “The body as a medium of representation does not mean anything in itself: it only stands for a text, a sign, a symbol or an ideological construct of something else. (Csordas, 1994:9).

“To perceive is to ‘understand implicitly, the effects of movement on sensory stimulation'” (Noe 2004:33)We perceive the world on a daily basis. We may not always realise but we are constantly perceiving situations, locating the familiar with the schemas already existing in the brain and finding a place for the unfamiliar, categorising what we experience within the giant filing cabinet that is our brain.

The body is not a finished process, it is constantly evolving. The body is continually making chemical exchanges, building new cells, growing new hair and nails, repairing itself and learning.

Performances can transport you into a different world. You are so drawn in to what you are seeing that the real world around us no longer exists. However, there are still things that can tear the illusion away, bringing us back to reality with a large thud. For example, the tall person sat in the row in front who manages to block your entire view with the back of their head, or the person who gets hungry half way through the performance and rustles the sweet packet trying to curb their craving, or the person who has such a hectic social life that they feel the need to check their phone half way through the performance. However we can also be brought back to the knowledge of our bodies through the deliberate strategies of immersive performance work. The artists may want the audience to acknowledge their bodies, it may be as a way to make them notice something that they may never have previously.

Space – Jonathan Pitches and Sita Popat

“Scenography is the seamless synthesis of space, text, research, art, actors, directors and spectators that contributes to an original creation.” (Howard, 2002:130). Through the layering of all of these different elements, the scenographer is able to create a new place to fill the void that is behind the proscenium arch of the theatre. However site specific work offers more elements for the scenographer to work with. They can choose to work with what is already within the space, or controversially to juxtapose it.

Once the space has been designed and the contents arranged, careful consideration should be taken to the placement of the audience. I have previously considered the placement of the dancers on the stage, in accordance to the amount of power I want the arrangement to have. However I have not given much thought the audience. In a traditional theatre, the seats are fixed, however in a different space, the audience can be placed in accordance to the relationship which should be drawn between them and the performer. They may be higher than the performer, having dominance, or below as more weaker characters, or they may have the performance in a promenade, allowing the audience to move around, a style which I am considering for my own work.