Where It All Began
Last year in my BA Fine Art Course at the University of Worcester I started unbeknown to me looking at the absurd and the absurdist. It all started with a piece of work called ‘Simon Said’. I made paper handouts written on these handouts were instructions, absurd instructions to give to the public. Things like “Simon said dance”, “Simon said hump a tree” and “Simon said rob a bank”. The work itself work well I had a good response from people towards some of the less arbitrary, or farcical ones. A police officer responded to “Simon said rob a bank” in a less than humorous way grabbing hold of me and telling me off, which wasn’t a surprise.
But, I wanted to cause a reaction rather than force a reaction, I wanted to have the reactions from people without being told what to do. After researching allot into different themes and context I made a piece called ‘Homage to Yellow’. The Yellow Wallpaper influenced my performance the quote;
‘There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.’
Influenced the Wallpaper design, her writings also influenced the manner in which I applied the paper to the wall using beans. I wanted to cause a reaction; this performance though didn’t ever get the kind of reaction I wanted from it as I only ever performed it inside of University as an assessment. The paper is crudely applied to the wall; I hate beans to the point of vomiting. There was always the potential of a reaction but one was never met.
The Moment of Enlightenment.
According to Brassier (2007);
‘Enlightenment consists in expediting science’s demolition of the manifest image by kicking away whatever pseudo-transcendental props are being used to shore it up otherwise inhibit the corrosive potency of science’s metaphysical subtractions’
I started looking at the non-manifest image and what that could be seen as, but in fact looking at what was already out there, using several different medias, I concentrated on a film I watched called ‘Frank’ I directly used the giant head idea to create my own ‘head within a head’. In ‘Gulliver’ I wanted to test people’s reactions to the absurd and incongruous. I also wanted to see how it felt looking out of tunnel vision. To look out at the world looking back in. The head hides my identity but also looks absurd a pointless act to make people look uncomfortable, in the same instance a representation of the modern street sales person who acts for the a faceless corporation they undeniably act for. The themes where there the work for me didn’t work as well as I would have liked, unfortunately only one performance has happened. But I had learned valuable lessons.
Playing Games
I looked at the themes carried through Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut piece’ the scissors are never there in their true form but are there in spirt by handing props to people, I give the bottle and umbrella; there is always the potential of the ‘Scissors’ been opened and closed. I looked at the potential that the abnormal or absurd, by posing the questions and enabling the audience to partake, I can also encourage that whim upon them, by demonstrating an absurd act or acts it allows the audience to feel secure in their response to the work. I showed this particular work twice. Once at PiLOT and once in, Newcastle, at Breeze Creatives.
PiLOT did not work as well as I would have liked the performance ended to sharply the act to clean cut. I did nothing to the audience so in response the audience did nothing back to me, the way I handed out the umbrellas was a response to Lang’s ‘Metropolis’. I handed out the props much like a scene seen within ‘Metropolis’
Breeze Creatives on the other hand worked well I had decided to ACTUALLY play the game winding up or demonstrating what I wanted in response from the audience. It resulted in Sculptures been made, water been poured everywhere and laughter.
