Life and Death

30th October

The experience of working with Shaun led me to further reflect on my motivation for my previous performance work.

I had first started looking at performance through looking at the work of Rebecca Horn. I became interested in exploring my space in relation to the world and how it was defined.

Horn created Finger Gloves (1972), extensions which she could wear on her hands which allowed her to pick things up from the floor without bending down which changed the distance in relation to how far her hands were from the ground.

I had been experimenting drawing with wire and had made a wire glove which fitted over my hand but enlarged the size of my hand quite considerably. I was interested in the feeling of a shift of power when I ‘wore’ the hand. In wearing the hand I felt more powerful as if the feeling of taking up more space was directly related to the feeling of more power.

In Bruce Nauman’s Wall Positions (1968) and Dance or Exercise around the Perimeter of a Square (1968), he added the dynamic of movement as he explored the relationship between his body and a confined space. Each new position explored the space around him but was restricted within the limits of the room. This gave me the idea of exploring my space but within boundaries and limits.

29th October

This performance was called Rainschemes for Insomniacs and incorporated a large scale painting and a symbolic object, a tree. The tree was placed in the middle of the performance area so that the branches reached out and upwards sending out messages or totems into the universe.

Various instruments and singing bowls were used to create a build-up of sound to increase the intensity of mood. Humming was also used to promote a trance like feeling of resonating with and transcending time.

Animal exhibits from the museum were placed around the tree to add to the atmosphere of the space. As performers, we wore various masks and used objects such as painted heads and skeleton fish heads to interact with the painting.

Stencil like cut outs of apocalyptic type creatures were suspended from above which were made especially for the performance by Shaun. The stencils were used to create shadow imagery using a variety of coloured lights which are projected onto the walls and ceilings. The performances were all accompanied by unique sound tracks composed by Shaun in collaboration with sound artists.

Link to short film of the performance: https://vimeo.com/189566768

24th October

The Spill Festival of Performance arranged by the Pacitti Company had asked the University if any art students wanted to volunteer to be involved in one of Shaun Caton’s performances. I was very interested in performance and working directly with a performance artist was very appealing.

I was wondering if performance was for me and what it was about it that I found appealing. Did I want audience participation? Is it just so that I can be seen or that I want to make a statement? What is it that I am trying to achieve through performance? Is it that I just like that heightened awareness feeling of being totally immersed in something?

Shaun Caton is a performance artist and his performances can be over a substantial duration of time or can be very short. Performances often include rituals, fetishes and myths and involve gatherings of creatures in either a prehistoric or post-apocalyptic time.

I did a drawing of the Secondary School of Applied Arts and made it into a thank you card which we all signed for the two ladies that had looked after us all week.

21st October

On reflection, I did like how the image became more distorted as it transferred from between one sheet to the other and as they moved slightly in the breeze. This movement had occurred because I had not secured the bottom of the sheets and I liked the way it added to the ambiguity of the image.

I was also interested in how the edge of the circle kept moving around due to how the pieces of film had been edited together. I liked the idea of the editing process almost having a life of its own in determining how the finished film looked.

I thought about time again about what time is? Is it really just change? Is time just the feelings of change? Does time move through us, or do we move through time?

Walter Benjamin saw time in the past as a single event consisting of disaster heaped upon disaster. He used a drawing by Paul Klee “Angelus Novus” to demonstrate how he pictured the Angel of History, saying that the Angel wants to be able to undo all the carnage of the past but is forever being blown backwards into the future by a ferocious storm, a storm which Benjamin calls progress.

This analogy reflects for me the lack of control that we seem to have over the events that are happening all around us all of the time and how little control we have over how much the future is affected by the past. It is almost as if we are like the angel, stuck in the middle between of an ever growing history and an ever shrinking future.

In contrast, the philosopher, Henri Bergson thought that we were wrong to try to measure time in a mechanical, scientific way. He believed that we experienced time as duration and that we were a diverse entity that could only be measured by quality not quantity, with no discernible features and in a constant fluid state of flux. As he explains in Time and Free Will, to endure is to be a:

qualitative multiplicity, with no likeness to number; an organic evolution which is yet not an increasing quantity; a pure heterogeneity within which there are no distinct qualities (Bergson cited in Watts Cunningham, 1914).

My installation in the prison made me explore the concept of time on a deeper level. I thought about how I had used something in the present time to create an unknown abstract form which in turn represented a time in the past but which also drew a parallel with how the future of the prison remained unknown.

This work made me think about the intrinsic relationship between time and history and how although time had moved on, the history surrounding the prison had not, even though one could not exist without the other?

With opinion divided on such an emotionally charged subject, no one can decide whether to knock the prison down or make it into a museum to commemorate the people who spent time there. Therefore the prison building itself remains stuck in both history and time.

Link to film Masquerade: https://vimeo.com/191950739

Reference:
Watts Cunningham, G. (1914), Bergson’s Conception of Duration, The Philosophical Review, 23(5),September, pp.525-539.