Unrecorded: this is the next step.

Reading the previous post I feel quite embarrassed. Just at the disappointed optimism of my writing. Book of Essays has now changed in my eyes from being something which was pretty much finite or complete to a beginning of sorts. Thank goodness for a reflection period.

Since the last post we have met up with Sylvia Rimat, applied to a scratch event, had the film edited and said our thanks to the contributors. Now we have to send out the edit, develop and apply.

I am drawing this blog to a close. As for Book of Essays, it has been taken up for development with myself and my collaborators, Bree Morrison and Sabina Stefanova.

It is an exciting time! I am staring a new blog: www.a-n.co.uk/p/3364359 documenting a new collective group ‘up’ (unwritten possibilities) formed from ourselves which will take the project further.

Feeling a bit better today about Book of Essays, it is a difficult thing to perform, a book. Never had the chance to develop something so considered in performance before. My aspirations are to create something with perhaps more ambition that my current limitations allow. Against that, my work is bound to fail to reach intentions.

I began to think of my practice differently when I took a workshop using my gains from my first performance at ]Performance Space[ with the artist Lynn Lu. It was good to be with a group of performance artists making work, as strange as it sounds, it doesn’t happen that often. And perhaps I should do something more solitary – if I burn myself out then I do not have the regret of upsetting others in the process.

Prior to the workshop we had to read up articles relating to empathy. Empathy in performance terms seems to be a vehicle for a transference of emotion between the artist and the audience. She also asked us to bring food item and an object that was not attached via personal connection or utilitarian means.

It was a great way to think about using objects: they had a connection – an allusion of meaning or similarity but they were not obvious. You had to work on them. This is a really good way of making suggestive connections between objects.

In the workshop I tried a few things. I ran at people till I could not stop myself, bought people opposite the LADA’s White Building and sat looking in eating Udon noodles with the group. With the object I grouped everyone together and asked them to hold onto a napkin, leaning back. I then placed crackers behind their feet to mark a breaking point when someone leant back too far.

I seem to want to use the audience as a material. Or some collaborators. I use words or instructions. I like to push things. I was really taken by Rocio Bolivio‘s work. She balanced on a chair until she fell over, pressed pomegranates into her eyes and ran blind trusting the group to catch her before she ran into a wall or an iron beam.

I am getting closer to being able to define myself I think.

This is late. Not a good sign.

Today is the post performance entry. I performed the Book of Essays both last night and the previous Friday, to different audiences with a few changes in both. My lovely assistants, partners in performance Bree and Sabina were a bit tired of the constant game changing and under developed nature of it all. And frankly I was too.This blog will most likely discredit my efforts in this process of development. As an artist I am terrified of failure, both in terms of content and delivery. I hope Sabina and Bree will want to work with me again. In the meantime I think I need to develop my practice on my own for a bit.

There were a few things that affected my ability to handle the project, notably handing in my notice at my former job, cutting me off from a source of income and audience members. I had to work full time for a week and a half in the run up to the show, people were sick (including myself) and I injured my back just before the first performance – caught me by complete surprise. These are the potential pitfalls. I have not received enough money to complete my final session of mentoring in Bristol but hope to soon.

I look forward to getting in contact with Farnham Maltings, thanking them for the support and asking for feedback. I will ask for feedback from Sylvia and edit my footage with a friend, finally some good documentation.

Now, though is a good time. I can look at who I am as an artist, where I am as a performer and what I make as a maker.

I have left a section of a rehearsal. Tell me what you think. Will post again, this blog is still alive.

Book of Essays

Well that was an enlightening rehearsal – literally: I had discovered that the gas lighter for my piece had been used up on the gas cooker at ]Performance Space[!

I got to the space at 1:30 and had several challenges: setting up the sound, figuring out how to shift a piece of tech I had never seen before (a twin cd mixer) and cleaning the rehearsal space. In future I will set this up earlier.

I also got to play around with my projector (yay!) and dvd player – with the addition of a couple of cables my AV store suddenly became a lot more flexible. I now don’t need to use my slow laptop for playback but use a slim slick reliable piece of independent equipment (and with a remote!) instead.

We sat around this set up while we discussed the performance, how we can change it, this blog and how it helped to refine, to redefine my performance, my practice, practicalities hah!

Then we did some more drama exercises. One thing when graduating with my BA in Fine Art and going into performance is a lacking knowledge of these games. We ended up walking then running around the space counting up to twenty then falling, touching the ground with every even number: listening, co-ordination, confidence.

Once the palava of getting the audio tracks working was set, we began the performance. I had to work around a fold up chair rather than an arm chair which was a big difference. Then we figured out the next part partly before launching into it, pretending to light the tealights.

One thing I noticed is I have a very carefully planned choreography in arranging china cups into words which relate to the text. However the group dynamic invites intervention, snatching and spontanaeity which works against this black fabric rectangle. The shape of the fabric is almost too dramatic.

The only way to get around this I think is to play them off against each other. To balance gravitas with play. But it has to be right, otherwise it would be darkly comic, or fail to touch the depth of the essays. During the rehearsal we were working through the third part and I unwound the thread around the chairs of the audience, then around my leg, around my waist. The thread was also in contact with Sabina and Bree, at one point near the end we almost made a circuit. This is a point I wanted to somehow replicate.

After Sabina had to rush off to Bermondsey I was talking with Bree about the character and the performer. It seemed I had to make a choice, whether with gesture, costume or other signifier to the audience who I was. Was I me, the staged me, or the author Charles Lamb?

I think I am me. So I am reading, not re-enacting. It has struck me that there is now a clear distinction between the different texts in the work. There are four. The first, Old China is a conversation between the author Charles Lamb and his cousin, Bridget about the freedom of poverty. The rest are solitary musings on dark streets, suburbs as memories, and death. However in Old China there is a split – two voices, two personalities. I voice both. We talked about Bree or Sabina being spot lit and present but speechless during this – I take their voice. But then Lamb takes his cousin’s voice. Bridget is to us what Lamb makes of her.

During the performance I was talking to Bree and Sabina about shadowing each other and Sabina said ‘so you want us to be the same person?’. Maybe, yes. After I also talked with Bree about them both dressed as the same person. As Bridget from Old China.

So there is this dynamic forming as a subtext to the work. The mutability of identity between the performers and the voices in the text. Playfulness and solemnity. Shadows and ghosts. Leading and being led. I still feel that the performance revolves around me – more book snatching then. And I still want to try dying, metaphorically, via ‘vegetable vegetable, fruit’. Have to try that Monday then!

It is the night before my rehearsal: Monday morning 00:10. I have sorted the PR leaflets, distributed a load via post and in person on Saturday, completed the risk assessment form. I have had so much help – I am grateful to Veronica, the events organiser of St George’s Church for helping me with the marketing side of this project.

My best news of the day is Sabina Stefanova replying to a text with ‘I am better!! :) We still on for tomoro?’. We are go.

I am going over how we will organise all the different parts to Book of Essays. Like the ball of polyester thread I am using, perhaps we will have to unravel everything to make a single line to be unwound. Certain elements stick in my head from my final rehearsal in Jan, like the moment when the room cast in darkness prevented me from reading. I want to shift my role too. I want to be part of a team, not simply a leader.

Perhaps this goes back to a time when I took part in a workshop run by a member of Forced Entertainment. We took turns in pairs to follow and to be followed. Then we could decide ourselves whether to choose and change these roles at will within a group. After the exercises, certain movements began to emerge and personalities started to present themselves. Certain tensions arose.

Maybe the way to manoeuvre beyond the role of storyteller lies in killing the storyteller.

I have ideas – the self, myself, unseeing through darkness or blindness, willing or unwilling to be led. Who is the leader leading?