Year 3 Worcester University BA Fine Art

As I was looking at something so architectural as the panopticon, I wanted to bring in something sculptural into my performances. I devised a ‘stage’ a wooden frame which took up and commanded the space. I see the gallery space as a panopticon. We look from the central space of a ‘white walled space’ outwards towards the paintings or sculptures. These are the windows, the doors of the cells portals to a reality which is no ours. Panoptic themes naturally reside within this space. Foucault relates to the panopticon. ‘We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an angular building; at the centre, a tower; this tower pierced with wide windows that open onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheric building is divided into cells, each of which extends the whole with of the building; … All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a school boy.’[1] The supervisor is the person looking at the artwork, each painting an illustration of the person in the cell. ‘visibility is a trap’[2]

In Crows (2017) I attempt to become that supervisor. The supervisor in my tower, my stage, the wooden frame. Using various objects, I begin to produce miniature performances, by not finishing the action of each miniature performance I begin to build tension. At one moment I make a slip knot, I hand the other side of the rope to an audience member to hold onto I drop the rope and move on. Following prison structure between each performative action I washed my hands and face. ‘at the first drum roll the prisoner must rise and stand as the supervisor opens the cell doors, at the second drum roll they must be dressed and made their beds, at the third, they must line up and proceed to the chapel for morning prayer. Work, prisoners go down in the court yard where they must wash their hands and faces and receive their first ration of bread.’[3] I controlled myself by doing this, controlling in the way I could have been in the prison itself. Control.

I continued this ritual using a gas mask to cover my identity. ‘Madness is childhood.’[4] Foucault tells of a reason for the asylum and prison and that is to control the poor and remove identity. This mask though not only removes my Identity it is also a method of control, it is intimidating. I am not in a hazardous area where one may be needed, am I alluding to the fact that the white powder is something other than flower. Either way it helps build tension and I sort to continue with the performance. I add further to this tension by alluding towards a hanging when this fails the first time due to the audience member dropping the rope I hand this back. I climb back up and insert an umbrella. I jump down and take a teddy I had earlier given to a separate audience member, rip its head off and return the stuffing to her. I pour the bowl of water over my head and return to my clothes breaking out of the central stage, rupturing tension. I walk off.

[1] Michel. Foucault (1991). Discipline and Punish The Birth of The British Prison. 4th ed. London: Penguin Buoks. 200.

[2] Michel. Foucault (1991). Discipline and Punish The Birth of The British Prison. 4th ed. London: Penguin Buoks. 200.

[3] Michel. Foucault (1991). Discipline and Punish The Birth of The British Prison. 4th ed. London: Penguin Books. 6.

[4] Michel Foucault (1961). Madness and Civiisation. France: Librairie. 252.

(part of my dissertation draft copy plan)

I stand under the sun, it glares its all seeing eye down on my bare skin. I shout and scream, Im not heard. The lights of control take a hold, I’m retained in the autonomous glow of subduction, you have this, take that but all is control, this is their plan, their model of control.

Crows attempts to break out of this apparatus. Never leaving, contained in my box of independence. The box is inside a box its contained by the gallery walls. a box within a box much like the panopticon the apparatus stands tall in the middle of the gallery space. The audience surrounds the box much like the inmates. Patiently they sit and wait watching, seeing.

To continue with the sense I have not lived, that I have not tasted freedom? The idea fills me with horror. Help me see…

(When Nietzsche Wept, 2007)

Marcel Broodthaers uses repetitive objects in his work. I have some work in the exhibition TIDE. an exhibition my fellow students invited me to be part of the work curated by Esme Bamber and Nicola Arnold. But they have indirectly shown me a potential way to take my screen printing series self-titled ‘Wake Up’.

The way they have curated it has made it more interesting in the sense that is a repetitive message being portrayed over and over again. I believe this is something I can work on. It defiantly reflects the ideas that I want to portray and I like that this has been portrayed through the work without my contribution or comments on curation or how id like my art work.

Marcel Broodthaers does this in many of his works. I believe this alone, the repetitive nature of work, is political. Just the very fact that it repeats itself  over and over again. much like my prints, every egg is different, every print is different. The egg is a recurring motif.

Yes of a greater stance Broodthaers has in a way he has ‘defaced’ his counties flag by sticking egg shells over the top of it. The eggs divided between the colors of his flag, the three types of people in his society (?) Upper Class, Middle Class, Working Class. all stepping on ‘egg shells’ (?). or it may just be the fact that this work is ascetically pleasing, one egg would not be as effective than a larger amount.

Defiantly something to consider?

Oppenheim uses puppets in some of his artwork. These puppets are moulded from the artists face they are displayed using the stings of control still hanging them from the ceiling.

Dennis Oppenheim: Attempt to Raise Hell 1974

The bell hangs at head height the puppet is held within the movement between siting and lying it cannot stand without hitting the bell making noise. the plinth replicates the wooden floor to which the puppet is staged.

‘By the mid-’70s he was making mechanized objects such as “Two Right Feet for Sebastian” (1974), in which a pair of boots kick the gallery walls sixty times a minute, and “Theme For A Major Hit” (also 1974), the current showstopper at Valentine. “Theme For A Major Hit” consists of a marionette — its bronze-painted head is a self-portrait — decked out in a silver suit and black turtleneck.

The puppet, operated by a motor clamped to the ceiling, taps (or, rather, clops) on a circular platform to a two-hour-long recording of “It Ain’t What You Make It’s What Makes You Do It,” a song written by Oppenheim and performed with a band that included Jim Ballard, Roger Welch, Bill Beckley, Connie Beckley, Christa Maiwold, John Shole and Diego Cortez.’

(http://hyperallergic.com/128192/homage-to-absurdity-the-restless-legacy-of-dennis-oppenheim/)

the fact that the puppet stands and moves by direction to me comments on the fact that ‘It’s what makes you do it,’ a reference to ‘the man’? again the puppet show us what we are forced not to see.