BOOKTONES
My Site Specific Performance aims to provide a rare platform for a select audience to perceive ‘The Library’ in a unique and interesting style. It will be accomplished through the use of auditory media and a visual performance working in tangent with the setting, atmosphere and visuals to create a sensory experience unlike any other.
A Framing Statement.
As I began to search the Library I initially aimed to find new places and new locations I’ve never seen before to perhaps enlighten or enhance my performance. Everywhere I looked I couldn’t manage to get past the locations simplicity, the atmosphere or how I’m supposed to create a performance that interacts with the space or the people inside when I don’t have any positive emotional connection to the site. This is due to the fact I personally perceive the library as a dull, dark and quite frankly boring place with bad memories. I found new areas i’ve never noticed before; unnoticed stairwells, quiet rooms, corridors i’ve never walked down but none of them felt right. At this point my SSP lacked a solid structure so It became hard trying to find the right location. Researching more into site specific works I found the famous contemporary artist Willi Dorner whom from his most famous for his works “Bodies in Urban Spaces” i took great inspiration from. “Generally speaking, I am interested in how we can perceive architecture/space through our body more. Precisely speaking through all our senses besides the visual one.” (Leão and Neto) Then it hit me, it wasn’t about finding somewhere new to inspire me, I needed to find somewhere that was very familiar to me but adapting and perceiving it in a different light to then inform my performance into what I want it to be. With this realization in mind I choose the ‘Free room’ to perform my SSP. This is a small transient and enclosed space which I saw potential for intimacy between spectator and performer. This intimacy allows an audience member to become more immersed in my piece. Hopefully this allows that extra barrier break down enabling the audience to hopefully make the reflective connections between what they are viewing and their own lives. In addition, the free room remains at the very front of the library so my performance also aims to abstractly provide the experience of the library with-out actually venturing inside. I decided to use movement in my SSP because it allows me through an alternative style present different characters of the library such as the people inside, the library its self, the historical architecture, present uses and the symbolism the library holds itself. I aimed to present 4 different ideas that symbolises the whole library – The student (present), The Teacher (future), The Library (Education) and The Industry Worker (past). By creating the auditory track containing recoded sounds of the Library spectators can perceive all areas of the site within the space of my performance. I used sound as a tool in which I can immerse my audience in the full experience of the library. This is complemented by my sites place, the atmosphere and its history. Willi Dorner heavily influenced my performance as I like the way he uses the human body to explore the thematic and physical devises of a space in an abstract style to deliver the message ‘What is normal to some, can be perceived as unique to others.’ Dorner said in an interview with Pedro Leão and Maria Neto for Scorpio Network “I want to take the residents on a walk in their own city.” (Leão and Neto) Which is precisely what I aim todo for my performance based around my site. My performance last around 20 minutes each time and I decided to make my piece durational running between the hours of 9am-9pm performing twice every hour. This allows me to reach out to as many audiences as I felt needed and to really see if an audience could connect with my piece and see the correlation.
An Analysis of Process.
Upon finding out my given site of the library I struggled to come up with ideas that I felt motivated to pursue, this is purely because this site to me doesn’t personally connect in a positive way. Then I began to think why? Feelings of stress, anxiety, tiredness and boredom which can’t be escaped. So why not use this to fuel my performance? Now, I need to create a piece of Live art that connects and interacts meanwhile still informed by its location. This therefore covers all areas such as its background, What its used for? Why is it used? Who uses it? How do people feel about it? How has it changed? Everything!
“The most Successful interactive shows ensure their space connects, vitally, to the emotions contained within a piece.” (Leão and Neto) This helped me begin to form my idea and my way of connecting to the library through the people inside and the emotions that are very much so part of the library. Later I then began to think how I could express these emotions through performance and making in interactive within its space. Thinking about sensory elements of the body I chose Sound/Hearing. I took the element sound from the library taking recordings of noises. Background noises, conversations, keyboard typing, walking, everything. The next step for this was forming this into an audio track which can be used to compliment my movement piece, which again all links back to making my SSP connect with an audience and the site.
As we go on through the course we begin to learn more and more about previous site specific performances and certain leading theatre companies such as “Punch Drunk” that have made SSP a huge success. Through this process I found “Willi Dorner” famous for his Site Specific work “Bodies in Urban Spaces”. After watching videos and images of his work I decided to incorporate some of his ideas into my given site as I believe It can help articulate my performance and make it more immersive. Dorner’s work consists of a group of dancers that run around different areas of public towns in unison then quickly and swiftly fix themselves into small gaps in-between buildings, under bridges, anything. Dorner’s SSP makes seemingly nothing, into art. Adapting this to my own performance I aim to use my body to articulate emotions of the library, the people inside and even just interacting with he space around me to connect with the library as a whole. So I began to research the concept of a basic human condition more so ‘everyday movements’ (in my case linked with the Library) during my research of the library by studying and observing the variety of students and finding certain actions and patterns that they had in common despite their individuality and uniqueness. Furthermore, in research I found David Seamon a phenomenological geographer keen on discovering characters of place through movement. Seamon says “Phenomenology… asks if from the variety of ways which men and women behave in and experience their everyday world there are particular patterns with transcend specific empirical contexts and point to the essential human condition – the irreducible crux of peoples life-situations which remains when all non-essentials – cultural context, historical era, perennial idiosyncrasies – are stripped bare through Phenomenological procedures.” (Seamon, 1980.) This provided me with exactly what I needed. There are so many negative views towards the library due to its sense of robotics and overdrive mode where people aren’t really living in the ‘now’ and have shut down into overdrive and are performing basic everyday habits. “Seamon fixed on the ‘everyday movement in space’ – ‘any spatial displacement of the body or bodily part initiated by the person himself (Seamon,1980.) With this in mind I truly focused on observing the ways of different types of library goers. To add to this my audio track needed to work in alignment with my basic movements so I used the repetition of sounds and crescendo effect to really create a similar atmosphere of the whole library to one singular room.
In order to allow my performance to connect with its space I decided to use my body as a use of movement to really interact with the space around me. During researching in space Tim Cresswell sparks the topic of ‘Transforming space into Place’. This topic entails the story of how someone can purchase a flat and even after they buying all the furniture and making it feel their own is this now a place? “Space is a more abstract concept than space.” (Cresswell,2004.) With this being said a place is somewhere that has rules, regulations, norms and emotion. Therefore, all of these aspects need to be seen present in my performance.
So questions were raised about my performance about why I only wanted to perform in one space instead of spreading them out across the library. By keeping my performance to one specific area it allows me to localise and condense down the entirety of the library into one small intimate space. This allows an audience toby more immersed into the piece. Even though this isn’t on-stage theatre over time boundaries and expectations of theatre on stage have been set in place ever since theatre first started so the elements of breaking a fourth wall still do exist even if we are performing in a different environment. With this in mind, this will increase the connection between the audience, space and performer allowing a not only more immersed experience but a captivating one too. Seamon speaks about the individual habits/movements of a person he calls ‘body-ballet’ then if these movements are performed for a prolonged period of time they are called ‘time-space routine’. Now, in a location such as the library bringing these things together amount a vast amount of people this is called ‘place-ballet’. considering this Seamon then says “The mobility’s of bodies combine in space and time to produce an existential insider – a feeling of belonging within rhythm of life in place.” (Cresswell,2004.) Furthermore, adapting this to my performance I spent much time creating this specific rhythm of life of the library and applying it to ‘The Free Room’ where I performed. To make this all possible I had to perfectly sync the correct scenes of the library, then through my use of recorded sounds from the library, I aim to create an audio track that can synergize with my movement to create aspects of my performance. Once again this enables me to compress the entire sounds of the library into a more intimate experience. My SSP will give spectators 3 different sensory experiences, visual, special and auditory.
When beginning to think about costume and what I shall wear during the performance I think back to Willi Dorner. Now, the actors in ‘Bodies in Urban Spaces’ all remain in similar clothing – brightly coloured tracksuits with hoods that always remain up to mask their identity. I believe this is done to take away any aspects that could detract away the attention from Dorner’s work. Keeping this in mind, I decided to create an anonymous identity for myself by wearing an all-black mask with the purpose of allowing an audience to project themselves onto me. In essence, as I create this anonymity this then creates a mirroring effect of how I’m acting as a representative of society. By taking away my identify this enables the audience to use me as a blank canvas that can be symbolic to them in whichever way they decide. With this being said I become a conduit between the audience and the space therefore meaning they become a part of the performance once again emphasising the immersion effect. If my theory works and the audience to self-reflect what they have seen and be immersed enough to understand what my performance was aiming to show or at least their own interpretation. In addition, as Im aiming to create a condensed down version of the library to one room by remaining anonymous this allows me to also better present the varying demographics and different ideologies within my piece. ‘Commedia dell’arte’, a phrase used to describe the use of masks in theatre to represent fixed social types and stock characters. I used this performative method to symbolise the four archetypical characters I was trying to portray using only physical expression and body language. Rudlin notes that “As an actor you must work within the limitations of a persona and cannot escape into the complexities of personality. In a sense you are the prisoner of the mask, and you must play out your part in terms of the statement it makes, rather than in terms of some complex emotions that go beyond that statement” (Rudlin,1994.) This supports my process in providing a based archetype instead of deep character complexities. I remain my clothing all plain white and natural because I don’t want spectators to ever be detracted away from the physicality or the concept of my representation of the whole library. therefore the audience cannot be taken away by any other means such as Physical appearance, skin tone, voice, anything. This method was also apparent when it came to my dressing of the room. I kept my performance space as blank as possible only containing 4 chairs to help represent different characters and a tray of books to see fit for the library. By keeping things plain it allows an audience to form their own interpretations of the movement.
As in any performance you will always meet difficulties or opportunity costs. Mine became apparent when I began putting my performance into action I realised some of the practicalities aren’t really feasible. This was because I decided the best way for my audience to hear my sound was through the use of headphones, as this would create an intimate atmosphere and immediately make the audience more immersed. But then questions arose such as: How can I facilitate a vast amount of people not only to somehow tune in to my audio track? and even further how can I do this so they could tune in to be in sync with the movement? The answer is I couldn’t it wasn’t feasible. So instead, adapting to the change I decided that given the good acoustics of the room a speaker would be good enough to still poetry the surround effects worked fine.
A Performance Evaluation.
When creating Booktones I began researching performance artists and companies based around similar motives, physicality’s and performative rules. I found “The Theatre Of Mistakes” a performance art company which, as Julian Maynard Smith states “used very abstract and minimal rules for action which I found disturbing but physically liberating.” (Kaye, 1996.) This reinforces my concept of freedom of the body in the movement of space. Julian adds “It was a sculptural way of dealing with performance, a sculptural way of dealing with bodies in space and time.” (Kaye, 1996.) This concept of space resonates with the thematic concerns of Booktones in its critical understanding of the relationship between space and time. Now, “Theatre of mistakes, although it had things called ‘inconsistent’ behaviors, was extremely tightly ruled. We wanted to do something bit looser and freer” (Kaye, 1996.) In relation to Booktones my anti-liminal sound scape was better to suited to as Maynard says a looser and freer movement pattern which over a grueling period of time make things a lot easier.
Final Site Specific Performance. Lincoln: Callum Izzard, 2016. video.
Finally, on the day of the performance which proved to be a mental and physically draining day my piece lasted form the hours of 9am-9pm. Throughout the day I performed 15 times ranging from crowds of 2-12. Even though my performance was rehearsed with certain movements made to match sound there still remained an element of improvisation which indeed made the beauty of the piece more prominent. The larger crowed performances proved a much better atmosphere in the room which pushed my ability to really ‘live in the moment’ and create a true representation of the library. Therefore, if If i was to do this again I would promote Booktones online through means of social media to create a larger audience. In terms of enrichment, the Site Specific performance module I believed has made me a better artist as it showed me a different medium of acting, one that takes your out of you comfort zones and away from the normality’s of theatre acting. Site Specific performance showed me how through deep researching, theorem and different methodologies can enlighten your performances and yourself as a contemporary artist. “The notion of the performance of the work by the viewer, irrespective of conventional medium or discipline, is a key to the emergence of art in practice, and arises across a wide variety of mode of work.” (Kaye, 1996.)
Works Cited:
Buttimer, Anne and David Seamon. The Human Experience Of Space And Place. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. Print.
Cresswell, Tim. Place. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.
Final Site Specific Performance. Lincoln: Callum Izzard, 2016. video.
Izzard, Callum. Picture Of Audio Track In Progress.. 2016. Print.
Izzard, Callum. Picture Of Me During Final Performance. 2016. Print.
Izzard, Callum. Picture Inside Of Lincoln Library. 2016. Print.
Izzard, Callum. Picture Of Performance Program. 2016. Print.
Kaye, Nick. Art Into Theatre. Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. Print.
Leão, Pedro and Maria Neto. “INTERVIEW WITH WILLI DORNER: BODIES IN URBAN SPACE”. Scopio Network. N.p., 2016. Web. 12 May 2016.
Rudlin, John. Commedia Dell’arte In The 20Th Century. Routledge, 1994. Print.