Translations

So, for the interim show I presented the video of my lecture on pub games on a desk in the triangle space. There was one chair and no headphones, which meant that only the person in the chair, close to the speakers could hear it.
I wouldn’t say I was overly happy with my piece for interim in comparison to my other work, but as an exercise into understand my practice it did open up a number of ideas. My main concern with this piece was that it was just a bit boring. Normally my work has an element of humour in it, and a certain light-heartedness, but due to the nature of this performance it didn’t have this. I also felt that It didn’t work in the gallery setting, as even the person sitting in the chair couldn’t hear it, due to the surrounding noise at the private view.
However I did think that some things worked, one being the performance itself. The show that I made this work for was called translations, and focused on changing your practice slightly. The way I changed mine was to perform myself in a participant based event. I felt the event itself worked, and if I could go back and change it I would just do the performance, and not show the video of it in the gallery space. The piece showed me the value of the original performance, and from this I was able to reconsider the way that I perform. Whether the performance itself should stand-alone or if it needs to be couple with the video achieve. This idea leads onto my thesis, where I am looking at whether performance and the achieve can, or must, go hand in hand. It also made me think about the way that I can present the research for my work as a viable part of the work itself. Although it may not seem it, there is a lot of research that go into my work, which I often discard and don’t show; it is just there to inform me. But this piece actively uses this research, and is something that I will be developing in the future.
Lastly this piece looked at two things I don’t often do or address in my work, one was to perform myself instead of hiring actor, which is something I’m still not overly comfortable with, not due to feeling unconfident, but feeling a lack of control over the performance. It is however something I will experiment with further. The second is doing a participant based event with member of the public, which is something I don’t do, because, again, I don’t feel I can maintain the right level of control over the performance. However in this situation (the lecture theatre) I felt I could assert control over the proceedings, and if I was to do a participant based event again I would be interested in doing it in this type of institutional, control environment, where I can take on a role as leader.
Below are some photos of my piece in the interim show, and some of the private view…