At the beginning of the project I was slighty apprehensive about working in a group of 5 other people. There were a lot of ideas floating about and we couldn't pin one down to focus on. We all wanted to try for locations, props, actions etc into a hat and drawing them out at random creating a series of scenarios for us to do. At first it was meant for a little excersise to help inspire us but we really enjoyed the method of chance and the absurdity of some of the events.something new and out of the studio. And after many mind maps and discussions we decided to just have a bit of fun and not pick anything too serious. So we created a chart of 'events'. Each putting suggestions for locations, materials, props, costume etc. This created a series of scenarios which we would then document and see where it took us.
The first 'event' was to be set in Hyde Park, dressed in oversized business clothing, strolling about with the subjects of fire and greed. This first one was a pivitol point for me in the collaboration as I really found out how we worked as a group and how comfortable we were around each other. Non of us had done performance art, which this was, before we really pushed our boundries. This image is one of my favourite from the whole project, it is very bold and really represents the odd events we had planned, as well as the grafitti in the background. During this 'event' we realised that performance art was the way to go and that video was the main medium to work in.
Over reading week, we all helped to create a table of individual 'events' for each of us to do over the week at home so we could continue to develop our work. This was also beneficial to us as it was interesting to see how we excecuted the individual tasks on our own with no one elses input. I didn't enjoy my individual one as much as I struggled with ideas on how I could incorperate each category, all while researching artists and discussing on our Facebook group on how we could move on.
We hired victorian costumes for this next event. Another thing I got from this collaboration experience is being spontenious. For this one we had to dance around a car park at 6am. We really bonded as a group as we started to do the harder events in the early hours of the morning doing ludacris actions. I feel this one had more of an aesthetic, escpecially on video as there is a lot going on and it slowly gets lighter which gives it a nice feel.
Scarborough was the next event and was my favourite of all of them. Was also the most unusual, it required us to spin in circles on Scarborough beach at 4am. I got some beautiful shots, this being one of them. It really captures the movement and light and I may consider using it as a starting point for a future project. The experience of exploring a place, a pretty familar, childhood place, at night really changes your perspective of the place. We got a lot of footage and images from this event in particular and started to consider where we were going to take this and started to think about the final piece, throwing some ideas around
For part of our grade we were asked to present 100 words about our collaboration. We collectively decided to create a new event to present our 100 words to. The words were written out as random words, running with the idea of the randomness of our actions, with ice on each other. The other elements such as leap frogging, making animal noises and sleeping were added in, with each of us taking a role in the performance. I, along with the group felt that this was out strongest performance yet. As we were performing this in front of people, the feedback we received was very useful. Our performances don't have any particular meaning and are very open to personal interpretation, but what we leave behind as a result of the performances really started to interest us, as well as the documentation.
We all missed making 3D and so decided as development to start creating sculptures. Using the same method we came up with a range of materials and durations and made various sculptures. This was my favourite and I feel the strongest image as it provokes a lot of thought. We worked really well as a team, helping eahc other out and suggesting a lot of ideas for the final piece as we were fast approaching the deadline. We wanted to combine everything that we had done, so we made a final event. Linking with our essay, we decided to be very site specific and use the studio space as the location. The main elements were sculptural actions, leaving what we used behind, teamwork and having a laugh.
Our final piece was the best performance we did. It was planned more than the others but still had a huge element of the unknown as we didn't know how all the elements would fit together. My job was to flick paint onto the fabric ceiling which in theory would drip onto the scene being unfolded below. The ceiling then could be used as a future project as it was itself a piece of art. The main aim of the final performance was to create mystery around our space. We chose to perform when no one was in the studio so no one would actually witness the performance, and all they had to go on was the things that resulted in the actions for example the paint splattered ceiling, the ripped apart matress, the bananas and cans lying about. This then provokes the audience looking at the scene to think about how all the things got there and what had actually happened. There were elements of each previous performances as we put up 1 image from each one on the walls, giving an uneasy homely feeling.
