Tuesday 23 August 2016

small table


Research Question: 16th August 2016
Practice Based Research
Studio

How does drawing as a live action inform the relationship between object and body?

What is trace in this research process?

Also…. Using this table – how is scale impacting on the uncanny presence?


I have found out that most of my physical gesture / position with a table in some way mimic  of  a table – placing myself in a quadruped-like position on all fours. Sometimes I do this with knees bent, but I am drawn to being in a legs straight / knees locked position (like a yoga down-dog style). I enjoy the sensation of back and leg extension. The table suggests the placing of hands and feet ‘at four corners. If my body is close to the table this also pushes my face forward to the table top – inviting me to further explore the dimensions of the table through touch of my face- my eye lash. I see the table in very close proximity, noticing the trace of dust, the scratches in the wood, the stains in the varnish. Lifting and carrying become a feature. With this small table I am able to lift the object entirely, to tuck it under my arm or into my body. I can lift it comfortably with one hand.

The image of the quadrupedal position throws up a problem for me as it brings to mind Allen Jone’s women as table in Table (1969). This along with his other fetishized images of women as furniture prompted a feminist backlash against the overt objectification of the woman which was parodied in Helen Chadwick’s performance works.
“[…] the imagery of capitalism, in which the alluring female body did not act as a sign for its owner’s own sexuality, but only as it existed for the male sexual imagination”.
Natalie Ferris in Allen Jones and the Masquerade of the Feminine
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/10/allen-jones-sexist-art-royal- https://www.academia.edu/15172418/Allen_Jones_and_the_Masquerade_of_the_Feminine_Allen_Jones_London_Royal_Academy_2014_

Does my physicality with these domestic objects in some way also explore a capitalist regime where the sexual and gender identity are still only constructed through and for the male consumer? I contest my own suggestion here. I think that the on all fours position for me is indicative of something more playful, more childlike. The four legs is animal-like.  Is this another uncanny mechanism to allude to a less human, less ‘animate’ form? Is the uncanniness appearing when a binary of human/ non human is broken down?

The act of drawing around the object and my body further promotes an awareness of the movement of exploring, climbing around and moving the table. I find that the line becomes a delineation of both the place of the table/ body and of the shadow of the table/ body. As such the lines are confused and do not indicate where the mark traces the position of the actual object or of the shadow of the object. As such there is a blurring of the tracing of presence and effect of presence (blocking light).  In the resulting drawing the actual presence of the object and the effect of the object are rendered with similar lines. Lines overlap lines as I have moved myself and the table. The scope of this movement has been in response to the dimensions of the paper on the floor, the presence of sunlight through the window and the field of vision of the camera. These semi-conscious restrictions are placed on the action. The restrictions promote returning movements, repeated overlapping of lines and rotation of the body and table.

This is a small table and perhaps appears at first to be miniature. But it is a ‘full size’ table in the sense that it is not a toy. It functions in the home with ‘proper’ use. This is an ‘occasional’ table.  It currently functions as a side table in my living room, placed in a corner adjacent to a small sofa, and is the place for a small lamp. It is a table I have inherited from my family and it was made by my granddad so probably dates to the 1960’s. The splayed legs and laminated wood top perhaps also suggest a 60’s style. The table has removable, screw-in legs and because of this has been convenient to travel and move house with since I first left home.

However, in the practice-based research action imagery the table does appear diminutive, and perhaps toy. The action therefore promotes a shift in thinking or understanding of the object – is it ‘real’ or is it an ‘imitation’ of a table? It draws into question the functionality of the object  and in turn I suggest the naming of the object  as ‘table’.

I arrive at a sense of tracing – that the small table is a ‘trace’ of the larger dining table. The small table, the body in a four-leg shape, the outline on the paper – these are as Derrida might suggest,  original and not original. They are both inscribed and absence of their originating form. By that I mean that they echo something previous, and are also something in themselves. I feel that this is essence of ‘disturbance’ in the research action that evokes the uncanny. The trace object/ activity draws attention to  - as trace- to the subject/ artist/ female. The play of human and object marks a ‘shift’, a shudder where comfortable reading and understanding are disturbed or displaced. I relate this disturbance back to the uncanny – uncanniness being the ‘feeling’, the experience of disturbance.

Friday 12 August 2016

I am thinking about Deleuze’s introduction ‘Repetition and Difference’



August 9th 2016.



“To repeat is to behave in a certain manner, but in relation to something unique or singular which as no equal or equivalent”.



I am thinking about how repetition of an event indexes the original event and vice versa. That in effect the first iteration is itself a determiner of subsequent iterations. I like the occurrence of the word’ vibrate’ in Deleuze’s sentence “[…] And perhaps this repetition at the level of external conduct echoes, for its own part, a more secret vibration which animates it, a more profound, internal repetition within the singular”.



Is he suggesting that even in the singular there is a vibration – a shudder of possibility that the event repeatable? In the singular an event or object is re-encountered in the process of experiencing.



I perform the simple action of carrying a table and chair into the space and sitting. I do this ten times. As performer there is something in the ‘knowing’ that from the first manifestation of the action I am going to repeat. The first action determines the repetition. There can be no repetition without the first action.



Is the first action actually repeated? Or rather, is it re-represented; in extreme resemblance or perfect equivalence? Of course, my research action is not a ‘perfect’ set of equivalences. Each repeat (or should I say re-representation) reveals the flaws and inconsistencies. I handle the furniture slightly differently each time. I place my feet differently. I pause at the table for an inconsistent length of time. More over, the shift of light at the window, the rain-fall outside and ambient sounds of the building betray the falseness of the repetition, revealing instead a series of singular events and encounters.



I am aware that the incidental choice of this table and chair also awakens another equivalence. This is the furniture of an exam room, calling to mind the rows and rows of ‘identical’ chairs and tables, and in turn the identical sitting, studying bodies at the tables; time passing.



The representation of one table and chair, and the one performance action represent repetition even if they are different kinds of design.



(As digital design reproduction advances I wonder if the idea that repetition as a ‘transgression’ from natural laws as Deleuze suggests is being brought into further question, undermining the ‘natural’ beyond that which the ‘similarly’ mass produced table and chair represent).



Is the performance, as Jane Blocker suggests in using Peggy Phelan’s terms – always in the process of disappearing, in the process of becoming itself? By that I mean, as I try to remove significance of the gesture through repetition am I also making that performance become ‘something’, become ‘the performance that repeats; that the repetition defines the performance in some way? Blocker uses Rebecca Schneider’s thinking here in considering performance as “of” disappearance:  “[…] if we think of ephemerality as “vanishing”, and if we think of performance as the antithesis of “saving”, do we limit ourselves to an understanding of performance predetermined by a cultural habituation to the patrilineal, West-identified (arguably white-cultural) logic of the Archive?

Rebecca Schneider, Archives: Performance Remains, Performance Research 2001, vol 6. No 2. P100.

I think this is relevant to my experience through the practice-based research because what I experience in the process of performance is a sense of both ‘loosing’ the ‘original’ through the repetition of action, whilst at the same time developing an awareness of the archival history of that action through its re-iteration. My body has a muscle-memory of each action of lifting and carrying and starts to mimic the previous version, placing the table in the ‘same’ position on the floor, holding my arms on the table in a similar fashion to the previous time. In addition, a shift in the sense of time occurs – not dissimilar to any experience of mundane, physical work, where the counting of the repeated action, the duration of it and sense of time passing alters in some way. As such I feel that the performance itself ‘disappears’ to be overtaken by the whole process. It becomes about the repeated lifted and carrying.



This leads me to reconsider the physical content of my work, and to think about the importance of carrying and lifting. How does this connect to ‘handling’, to caressing? What is the endurance of this (for example carrying a mattress, or holding utensils above my head) doing and saying?





(There is a problem in that I am thinking about the action as a live experience but you the secondary spectator are consuming as or through the video – a medium that in Jane Blocker’s words has capacity for endless repetition simultaneously preserves, re-enacts, and hollows out.)





Blocker, Jane. Repetition:  A Skin which Unravels

In Jones, Amelia & Heathfield, Adrian (2012) Perform Repeat Record: Live Art in History. Bristol, Chicago. Intellect.







Introduction: Repetition and Difference

Deleuze Gilles (1994) Difference and Repetition

Translated by Paul Patton. Columbia University Press. New York. 1-4.

Available August 2016:











Monday 8 August 2016


Not At Home - Description. 
 
Precarious Assembly, The Whitworth Manchester. 
August 4th 2016.

I carry and place a cardboard box of objects in the space. Each of the five actions is performed in sequence, in the following body states and spaces:
1.     In black t-shirt and long trousers; bare feet, hair tied back.  (Taking place in the first floor textiles exhibition).
2.     Naked. (Taking place in the Elizabeth Price curated exhibition).
3.     In denim skirt and blue t-shirt. (Taking place in the main collection - new aquisitions).

a.     Utensils
I take some kitchen utensils from the box, that includes wooden spoons and spatulas; plastic fish slice and slotted spoon; potato masher’ wire whisk; metal fish slice and spoon. A divide the utensils into two hands and stand with a fists of these tools – looking at them for a moment. I begin to lick the utensils. I explore the length and contours of the utensils with my tongue. I move from one fistful to the other, repeating this action five times. As I complete a licking action I raise my hands slightly so that both fists become elevated from my body. As I lick I can taste the residue of cooking on the utensils- a sweet and savoury ‘onion-ish’ taste. I feel the coldness of the metal and the roughness of the wood. I lick over my fingers and along the spoon handles, pushing my tongue into the slots of the fish slices, the curve of the potato masher and the wires of the whisk. When I have done this five times I raise my fists of utensils up and stand for a count of fifty. I then let the utensils drop and they clatter to the floor.
b.     Bed
I take a used pillow from the box, it is white fabric stained yellow. I place the pillow on the floor. I take a wooden toy bed from the box. It is dark brown, hand made. I crouch to place it next to the pillow (below and to the right), and then I stand. I hold my hands/ arms as if still holding the toy bed. I then crouch to pick the bed up and hold it forward before putting it down again. I repeat this action of picking up and replacing the bed twenty five times. I then step forward onto the pillow and jump up and down fifty times, holding my body loosely, becoming breathless. I stop and quickly lie down behind the pillow, grabbing the toy bed and placing it on my chest/ abdomen so that it rises and falls as I pant. I hold my fists tightly, but slowly let them release with creaking, jumping motion of the tendons. Once my breathing has returned to normal and my fists are unclenched I allow my body to relax and press into the floor.
c.      Pan
I take a large saucepan and lid from the box. It is stainless steel with two handles. I lift the lid and look at it, consider it. I am holding the lid in my left hand and the pan in my right. I see the reflection of the room in the pan lid. I twist my body slowly, holding the lid and maintaining a gaze into the lid so as to visually explore the space I am in. I move my body, turning on-the-spot so that I can take in the whole space, walls, floor, people, ceiling. I try to twist my body so that I can see all the way behind me. As I move I occasionally spin the pan in my right hand. One I feel that I have gone ‘all the way round’ I return to front and slowly replace the lid. I place the pan on the floor.
d.     Curtain
I take a curtain from the box. It is made from a fabric in creams and browns with a floral pattern of poppies and thistles. The curtain is lined, with gathering tape and hanging weights. The curtain lies in a pool at my feet. I bundle the fabric into a ball and start to roll this around and over my body. I make my way from one leg, across my torso and up my chest. I try to keep the bundle whole, refolding fabric into the ball as it drops loose. I roll the fabric under my arm put, behind my neck and over my head, and along an arm. I roll it down my back and between my legs, down my leg to the floor. I let the curtain fall on the floor at my feet then pick up the top edge and with two hands pull the fabric up over my face and head until it covers me, pulling the fabric from behind my back so it travels over my head and body to fall behind me. Step back so the curtain is at my feet again. I do this thee times then leave it heaped on the floor. 
e.     Crockery
One-at-at time I take twelve ceramic plates from the box. They are of varying sizes and designs. I place a plate on the floor. There is a slight ringing noise when some plates touch the hard floor. I stand close to the plate and then lift my bare foot to trace the shape and feel of it with my foot. Standing with my weight on one leg I allow my toes to trace the edge of the place, or across the bowl of it. Sometimes my feet stick a little and the plate moves. I can feel embossed pattern on some places and the warmth of the china plates. Once I have placed and touched all the plates I collect them up in my arms. I stack them against my breasts, leaning back a little so as to cradle the plates in my arms. I shuffle the plates so as to put them in some sort of order. Some slip, and there is a clattering noise. Once happy with the action and arrangement I stack the plates on the floor. I go to stand on the stack with my full weight. The first two times some of the plates crack and break. (I leave the broken shards in the space). I do more than stand on one leg. The third time (with a diminished pile of now stronger plates) I am able to fully stand with two feet on the stack and lift my heels from the plates. I can stand for a count of fifty before stepping off the stack.

I gather all the objects up, back in the box. If there are broken shards of pottery I leave these in the gallery. On one occasion I forget a wooden spoon and it is also left. I carry the box to exit the space (or to move to the next performance site).

Tuesday 2 August 2016

A question arising around the choice of (un) dress in the performance research




August 2nd 2016
Rough Notes.
The process throws forward a question around dress – how do I present ‘self’ as a clothed / naked person? What does this do to the politics of the action?
I perform the same action in three states of un-dress: wearing the clothes I have on that day (denim skirt and t shirt); wearing black t shirt and trousers as ‘performance clothes’; naked. All the time I have bare feet and my hair tied back.

Action: holding a bundle of kitchen utensils in each fist – wooden spoons, spatulas, whisks and the like – I lick the utensils, alternating five times from each hand. As I lick from one hand the other hand slowly rises until both fists of utensils are raised in the air. I hold this for a moment, then fling the utensils to the floor with a clatter.

What I notice about the difference in dress is that it complicates the visual imagery with added context. The black clothes seem neutral until they are set against nakedness. The alternative states of dress draw attention to the first – they add to saying something of my identity as woman in her 50’s; as performer/ artist.

In jeans skirt I perhaps look ‘homely’ – plain and utility. The clothing seems to be without significance but I reconsider that once this dress is juxtaposed with the black clothing and the naked body its own significance comes forward. These clothes speak of me – they are the most normative apparel and as such most closely connected with the sense of belonging and perhaps home.

In black I become a solid shape. Black absorbs light, black is of solemnity. The black clothing is recognisable as a ‘performance art uniform’ – it claims a neutrality that asks the viewer ‘ don’t consider the clothing, consider the action and the body’. I am aware of course that the black art clothing, much like the gallery space itself, is not without context.

In contrast the naked body operates as revealing of the ordinariness – the reality of the body of the performer. It says ‘ this is the body of the fifty year old woman’. My body is not slim but is muscular in places. I have suntan marks from a recently worn bikini and shaved public hair – perhaps this tells of the leisure time that I can afford? It removes all other contextual signification of jeweller or clothing. I am reminded of Kenneth Clark’s discussion on the nude in suggesting the nude is not the subject of the art form but the form itself. My body is not nude per se – it is naked (without clothes) – where are the clothes? (My mind leaps to the images of heaped clothes at Auschwitz that in turn mark the absence of the body.) The naked body becomes it’s own momento mori speaking both of life and death.

If shoes signify the wearer in some way what does bare feet do? The bare footed person is not without identity, otherwise clothed their gender, faith, employment etc. can still be signified. In the context of the performance action I suggest that the bare foot signifies the act as art work, it creates a bodily ‘frame’ that moves the ordinary body part into a place of cultural object.

The bare foot signposts the action of walking and draws attention to the grounding of the body to the floor. It signals an attention to the mechanics of the body which might become a choreography.

Further reading:
Tim Ingold – talking about the wearing of shoes and training of the feet – separation of body/ mind. The way the feet embodied

Eugenio Barba – the ordinary becoming extra ordinary?
Zerilli – 2004 phenomenology of acting?
Intentionality?
Gradiva – the walking woman?

Plates


Plates
Action Research
August 1st 2016
(First draft notes)
I am gathering household objects. I buy a china tea service from a junk shop - thinking that this has no emotional connection to me and that therefore I will feel comfortable working with it, experimenting, breaking it potentially. Yet once I am in studio, sharing the space with these delicate cups, plates and saucers, I feel attached to them and somehow responsible as a new custodian of them. A simple score determines my actions: to repeat an action; to think about my feet. I place the plates. The action research sits in a creative environment loaded with context that seeps into the space as if triggered by the presence of the objects I elect to work with at that time.

The research action asks how does my body describe the properties of the plates, and perhaps visa versa. What is the moment when the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and why? Dramaturgy is developed in a responsive manner, dealing with the moment of encounter and interaction. As I take the crockery from a cardboard box and set it on the floor a series of automatic gestures are triggered, that involve hand and foot. I place the plates and saucers on the floor and hear them offer a slight ringing sound to the air around. I feel the warmth of the ceramic with my toes. I stack the plates and stand on them. The plates creak a little but do not break.

The action describes a dialogue between the inanimate object and the body. Responding to the ‘found’ crockery speaks of the negotiation of the present/ presence in a way that Susan Stewart described a sense of suburbia, something of the two foci of the suburban as nostalgia and technology (Steward. 1994.1). In the moments of holding, handling and standing upon the crockery I am reminded of the industrial technology that produced it and indeed the industrious hands that made it. (I have been engaged in a conversation recently with a ceramicist and am reminded of the history of labour in the pottery industry). I imagine the hands of the woman that applied the slip transfer to this design, or edged the rim of the plate with gold paint. I also recall the antiquated tradition of accumulating a dinner service for marriage and the young housewife’s attachment to the display of and use of the crockery.

The placing of the foot on the plate seems naughty, taboo*. The action tests the body by placing the lower limbs under tension and creating a dramaturgy of tension, balance, holding. Whilst the action presents at stillness the body is placed in a constant motion, shifting weight, tensing and relaxing muscles so as to keep a balance.

Is the work ‘about’ nostalgia? I don’t think that there is any intention of wistful or sentimental longing for the past evoked here. Rather, a strange tension develops in the unsettling action of the body with and against the objects. The work dismantles the nostalgic through the irreverence shown in the employment of the feet, whilst somehow recalling a memory caught in a memory, in Freudian sense of ‘working through’ that is physically recalled in the existence of the plates as a kind of ‘portal’. There is /was no utopian life of the suburban housewife to recall. Rather it is the memory of a construct, and the aspiration to a construct that cannot and was not achieved. Swedish philosopher and editor in chief of Site Journal makes reference to Hegel’s notion of Aufhebung, in relation to poetry and I wonder if there is not a useful parallel here apparent in the simultaneous cancelling out and preserving of a state of being as expressed in the action of standing on the plates? By this I mean, the action emerges from philosophical concerns to both acknowledge (and perhaps even a supressed desire to achieve) a sense of status quo as represented by the suburban home, whilst at the same time to undermine and deconstruct this archetype. And yet, nothing is destroyed. The detritus of broken plates, or old mattresses serves only to re-recall, re-repeat the presence of the domestic?

* I think about Freud’s thinking on taboo – and belief in the power of the person to transmit a spiritual energy to an object: “Persons or things which are regarded as taboo may be compared to objects charged with electricity; they are the seat of tremendous power which is transmissible by contact”.  (Freud. 1918.12)


Steward, Susan (1994) On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection.  USA. Duke University Press

Wallenstein, Sven-Olov (no date) Tropes of Nostalgia: Winckelmann, Hegel, Heidegger, and the Quest for Origins. Accessed August 2016 at:

Site Magazine

Freud, Sigmund (1918) Totem and Taboo. 
Chapter II. Taboo and the Ambivalence of Emotions. Accessed August 2016 at: http://www.bartleby.com/281/2.html