UNIT 3 – Performance

My being craves a safe and dedicated container to move and unfold and express within that is just mine.

What is the lighting solution?
What is the feeling to portray? How do I do that with lighting and angle?
What is the best angle to capture shadows, my body, and the whole frame? Which are the priorities for this work?
Do I include the baby wooden frame in the performance? Interact with it?
Interacting with the frame: Will I inherently be interacting with it because it’s in the video?
- Is it enough for me just to be inside of it? Do I intend to remain within, or move without as well? What’s the purpose of one or the other? What’s the crossing of the frame like?
- Do I need more physical interaction with it? Is it too arbitrary, like what’s the point of it being there?
  - Perhaps I’m getting self-conscious? As if I’m asking, is it “enough?” For who? What determines that? I think and feel through all of the options, possibilities, ideas. But which is “the right” one?
- What does this need to be for me?
- How do I feel about the song? Do I loop it? Do I do multiple videos? Do they then connect or do they become individual pieces?
  - Maybe multiple responses looped on one wall with the installation on another beside the video? Repetition of the song feels like it could get…annoying? Maybe alter something in the song? Or do the “real” song, then the cover? Or silence, then slow introduction of the music, then silence?

The size of the frame (6′ x 6′ x 7′) will extend beyond the width of the backgrounds in the studio, so I decided not to use a background which means that the floor and walls will be visible. This is less ideal because I’ll need to mask the outlets and building parts, and there are marks on the walls that might end up being visible in the footage. Plus I like the aesthetic less than a solid neutral background because my drive is to have the least amount of additional visual noise.

I would like to have the attention be directed instead towards details like the architecture “I” beams of the frame, the distorted shadows, the negative spaces made by the frame, my body, and the resulting shadows.

I see the frame as architecture. It becomes a structure that defines space. It becomes an entity that one can interact with, negotiate around, ignore, change, build on, take apart. I think I’m curious about and exploring how my frame – architecture on a bigger picture – affects its environment and human behaviour that exists within that immediate ecosystem. And then how the components affect the container.

I’m exploring and expressing and negotiating form and relationships – building angles; structural wall, floor, and ceiling lines; corners; scale; shadow.

Room corners to frame corners
Frame foundation lines to laid concrete lines
Frame to shadows to perspective

What if I filmed from an extreme view, and closer in/frontal? Two cameras, or one after another?

I asked if Kim would be willing to record and provide songs for my performances, which she very kindly did! I am so grateful and feel good at her sharing her original work with me to use.

Thought/feeling process through performance and architecture

Frame build

Installation

Performance setup, lighting, testing

Lights off with door open – attempting to recreate this lighting

Performance

I set the camera up in two locations – at first, it was very intentional. Then I had different instincts. 1 – change the camera angle and place the little cube inside the large, which opened up a totally new thought process to test the little frame by placing myself within, mimicking the within of the larger cube. 2 – move the light stand, which created the shadows and emphasis on negative spaces that I was desiring but didn’t know how to achieve. This created the answer for how to install the ceramic cube environment.

Performance: Relational movement: Body and Song

I responded to lyrics and tones of “Corner Store Confessions,” an original song by Kim Holmes and Darrah Chmelyk over multiple takes, each take is unique in movement. I took the movements from each performance that I liked the best (interesting “mark-making” and shapes) and put them into a sequential order for the video performance, with the song.
Naming: I named it the way that I refer to it in my mind: very categorically because this is a physical and experiential experience, not one that feels like it connects with a looser naming convention.

Performance: Relational movement: Body and Object

I randomly had an idea to change the camera position, place the small frame into the large, and press play. I moved intuitively and let curiosity lead my movements, which led to me placing myself inside of and around the small frame – treating it like furniture, clothing, architecture – which are all the ways that I see these architectural structures. How does architecture affect human behavior? How does human behavior affect architecture?
Can this be a silent film? Ideally, I would have left in the organic sounds made from the movements, but they were poor and muddied by external noises. Because this video will be viewed on my laptop within a larger space with background music, I chose to have the viewer wear headphones and to include another of Kim’s songs, one that resonates with me and feels like a reasonable questioning appropriate to how I feel. This is the song that will also play in the space, so it feels okay to connect. I changed the pace of the song in the video, which has distorted the singer’s voice quite a bit and becomes unrecognizable, which I like and the pace fits better with the pace of my movements in the video.
Also named it categorically and almost scientific-like. This piece feels more descriptive like I’m on an expedition to explore the terrain of the box and what I can do with it, rather than emotional or metaphorical.

Note: performances are in Media Gallery on Blackboard within FIN 231 course.

Clips from performances/explorations of movement not shown in videos

Reflections

engagement of the senses
grieving and confused that I did not get to this sooner – body movement, dance – it’s in my being – what happened, how and why – I was once a dancer, once a sewer, but those stopped in my childhood and I’m angry and sad and my body wants that time back – feels like wasted, not honest, not own direction.
I don’t know what to do or how – performance, dance, movement need to be in my life – art? acting? theatre? not trained? study?
unsettled as a constant about “Art?”
ending diploma. knowledge about body/movement/expression. work with hands/tactile/texture. sensational. ceramics/kiln. community. mentorship. income?!?! all unknown. I don’t know what next. it feels isolating, desperate, small, burdensome. I don’t know what is possible. but it feels honest.
value: personal – societal –measured