Research

We Invite an Audience

For our second experiment, we invited an audience to join us in looking at peoples perceptions of self. The group exposed themselves at varying stages of nakedness and drew on themselves the changes they would make to their body if they could create a perfect version of their form. We then stood in a line, with our eyes closed, and asked the ‘audience’ to graduate down the line, drawing on the changes they would make to each person. The most interesting thing we found was that everyone stuck to the pre drawn lines of each person when making their changes, and later described that choice as reluctance to offend people. Despite the additions being completely anonymous, the audience explained that they felt a sense of exposure and empathy when asked to complete the task, and felt they would be judged on their decisions. This relates to the sense of shame mentioned in an earlier blog, and a quote from Brené Browns’ speech entitled The Power of Vulnerability;

‘…shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection: Is there something

about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won’t be worthy of connection?’ (TED 2011)

The group linked this idea with our notion of vulnerability, in that the most basic reason people feel vulnerable is because they are ashamed of themselves, and afraid of other people’s perception of them. We therefore found it interesting that the audience experienced this same apprehension of honesty or exposure when asked to complete a set task. This furthered our interest in the relationship between the performer and the audience, and has also increased our curiosity in the ability to make the audience empathise with us as performers, to the extent that they can fully experience the same emotions (vulnerability, shame etc.) as the group.

TED (2011) The Power of Vulnerability [online video] available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCvmsMzlF7o  [accessed 31 October 2013].

We Decide to Practice

Throughout our first few meetings as a group, we realised that when we thought about what made us feel vulnerable, we all made a direct link with exposure. This relates to both the exposure of our mental state (e.g. our opinions, our past, our secrets etc.) and physical exposure of our form.

It was decided that as a group of self conscious twenty something year olds, it would take some persuading for us to expose ourselves, both mentally and physically, and so we decided to do a number of experiments that will, eventually, form a large part of our piece. Our first experiment will be performed within the group, where we will play both the part of performer and audience, and we have decided to meet to test our initial levels of comfort with other members of the group. We will do this by firstly revealing ourselves physically, in the simple act of removing our clothes in front of the group, and then by exposing ourselves mentally, for which we will record an intimate conversation, or ‘heart to heart’ about our biggest insecurities, flaws and occasions on which we have felt most vulnerable. The recording will be edited and used as part of the audio background for our final performance.

 We decided that as a group we shared a mutual interest of blurring the lines between performer and audience, and this will form the base of many of our experiments. Whilst researching this idea, we looked at a lot of work by Marina Abramovic. Whilst studying Abramovic for previous modules, we have learnt that she often uses her pieces to explore the relationship between audience and performer, so for this piece, I looked extensively at Rhythm 0 and The Artist is Present, two of her works in which the distinction between audience and performer became so blurred it ceased to exist. The Artist is Present is particularly relevant to our piece as Abramovic doesn’t ask the audience to do anything in particular, and yet the entire performance relies on the audience member, and for a short period of time they were both occupying the space as performers, each of equal importance.

Another artist I found influential in my input towards the piece was Negin Vaziri, in particular her piece entitled Eternity Woman, described as an installation ‘…following the outlines of a female body and the enviroment in which it exists.’ (Vaziri, 2010) Vaziri embraces feminity throughout her work, yet is not aiming to portray the female form in a sexual manner, a theme which I feel is important to our piece.

Vaziri, N. (2010) Installations. [online] Available from http://www.neginvaziri.com/www.neginvaziri.com/INSTALLATION/INSTALLATION.html [Accessed  19 October 2013]