The Forgotten Prop

Still ploughing my way through the allocated reading list for ‘Doers and/or of Doings’. Yesterday’s article to be subjected to three hours scrutiny over the course of a particularly dull gallery shift was the preface to a book called ‘The Stage Life of Props’ by Andrew Sofer. I thought that his was an interesting piece to blindly post to me. I can only assume that it arrived as the result of a comment I made in an early meeting about some wayward desire to get into scenography and set design at some point in a rather distant future.

So what was there to say about the article? No doubt this preface was designed to pique my interest into reading the whole book. If so it failed in its task but not for lack of interesting content, but rather for lack of relevance to me… in any way. That having been said, there were, in this introduction alone, some rather interesting comments. Props (along with sets and mechanical effects) within the theatre are rarely written about critically. The article states, ‘Most books that mention stage properties in their title are manuals aimed at aspiring stage designer or technical director.’ ‘And?’ I hear you cry? Well what this effectively means is that scenography is not getting the critical analysis it deserves, the type of analysis we associate with the arts. The props, the set, the effects, these are seen a sensationalist mechanisms which create the spectacle. However these mechanisms are of central importance to the experience itself. What is not said directly through spoken word can be hinted at more subtly through a symbolic use of set and prop.

The book (I understand from the preface) analyses the existence and use of these mechanisms not as passive emblems but active events. The article describes this as, ‘a mechanism of appropriation to address a wider semiotic crisis within the theatre and often culture.’ From the simplest to the most complicated of sets, these miscellaneous items create an atmosphere, set the scene and say the unsaid before a word has been uttered. The power of the prop should not be undermined.

From Fish to Fantasy

Doers and/or of Doings: pop-up school part 1

The idea of the pop-up site/school/shop/restaurant has transcended its original (rather idealistic) beginnings; a site accessible to all, initiated by anyone, a site without the stress, strain, chance and investment required in starting a business. Perhaps this change occurred when Michelin star chefs jumped on the band-wagon taking over small country pubs to peddle their gastro wares or when Faberge opened up the mother of all pop-up shops in one of the most exclusive ski resorts in Switzerland last month. Never the less, the notion of the pop-up school as a method of initiating and promoting a fledgling idea, testing the waters of the cut-throat wide world, has always appealed to me in an era where business ventures are deemed a disaster, closed down and sold on for scrap parts before they have had a chance to get their money-making feet off the ground.

It was with this in mind that I tentatively walked into my first class of the pop-up school ‘Doers and/or of Doings’ at Edinburgh’s Sierra Metro under the instruction of artist and thinker Travis Souza. The subject appealed to me - ‘Impasse’ or ‘Creative Block’ - (‘general art vs. life crisis’ as another member rather eloquently put it). It is the well trodden path of the art student on leaving college, full of hope and enthusiasm, to then find themselves a year past, working in some dingy pub, depressed with not a single artwork to show for themselves. I could see myself following suite feeling inexplicably like, rather than increasing my life prospects, the five year masters had instead placed me in a vacuum from which I emerged, out of touch with reality with little more than an accumulation of paper under the bed and a diverse selection of fine-liners to show for it. It was this or the pop-up school!

Little did I know the twist in the route to follow. First came the email - a presentation on said ‘Impasse’, a selection of images and (heaven forbid) A TWITTER ACCOUNT were all required for the first Sunday (leaving me exactly three days). Having not spoken about my art for over six months and always associated the idea a twitter account with, well, self-indulgent twits, I was flummoxed. After the first meeting however, I came away more relaxed with my mind fuller and much less haphazard than I had felt in many a month. Twitter proved to be quite addictive and I secretly justified it to myself as being ‘for art purposes’. I slightly competitively attacked the task in hand, intent on throwing myself into researching the other member’s Impasse while stubbornly ignoring my own.

Then came the next issue, I had absolutely no idea how to research since leaving the drowsy confines of the university library. I tried the Central Library, panic selecting books on the merits of their front covers, read exhibition reviews and finally landed on typing in words and phrases into Google trying to hit upon some happy coincidence that might be in some way helpful to the other member’s practice. Sunday evening I emerged from session two feeling dazed and confused after six hours tucked in a small room, huddled round an electric heater working on schedules for the week ahead for the other participants. The idea was that these schedules would exist within day to day life rather that trying to create art outside of reality. When I got my weekly plan back it read something like a mad old woman’s to-do list. I had to orchestrate and document a 1970s themed Valentines dinner party, make a short film to the recipe of papier-mâché, fish and nesting among other things. I shall let you know how this pans out. Until then however, the image is a taster of the week that followed.

Many thanks to the pop-up school for making this the most manic, creative and hilarious week in some time.
http://doersandofdoings.wordpress.com/

Possible Worlds

Day two sitting in the gallery bought a second selection of fine readings courtesy of Sierra Metro’s pop-up school. The first I picked up had the best title in the world, ‘Embodiment: From Fish to Fantasy’ by Andy Clark yet two pages in the content had become, well, incomprehensible to say the least. I gleaned a little about embodiment being something to do with exploitation of the localised environment (some example of a Blue fin Tuna was selected). After that the scientific lingo sent me off course and I moved swiftly on to article 2: ‘Possible Worlds in the Theatre of the Absurd’ by Katerina Vassilopoulou 2006. This was fascinating. I am a keen theatre fan and am aware of the theatre of the absurd commonly summarised as being built on futility and meaninglessness of life and death bought about by the post-war period of the 1950s. I have seen Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, read a little of Ionesco’s ‘Jacques or Obedience’ and even was part of the costume team for an ammeter dramatics version of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ but thought little about the mechanisms behind absurdity. What I came to see was that we have a certain expectation of a play which is based on reality, this can become absurd by slipping seamlessly into fantasy (or rather another type of reality - textual reality). The fact that the worlds created are then accepted by the characters expands an understanding of certain phases which adjust in tune to the characters’ purposes. Absurdity (as opposed to realistic fantasy) is created by the way characters deal with rational situations. Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’ is considered absurd due to the characters’ acceptance of the situation where as Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ is realistic fantasy for its characters’ rejection of the situation. The possible-worlds theory is no doubt a fascinating topic and one I shall endeavour to track further in the future but for now it is exciting merely to re-ignite my enjoyment of learning, reading and absorption of information.

Confused about Photography?

I am taking part in Sierro Metro’s pop-up school run by Travis Souza this month - ‘Doers and/or of Doings’, I shall elaborate on this further at a later date. This involves a series of tasks given allocated to me by other artists to fit into my day to day life and work. Some of these are a little strange -documenting a 70s dinner party, making a short film to a recipe involving things like a fish tank, but there are also a few less bizarre tasks - readings etc. The first was called ‘Photography as Representational Art’ written in 1986 by Robert Wicks.

I always try and sum up an article in a sentence or two to formulate/clarify it in my mind. I then analyse it to see how I may apply it to my work. The summery I came up with goes something like this:

Photography’s inherent link to a ‘presentness’ results in the sacrifice of the opportunity for total fiction offered by other representational art forms. This required ‘presentness’ however, when linked with relevant technical manipulation is what in fact makes a photograph a representational piece of art.

(For this to make sense it is obviously necessary to read the whole article)
Obviously a lot of the discussion on manipulation of the medium (or limitations within this manipulation) are now obsolete due to technological advancements. The link to presentness however will always be the essence of photography. We can photoshop indefinitely but the initial photograph will always be a static capture of something. This confused me somewhat and merely chose to clarify photography in my mind as a tool for documentation rather than a piece of work in its own right. This is not to eliminate that photograph becoming a piece of work but that is up to how the artist chooses to elevate it. The article left me bemused, it seemed to argue the case for photography as a tool for manipulation while discussing it as a representational art form. I still somehow think that I will continue to use photography a tool of manipulation rather than creation.