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.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz at Inverleith House

The Fine Art/Interior Design boundary has never been definitive. Marc Camille Chaimowicz uses Inverleith House to export ’The Interior’ into the world of fine art not as a shell to be filled but a subject to be analysed. Indeed the parallel has often been drawn between Chaimowicz’s work and the Gesamtkunstwerk; total work of art. What Chaimowicz so cleverly procured in Inverleith House was what effectively looks like a stately home. The full-length windows look out onto the idyllic Botanic Gardens (maybe not quite yet but come spring we can but hope). This setting frames the work somehow and draws the architecture as well as the surrounding landscape into the interior. Pieces no longer become distinguishable from one another but meld into a single environment.

Chaimowicz commissioned a carpet from Edinburgh’s Dovecot Studios. This carpet sits on an oddly lop-sided plinth. The insignificant becomes the significant not by merely being raised above floor level, but raised to an uneven level above floor level. I bloody love plinths! What ever happened to them? Where did they go? Or does every gallery still use them to death but now that we are all so used to seeing things floating in mid air we no longer take note of what they are on. I read an article in ’Map’ recently about the artist called Audrey Reynolds who makes a feature of the plinth. Reynolds’ plinth and blob-on-top-of-plinth (and sometimes carpet under plinth) become one complete picture. The plinth traditionally has never been given much credit - perhaps not quite as aerodynamic as the plane, the plinth, never the less, does still perform the pretty unimaginable task of making an object float in a space. Chaimowicz’s tables and furnishings ARE plinths, Chaimowicz and Reynolds are together reinstating the plinth. These plinths are a bit of a cut above, beautifully carved, cast and … functional.

If Reynolds’ work has been described as a sort of grubby minimalism, then Chaimowicz’s pastel hues and flower prints, strategically placed mink stoles and silk knickers could perhaps be described as candy-floss minimalism. The antithesis of minimalism in so many respects and still perfectly in tune with the minimalist sensibility. An art built on such a multitude of stereotypes only proves a development in artistic opinion. There is no longer this desire to conform to a similar style. Perhaps we are moving into a freer, more liquid time where artists seem to be picking indiscriminately from various disciplines and styles. They are proving that there is more to be gained from throwing ideas together than segmenting them apart.

The digital age has re-aligned our opinions on where, what and whether to separate different disciplines at all as origins become blurred into cyberspace. Chaimowicz embraces this modern Gesamtkunstwerk, yet his execution and the subsequent forms reference a different era of functionality, slick design and precision in implementation. Can work be overtly masculine AND feminine, cluttered AND sparse, minimal AND, somehow, maximal? Or, maybe, these polar opposites never existed in the first place. Labelling something results in elimination of the shades of grey, categorisation places everything that does not exactly epitomise it, outside of it. Chaimowicz (and Reynolds) with the help of a few plinths, are bridging the gap.

Dialogues Past

I think I have mentioned before (on more than one occasion) the recent surge of performance artists re-visiting and re-assessing their earlier works. Once again another exhibition came to my attention highlighting this particular phenomenon, ‘10 Dialogues’ at the Royal Scottish Academy, so here I am, yet again, bloging about other artists reliving previous successes. The thing is that many of these performances are only deemed as being of seminal importance in retrospect. Now Marina Ambramovic (the mother of all performance artists) draws thousands to her events, as seen in the Manchester International Festival 2010. Yet in 1975, when she first scored a star on the floor in paraffin and set it alight with herself inside, it was not to a jostling collection of well-to-do gallery goers but a concerned bunch of students who then had to drag her from the charred zone on her loss of consciousness. At least if Ambramovic was to re-create this work today the MoMA would probably have ten firemen on queue to lift her out the wreckage and a helicopter on hand to airlift her to safety, while filming it all of course.

Ambramovic was not however the artist I started of writing this article about (she is merely a useful study for the matter). The piece that particularly caught my attention in ‘10 Dialogues’ and made me reconsider the recreated performance was a simple film of a car journey, itself a recreation of a previous film made from a car journey by another artist. The work was shown on one TV split into two screens so that original film and recreation showed in tandem. The piece was perfect, each camera angle, close up and panning-out had been recreated and yet rather than the two images looking the same the scenery had changed so much in the thirty years or so between them that the two films melded into polar opposites. Where once there had been a lamp post, later there was not, once a hedgerow, now a block of flats.

It bought to mind the futility of attempting to re-create past events. No doubt someone will always have barged in in the interim and built a block of flats or situated the fire brigade on stand-by. This is what I took away from ‘10 Dialogues’. It was an exhibition that celebrated the past and an analysis of how it impacted on the future. It was not about trying to keep events in cotton wool but mapping how things changed. When I was at college I once spent months making the most god awful mess of paper mache wires. It looked horrific! I then spent the next few months trying to work this revolting lump into every installation I created to no avail. After seeing ‘10 Dialogues’ I took a photo of this piece and promptly binned it. It was a mess, it didn’t work and I’m moving on. It is not our job as artists to dwell on previous disasters, to drag a reluctant success story out of them. Perhaps they will in time hold that status but dwelling on the past has always been acknowledged as an unhealthy occupational hazard likely to catch fire and blow up in our face.