Box Shy - The Party Project, #1
While we like musing in the big comfy chair at shana's place (see the what is performance? video), we value showing just as much as talking.
And so... our latest project is PARTY GAMES. And it's in your neighborhood (or your backyard -- invite us to your next party and there we will be!)
We are developing a piece round-robin style, each of us getting 5 days to add a layer and develop the work before we polish it together just in time to share it during a local house party, putting performance into social mingling like any other conversation.
Esther started this round:
I was working in the studio and decided to play with the edges of the frame, using 4 $20 bills to mark the camera's space. I edited this down to draw attention to entering, exiting, and being in the frame. I added voice over to bring out the inner thought process that can go on when I'm making stuff up in the studio.
Thoughts? Questions? Leave us your comments and we'll respond!
And so... our latest project is PARTY GAMES. And it's in your neighborhood (or your backyard -- invite us to your next party and there we will be!)
We are developing a piece round-robin style, each of us getting 5 days to add a layer and develop the work before we polish it together just in time to share it during a local house party, putting performance into social mingling like any other conversation.
Esther started this round:
I was working in the studio and decided to play with the edges of the frame, using 4 $20 bills to mark the camera's space. I edited this down to draw attention to entering, exiting, and being in the frame. I added voice over to bring out the inner thought process that can go on when I'm making stuff up in the studio.
Thoughts? Questions? Leave us your comments and we'll respond!
Labels: the party project, videos
2 Comments:
m. palmer (that's my dad) emailed me the comments below, and I thought they were worth sharing:
Did you see the article in The New Yorker by Atul Gwande on June 30? The first half is about a woman who had this horrifying problem with an itch in a particular area of her scalp. But the second half is a more general discussion of recent developments in the neurology of perception, which tend to validate views by people such as George Berkley of the 18th century, Jean Piaget, and others.
I mention this because I found your commentary on the first iteration of Party Games . . . well, perceptive. I have long wanted to try to write something on the nature of causation as requiring both the caused thing and the causer to be in some kind of a working together. Aristotle's notion of a material cause is somewhat related. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that a performance is the result of both the perceivers and the performers working together. Put in different terms, a hammer cannot cause a nail to pierce a cloud, but a hammer and a block of wood can together bring about a nail stuck in wood. It's somewhat up to the audience whether it wants to be a cloud or wood.
I did read that article and I've actually heard the scientist the author mentions at the end --Dr. Ramachadran-- speak on his phantom limb research. The mirror box solution I think is fascinating. There seems to be a lot of interesting new work on the brain --what I find most exciting is our brain's apparent ability to adapt to injury (through training) when neighboring regions of the brain take over the functions of a newly-dead region. It shows the brain as a regenerative rather than fixed part of our body.
The cloud/wood idea is an interesting metaphor for the performer/viewer relationship and in many ways very apt. It is a central idea in my work, which leads me to think the relationship is more complex than the cloud/wood dichotomy --because as the creators of the performance we run into the problem of the audience's decision. More so than what that decision is, it is a problem of whether or not they make one or embrace that active role. And as the artist I need to consider how the work asks the audience to engage --do they take their cues from the work? from their personal outside experiences? from the physical sensations they have left over from a long day at work or a relaxing, full meal? What expectations do I choose to have of my viewers and their autonomy? Do I want the reality of the interaction to embrace the fantasy of it?
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