Week 3

Discussion

Today’s discussion started with a discussion about the piece where are devising is based from “The Hour in which we knew nothing of each other by Peter Hanke and discussed Hanke’s political stances and the controversy surrounding him and his Nobel prize win. The question asked to the group was can you separate the art from the artist? And also should we integrate/reference his controversy in our interpretation? The main consensus from the discussion was that the art can and should be separated from the artist and I agreed with that point with the condition that the art doesn’t reflect a perspective that I cannot codon which is not the case in “The hour in which we knew nothing of each other”. Whilst believing that the art should be separate from the artist and willing to include a reference to Hanke’s connection with the visitation of the dictator’s Slobodan Milosevic funeral, I don’t see how or why we would include a reference to the event unless we started to build the piece around a centralised theme in contrast to the nationalist views as I don’t feel adding a political reference in a piece that isn’t very political is impactful or valuable.

Warm-up

We warmed up by doing the same warm as the last two lessons moving around the space being aware of the others in the room. We then moved onto changing the rhythm and tempo around the room interchanging from travelling the fastest way we could around the room to the slowest way that we could travel. I feel like these changes in speed changed the dynamic in the room with the quickest movements being more vibrant and alive energy and the slowest, more mellow energy which built up in tension. Thoughts in my head when moving fast was few and far between with me just trying not to bump into each other whilst when walking slowly I had a lot more thoughts as I had more time to think about the specificity of my movements and focus on how my movements were realistic nuances of walking normally in a slow version.

We then started to work on occupying the most and the least space in the room while travelling around the space. I found it difficult to think of the different ways of making my body the biggest and smallest it can be without staying in the same position. I feel like the exercise taught me to think more abstractly rather than practically about how to be small and how to be big as I initially took the request as a task of efficiency of being the smallest and biggest meaning only being in the one position where I thought I was the biggest or smallest I could ever be rather than an explorative task to finding new ways of being small or big.

From that exercise we were split into two groups and we had to travel around the room constantly in physical contact with each other discovering new ways in being contact with each other and moving in unconventional ways. I struggled in terms of variety in this exercise in terms of the contact with the group and different movements of travelling, I feel that I learnt from the last exercise in how to move more abstractly but it took me some time during this exercise to get into the mind-set of exploring with the ways in which that I can be in physical contact with a member of my group.

The organism

The warm-up developed into the organism exercise which was a group of three (with Leo and Brandon) that would have to move around the room in contact with each other occupying the smallest and biggest amount of space that we could. The difficulty with this exercise is communicating without speech and how we could move around the space whilst maintaining the contact and exploring the different ways of moving and whilst being big or small. We as a group took some time to start to develop a means of non-verbal communication on how to start moving around the room effectively. The thing was when we started to move across the room effectively the amount of exploration of different shapes that we could make whilst as the organism decreased and we weren’t as creative as we could have been in how we were connecting to each other. Being on top of each other having to climb around and under each other whilst being physically connected gave a sense of aliveness as a creature and we were one entity but with conflicting separate moving features. It felt like an embryonic creature learning and expanding whilst moving and exploring the ways of travel through the space, I feel this was because of our constrictions we had to adapt in order to move.

The other space

We then went onto to the other space exercise as we laid on the floor to start to feel the weight of our body on the floor observing the feelings that we felt and the sounds that we heard. We then started to imagine ourselves in another space and to imagine the different texture of how the ground feels in the environment that we are imagining. I started to think of being on a grassy hill in a park area during summer. I started to imagine the sensations of laying on the soft grass with the sun on my face and the occasional breeze of air. I was alone on the hill and this I think was the most important feeling, the feeling of peace. We then were told to open our eyes and start to exist within our imaginary environment. I started with just looking at cloud in the sky when on the hill sitting up with my arms hugging my bent legs. I then slowly lied back with coming together prop up my head from off the floor and stretched out my legs straight still looking at the clouds. I then sat back up to the same position this time picking some grass grains and rolling them in my hand then looking back at the clouds. I then stood and started to walk out of the space still rolling the grass and looking at the clouds and then at the grass in my hand. I feel like the serenity is an interesting quality to have in terms of the whole piece with “Wandering hand”, “The Opposite actions” and “the organism” being less calm and faster paced and frantic. Whilst doing the exercise with all the others doing their own spaces I think the contrast in the room was quite interesting being in the same space but have different spaces in the mind, the room felt a little bit like organised chaos.

The object

We all brought some objects to explore with in class and I brought a bike helmet and an umbrella. We started to walk around the room and explored the ways that our objects can be used in an abstract way to its normal function. I found it quite difficult to think on my feet and create many different alternative functions for the objects. As the task went on the mind became more empty for ideas and I found that you had to just think of any random item and try to make it believable as you possible could and if it didn’t work or feel right just to quickly move on to something else, this was easier said than done. The functions that I got for the helmet was holding and rocking it in my arms as if it was a baby, dragging it by its straps on the floor as it was a dog, holding it as if it was a bowl that I mimed eating from, dribbling around with it as if it was a football, wrapping it around my neck by the straps as if it was a necklace, reaching up and twisting into the ceiling as if it was a lightbulb and the functions that I got for the umbrella was swing with it closed as if it was a golf club, moving around the room dipping besides each side of me as if it was a rowing oar, with it open sweep the floor as if it was a broom, holding it in front of me sideways as it was a bicycle handlebars moving with my legs pumping up and down like I’m riding a bike, moving it quickly from to side to side like a  toothbrush, holding it to my ear as if it was a phone, having the umbrella out and looking and feeding it like a fish pond.

We then started to explore the objects as they normal function in the space and to create scenarios around that function. For the Umbrella waiting in the rain annoyed and frustrated waiting for a bus. I would often take a look to see if the bus was coming by leaning my torso forward and turning my head. I would also be tapping my foot impatiently and have a constant annoyed energy of not being still. With my helmet tired and injured hobbling home with bicycle, holding my helmet under my arm on my midriff. I would hobble along as though my left leg was injured and be out of breath and every now and have a little grimace of pain.