As far as I remember, the first work related to objects was Theatre class with Glen noble on 10th January 2012. It was improvisation session about spontaneous performance making. We were creating invisible objects with our hands, gifting them and responding being gifted, having a clever idea and adding some information about gifted person. In other words, we created imaginative things, objects, having an idea, making a piece of story, creating the situation, character, relationship, activity and ware, as object becomes not the prime thing. Invisible objects itself allowed to find situation ahead, continue actions. We worked in lines, in pairs (creating particular continuous situation) and in groups (playing with a soft ball), noticing people reactions and spontaneous actions that everybody make, especially when their status changes.
I found it really interesting, because working with invisible objects and creating them, I had an opportunity to open my imagination and "make" whatever I want, I wasn't limited by things I actually have. However, it wasn't that easy for me as I thought - it was difficult to create spontaneously, quickly react, find similar shape of invisible object, thinking about the size, the temperature, state, etc.. Responding was tricky to avoid questioning, keep natural, worrying how do I look (if i'm doing it right, if my English is good enough to explain what I wanted to explain, etc.). I feel I am still fighting with my fair of audience on acting, especially improvising.
I liked the spontaneity of actions, and I was impressed what a surprising situations were created. It was interesting to notice, how few words or few sentences can create such an clear situation, can give so much information. However, I still need to keep working with saying YES for everything I am suggested, because I still catch myself saying NO, and it limits or probably distracts my partner to keep improvising, it doesn't allow to open creativity as much as possible. It is also very useful experience for responding, working with other people negotiating and in co-operation development.
Next time I was concentrating on objects was during the Theatre class with Joff. It was about ANIMATION. It was a work with a piece of paper (we used newspaper). We explored the natural quality of it, (how it moves, falls, speed...) we crumpled it and repeated our exploration, checked this quality and differences. Then, as we started to play with it more and more, I was surprised and impressed what kind of shapes and ways of changes we can find and how many things we can create playing and using our imagination. When we watched ways to move it in different shapes, I found it really strange that it was actually interesting and catching the eyes, the piece of newspaper suddenly becomes a character, becomes alive, and you can make stories! It was so unexpected for me, I thought it should be boring and disappointing, but it actually wasn't. Moving it the speed becomes important, can make it so effective. Sometimes such a delicate, small and slow, careful movement or moving can be very interesting. Literally the material doesn't really matter, because it gets totally different quality and form. Watching other people creations I found some objects so cute even it wasn't anything spectacular. It became obvious for me, that the more you play with particular object or thing, the more you find and you can keep improvising like days.
Some weeks later we continued our work using PUPPETS. We made our own puppets using a square piece of material. This time we focused more on HOW to move it, the quality of moving in order to make it as much similar to something alive as possible. It was so fun when we added some sounds as well. The most important things to think about working with this kind of puppets are gravity, fixed points, bending quality and slow motion, which works the best, as it is so hard to make even simple movement that would make sense. This experience for me showed how creativity and imagination can show such a big things which usually are not noticeable at all. And it was another time, when I found playing really worth in a creation process.
22nd February 2012
Improvisation
Amy Voris
The last but the most impressive work with objects was with Amy Voris during improvisation class. We played with a stuff we found around the space, 3 objects each person. Moving around the space and creating and making changes by playing in other group's compositions we saw the variety of beauty or meaning in compositions. I really liked how teamwork can assist finding something new, something beautiful and meaningful. I also found that it helps to keep going, by giving a new ideas ahead for the others as much as showing how creative everyone can be, and what a difference it does in the result. As we continued working connecting all these little compositions into one big composition, which was amazing. The more we played, the more we enjoyed finding new and unexpected, undiscovered ways to change the whole picture, the more creative we became. But the most fun and impressive was placing ourselves into that picture, becoming part of it. It was like different, unexplored land, and we were the part of it. Then we started to explore one particular object from that picture and noticing the quality of it, etc. I choose a pillow. It was such a simple object to explored by I liked it and was looking for things I didn't notice before. Support was the nicest thing of this object, even it is quite obvious. I also found that making composition using such a simple objects we use everyday, gives some character, meaning of being for each of it, the cause to be there, which makes ourselves to think deeper about things we don't usually think about too much. Hightening or using it not on purpose or not as usual we make it important somehow.
In my future work I will definitely explore it more and more, because it gives so much really good ideas for performances in so many ways, starting from giving idea or fulfilling it, going to a space filling compositionally , etc... I found that objects actually make sense.
The project of 3rd year students that we went to see after we finished class, their experience, their exploration and work they did working in the same method using objects, really fascinated me. It showed how endless this can be, and how open-minded we should be to create something really nice. And how fun as well, because I've tried to get involved into their work. It was really easy going process, which made sense. |
| Green stuff:) |
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| Allocation according to colors. |
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| A part of the final result we reached:) |
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| 1st year student's creativity :) |
General Thoughts
All this experience exploring objects should be very useful for me during my all course, especially on IPP1 projects and in my future works of course.
It also reminded me the Mel Brimfield : This is Performance Art exhibition we were in Warwick mead gallery with Polly Hudson in the autumn. There were some pictures of objects, objects' compositions that I can still remember and it was beautiful.
I also found relationship between this experience and researching, reading that I've done. Gary Izzo in his book "The art of play" writes so nice about playing, and I really liked the way he described power of play talking about the children playing, how they create some beautiful, magical places using their imagination, and if you want to see what they see, if you want to be the part of that magical space and creation, a part of game, you can not say NO at any time. I also like his statement that play is a natural state. And notice that play has it's own unique and unalterable rules,how it builds community and so many other things that is useful to know and notice.
So I find more and more interesting things and importance of play in artist life.
Addition.
In some way,we all can be an object ourselves. This thought came from the Theatre class with Glen when we worked about Organic improvisation, about copying, mirroring each other, exploring other people habitats, behavior, then transforming it, including sounds, etc... the copied person becomes an object. Considering that objects itself can be a start of creating process, "using" people as an objects to get the idea is quite interesting in my opinion, and it gives a chance to make something familiar for the audience in a result - performance.
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