Production Values

I've been struggling with editing the existing episodes of The O Show because I can't reconcile my desired aesthetic with the production values achieved in the recordings of the live events. This concern has come to a head since showing my work (and this particular clip) at a talk on Saturday as part of the exhibition For Our Freedom Years organised by two of my former students Kerry Clarke and Gemma Donavan. The question keeps coming up, is the 'look' of the video document a conscious choice? Are you going for an anti-chat show aesthetic? Sadly, the answer is: I did what I could under the circumstances, so no, it doesn't have the 'look' I most want. I'd love for The O Show to approximate more closely the production values of mainstream talk shows, but I simply don't have that kind of budget. I could go for a more consciously alternative aesthetic, a highly personalised one, as Jennifer Sullivan has done with her It's a Process series, creating the set out of her own paintings and sculptures. As of now the solution is yet to be found. I want to create a visually stimulating and thought-provoking video series, but I also want to push the show forward in terms of content which means simply making more shows despite the shoestring budget. Do I put future shows on hold while I do some fundraising to acheive higher end production values or do I go on making shows that work as live events and don't translate as well to video? Does performance documentation have to be boring and ugly? Can I find a compromise?

The below TED talk video is not only fascinating in terms of the content, but it looks great. Clearly a large sum of money has gone into this. I'm wondering if I can approximate these production values for my shows with slightly less extravagant means. 

 

Bin There Done That

A collection of quotes and paraphrased statements from Trashing Performance's public programme last week which regrettably may hold less meaning here as they are out of context, but perhaps they will remind me and the other participants/audience members about what we experienced: 

Be Cheesy! ... Hollow and synthetic fruit come hither!
-Owen Parry

Bin There, Done That 
- P A Skantze

In response to the name 'trash performance' I'd like to coin the term 'Light Art'.
-Scottee

"It takes a lot of money to look this cheap." - Dolly Parton
- Lois Weaver

... feeling world has no patience for your complexity

Sometimes crisis doesn't feel like crisis.

Without fantasy, how can you imagine a rich relation to the social?
- Lauren Berlant

I am one of those melodramatic women that make others shut off emotionally.
- Jennifer Doyle

"I've got a confession to make: Middle-class values make me sick" - Jo Spence
- Lisa Blackman and Bird la Bird

I am my own worst nightmare and I'm living the dream.
- David Hoyle

"...what we want to get rid of tells us who we are[...]but what we want to get rid of also makes us who we are" - Gay Hawkins
- Katerina Paramana

Spectacle should not be exclusive to Kylie Monogue.

cultivating your brand as an artist = repeat yourself
-Neil Bartlett

I'd like to take the feeling I have when I'm masturbating and put it on display. 

I'm romantic about perverse things in a teenage girl sort of way.

Good art is made by people who are motivated by pleasure. 
- Bruce Benderson

I really feel uncomfortable having a voice most of the time.
- Bean 

The commercial sector will always look to radical work because they want to sell more stuff.
-Keith Khan

When the going gets tough, the mainstream fucks off. 
- Lois Keidan

Gert Wilder's said "Art is just a Leftist hobby"
- Oreet Ashery

I suffer from A.D.D.D. (Attention Deficit Drag Disorder).

If you give a drag queen a piece of fabric, chances are she'll twirl.
- Joe E Jeffreys

Dive into the forbidden!

Life has me by the balls, performance lets me get back at life.
- Rocio Bolivar (La Congelada de Uva)

You know nothing if you don't know pleasure is  the pleasure of the other.

art = therapy

the present pathology = a problem of respiration; the sickening perception of the other's breath 

conspiration = ability to breathe together / reactivation of the collective breath

I am not a judge, I am a doctor; I want to heal, not to judge.

When people are suffering they are never guilty. 
- Franco 'Bifo' Berardi

For me performance is the best political tool.

Everyone is not an artist.

A new language is needed because political art and protest are inefficient.

Is it art? I don't even care anymore; I'm the happiest I've ever been.
- Tania Bruguera

Art, man it's fucking long... of course we like art, but we like a little of it.

People without education want comfort and simplicity; they don't want to see what's funded by the Arts Council.

It is my long term passion to reach those ordinary people.
- Simon Casson

Artists are part of the economic structure of power no matter how unsuccessfully. 
- Common Culture

We are all in transition.
- Ingo Cando

Give & Take

(This is the idea I won and that I will have to perform within a year.)

At yesterday's Trash Salon, as a response to the question of how to do things with waste, I orchestrated a raffle of ideas - an exchange of unfulfilled art aspirations. These were the instructions:

Have you had a great idea for a performance that for some reason or another you just couldn’t pull off?

Don’t let your live art ideas go to waste! Give them to a performance artist who needs them!

Feeling the pressure to come up with new ideas for live art? Do you have a show lined up, but no clue what to do?

Take a load off and use someone else’s idea! This show is going to make itself.

It’s easy, just follow these simple steps:

1.  Think of an art idea you had that you never acted on and write it down on a card.

2.  Sign over permission for another artist to use it. (This is a small price to pay, considering you now have the chance to win someone else’s idea – no strings attached!)

3.  Swap the idea for a sheet of tickets.

4.  To win someone else’s idea place as many tickets as you wish into the adjacent cup.

5.  Towards the end of today’s salon, we will raffle each idea off, so keep your ears pricked and listen for your number. This could be your lucky day.

The below signed artists understand that in offering an idea to Oriana Fox’s ‘Give & Take’ raffle, they no longer hold any rights over that idea or the work(s) produced from it, and therefore have no recourse to financial or copyright claims when it is used by the performer who has won it. In agreeing to participate in the raffle, and in exchange for forfeiting authorship of their idea donation, they have the chance to win an idea and therefore promise to perform it to the best of their ability within one year of today 25 October 2011. They promise to notify Oriana as to when this live art piece took place, supplying her with a piece of documentation for her archive and that of performance matters.

 Signature                                    Name                          Email                     

 

The Hostess with the Mostess

Inspired by the Metal Comedy Lab, I have decided to put some energy into making my opening monologues at the start and end of The O Show a lot funnier. They say the best thing an aspiring comic can do is watch other comedians. So I spent a day watching youtube stand-up clips, which was exhausting and not as much fun as you would imagine it to be. The above clips gave me some confidence...

How to Kill (in comedic terms, of course)


Alex Horne


Shaista Aziz


Simon Munnery

On day 2 of the Metal Culture workshop on comedy, we met with three stand up comics, Alex Horne, Shaista Aziz and Simon Munnery, who shared their back stories and tips of the trade. As a group we then discussed the differences between comics and performance artists and came up with the following key points:

  • The sole intention of the comic is to amuse and entertain. Performance artists intend to produce a range of responses but also (on the whole) feel compelled to be critical of the status quo (although that can be a side effect of the comedian's material too). Performance artists might be criticised by academics, critics and audience members for being (merely) funny or entertaining.
  • The comic never takes him or herself seriously. Performance artists, on the other hand, always do.
  • The comic relies on hearing/gauging the response of the audience to asses how their routine is going. Performance artists don't always have such a responsive interaction with the audience.
  • The audience of a comic can usually expect to be amused. The audience of a performance artist can usually expect to be bored.
  • Comics perform for an audience of strangers, some of whom are openly hostile and engage in practices like heckling. Performance artists perform for audiences that usually consist of their peers who watch/listen politely and sometimes, if the artist is lucky, offer praise or constructive criticism.
  • Comics like to make people feel uncomfortable, but not in a bad way. Performance artists like to make people feel uncomfortable.
  • Both comics and performance artists need to consider the context of their performances, but to water down one's act is not an option.
  • Penny Arcade is a good example of someone who straddles the worlds of comedy and performance art.
  • Comics have to perform night after night to support themselves, often repeating the same routine for years. Performance artists (sometimes get research grants and) may spend months preparing for a single performance.
  • Both comics and performance artists use their own special jargon, for example: to kill, to bomb, the setup, the punch line, heckler, blue / criticality, piece, contextualisation, performativity, characterisation, etc.
  • There is no formalised education for stand-up comics other than some short courses; you can't get a degree in comedy, but a surprising number of British comedians went to Cambridge. Most comics learn their trade in front of an audience - stage time is key. Many performance artists have graduate level training in art or theatre, while others are self-taught.
  • To use another comic's joke is to steal. To use another performance artist's piece is to re-enact, cite or appropriate.
  • Mel Brimfield has succeeded at convincing us that there is no difference between Gilbert & George and Morecambe & Wise.
  • At the end of their careers some comics and performance artists will find out what the long term effects of peddling filth and untruth actually are.
  • When giving a talk about their work, stand-up comics tend to stand. Performance artists either sit or stand when giving lectures on their work.
  • Much of the above isn't particularly funny and that's probably because it was written by a performance artist.

Low Carbon Comedy Retreat

I've been whisked away for the week thanks to Metal Culture and Oreet Ashery who have invited me and several other performance artists to Southend on Sea to explore the role of humour in our work. We're spending the week in a lovely four-storey Grade II listed, Georgian building set within the grounds of the well loved and used, Chalkwell Park. Metal's mission was summed up for us as such: 'to give artists the time and space to do what ever the fuck they want to do.' These past two days have proven that this is in fact a completely supportive, interdisciplinary environment built on idealism and with the funding to fuel those noble principles. The building itself, Chalkwell Hall has been renovated to save the earth with wind-turbines buzzing between the chimneys and photovalic tiles on the glass roof; it's also totally wheelchair accessible. We're fed home-cooked meals; on Monday we had a raspberry crumble that was baked by the managing director Colette Bailey. Staff, guests and artists eat side by side with each other, giving it a homely open feeling. I've been granted time and space to explore without the pressure of producing something final, or this can be a period of intense research and production, staying up into the wee hours of the morning making art, if that's what I want it to be; it's entirely up to me. No pressure. All of these comforts and reassurances have been giving me a sense of serenity and calm, yet all the while I know in the back of my mind I've got to be funny.

All talk and no TV party

I've been researching chat shows in preparation for upcoming episodes of The O Show and I've come across some interesting ideas ...

The mainstream TV talk show host has been described as an anchor and agent of meaning, someone whose power resides in their ‘real life’ character riding the line between expert and audience-member. What if I break down that barrier even further – opening it up to forms of participation not possible on TV due to censorship and need for ratings? Maybe instead of the commercial chat show format, I should do something a bit more like Glen O'Brien's TV Party?

Dance Theatre Journal - Trashy students get their grubby mits all over it


Cover: Penny Arcade, Photo by Christa Holka
                               

Trashing
 Dance Theatre Journal

We are thrilled to announce the forthcoming issue of Trashing Dance Theatre Journal co-edited by João Florêncio and Owen Parry.

This special issue of Dance Theatre Journal is a dedicated and rigorous exploration of Trash in art, performance, work, and club culture. It features interviews with performance star and living-legend Penny Arcade, club performer Mouse, sex worker and activist Thierry Schaffauser, plus articles exploring the work of John Sex, Danish collective dunst, Club Wotever and the 'lowest form of performance' - living street sculptures, wasted works, and contaminated performances. Forms of trashy articulation including soap box articles, TV Chat Shows and Tabloid Newspapers interrupt and compliment more formal essays and interviews in this special issue!

Contributors include:

Augusto Corrieri
Bryony Kimmings
Eirini Kartsaki
Johanna Linsley
Lisa Wesley
Lorena Rivero de Beer
Marcia Farquhar
Marianne Mulvey
Mathias Danbolt
Oriana Fox
R. Justin Hunt
Rachel Lois Clapham
Season Butler
Tero Nahua
The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein
Vikki Chalklin

Trashing
Dance Theatre Journal will be available to purchase through the Unbound stall at the Trashing Performance Public Programme.

See www.thisisperformancematters.co.uk for details

Just Say 'No'

Excerpt from Charles Atlas' video Rainer Variations (2002)

Since 2009 I've been thinking about Yvonne Rainer's 'No Manifesto' and how I could re-perform one of her choreographic pieces in a way that makes sense of my love of both the avant-garde and the burlesque. Charles Atlas has beat me to it.