one-to-one performance and Etiquette, Oto cafe, Dalston

two things i've found/been signposted connecting with the relationships that can happen in one-to-one performances;

One archive: Lyn Gardener's blog post, 'I didn't know where to look' (how does this sit, nearly 4 years on? NRLA in a couple of weeks with back to back performances/performative events will be a good place to consider this in 2009)

excerpts;
"Traditionally, theatre has been a communal experience, but Lois Keidan of the Live Art Development Agency argues that in the age of the internet, the opportunity for audiences to have face-to-face encounters in real time with real people is enormously appealing. "It feels more real than real life," she says, "and because it isn't a mass experience you know that nobody is going to have the same experience as you have. It makes the event unique and it makes you feel special."

Laura Godfrey-Isaacs agrees: "Home has done salon series before that have concentrated on the communal, but this one-to-one season responds to people's desire for experiences that are more direct and unmediated, and less formal. It often results in something very charged because the audience member is crucial to what does - or doesn't - happen. It allows both the audience and the artist to take risks, because they are the only people in the room. They are the only people who will ever know what really happened during the encounter."

like these key things to think about more from the article in my constant thinking about why that style appeals to me: one-to-ones are unique, (and what is unique in my work?, ) you are the only ones who know what really happened,(the re-counting the encounter can be chinese whispers, and the complete privacy is to me, an unspoken thing, i don't re-count it in fact) more real than real life (what does that mean?) you and the audience take risks.......

One current, I must experience this: Etiquette, at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London throughout February 2009 and possibly beyond. A Lyn Gardner "One to watch."

excerpt from website:

"Alongside their innovative stage works (Doublethink, Five in the Morning) involving instructions to unrehearsed performers, Rotozaza here invite the audience to try it themselves. Etiquette offers the fantasy of speaking with someone without having to plan what you say, and the resulting thrill of disowning responsibility in a performance situation. Conversation is shown to be a kind of theatre whereby 'audience' and 'actor' roles are imperceptibly assumed and exchanged."

It is recommended by Etiquette company Rotozaza to watch this Godard clip which i quite like, in thinking about conversations with a stranger:



I like the idea that in Etiquette, the audience and performers are 'removed' and both are equal participants, you can do it between strangers OR between people that know one another,leave that up to the audience that turn up to choose. personally, i'd like to try it both ways, as i do in my own work, (I have said sometime intimate things to strangers I have not told my partner or anyone, and have learnt humbling things about my friends/family in 10 minutes than i never knew throughout my relationship with them, question: why does it take my work to do this??) although unsure if the headset dialogue is the same each time, spoiling the surprise.
The performative instructions for narrative action/conversation are given via headset whilst sat in a cafe. I have been thinking post The Darkroom at Duckie that my scores could be used by someone else entirely, like ideas in Fluxus of the blurring of performance and reality, and Tino Sehgal using actors to carry out instructions. In my application to SPRINT I have suggested there could be multiple encouters at the same time. Do I want to remove myself from the work in this way entirely? Or can I actually do this? More of a directing role akin to theatre??

In reference to participation in art, I will need to come back to thoughts from Art in the Social Sphere, the symposium I attended at Loughborough University this week, with excellent speakers: writer/artist Dave Beech, APG-er Barbara Steveni and gift-girl Lisa Cheung.

SPRINT Festival proposal

This is the proposal submitted to SPRINT, the Camden People's Theatre event June 2009

Harriet Poole: Live Participatory Photography:
The Darkroom (or name adapted to site)

Preferred space: Starting in the bar/foyer/populated area moving to a small private, light tight space, and then back to bar/foyer. Small, light tight closet/office/bathroom/shed type space or small space that can be made light tight and into a photographic darkroom. Ideally around 8 foot by 3 feet but can adapt to space given. Using an existing working room with side bench or shelf as found would be particularly ideal (moving some items if necessary to accommodate myself and participant) e.g. mops, buckets, screwdrivers, old equipment etc welcome in the space. If two small rooms could be found, there could be a performance installation of the photogram relics. If the space(s) were more ‘behind the scenes’ or away from black-box theatre, this would be ideal, I have responded to sites such as redundant factory/warehouses rich with history situating my work in amongst other performance events.

Duration of work: Durational, intimate performance for one at a time (approximately 10 minutes per encounter) There could, and ideally would, be multiple encounters happening simultaneously. Ideally happening on a busy night, people socialising, waiting for a show, or after a show. Could also work on a pre-booked basis with an usher entirely in a given room, I have worked in this way before. A visit would be good to determine this and make the piece entirely site-responsive, maybe drawing connections with my other work such as shed (see http://www.harrietpoole.com/work.php.)

The number of artists involved: One (myself) or more (performers only). If taking place during a busy event around the area with a ‘found’ audience, I work with a score allowing for individual and fluid happenings around that and have worked with more than one performer having their own one-to-ones.

Description of the work (provisional, pending site visit): In The Darkroom, people are approached in the bar/foyer and asked if they would like to go to the darkroom. Using a mobile phone camera, the image of the strangers together in the foyer/bar is taken by another person in the bar, and then the performer and participant move to the private room in red light. Stories are told in the private room through objects from their pockets, the objects as a trigger for finding and sharing a human connection: for example, from the ordinariness of a train ticket they could talk about the funeral that it enabled the person to attend. The last person that was phoned and shouldn’t have been. The objects are laid onto photographic paper and exposed and developed- they surface momentarily through a photogrammed memory of the object but are not then fixed. The closet idea is about referencing those tucked away spaces maybe under the stairs, amateur darkroom in the attic, child’s den, inventors quiet paradise to be able to sit and consider one’s thoughts, make new discoveries, or share secrets. The fleeting exchange of memories between two strangers is, as is the problem with photography, of the moment that has passed. This performance thus culminates in marking this fact through the death of the photographs created, the mobile phone image’s light kills the photogram and is deleted. This denotes the end of a period of togetherness as two strangers then leave one another and the performer and the participant return to the foyer/bar.

The Darkroom has been developed from (in)visible exchange, the above piece is based on my Duckie show and could, I would hope develop further with SPRINT; elements have always been quite different. My work explores theories in the work of Roland Barthes and Tino Sehgal, the first for his theories of the ‘mortality’ of the paper based photograph as an ‘impossible’ record of ‘now,’ and the latter for the fleeting materiality of his art works. I work with principles of non-matrixed theatre and audience participation through the subversion of time/lens based media practices. I experiment with pushing the temporal nature of performance through marrying with the temporal nature of photography, placing the process of image making intrinsically at the heart of an intimate performative experience.

Technical: Creating a staged light tight darkroom providing own equipment being small darkroom (box) tray, photographic developer, photographic paper, red safety lights, blackout.
Ability to lock door or shut it very firmly so light tight.
Depending on room set up as to whether would need a bench or a table and depending on the height of these- chairs or stools or standing- I can arrange these where necessary.
Access to water nearby and electrical sockets in the room or very nearby.
If possible I would like to view the room in advance of the event so I can plan for the right materials, and any slight adaptations to the performance if layout of room etc dictates.
Please note- I have a lot of experience in constructing make-shift darkrooms if the above sounds horrendously off putting- and I am able to do it myself. There is no Enlarger or other traditional darkroom equipment, processing troughs etc, but would put down suitable protective sheeting as applicable. Depending on how much black out was required would dictate how long I would need to set up; if time is short I could get assistance.

Should hear by end of February whether successful or not....