Shrimp in a box

Shrimp in the box came about after I had to help Jodie Smith carry a plinth upstairs for her work in the show 'Everything wrong with the world' in PS3. After I realised I could fit in the plinth I realised that this was going to become Spontaneous Performance Piece #2. (see below for Spontaneous Performance Piece #1) The name 'Shrimp in the box', obviously refers to the toy 'Jack in the Box', where a handle is turned on a box for a certain period of time before a clown jumps out of it. The idea of these toys is that the player of the box will not know what is going to jump out at them and when, and this then provokes a reaction of shock, and then usually, laughter. 

I wanted to find other ways of displaying this spectacle in a gallery environment and also incorporate a performance aspect. I like these short performances because they require no commitment and I can see how ideas might play out really quickly and easily. For the end of term film screening during the briefing I submitted the really really really short film above, and there were multiple giggles and laughs from the audience, which is what I wanted; for the audience to not know whats going to happen and whats going to jump out of the box, and for this to then provoke some sort of laughing reaction. 

During the mental preparation for this short performance - the spectacle is very, very warm to wear - I was actually rather cold, so put it on as a blanket of sorts. Jodie realised that wearing it in this way could potentially lead people to believe that it is actually some form of avant garde fashion piece, because of the way the appendages fall into shoulder pads and the way it drapes around the body. Whilst not the intention, I like the fact that this spectacle can be appropriated to suit many different contexts. 

Professional Practice!! (puppets)

Me and Jodie are still very much wanting to develop our puppetry to take around festivals during the summer, however it has taken a backburner temporalily while we get our dissertations out of the way. Come January we plan to develop what animals we want to make including both real and fantasy animals, as well as develop the way we perform the puppets. I am most interested in whether it is possible to 'become' the animal we are performing to make it the most realistic animal encounter we can. Our concept is very much about staging an 'animal encounter', to capture the magic of the natural world and to bring people back to nature.

We have already begun to put the wheels in motion for the summer. We have contacted Hogsozzle festival, which Jodie worked at last year, pitching an idea for multiple walkabout puppets, including a flying pig based on the name of the festival. This project is ambitious but Hogsozzle are definitely on board, and it will be good to have a deadline and something to work towards to push us. Having worked at festivals over last summer, this will be a good opportunity to interact with the organisers of the festival on creative professional level not just in the hospitality and catering side of events. I will also be able to network with other designers and performers within the festival context. The festival is the 24th - 26th May 2019, which is early on in festival season, so we will be able to develop our performative skills throughout the summer at festivals (as Jodie and I both are planning on working at festivals over the summer and intend to bring the puppets with us regardless of whether we have talked to the organisers or not). We also plan to hand out small leaflets/business cards explaining our concept to the public and engage them with the environmental issues at hand so that our work also becomes educational. We will also say that our puppets and our services ae available for hire for children parties, workshops and events, with a vision to form our own business out of this.

At my initial professional practice meeting I spoke with Will from the Ideas Factory at NUA. He specialises in starting businesses, so he would be able to help Jodie and I if we wanted to take the puppetry further. If this goes well and I enjoy puppeteering, Will also mentioned the NUA internship programme for September next year. I think it would be good to look into whether it would be possible to do this programme at somewhere like the Puppet Theatre, or another Norwich based theatre, as I am very interested in a possible career in the costume industry.

Hogsozzle 2018 teaser

Drag in the Gallery

As part of the second instalment of Drag in the Gallery, one of the performers from the House of Daze asked me if I could perform in one of the pieces I had on display. I didn't know what song George would be performing or how he was going to interpret my work, but it was amazing to see my work in a different context and how someone can change the meaning of a work through performance. In terms of professional practice, I hope that this will lead to future collaborations with the House of Daze if they ever need a more abstract costume, as this will allow me to get my work out there with an already established performance collective, and will hopefully allow the performers to be more expressive and elaborate in their outfits.

INTERIM SHOW - UNDER CONSTRUCTION - EVALUATION

When I arrived for the interim show there wasn't much time to look around the event because they had already started setting up for Drag in the Gallery, which meant that I wasn't able to get any documentation of the audience taking my pieces off the hooks and putting them on which is a shame but if anything this should be a kick in the right direction to get better documentation of my work. 

I enjoy the way they come off and away from the wall - they are so tactile because of all the different textures, I think this helps with audience interaction. When they are on the wall they are static, and even though the expectation is there that they could or should be activated in some way, they don't have the same impact that they have when there is movement involved. Perhaps if I had put some shoes underneath them - similar to the experiment I did in my studio space with the netting piece - then the expectation would still be there but they would hold their own as static pieces too. Or maybe even if they were hung slightly lower, so that they touched the floor, so it looked like they were rising up out of the ground, then they would have worked as a stand alone piece of exhibited work. Ultimately I feel like I concentrated more on the idea of audience interaction rather than thinking about all aspects of the work. 

DRAG IN THE GALLERY PART II

Devil Child 

Devil Child Full Performance

When I spoke to George about why he chose that piece of mine to wear, he said he loves to be more experimental with his costumes, and he knew he wanted to have lots of clownish make up, so he wanted a costume that would compliment the make up well. Wearing my piece also meant that he wouldn't have to spend any money on an outfit. The pink of his face and neck really picked up the pinks of the netting and really brought the whole thing together so much that I almost felt that I had made it specifically for George to wear. 

I am still unsure what to call my pieces - are they pieces? Are they costumes? After watching Devil Child perform in one of them I have realised that they are spectacles. My research for my extended essay led me to look at Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Rabelais and his world', which led me find the idea of the carnival spectacle. Spectacles have a strong visual presence, and Devil Child performing in my piece definitely had that, and I think that all of my pieces have that too. So I have decided to call them spectacles from now on. Carnival also does not acknowledge the distinction between actors and spectators, as the audience live in it, and at Drag in the Gallery there was no barriers between audience and performer because we were sitting on the floor and you could here the movement of the costumes and the rustle of the audience as they watched. 

When he first sat down on the floor to start the song I was dubious because what I like about my spectacle is the movement and the way the material moves. The spectacle was also supposed to be all encompassing of the body and in my experiments in and out of the studio with it I had failed to really achieve this. While he was sitting on the floor, the netting was surrounding him completely from the neck down, and it was really full, which definitely helped to create an all encompassing outfit. When the song started Devil Child was so expressive in his movements that it didn't matter that he was sitting down because the material still moved but just in a different way than I had been previously playing with it. I especially enjoyed the way he kept moving his body backwards and forwards as it really got the full movement of the netting which meant you could see all of the colours. Even though the song was sad, it was also about empowerment and release, which was clearly expressed through the movements of both the body and the costume, as when the song reached its crescendo, the netting was released so you could see its full potential. The netting just came into a life of its own and you could really see the full movement of the material. He moved energetically and sporadically which gave a chaotic and electric feel to the performance and had he moved in this way without wearing something that was tighter fitting, I don't think it would have been the same. His yellow tights too really complimented the yellows of the netting, which was good because there wasn't that much yellow in there, so with the pink of the face paint it really felt like a full finished spectacle. At the end of the performance, Devil Child stood with an arm around his head and the other over his body for a few seconds, perfectly still like a statue, which reminded me of when I dressed up the Greek sculptures, which is a contrast that I really enjoyed. 

After I finish a piece and I get someone to film me in it, my initial reaction is not to just move, it is to dance. I think this is because I am ultimately picturing my spectacles in a festival context, and I am always dancing at festivals. Seeing my work being worn and performed in a choreographed routine has confirmed to me that dancing is an aspect of my practice that I want to possibly explore further and that maybe instead of seeking performance artists to work with I should consider asking dancers if they would be interested in working with me. 

Devil Child's Insta:

At the first Drag in the Gallery installment ^^^^

Thom Ketchup Drag in the Gallery part 2

^^^^ Knowing little about the world of drag, I was intrigued to discover that performances could be this reserved and intense - I assumed that drag was all about exaggerated movements and being flamboyant. The amount of work that went into the costumes was stunning, and all of the performers had really thought about how the costume and the music could reflect and respond to each other.