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Planning St Malo
After listening to Tom Pope talk about his work at the Jersey Societe we were faced with the challenge of coming up with our own idea’s to create a piece of film in St Malo. I gathered into a small group where we brainstormed ideas of what we would like todo in St Malo. We agree’ed that we didn’t want to over plan as we needed it to have some spontaneity however we did decide on some ideas;
Buying a bunch on roses from a local supermarket and walking through the middle of town and handing out these roses to people as a kind gesture. I am looking forward to seeing the public’s reaction to this gesture, as it is something that we have no control over. I also really like the idea of getting the public to interact with our work as it creates excitement.
Another idea was to bring along the prop of an inflatable ball. With this prop a number of idea’s branched off of it. We would stand in the middle of a public space, for example out side of all of the restaurants and we would play catch with this ball. However we would pretend that the ball is really heavy. This game needs to include improvisation. I think some of the best work comes from improvisation as it creates something unexpected. From this game, action pictures can be captured of the people playing the game, and also picture’s of the public walking around us- and how they react to us playing this game in the middle of the street. Another idea from the ‘ball prop’ was the idea of letting the ball roll down the hill whilst someone runs after it, this is a very simple idea but in St Malo the flooring is all cobbled stones and the walls are man made, therefor the shot will be very rich in detail.
One other idea from our brainstorm was to bring a large blanket and lay it out in the middle of the street. On this blanket a couple of us would sit down and meditate. We would film the whole setting up of the meditation area and the mediation. The camera would stay in the same position throughout the whole performance so it can capture the audience walking past an the audience’s reaction.
In our time in St Malo, whilst doing our original ideas I would also like to do the ideas that we think of spontaneously in St Malo, these ideas could include found objects or a scenery. My main interest in this project, is seeing the public’s reaction to our performances as I think this is a very naturalistic thing.
Shoot – Durham
For the next couple of days I am over in Durham for my brother’s graduation. In this time I want to use the opportunity to put together my practise of subversion and performance photography into practise by taking photographs around the Durham area. I have no particular objective that I want to achieve but instead will see what I find as a go along. I am looking forward to this task I have set myself because it is something new and different. The problem with Jersey in many cases is that it is very repetitive and can be tedious to photograph the same sort of places over and over again. I have only been to Durham once before so it will be quite interesting to photograph somewhere unusual and unknown to me. I will enjoy exploring a more ‘outsider’ perspective, in a community which is alien to me. I have considered going at some point in the early morning because I want to see what the city is like when it is less busy. I find the community of Durham is connected very richly associated with tradition and heritage. Therefore I think that it will be a good idea, using my newly found knowledge of how an archive works, to take pictures of major monuments within Durham and compare them with historical photographs that I find on the internet. I will also combine this study with a more comtemporary task, taking candid photographs around the city, attempting to capture images that are most striking and interesting, perhaps the publics reaction to a stern busker or even a homeless person. I want to capture realistic, but nevertheless surprising aspects of life. I WIll attempt to remain objective however if present with the right opportunity, I will not hesitate to take a more direct approach.
DAY CONTACT SHEET
ST.MALO TRIP
For our first photography study we went on a trip to St. Malo. The trip consisted of 4 main shoots, during the shoots we split up into 4 groups of around 10 people accompanied by 1 adult.
For my first group shoot we started off by walking around inside the walls of st.malo up towards the north wall. Early on we found a set of steps that thought would be aesthetically pleasing to do a performance photography shoot. i stood at the base of the stairs and angled my camera to face the peak, I then positioned the girls to stand in a zig zag, unexpectedly a ball was found so i asked the girls to throw the ball between them. Tom pope the artist we were with then suggested the idea of rolling the ball down the banister so the video could be easily looped. we therefore did so and the result was excellent. After we did this shoot we then carried on walking up the stairs and came to an area that was a busy public walk way, there were some old empty boxes nearby so we had the idea to ask one of the girls to hide inside the box and pop out when a member of the public walked close by. we did this in order to see peoples reactions. 
we then positioned ourselves across the street in order to not let the public know they were being recorded to get a natural reaction.
we came to an area just up the road from the walk way that had traffic cones laying in the road, two of the girls without comand picked up the cones and put it on their heads, this was a chance act and as i wasnt recording i asked them to reinact what they did exactly. 
Just up the road from this coned area was a multiple walled area shown below, i had an idea as a performance photography piece for the girls to position themselves behind different areas of the wall and ‘pop up’ randomly, the video which is currently being edited was then looped to create an infinity affect. This then concluded the end of the first shoot.
SECOND SHOOT
Shorty after a brief rendezvous at the meeting place, the second shoot started. directly next to the meeting place there was a merry go round, we all decided to go on it and video the experience from the horses. The video is still being edited but here was the making of it.
We then had the idea to go and buy some yellow roses from the supermarket and hand them to random people as random acts of kindness. This shoot was by far the hardest to conduct and capture as some people didn’t understand and thought they had to pay for the flowers. Capturing peoples reactions was hard as well, some people noticed the cameras and became shy or would smile and wave at the camera, this therefore was not a natural reaction but one provoked by the cameras presence.
We then thought of the ball we had found earlier on in the day and thought of an odd idea to use it in a public place, we originally wanted to conduct a fake rugby game in the middle of the street. As this was to difficult for multiple reasons, we decided to pretend that the ball was very heavy. this was the result of the piece.
St Malo Day: Performance Ideas
First of all we were split into our small groups of 10 and went off with different teachers. The first place my group and I went to was the beach area and the long walkway. Here we worked in our pairs and came up with a few of our own ideas. Tania and I came across a large window which had these massive bars on them. With the idea of weak anarchy in mind we decided that it would be a good idea to film me climbing it. The meaning behind this was to challenge the norm and what is expected of us as a society, to see the reaction of the public around. Some people decided to film us and take photos of us while we were performing as well as other students recording at the same time to get different perspectives of the performance.
Another idea we had was actually taken as inspiration from one of Tom Pope’s Weak Anarchy photographs. Here I hid in a bush to see how any spectators would perceive it. We didn’t manage to get the spectators on camera but some people came by and took photographs and left. This one wasn’t the most successful footage but was some good experimentation anyway.
Mr Toft came up with the idea to go sit on a bench with a man and mimic his pose. After Sophie and I volunteered we went and sat right next to him. I greeted him in French and sat down and copied his pose. We sat there for about a minute but the man didn’t catch on to what we were doing and I could tell he felt uncomfortable. I think that this was a fun thing to do although I did feel bad that the man was so uncomfortable. I thanked the man for his time and walked away.
We had the idea to draw on the walls down at the beach area with chalk. We simply wrote ‘St Malo 2015’, this was just to start off the final montage video of all of our performances. This wasn’t very interesting to do and no one really saw but still it was a way to start us off on the beach and so that anyone later on in the day would be able to see that we were there.
On the beach there were a pair of two men playing with a bat and ball so Tania and I decided that it would be an interesting idea to go and stand in the middle of their game to see how they would react. This was successful as they reacted well by laughing it off and they just carried on playing around us. This was one of the most interactive performances that we ended up doing and actually worked well.
I did attempt to just walk alongside a woman on the beach as she strolled along but this wasn’t successful because I felt awkward just following her and I could see that she felt uncomfortable so I walked away. I did however go up to a couple who were sat on the wall eating, sat next to them and started drawing. This worked ok as the could just looked at me once and didn’t seem to be bothered by me. This also showed that the two didn’t feel like their space was being invaded even though I was quite close to them.
On the next hour we lacked ideas and inspiration. We were walking along a large walkway and there was just nothing around that I felt inspired by or interested in. We did a few group performances. The first of which was pretending to be the statue and mimicking it. This for me wasn’t very interesting and didn’t really have anything to do with our idea of weak anarchy. It had no real reason and spectators just did not care at all.
The second thing that we did as a large collective was for one person to go and sit on the bench, put down an object and walk away. The next person would pick up that object and replace it with something of their own. This for me was boring and didn’t really make sense. A few people were looking at us but I think this was only because there was a large crowd of us photography students all taking photographs of the same thing, spectators wanted to see what all the fuss was about and if they too should be taking photographs of what is going on. I feel like this sort of worked as it did get some audience attention but it wasn’t overly successful with actually being interesting or much of a movement within performance photography.
For the final hour we worked alongside Tom Pope. This was a great hour for doing work as a large group. The first thing that we did was walk backwards in a busy street. We each filmed from our own perspective of the walk which is interesting to watch back. This was fun to do as we all just walked through the street and people had to move out of our way in order to avoid bumping into us which is different to how we spent most of the day when we were the ones who were avoiding French workers and students.
Another collective idea that we had was to carry one person round the streets of St Malo. Here we nominated Holly with other students carrying her as she navigates everyone around. This got a lot of looks and people from all around were watching us as we did this.
We decided that it would be a great idea to navigate our way around St Malo with a map from Jersey St Helier. Here we just walked around in a large circle and came across as small shop with a load of wooden swords which we battled with and Tom Pope photographed on his film camera and as other students filmed and took photos of. This was fun and we were able to mess around for a good minute before the owner of the shop told us to stop. So on we went with our map and navigated around the streets of St Malo right up until we got ice cream and have to leave for the Harbour to get the boat back home to Jersey.
Currently I am working on making a montage video of the entire day in St Malo as well as performance videos. This should be completed in the week. Over the day I made short little clips so that I could use them for documentation of the whole trip as well as recording all of the performances we decided to create. For my first video I am just going to show little clips of everything that we did in the day as a teaser for the actual performance videos. This includes snippets of my performances as well as other groups performances. We thought it would be a good idea to help each other out and record each others performances so that we have different perspectives of things and different approaches to looking at them. We also decided to film the spectators reactions as performance photography is all about the audience and who is there at the time to see you and your performance.
I like looking at the images, created from the videos, in black and white instead of colour because it allows the spectator to focus on what is going on in the image rather than being distracted by all of the different colours in the background that are not important.
Tourist Stuff
These six photos were just extra photos that I decided to take on my phone so that I had a record of the different places that we went to in St Malo.
St Malo Prep
Before going to St. Malo for the day I had to come up with some ideas of what I wanted to do. The idea I came up with came from a video i’d watched a while ago, which I thought I could use to create a situation where the audience are the performers, and rather than them watching us, we were watching them.
It was a video from a channel, which creates a series called ‘The Art Assignment’ which is presented by Sarah Green. The series has different artists come up with creative assignments for anyone who wishes to partake in them. This particular Art Assignment was the second in the series, called Stakeout, with Deb Sokolow.
The ‘instructions’ for the assignment were:
1. Find an interesting object
2. Place the object in a public spot where people can interact with it
3. Pick a location to observe these interactions
4. Document your experience (photo, video, drawing, anything)
In the video Sarah Green talks about a couple of artists who relate to this idea. Including Vito Acconci and Sophie Calle.
Vito Acconci, Following Piece ,1969. Every day he would pick a random stranger off the street, and follow them until they went into a private space.
Sophie Calle, Sweet Venitienne 1980, This began when She was following one man who she quickly lost sight of, but met coincidentally met him at a party and discovered he would be taking a trip to Venice, and so she got a wig and a disguise and followed him on his trip without his awareness for 13 days. She would take photos and write detailed reports about this man.
Sarah Green said about the topic “Stalker like activities raise important questions about the nature of surveillance; Does the stakeout reveal more about the watcher or the watched? Is it about the clandestant thrill of spying or exposing the vulnerability of others; And what are the limits of public and private space?”
This was something I was quite keen to explore after looking at some of Tom Popes work, where he tries to both include the public as the performers, and in other cases look at the limits of public and private space.
So for our version of this ‘Assignment’ we got some disposable cameras. One which we would Place in St. Malo, one I hope to place somewhere in Jersey, and then a third which I will try to place in Bournemouth whilst I am over there for three weeks.
I thought that by doing this, I wouldn’t necessarily have to be there constantly to see the outcomes, and as we were going to be walking around different areas of St Malo for the day we thought this would be very good.
We didn’t really come up with any other ideas of what we could do in St. Malo and thought we would simply do whatever came to us whilst we were there, like with the Psycho-geography Tom Pope had discussed within his presentation.
FRANCE IDEAS
Powder Paint
I have an idea to shock the public just like Tom Pope does in his photography to try and get the audience to get involved. I want to achieve this by walking through the streets of St. Malo and just threw powder paint into the air, I want to record it as a video and get some images from them to ensure I had some members of the public in them and their reactions. I won’t throw a vast amount of powder because I don’t want to disrespect/damage French property, just enough to make it visible and able to wash away with the rain. The powder paint is like releasing some sort of physical energy into the air but by creating a beautiful cloud of pink. It’s like expressing some emotion to people that I don’t know me and don’t speak the same language as me and who live in different environments to me. This interests me as some reactions will understand that it is creative but some will think I am just disturbing people and creating mess.
Flowers
As a kind gesture, I plan to buy a bunch of roses and give out a rose to random people walking in the street to see what their reactions are. This idea is more to get a positive reaction from the public rather than a more negative will likely happen when I shoot some of my other ideas which may cause some aggravation to some members of the public.
I would like my videos to be spontaneous as well, because I find it easier to walk around, see something then come up with an idea of what I can do. These types of videos are in the heat of the moment which can either go good or bad which is always helpful for experimentation.
St. Malo
Ideas for My Trip to St Malo
Next Wednesday we are going on a school trip to St Malo as part of our work related to subversion. During our time in St Malo we are required to work in small group and come up with a series of different performances that would be considered as subversive, thinking specifically about how the audience would react to different performances considered strange and peculiar . I have brainstormed and selected a few of my best ideas.
1 – Writing with chalk
After reading George Orwell’s dystopia novel 1984 for my English A-Level coursework, I was drawn to the writing of a diary extract made by the main character, Wiston Smith in which he wrote ‘DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER’ – an act of rebellion against the novel’s oppressive regime. In the context of the novel the act of writing such a phase was an extremely serious crime that goes against the framework of the society. This has inspired me to write in chalk the same phrase on the streets of St Malo. This will be a subversive act, that symbolize a challenge towards society because of the context that the slogan played in the novel. The slogan, because it only has a reference to a fictional work therefore in reality has no direct meaning in real life. Instead it will be related more towards the contextual themes of the novel, which include general criticisms of society, through the use of extreme examples. My performance will therefore be a general, non-specific criticism of major issues within society, along the lines of government and the role of community.
2 – Capturing people’s reactions
Another idea which I have come up with is to photograph the reaction of the public whenever a subversive act is taking place either by a member of my group of even when we assemble as a collective group. I think that it would be an interesting idea to see how subversion has an effect on the people who are subjected to it. Through this I will be photographing from a candid/observational perspective without trying to influencing my subjects. This style of photography is known as documentary photography because I am attempting to give a realistic, accurate portrayal of events that are happening. It will be interesting to see from an outsider perspective the influence that subversion plays in society, without necessarily being part of the act nor perceiving it as the role of an audience. There is a definite element of chance within this type of photography. There is absolutely no way of knowing how the performance will turn out, and the outcome will depend entirely on the audiences response. My main intention of this is to document form an objective manner how people in society react to something considered ab-normal. It will therefore serve as an interesting research tool concerning the role of subversion in provoking responses within society.
3 – Tennis Ball Games
My final idea is a bit more general. It involves me photographing a performance of people taking part in a game-related activity with a tennis ball. I have not planned anything in particular, and will act spontaneously to evoke a game situations, perhaps at an informal moment, such as a break-time. The overall basis of this performance is to see how people react in casual and informal settings, and test whether they will behave more subversively in the context of an informal environment, and the extent of there awareness of this. Photographing this will be very interesting because the photograph can then be used objectively to test out a theory. The main objective therefore of the photo in the case is to illustrate how subversion works in real-life. I will include text at the bottom of the photograph in order to show the viewer specifically the purpose of this photo. In this instance it is important to highlight the meaning, as otherwise there is no clear meaning behind the photograph, and therefore there would be no indication of any thought/conceptual ideas being expressed.
