Presentation
Here is the link to the presentation myself, Sammi, Dylan and Alex made. I enjoyed collaborating as a group and sharing my ideas in this communicative manner.
Analysis: 1928 Dadaism Film
Film was a major artistic direction of the Dadaist movement. During the 1920s, Cinematography had first started to develop as a major form of public entertainment. The earliest artist associated with the Dadist Movement started to see the major advantages of using film as a means of delivery their artistic message. After doing a bit of research, I came across one of the earliest Dadaist films from 1928. I was impressed by the quality of film and editing considering that the video was created very early on in the history of film technology. The philosophies of the Dadaist movement are clearly apparent through this video, and it is very interesting to see an earky account of the movement, before it had really taken off as a major art movement.
I like how there seems to be no direction or meaning towards any theme in particular. Almost as if the subconscious mind of the film maker has played an unfiltered part, not allowing the constraints of the conscious mind to affect the outcome of the piece. The lack of narrative progression or story line, immediately draws me to the concept of subversion through the sense of structural disorder that is established. The lack of structural process contrasts greatly against themes of order and efficiently, which in context hints at the idea that a protest of this theme relates to war and military, a classic symbolization of structure and conformity. Considering that the film was made in 1928, this may therefore be a subtle hint of the film-makers protest towards the events of WWI (1914-1918). The lack of clear intent is in itself a theme of the Dadaist movement. The lack of meaning behind the film relates to the Dadaist concept that art has no direct meaning or relevance in society.
Comedy of this piece is created from the sense of subversion and confusion established by the absurdity of the performance. The filmmaker uses the comical technique known as farce, through the use of visual effects to create crude characterizations, such as the man’s loose head turning; and improbable, surreal situations; such as the flying hats. Farce works in the genre of silent film because the absence of verbal communication allows for communication and expression to be greatly exaggerated in order to make up for the silence. In the context of comedy, this is known a physical comedy. These visual effects help to add an already established sense of chaos and disorder.Therefore the confusion of such effects is what enhances the Dadaist principles of the video.
Analysing Performance: Remy Gaillard
In this performance, Gaillard dresses up as a member of the French National Volleyball team. As soon as the French team line up for the national anthem, Gaillard sneaks his way form the crowd, into the French line up. This performacne is an extremely hilarious and satirical video in which Gaillard attempts to make mockery of the intense, serious nature of the situation. The contrast between the focus of the players and Gaillard michevous, exagarated personality is very conflicting and interesting to compare. For example, during the national anthem, the French Teamm remain silent, whereas their ‘newest member’ Gaillard sings loudly and passionately.
In this performance much of the comedy arises from the atmosphere of confusion and absurdity created by Gaillard. He establishes a sense of complete chaos in which many players either seem unaware or simply perplexed by his sudden appearance. What is very interesting concerning the performance is the amount of time it took for Gaillard to be noticed and removed from the court. This in turn drew me to consider the idea of how people in society react to subversion. It was clear that when Gaillard went to shake the hands of his oppenant, that some people seemed surprised by this new players appearance who had not appeared earlier on, however they did seem to openly challenge this. This is an idea which I find fascinating about performace/performacne photography, the fact that an artist/performer is about to get away with acting subversly directly unchallenged, simply because people do not know how to respond to such an unusual form of behaviour.
The subtely of this performance I believe works very well. Gaillard’s objective is not to draw attention to himself as such, but instead it is to try to blend into a situation that he does not fit into. This means therefore that Gaillard is conducting his performacne from an ‘outsider’ perspective. An element of comedy that irises from the fact Gaillard has thrusted himself into a ridiculous and in many cases inappropriate situation. It is exciting to watch and there is a constant anticipation for Gallard to be caught out. This idea relates very effectively to the idea of chance, because the crowds reaction is completely uncertain and the length of the performances depends directly on factors outside of Gaillards control.
This performance has inspired me to explore the concept of an ‘outsider’ in performacne. By acting subversly in situations that you have no connections to, makes the performance even more exciting and on edge, because their is no way of interpreting how strangers will react. Also there is something more risky about it, due to the facto hat acting subservy in public is prehaps uncomfortable and more difficult than it would be to act subservy in front of people you know well. Such a performacne enables the performer to view the situation objectively. I felt that this was the case during our trip to St Malo, because we had no prior experience of then place, and we were complete outsiders, forced to react and adapt (change) to the various situations that we were presented with.
Finals
As part of experimenting with the photographs I took in St. Malo to get a final outcome I narrowed down the photographs to my favourite ones I then chose two different photographs and a video. At first I was going to use the video however, I then took screen shoots on Premier of 4 different moments which I thought would represent what the video was showing in stills. I think this looked appealing to the eye and showed the performance however you couldn’t see the audiences reactions as well as in the video which is a part of performance photography. I choose the second photograph because I liked the way it looks and the performance, however you can see two people from my group taking photographs of the performance. Finally, I choose the third photograph because I think It’s a different and more challenging performance but the photograph also doesn’t incorporate any audience reactions. Over all my favourite out of the three is the screen shoots of the video however I’m going to try and incorporate the audience into my final.
Tom Pope
I found this image on Tom Pope’s website and it was captioned ” 12 revolutions 12 estimated minutes 12 liters of gloss black paint” it interested me because I think it has a deeper meaning to it. This photograph was taken during a performance which seems to have been pre planned due to it being in an enclosed space which doesn’t look pubic. I think the photograph shows Tom using up liters of black paint by painting a circle over and over again for 12 minutes. Tom likes the use of repetition in his work and audience participation even if it’s just observation which we can see in this photograph. The fact that Tom’s back is facing the camera and the performance isn’t being done in an area which is appealing to the eye re- enforces the idea that Tom’s work is about the performance rather than the photo itself. After thinking about why Tom chose to paint a circle it occurred to me that clocks have 12 numbers on them which would fit in with his pattern of 12. The definition of revolution is ” a forcible up throw of a government or social order in favor of a new system”. However when I googled the 12 revolutions nothing came up. In my interpenetration of the photograph circles usually represent a continuous cycle usually in the 12 hours a day reinforced by the repetition of going over the circle again and again and revolution being a key to breaking this cycle.
Presentation
Performance Photography Presentation
Here are the presentations that we made on Friday to present in front of the class with Tom and Gareth. This was an interesting task to do which ended up going quite well.
Family Album Research Continued
When scanning in these images I forgot to change the sizes so they are all very small. Over the holidays I’ll be scanning more in (for general family use) and so will update these images to the bigger versions.
Photoshoots
This was one of the first photoshoots we did in St. Malo , however it was unplanned we came across this water fountain while we were deriving. I like this photoshoot because I think It fit’s in well the concept of pushing the boundaries of what is and isn’t accepted in society. There was a few spectators sitting on the benches behind the fountain it was interesting to see their reaction, some of them stared in disgust while others choose to ignore it.
This was the second photoshoot we did, while deriving. The concept behind this idea is similar to the first one as these ‘trunks’ were put there to be looked at and not to be climbed almost as a type of monument. However I don’t think this idea worked as well as the first one because there wasn’t many people on the beach therefore we weren’t able to get an audience reaction or participation.
For this photoshoot, the girls sat down next to the man on the bench and copied his movements although this photoshoot wasn’t pushing any boundaries I think it was a brave thing to do and isn’t in the norms of what society would expect you to do in public especially with a stranger. It was also interesting to see his reaction, I think he was embarrassed at the beginning but then understood what was going on and found it quite amusing.
When we were with Tom Pope we came up with the idea of carrying Holly around in a populated area. I think that this was a good idea however it was hard to keep a straight face and not laugh which at times made it look like we were just messing around between friends. There was also no participation from the audience which Tom Pope likes to incorporate into his work, it was more of an ‘closed’ photoshoot.
For this photoshoot we took it in turns to wonder up to the statue and copy the position in which the statue was standing we made a video out of this however this is just a snapshoot. In the video we were able to capture the audience walking by and looking at what we were doing. However I don’t think that this photoshoot was pushing the boundries very far and therefore we didn’t get a big reaction out of the public.