After listening to Tom Pope talk about his work at the Jersey Societe, I went and researched the ‘Space HI-Jackers’ which is a group of protesters that Tom talked about during his talk. The Space Hijackers is a group originating in the United Kingdom that defines itself as;
“an international band of anarchitects who battle to save our streets, towns and cities from the evils of urban planners, architects,multinationals and other hoodlums”
This group has done several projects which is testing authority. For example the government made a law against drinking on the subway so the Space Hijackers gathered together, wearing coats and carrying suitcases (in disguise) and all got onto the subway. When the train had started moving all of the space hijackers took their coats off to reveal their party clothes underneath and had alcohol and speakers in their suitcases- creating a party on the train. When they arrived at the next platform they all redressed and picked up all the litter and left the subway, like nothing had happened.
After researching about the Space Hijackers, it got me thinking about people who do things against social norms, such as Jack Jones. These people do things to gain a negative or positive reaction from the public for their own pleasure. This the type of things that we needed to do in our day trip to St Malo therefor we brain stormed idea’s within out group and came up with some idea’s to experiment with.
Tom Pope is the performance photographer that visited us at the Jersey Societe. A performance photographer means that he makes films from social content, for example whilst working with Andrew Lacon (a famous sculptor) they created a man made stage in which the public needed to walk over to get into an art museum. This was held in the Hockney Gallery in London in 2010 and was called ‘Enter Right Exit Left’. Pope and Lacon did this to examine audience participation within the space installed.
This is the stage that Tom Pope and Andrew Lacon made in the Hockney Gallery
Tom studied photography in the arts in 2008 at Swanswa’s Metropolitan University then went on to do his masters at the Royal College of Art in 2011. During doing his masters he started to experiment with the idea of time through the use of film. His first project a video camera was set up on a tripod whilst Tom aimed an arrow from a bow and arrow towards the camera. The clip is 1.17 seconds long and ends with the arrow flying into the camera lens. This collection of work is called ‘Blinded By Amor’.
This is an image of the arrow which got targeted into the camera.
Another project of Tom Pope’s called ‘Kinsington Chalk’ whilst he was studying at the Royal Collage of Art was set up in the streets of Kensington and the video camera and tripod was set up on one side of the road facing this large black box which Tom was trying to write the numbers 1-60 in 60 seconds.
During the video, members of the public come up to Tom and question what he is doing and try to tell him what he is doing is unacceptable. Tom replied nothing to these people however when he was explaining his theory behind his project he explained that he was testing the social acceptance boundaries which run in a community, without breaking the Law. Tom said this project was inspired by ‘Eddris Khan’ who also tests Authority.
Tom Pope
I really like Tom Pope’s work, as I believe that he injects creativity into it along side context. For example I really like the idea of going against social norms and pushing authority to gain a reaction from the public. There is an example of this in his project ‘Kensington Chalk’.
Whilst in St Malo I experienced gaining a reaction from the public whilst we gave out flowers to ‘randomers’ as a token of kindness. Most people’s reaction was hesitant yet very thankful- however some people refused the gesture. I thought this was very interesting to see a persons reaction, and concluded that most people reacted to the gesture in a similar way to how they saw a previous ‘flower receiver’ act. We captured images and video’s from this shoot.
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.
I like Tom Pope’s style of work very much because he is an extremely creative, original and in many cases revolutionary artist whose varied approach to photography and it’s meaning provides a refreshing stance against the more ordinary, formal, and aesthetically conscious stance typically embodied with most traditional art. I am drawn to Tom’s rebellious stance, especially through the way in which he uses this rebellion to observantly challenge society, directing such a meas in a constructive and interesting manner. Tom use of subtly to draw out sophisticated meaning, such as challenging the concept of personal space within society through seemingly minor and lightly disruptive actions which at most can be viewed comically.
During our St Malo trip last Wednesday, I decided to use the influences that I have gained from studying the work of Tom Pope. The themes that I have taken influence from include; subversion, satire and performance photography.
Photo 1
This photograph was taken at lunch time of a few of my friends playing a spontaneous game that involved the participants battling to catch the tennis ball first. I have captured an event involving two people playing the game actively battling for the tennis ball, whilst a third subject stands passively by, observing with apparent fascination, supported by three further intrigued bystanders in the background. This photography relates mainly to the idea of chance because I have captured a specific spontaneous moment which occurred meerly through luck and coincidence.
The meaning that I attempted to explore behind this image is to show how a simple and minor act is capable of nevertheless creating a spectacle of awe and fascination. In this image a single act of two people battling for a tennis ball is witnessed with great fascination. The movement and sense of liveliness displayed with the two performers is juxtaposed dramatically with the sense of calm and stillness from the spectators. This image shows how performance in society act as spectacle’s by which bystanders are almost compelled to witness. Subsequently the nature of this image directly questions the right to anonymity. There was/is absolutely nothing to prevent any individual from not observing that moment, which makes the action of the two performers therefore open directly to scrutiny and judgement.
This image also questions who really gains an accurate account from an experience from an action – the subjective performer who was directly associated with the performer or the objective witness, who experiences a more indirect and whole event? As the photographer of this event I find this concept fascinating because, I objectively witnessed the event whilst subjectively performing at the same time. It is difficult to say whether this image an objective account of my own witnessing to this event, or it it a subjective account to my performance of taking a photo, which is fundamentally unreliable due to the specific nature of my perspective, timing and bias.
Photo 2
In this image I captured the reaction of a member of the public with a performance of a girl from our group occurred (she was wrapped up in bubble-wrap and rolled down a hill!). The subject of this image was an ordinary bystander to the event. The subject recognised the events peculiar nature but did not however react very evidently to the occurrence, simply giving a brief, half-intrigued glance. What is effective about this image is the subtly behind it. The individual has just witnessed and extremely subversive and peculiar event but however the reaction does not directly reflect this. This photograph explores the theme of change
This observation therefore shows how an individuals reaction can in many cases be deceptive, diificult as this example shows to judge the true nature of what caused the reaction. Furthermore this begins to challenge the perspective of the viewer, who would most likely be drawn to perceive the event witnessed by the subject to be simply an ordinary and normal one, which however it certainly was not. This therefore questions the viewers quickness to assume the nature of the photograph, without any provable evidence.
This image relates well to the theme of change because it shows how individuals behaviour will be affected by the nature of the environment. The formality of this setting has caused the subject to give only a subtle response in relation to an unusial situation. This reaction may however have changed should the situation have been more private and open to expression.
This photo is a depiction of the slogan ‘1984’ by George Orwell. I find that this image is very effective because it is visually bold and powerful. There is a sense of conflict (challenge) with this image, due to the fact that a direct point is made to an ambiguous meaning.
The simplistic nature of this image I find works very well because it sends a clear message to the viewer. I have made no attempt to make the writing precise and artistic. I find that this works well because it highlights the spontaneity of the performance, at gives it the protest a realistic feel, literally as if anyone could make a similar protest which challenges society. When making this protest I took influence from Tom Pope’s ‘Weak Anarchy’ series. This protest does not promote any radical political idea but is instead a more subtle means of questioning society and life in general. The lack of specific intention I also find important because it makes the protest quite disorderly, therefore even more subversive.
Tom Pope is a British photographer and visual artist born in 1986 in Bristol, England.
Early Career and Education
Tom began his career as a photographer studying Photography at Swansea Metropolitian University were he gained a 1st Class (BA) He then went on to achieve a Masters
Degree in Photography at the pestigious Royal College of Art
Between the ages of 21-23, Tom traveled extensively throughout Europe, working as a ‘Photograph in Residence’ in Finland (2007), and in Wales and France (2009)
In 2009, Tom made his first publication entitled, ‘The Centre for Lens Arts and Science Interaction’
Notable Series
Fountain Bike – 1:40 Video (www.tompope.co.uk/fountainbikevideo.html)
Weak Anarchy
Time Bound
Enter Right Exit Left
Tom’s Specialisation: Performance Photography
Tom specialises in a type of photography known as performance photography. This type of photography is a very experimental method that involves the artist recording a certain performace, either subjectively or objectively. The ‘performance’ is then either made as an entire film (Tom argues that all film is technically photography), or individual moments of the performance captured as a still image
Tom uses performance photography as a means of testing social barriers and understanding different behaviour patterns between the general public. An interpretation of Tom’s pieces could be that that the subject is the auddience and how they react, not exclusively the ‘performance
A famous piece of perfomance photography that Tom has created is entitle ‘Fountain Bike’. In this short video, Tom records himself peddling a stationary bike attached to a water pump which squirts out water. In this satirical experiment, Tom creates a chaotic and unusual atmosphere in which the general public are completely unaware of how to respond. It is through creating these bizare scenorioes that Tom tests how people react to the bizare and unusual
Gareth Syvret – Archisle Project Leader
“Tom Pope is a great appointment for 2015 that reflects the diversity and fresh thinking in contemporary photography that drives Archisle”
“Dada”, written phonetically as (/ˈdɑːdɑː/), is commonly referred to as ‘baby talk’, since infants normally call their father figure that. This is a very simplistic utterance which has a lot of associations. Interestingly, Dada actually translates into ‘hobby horse’ in French.
Movement:
Dadaism (Dada), in itself, was an anti-art movement. The aim was create radical pieces that generated a big reaction from the audiences. Dadaists dispensed all of their artistic thinking and completely changed the way in which they depicted the world.
Many artists would get together and form clubs, such as Cabaret Voltaire. This particular club was started by Hugo Ball (born February 22, 1886) and his wife, Emmy Hemmings. Here, they were able to combine their adoration for poetry, dance, music and performance. Later, many artists joined from all different area’s of interest and added to the club’s knowledge.
Dadaism focuses on doing the opposite of what’s considered to be normal. It’s all about breaking the normal conventions and rules of society. This theme first started as a reaction to World War One and the main aim was to surprise and shock people. Members of the group wanted to achieve a large audience reaction, therefore they thought of many ways to explore this and test the audiences responses. In turn, they began to receive great attention from doing their creative stunts and work. They did many exhibitions, which would vary from poetry to putting up posters and photo-montages. They would do ordinary things, but in different, more all spontaneous and free ways.
Between the year of 1974 and 1976, another movement called Punk Rock was formed. Jamie Reid were quite influential to this genre. Reid was also an anarchist and linked to the popular group ‘the Situationists’. They would cut-up newspapers and create photo-montages to represent this. This genre of music and art was common in at least three English-speaking countries at the time, including the UK. The movement were quite similar to Dada, in that they also went against the expected characteristics of art. They shook up society, since their views were quite extreme. Here are some examples from the Rock movement:
Jamie Reid – 1977 – No Feelings
Jamie Reid
Name Selection:
The actual word Dada was chosen in a very crazy way. A man simply stabbed a knife into a dictionary and the first word that it pointed at was chosen.
Time Period:
This concept of Dadaism began
Dadaism came up when the first world war was in action, as a reaction towards it.
in 1916 by Hugo Ball and has majorly influenced the way that artists work. Hugo Ball had many degree’s of creativity. He was a poet, author and of course dadaist. Examples of photo-montages in Dada form:
Hugo Ball, dadaism
In this photograph above, there are three different characters which were all created by Ball. These were completed in the early and late 19th century. Each capture unique and outstanding performances, some done at Cabaret Voltaire, which captured the moment within a split-second of a frame. They all express Ball’s ideologies about the world. During that time period, he was probably trying to protest against the negative occurrences, in particular the world wars.
Hugo Ball quotes:
The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise?
We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.
Everywhere, the ethical predicament of our time imposes itself with an urgency which suggests that even the question “Have we anything to eat?” will be answered not in material but in ethical terms.
It’s inspiration that counts, not the drill.
Erwin Blumenfeld, Menschen Mit Kopf – Humans With Brains, photomontage, 1921.Raoul Hausmann, Dada Cino“Our whole purpose was to integrate objects from the world of machines and industry into the world of art.”
The international Dada Fair was captured with this photograph:
International Dada Fair, 1920.
“For us, art is not an end in itself,” Hugo Ball said, “but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in”. The group was not so worried about the aesthetical qualities of their work. They just wanted to show their thought processes and ideas. The Dadaists used many modernised techniques. Their main methods of displaying work was in photomontages and collages. Famous examples include:
Tom Pope himself uses this concept, frequently, as an influence for his work. Nowadays, there are many new concepts, which have been previously influenced by Dadaism. Examples include: Situationism, Fluxus, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism and Performance Art.
“DADA, as for it, it smells of nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.” – Picabia.
Berlin Dada Fair, 1920.Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Höch at the opening of the First International Dada Fair held at the Otto Burchard Gallery, Berlin, June 30, 1920.International Dada Fair, 1920.
The Space Hijackers are one of the groups that inspired Tom Pope to do his work. They are a group from the UK, who ‘fight to save public spaces’. Their purpose is to change how spaces are perceived by the public and to take away some of the power from the people who built or own the space the reason behind this is because they think public spaces are becoming to politicised. They try to change the public’s perception by performing unexpected non violent events for example: they organised a ‘party’ at the London underground once the trains had left as form of protesting against Mayor Boris’ new law to ban drinking on public transports.
The Space hijacker’s work links in with one of our project themes challenge because they challenge the authorities by pushing boundaries in an expressive non violent way as well as challenging the public to change their perception of public spaces, this is also closely linked to what we were doing in St.Malo as we were testing what is and isn’t accepted in society.
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.
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.
