Our trip to St Malo on the 17th of June 2015 with guests Gareth Syvret and Tom Pope, developed or aim to succeed the expectations of the locals in a foreign arena. In our small groups, we came up with several ideas to incorporate this enigma. Our first idea was using Sian. Sian bought 24 yellow roses at the local Market and our idea was to hand out the flowers in order to receive the reaction of the public. This was very successful in a way I felt encapsulated the senses of community and relationships.
Sian holding the yellow roses.
One of our targets for receiving the roses.
This experiment suggested positive, as many people where up to the challenge of exceeding this performance. In awe to Tom Pope, this idea of performance has given challenge by testing the public’s response. Chance has been established through the duration of the performance as many people changed their mind about receiving the flower. This then enabled the way we change our approach to people and the way we dictate our performance in order to receive a more positive outcome.
A woman happily receiving her yellow rose.
I was really happy with this photograph partly because you can clearly see the reaction upon this woman’s face. I am glad that our aim was established and that the roses gained a positive and interesting experience. I felt this interaction was key and I’m glad i challenged this.
Our next task was to use a blow-up ball through a mundane environment. The main aim was to characterize a movement which would represent a normal and sophisticated stance that we would use to challenge and chance the public community passing through this area and time. This movement was simple, the ball would roll down the metal railings and eventually, be passed back up to the top in which the movement would start over again. This action was repeated, and half way through, members of the public passed through and reacted in a surprised, un-realistic way. However, because we didn’t take much notice and reacted as if there was no abnormality, the action was suppressed as normal. This was also dictated through the way we kept quiet; regarding nothing abstracted or influenced our performance.
This technique proved very successful. I felt the aim was fulfilled due to the ordinariness, and the pace was very smooth and interactive. I feel an element of change was anticipated due to the challenge towards the transitions of normal and abnormal. I feel as a group we turned an action so simple to an action worth meaning, that the typical and mundane values where transgressed and pushed to the extremes.
Here is a link to the video of the Blow-Up Ball:
The next task we took was during our experience in St Malo’s local supermarket. The aim was to venture up and down the aisles of the market and pick up various items from the different shelves. This was among the public circle and wasn’t staged to the extreme. This was all captured on video and when one of us shouted ‘slow’, the movements of normal pace turned into slow-motion, leaving the only the public to react in a surprising and humorous way.
Surprisingly, the people of the public didn’t know quite how to react and in this in fact made them not appear in the video at all due to them realizing the performance and warding off because of it. The avoidance in such a public and mundane place ensured to us that we had really challenged and changed the transition of normal to radicalized, proving our performance as successful.
Setting up into our positions.practicing the repetitive actions.
Here is a link to the video of our Slow-Mo Market Dash:
The next task was to challenge the reaction of the public further. We directed one of our group members, Molly to climb into a small cardboard box. She then placed herself with our instruction in the middle of a busy pavement, central of St Malo’s town. We captured on video the audiences reactions and how they were challenged with the change of normality. This idea of chance was established too, as people who walked past gave molly the chance to perform.With the influence from Tom Pope, the suggestion of how if there wasn’t any people there would probably be no chance of any performance, so concluding this the location of this act gave this performance a chance to challenge the change in the public arena.
Molly waiting for her performance to start.Molly hiding in the box.
I felt this performance was very successful, and from the video you can clearly see the aim of this action being established. The feeling of change from normality to becoming surprised was clearly evident, and from the video this challenge was successful as we changed the normal transitions that wouldn’t of been there if our performance didn’t take place in that moment of time.
Last Tuesday we had a workshop with Tom Pope, the current photographer in residence of Jersey. The first half of the day he had a presentation and talked through his previous works, and then in the second part of the day after lunch, we went and did some activities. One of the man aspects he is exploring is play and so we partook in some photography related games.
The first was a game where we were given an orange, which we had to throw between ourselves (in pairs) and whoever hadn’t thrown the orange had to ‘catch’ the orange in a photo as close as they could to the camera.
The second game was where, in pairs again, you each hold your own cameras, but without your finger on the shutter, and you put your first finger of your left hand on the other persons shutter, the aim is to try and take as many selfies on the other persons camera as possible, whilst trying to prevent them from taking photos on your camera.
The Dada Art Movement begin as a protest movement agaisnt WWI and the horrors that it entailed
The artists and writers involved, many of which whom were exiled at the time saw the concepts of Nationalism, Rationalism and Materialism as entirely repsonsible for the war. In repsonse these artists sought to breakaway from traiditional ‘establishment’ art and instead started to produce more contemporary and politically based pieces of art, known as ‘non- art by non-artists’
The art produced although serious in its intentions is witiful, comical and has a ‘ridiculus factor to it’. For example of famous piece of Dada Art is Marcel Duchamps sculpture ‘Fountain’, which literally is a public urinal with a signature scribbled on it
Tom uses the obseen nature of the Dada movement as a key influence of his own work, espacially the element of comedy within art
Situationism
The situationalist movement (1957-1971) was the artistic faction of the Socialist Internationalist (SI) Movement. This was a political movement which supported a democratic form of Marxism and rejected Capitalism as a result of the inequalities and suppression that resulted.
The art involved was very satirical, consisting mostly of posters, painting and photographs alongside a small message which subtly criticized and brought attention to major issues in society
Although Marxist the movement was heavily against the oppressive regime of the USSR, and the artists sought to actively condemn the regime through their messages.
A key concept of the situationalist theory is the idea of the ‘spectacle’. This term is used to describe how society is controlled by material possession.
Tom’s work uses situationalist concepts in his own work. For example his ‘Time Bound’ experiment explores how material possession (e.g. clocks) control people’s behaviors, in that case the measurement of time.
Physco-Geography
Another type of influence that Tom explores in his work is Phyco-Geography. In this method, the photographer will ‘drift’ spontaneously around the environment to wherever they choose either consciously or sub-consciously
Tom spoke of an observational project he did based on creating a paper areoplane and throwing it around an art gallery, and wherever the areoplane landed is where he would view the next image
Drifting is a way of the photographer guiding what they shoot based on instinct. It is a random process that means that if done properly, the photographer’s work will always remain original and exciting, because they are not influenced by any external guidance or pressure, only by thoughts which are spontaneous.
For the St Malo day I worked with Tania Ferreira and together we decided to work with the idea of Tom Pope’s Weak Anarchy set of images. I really like the idea of challenging what we as a society see as right. Weak Anarchy isn’t the idea of doing something against the law but instead a movement that challenges the way people think. It isn’t necessarily against the law but it also isn’t see as very good in the public eye. I want to challenge the way the public think and see if spectators will actually interact in the performance. http://www.tompope.co.uk/weakanarchy.html
In St Malo we went round in groups of about 10 people where we could split off into our little creative groups. There were three different locations with three different teachers; McKinley, Toft and Pope. Our first group was with Mr Toft and we headed around near and on the beach. Some photographs below are just images of documentation of where we went.
For the next hour we went up to the wall in St Malo and tried to get inspired. This for me was the most challenging part of the trip as there weren’t many objects we could take and create something different and unique with. The whole performance was a lot harder to do and create on this location. Here we were working with Mr McKinley. I managed to reflect a lot more on the movement behind performance photography and the theory of it in this hour rather than producing something great as a practical. Here are some photos of the journey on the wall [not performance pieces].
The third and final location we went to was around the streets of St Malo. Here we worked with Tom Pope which was interesting to see him as a photographer exploring the streets. This was my favorite shoot as we did work as a collective large group. All of these photographs are documents of our surroundings and where we went on the day. I am going to be making a short video of the performances which Tania and I did as well as some other performances which we watched throughout the day.
Here are some images from the day we spent down at the Jersey Archive. We went outside down to an open space and Tom Pope gave us some activities to do in pairs and small groups. This was a fun way to show us what performance photography is all about.
Selfie Challenge Explanation
Selfie Challenge Example
Selfie Fights
Selfie Fights
Selfie Challenge
Selfie Challenge
Group Work
Group Work
Group Work
Group Work
Tom Pope Group Work
Orange Challenge
Orange Aftermath
Orange Challenge
I really enjoyed this day, messing around with a different style of photography but I don’t think that I got many artistic or creative photos out of it so I am going to do my own individual shoots by myself to express the art of performance photography.
Tom Pope lives and works in London. For Tom’s photographs he uses a film camera and develops the images in a light room. When we went to the Jersey Archisle for a workshop with Tom he explained that his photography has an element of chance, he believes that a studio is too isolated to work in and he uses the theory of psycho-geography, whereby he gets inspired by the location he is in to take the photographs. To take Tom’s photographs he uses no post production or does not plan to shoot his photographs as he believes it makes for a more “truthful document”. Tom’s work involves “drifting around and seeing where the city guides you” i think this is an interesting idea of exploring the terrain.
Tom Pope studied photography at the Swansea Metropolitan University and the Royal Collage of Art and he is a champion Archer. Tom is also interested in Philosophy.
Fountain bikeI think we Both Want Something Quite DifferentFlight of FancyFountainCatchA moment
Tom Pope sees his photography as him ‘recording a performance’ as the film is made until the video is over. For example Tom Pope’s video of him shaking a tree and the performance is over when the petals have covered the camera lens. In a performance there may be no record if the performance is trying to hit the shutter. Tom believes that photography and film is intertwined and that it is ‘lens based media’.
In addition Tom Pope says that he ‘subverts the meaning and lines of objects I see’ and he ‘subverts social situations’. I think by this he means that by going to different places and going to different situations then he can subvert how we would usually see people act in those places and shock the people around us. I think that in Tom Pope’s images this is shown by when he makes his videos the audience’s reaction in the back of the videos.
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.
A collection of Pope’s images captured between 2005-2011
The results regarding the ‘Chancing Orange’ Shoot with Tom Pope – Societe Jersiaise June 2015
With regard to Tom Pope, our development of the key themes came down to various statements: repeating an action over and over again to benefit the chances of capturing the performance which becomes influenced / held within the margins of challenge and how you can change the chance by altering the subjects performance.
Tom’s influence comes down purely by walking through a threshold of chance and change. His approach to walking through a public arena or audience gives sense of a performance but not of that being successful, its always down to chance regardless of environmental, physical or social factors. I fell when approaching this challenge, this ideal of chance stayed in my mind. I questioned myself on how to make this shoot more successful, and doing so I changed the way I angled my camera and positioned myself in a more beneficial and approachable position. The more I did this with more control, the more effective the photograph turned out to be.
In this image above, Molly was positioned around 5 meters from where i was standing. She threw the orange towards my camera and I did vise versa. This photo was among the most successful, as using a manual blur helped contribute towards the main focus of the image, in this case, the orange. This also helped as during the editing processes in Photoshop, we were able to not insert a Gaussian Blur or any artificial focusing tools because this feature was so effective.
Dérive is an unplanned journey through an urban landscape which is led by the colours and architecture, with the aim of experiencing something different. It was made by a French situationist called Guy Debord in 1958. Dérive is closely linked to psycogeography which means exploring the urban environment being led by curiosity and allowing your senses to ‘discover’ the landscape. I think that Dérive is also linked to our project theme chance because of the uncertainty that may not find a new interesting landscape.
Situationist theorist Guy Debord defines the dérive as “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.” He also notes that “the term also designates a specific uninterrupted period of dériving.”
During our photography trip to St. Malo, we took some time to ‘derive’ we walked around St. Malo without a destination, we walked through the main urban area and ended near the beach taking photographs along the way and doing small activities which link in with Tom’s idea of pushing the boundaries of what is and isn’t accepted in society for example we climbed some tree trunks which were placed along the beach and seen as a tourist attraction because this isn’t seen as ‘normal’ behaviour in public. Overall I think that Dérive is a good and fun way of exploring new environments which I think could be more effective than actually planning places to visit.
The first was a game where we were given an orange, which we had to throw between ourselves (in pairs) and whoever hadn’t thrown the orange had to ‘catch’ the orange in a photo as close as they could to the camera.
