Time to commit the thoughts and get things made. More than just the usual day to day stuff to get done that is.
How to do the WTF performance? What successful home performances have I watched? What constitutes successful?
Where to perform. I need a space that I can work uninterrupted for at least an hour. If not two hours. I think if I am doing this at home I need to embrace the home situation and try not to hide that it is happening at home. Thinking about positioning my phone on the ceiling (in the kitchen? the corridor?) or high up, like on the tripod as high as possible, pointed downwards, and work through a scroll of the thoughts that were contributed. Use the brown paper, I could write them vertically as a list. I could have the scroll pre-written out, and then tick them off as I work through them. Or I could write them out, one by one, as I go through them, and hold it up to the camera as I write each one. The second option means I would need to have them written out somewhere already and then rewrite them out, but this way as I go through them and get more tired they will get more illegible and the scroll will fatigue with my energy levels, a nice coordination of occurrences. Ideally I would like to have a space where I am outdoors and in an open, derelict space. Possibly down the road at the Knockanean quarry, under the old barn building? But I think that in this instance it will be important to keep a close relationship with the camera as there will be only me, the exercises, the writing and the relationship between these things. It needs to be acknowledged, the camera in the room, and not ignored, as it’s a ‘if a tree falls in the woods’ situation. The camera is a portal to allow an audience, if any, so it has to be acknowledged.
The important thing will be to keep to establish a pace, so that if there are viewers they will ascertain that the performance is simply a slice of continuance. As in, these actions would be happening anyway, which they would, and are happening, and it is what it is.
I watched the pre Revision festival trial performance I made in Laura’s gym, and like all old work it made me cringe a bit. OK a LOT. Talk about middle class women problems :) Its all me me me me, I feel this I feel that… But having watched I am conflicted about whether to speak or not. The whole concept is a parody of my life as a fitness instructor, when you talk, perform/demo the exercise, and talk through it. Guide the class. Lead the class. But the version I watched is too puerile, with all that breathy talking, It makes me want to puke, I need to progress it.
Eeeuch. I do kind of like the talking through the exercising but not the inanities uttered before and after, and the constant allusions to the exercises being a medicinal anecdote. I think best to talk some times but perhaps in a less structured way?
I want to schedule this for either this Friday or next week. Also its good to have birthdays to plan and stuff to be doing as it helps my attention be held elsewhere than the slow admittance, as each day goes by without an email, that I am not going to be successful in the last two open calls which I spent considerable time applying for. However being the practical individual that I am, I have of course applied for another opportunity since then, a 12 hour durational theatre piece called 12 Songs, using some of the material I had to prepare for aforementioned open calls which I don’t think I will get shortlisted for. Waste not want not!
