Group Presentation Reflection

When I had to present my research on 'The Site of Performance' to an audience, I struggled.

I came to realize that I had lost my way in understanding what performance actually is. I had temporarily lost the admiration that I had for artists who participated in the performances. I couldn't for the moment see the point and understanding of why some artists such as Marina Abramovich would be motivated to create work that could endanger themselves.

When evaluating my confusion I came to the conclusion that the boundaries for me, between Performance and Art had become clouded...

I see art as using my body as a vehicle to create work that also moves people.

What really helped me was the reaction that was shared when I played clips of various pieces and the feedback from a task that I presented students with. When I read through the feedback after the presentation I saw that most people shared my view yet gave me insight into a range of unique opinions on the subject. 

A comparison between Monty Python's 'Ministry of Silly Walks'(1970) and Bruce Nauman's 'Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square' (1967)

The movement created by John Cleese and other members of the cast displays some similarities to Bruce Nauman’s Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square. I thought it would be interesting to compare the work of seminal artist Nauman to the comedy created by one of the most critically acclaimed group of comedians in British history.

I love this comic sketch as I believe that it illustrates the truly traditional British humour of all things silly. I’m a huge fan of John Cleese as an actor and comedian from his role as Basil in Fawlty Towers, first shown on BBC2 in 1975. The exploits and misadventures of Basil Fawlty are so memorable that generations within my family enjoy and reminisce about the episodes creating anecdotes of their own with the lines from the script.

Cleese's performance in the Monty Python sketch Ministry of Silly Walks looks at first glance, to share something of Nauman's art performance.Cleese enters into the newsagents from the left side from the viewers point of view. He leaps into the frame with a bowler hat and suit on. He buys The Times newspaper and the interaction between the seller and Cleese as the customer is brief. When exiting this frame Cleese then proceeds to turn - lifting his leg to his hip to manoeuvre himself and walk out of the frame.

The next frame is filmed outside the shop where he puts his newspaper into his briefcase; straightening his tie before starting another length of his ‘silly walk’ . Cleese’s walk consists of exaggerated movements both on a high (up to the hip) and low (just feet) to create this walk. His set of choreographed movements that he uses when travelling down a street consists of shuffling, skipping, hopping, high kicks from the knee as well as crossovers and a movement that involves one of his legs being bent from the knee and ridged when he walks, almost like a robot.  He repeatedly moves in and out of frames doing these steps whilst the non-diegetic sound of laughter is heard.

 

John Cleese is the main character in the sketch; he plays a civil servant who is interviewing a man with a considerably less silly walk who wants a grant to improve his ‘silly walk’. The conversation goes back and forth between the two as they illustrate their walks. At one point a secretary (who also has a silly walk) brings tea that goes all over the floor due to her silly walk.

Cleese is parodying workers in the city of London by his extravagant movements, whereas Nauman  uses his body and his studio as his medium.

The medium of art then compares then to the medium of comedy, and although the concepts for these pieces of work seem vastly different, the absurdity in both is similar. Despite the difference in intention, the absurd is an outcome of both of these seminal pieces of work.

 

How It Was- Beth Edwards

I myself  have joined the queue of artists that have recycled Beckett's title and used it as their own.

The novel inspired me so much that I chose to use elements of the author's work and put them into mine, in particular the lines of text from the book and an adaptation of the title.

I also aim to use the contrast between his academic text and my own themes of history and the working class to create a multi sensory piece of work that pulls on heartstrings.

experimental work 1

Experimental work 2

Samuel Beckett- 'How It Is'

I first looked into Beckett for my AS Art and Context exam unit. After purchasing the book How it is I have begun to learn about what I believe is the modernist abstract and gritty realism that made Beckett such a unique writer.

I find his writing highly academic and his writing style extremely unique . When reading the preface to the book I learned how he edits his own work from autobiographical to being almost ominous.

The book is in three parts and is 129 pages long (in this edition). The graphic work on the front of the book is purely typographic. The text of the title is bold and green on a light grey background.

 
"Beckett then, finds an analogous explanation of his means to satisfying thirst, before settling for a brief refusal to explain: ‘mouth opens the tongue comes out and lolls in the mud and no question of thirst either’. It’s as simple as that. We have a character alone, in the constant darkness, able to subsist. Which is all that is needed for the narration to proceed and, in the end, is all we are given. This is ‘How It Is’. Realism, causality and explanation are written out of the text. The narrator crawls through the mud and darkness without knowing where he comes from or where he is going, and certainly not why. He drags with him a sack containing tins of food, the origin of which is a mystery to him. On his journey he meets another whom he calls Pim and with whom he has a brief, abusive relationship. In ‘How It Is’ Beckett continues to strip away conventional forms, as if to adumbrate the ‘peeling the onion’ metaphor ventured in his earliest critical book on Proust."

Quote from Introduction in Beckett. S, Faber and Faber ,1964

''the last modernist.''- Anthony Cronin

Born in 1906,Samuel Beckett is described as fitting in "easily with writers like Vladimir Nabokov, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, Witold Gombrowicz, Henry Roth, Nathanael West and Louis-Ferdinand Celine." Like them, Beckett was a "second-generation modernist who arrived on the scene in the late 20's, shortly after Eliot, Joyce, Kafka and Proust had written their major works."  Also like them, Beckett was "caught between the anxieties of influence and the uncertainties of political and economic crisis," and he too "turned toward a dark, acrid and mocking humor that became one of the great literary vehicles of the Depression years."

'Waiting for Godot', perhaps Beckett's most famous work which premiered in 1953 is an allegory written in a heartless modern tone. The theatre goer naturally (in a way similar to my first experience of Nauman's work in the Sunderland show) "rummages through the performance in search of a meaning. It seems fairly certain that Godot stands for God. Those who are loitering by the withered tree are waiting for salvation, which never comes.The rest of the symbolism in Beckett's play is less accessible, and the following quote mirrors my own feelings about Beckett and equally my feelings in relation to Bruce Nauman's work:

 

"Although "Waiting for Godot" is a "puzzlement," as the King of Siam would express it, Mr. Beckett is no charlatan. He has strong feelings about the degradation of mankind, and he has given vent to them copiously. "Waiting for Godot" is all feeling. Perhaps that is why it is puzzling and convincing at the same time. Theatregoers can rail at it, but they cannot ignore it. For Mr. Beckett is a valid writer."

http://www.Samuel-Beckett.net/outsider.html

The following is a quote from Faber & Faber's 1964 Samuel Beckett in relation to How It Is.

"The earliest versions of ‘How It Is’ contain references to moles, and to callers, and to a scribbler relaxing in his cottage in the country. But, although Becket often began with images from his own experience, he would later remove autobiographical details and dismantle chronological and casual relationships, replacing them with the abstract from that have a coherence of their own. Thus the first version of the French text includes lengthy passages explaining the total darkness in which the narrator lives, and invoking the all-too-trivial moles who manage to be punctual in their own comings and goings without benefit of altering day and night. After several drafts, Becket simply asserts the existence of ‘impenetrable dark’.

Again, after the review of the various types of callers he has known in past lives, the narrator’s solitude is initially explained by a thorough examination of circumstance and probability. Beckett then cancels the passage and summarises in a few words: ‘long wrangle so minute that moments when yes to be feared’, then simply affirms ‘no callers this time’.

Likewise, the narrator’s continued survival seems at first to require some explanation grounded in realism. The contents of the all-important sack satisfy the need for food; Beckett then finds an analogous explanation of his means to satisfying thirst, before settling for a brief refusal to explain: ‘mouth opens the tongue comes out and lolls in the mud and no question of thirst either’. It’s as simple as that. We have a character alone, in the constant darkness, able to subsist. Which is all that is needed for the narration to proceed and, in the end, is all we are given. This is ‘How It Is’. Realism, causality and explanation are written out of the text. The narrator crawls through the mud and darkness without knowing where he comes from or where he is going, and certainly not why. He drags with him a sack containing tins of food, the origin of which is a mystery to him. On his journey he meets another whom he calls Pim and with whom he has a brief, abusive relationship. In ‘How It Is’ Beckett continues to strip away conventional forms, as if to adumbrate the ‘peeling the onion’ metaphor ventured in his earliest critical book on Proust."