Psycho Social exhibition

OFF SITE SHOW

Personal piece –

Too rushed- I could’ve experimented with layout for the show – instead what about TV’s in corner of room? Creating solipsistic circle enclosing the audience?? But then of course this would no longer exclude them and the audience would not be myself and the objects it would also include them.

Objects in centre of circle – what if I separated the objects dotted them around or had the TV’s in the corners of the room with some objects in front of each one that was the audience would still be the objects. And it would all be less literal – there would be more for the audience to work out – rather than there being a literal object audience- however there is already quite a lot to digest.

Perhaps the TV’s should’ve been more enclosed a very tight circle barely giving the objects any room, that way no one could walk through it and the audience would barely be able to even see it. (But I enjoyed spectating to see when people would stand in the middle, what made them feel they were invited too? Perhaps the allure of the objects?

Or perform within the circle to myself as added facet rather than the inclusion of objects. Or be one of the points of the circle still performing to objects to add live actual presence as of course ‘present day’ me in the video is technically now past me. I could’ve been reflecting live on the exhibition on people’s reactions etc, OR on my reaction to being there performing watching the video of myself reflecting and reflecting on it (what a mouthful)

Instead of the video being about past presence and future it could just be a circle of videos of myself reflecting to myself a circle that never ends, this would also be quite overwhelming but in a good way, overload of the absurdity of it.

ALONGSIDE the installation, I could’ve sat in a corner just reflecting out loud to myself but away from the circle to separate the live element of myself from this weird stuck version of myself.

The grandma video was problematic …. Was too funny, humour perhaps undermined it, but also I do like to use humour it is key to mock myself and undermine. The music was too obvious and clichéd (however I did choose not to use the music in the end)

It was perhaps not obvious enough I was mocking myself or using cliché on purpose as a way to critique, some people may have thought I was being serious with this.

Also on the surface it seemed like I was mocking the old women, when really I was just using them to mock myself, (the route of a lonely solipsist).

The nature of surveillance is often seen as cruel but obviously self-surveillance is not seen the same way.

I massively regret not doing my performance, I excused myself on the night because I was exhausted and much stressed but really I was using those because I was just scared. I was scared because it was so subtle that people might not realise and think I was just being rude, but really who cares about that. If I could change anything it would be doing the performance, especially because the private view was the perfect time to do it.

TEXT AND VOICE IN THE PIECE:

Subtitles – think carefully about how to use them and how text is represented. I didn’t experiment at all with text I just went for my default form, which I do think worked however to progress I need to explore other ways.

How can I challenge the voice? Or add to the voice? Separate it from the body? Separate text and voice, person and voice?

SELECTIVE SUBTITILING – I did this before with the soap opera video (from when I was 13) – however I did not do it thoughtfully enough – how can I use it to emphasise the key points.

Use a voice that isn’t my own? Or a voice that is me but a different image, or different text from someone else but in my voice made to seem like it is mine too.

VOICE – TEXT- SOUND (separate and remix)

Experiment with direct address in exhibition piece it is all aimed at ‘myself’ (even though really its clear it is not as I am making it for an audience) – I NEED TO ADDRESS THE AUDIENCE –perhaps? Like Cinzia Cremona

YOU – or also to a specific person eg my mum – address it to my mum or address it to Andrew – or someone I don’t know someone famous?

How would this then make the other audience feel, excluded? Or more intrigued? How would that re-act to exclusion?

ADVICE FROM CRIT:

Essays – Kawara On kawara

-          Narcissism

Practical advice – presentation issues, space, music choice

I often find that people don’t know how to crit it because it is about myself so they cant get into it enough- I did not really find the crit very helpful, because of time I had a significant amount less time and it was more rushed. However the essays suggested were extremely helpful and relevant to my work.

We held our own crit on Saturday night (Mel, Bob, Rosie, Laila and myself)- this was very helpful hearing from the people we worked with – feeling comfortable enough to speak to each other- it was very important to me to know what my collaborators had to say and how they would suggest to improve my work. The general thing was that it had too much going on which I agree with, it was a lot to digest and without understanding the concept properly perhaps a lot of it did not make sense to people. It maybe wasn’t clear enough that is was me with the trolley walking down the street or me in the ‘soap opera’ video and so without that knowledge they did not seem to link. The soap opera video was also perhaps offensive (homophobic) if you did not realise it was made by 13 year olds. Also the level of criticality not obvious enough?

Also not clear that my press release was just another level of mocking, making it over complex and pretentious sounding on purpose to try and alienate the viewer- setting them up to be alienated from the video. Perhaps there was too much mocking going on.

OVERALL EXHIBTION

Overall we worked well collectively and communicated clearly we had plenty of meetings in preparation and made lots of visits to the space. I think our work all tied in together well and there were clear dialogues between them.

We used the space well too, not at first though, it took a lot of moving around and compromise.

Although I think my work was quite bitty in the centre. I also think that the darkened space could’ve been used more successfully with people in that area spreading out more.  Laila’s piece worked really well in the space, weaving through others pieces of work, however there were some problems with health and safety so sadly some of her work was compromised because of this.

Joel’s performance was a major disruption due to the lack of communication from Joel and also lack of organisation. It was frustrating especially as he missed the crit so we didn’t have a opportunity to hear from him properly but I understand that he had to finish the work. But it was stressful for all of us involved having the exhibition all set up but still Joel not being finished right past the start time. Then there were issues when the performance began as it felt like it took over because it was so long which we had not anticipated and because we had no idea what his plans were we didn’t know how to re-act to it, which was frustrating as his collaborators in the show.  But we have all spoken as a group now about it and we have all learned from this experience that we all need to communicate better.

Perhaps for next time too we should have all worked more with the space in mind, I certainly did not consider it enough when making the piece and this was a mistake because I could’ve used the space a lot better, rather than just plonking the stuff in the middle.

I think our promotion of the show was very successful we had a huge crowd come, a resident of the Hive estimated about 130 at one point which was very exciting.