2nd Rehearsal

 At today’s rehearsal we had a group discussion on how we could possibly incorporate our own dreams in this piece. Then through discussion we have decided that through our piece we will portray the public and private instead of the dream and reality.

The piece so far:

 - We start siting down at a table with five chairs. One chair stays empty for a member of the audience.

 - We start eating, sharing food.

 - One by one, we play a personal video on phone/pad, leave it at the table, get up and walk to our worlds.

 - In our worlds , we fall asleep, we wake up.

 - One by one we say our lines (that portray how the individuals felt living together).

week 7

Today’s lecture consisted of a presentation that has been led by a guest lecturer from Chicago ,Columbia College,  Brain Shaw . We started with a worm up exercise/game which was meant to help us focused, concentrate and be able to listen and learn. We were introduced to an artist, Mark Lombardi who draws. The way he describes his drawings is that it’s all public information and he is rearranging it in to a visual format that is meaningful to him. The drawings portray a map/landscape of connection web between global finance and international terrorism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz_TfsAgvHM

 

 

 

We also looked at videos of physical theatre company Plasticane, which Brian is a part of. The videos showed how the company responds to their research through physical theatre. One of the productions we had a closer look at was "The Doorslam". Brian then  filled us in on how the idea came about. We foud out that Brian drew the inspiration from working in a hotel. I somehow struggle to see the relevence of creating from the archieves.

http://www.plasticene.com/  

In the second half of the seminar, groups were asked to rehearse to later show their work to the rest of the groups. I and one other member of my group had a discussion about possibly incorporating our own dreams in our piece. We talked about our individual dreams and nightmares. Features that stood out to me from this discussion ware: the inability to focus the vision on an object or person in a dream, the ability to see very clearly in high definition during a dream, the fact that running can be difficult during a dream, the fact that we dream about crashing and we wake up. Then we started questioning the relevance of name of the original Dream Capsule to what its representing. We realized that we only started thinking about our own dreams because the name of the piece has the word ‘dream’ in it. We reminded ourselves that the Dream Capsule is about displaying the private to the public. The other half of my group has went to the Goldsmiths LIFT Archives to see if they can find any more documentation that we could possibly work off as we all agreed that we need more documentation material.

 

 

 

1st Rehearsal

The group has met for a first rehearsal.

 We spend some time discussing the actual assignment outline. Some people, involving me feel slightly lost in the task. The group is also concerned with the artistic form and how much of the archival material should be involved in the final piece. We spend some time on the internet in one of the UEL class room researching the Lift archives. We read an article describing the first Dream Capsule staged in a Myer window shop. The group decided to investigate if there was any video material prom that period. We have found few videos on You Tube that show the participants of the Urban Dream Capsule performing a dance routine. We found it amusing and decided to recreate the dance as a documentation of the event. I also found this footage of one of the participants cooking, the other two siting down on hairs and interacting with the audience on the other side of the glass. One of the men is holding a piece of what looks like a small drawing board and a pen, which suggests that it’s the way the individuals communicate with the audience. The fourth participant can be seen in the bathroom and appearing to be trying to fix what looks like a radiator to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfMwjf6tfoE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwSG_P0slJY

week 6

Today’s lecture consisted of the class looking at images mentioned in this week’s reading by Auslander. The class also discussed the question: how much does a re-creation of a performance based on archives actually recreate the documentation. Also an example was given of Abramovic, 'Seven Easy Pieces'.

During today’s seminar myself, Melody , Shamika, decided to form o group. We had a discussion about the different archival material we looked at individually. We had a discussion about the different archival material we individually encountered. Through elimination we narrowed our choices down to UBU and The Dream Capsule

week 5

 Today’s lecture topics ware:

-          Memory

-          Archive

-          Repetition

-          Documentation

We moved the subject of repetition in regards to a live performance. The class discussed how a performance that is staged one day will never be exactly the same performed the next day. The timing will be slightly different as well as the position of an actor in a certain scene. The question why we record performances? –was asked. The group determined that the reasons are: for documentation, to keep the memory of the day, for later assessment. Also we ware made aware of the fact that it’s important to question the archives in terms of accuracy and value it has. It’s important to ask yourself questions about the archives and try and find an answer inside the archives.  Also in regards to the documentation of live performance, I think its importance is greater to people that haven’t seen the performance. The documentation: video recordings, still images, scripts etc. Can help an individual to better imagine and understand the performance.

Week 4

Today’s seminar took place at Goldsmiths Lift archives at New Cross. The group received different boxes with different archives. I had a look through the archives of The Dream Capsule and UBU Truth Commission. I found a certain artist that I became interested in. I found this photocopy of a newspaper page talking about this artist and the type of work he does. I particularly became interested in his acting methodology which according to the article was rigours. The actors in his theatre could not speak to each other and many left because of the tough rules. Now I could possibly investigate, if he was tough and unconventional indeed but...I’m not sure if this wold classify as performing the LIFT archive. The other archives I looked at ware documents from the Dream Capsule about the LIFT Festival 1995. These ware emails from the organizers to different staff members, also artist’s schedulers and timetable. I must admit that I was slightly confused by the archives and what is actually been asked of me, I mean what is my task?