Workshop 3/4 - Duets/Triplets responding to Art from the Tate

In this lesson we began to create a triplet responding to your art work from The Tate Modern. In my group is Eloise and Ellie and after discussing pieces we liked from the Tate we chose a couple pieces to base our installation about.

INSPIRATION:

[1] Shooting Painting by Niki De saint Phalle

[2] Spatial Awareness 'Waiting' by Lucio Fontana

I was drawn to the beauty of what the violence of shooting created.

Eloise was drawn to the simplicity of something that appears so violent.

From these pictures we focused on the physical appearance of the artwork in order to create our piece.
We chose the idea of looking at three different types of mental illness: psychopathy, OCD and alcoholism. I believe we want to highlight these issues, bringing them attention and awareness to the idea that we can support these kind of people. 
As there are three of us, each person is going to take a role as one of the traits, with Eloise symbolising psychopathy, Ellie being alcoholism and me portraying OCD.
For psychopathy we chose to have a character with split make up, one side normal and the other messy to show the difference between the difference between what we see on the outside compared to the inside of a psychotic person. Every time the messy side is faced to the audience, Eloise will pop a balloon with red paint in to symbolise their lack of empathy (this replicates medical tests that some people under go, with red light suggesting psychopathic thoughts). The popping of the balloons is heavily influenced by the shooting paintings, the knife used to pop them influenced by the other picture. This knife is used to represent the violence often associated with psychopaths, although it may not truly represent the deficiency. 
Ellie's role representing alcoholism sees her sitting under the dripping paint collecting it in empty alcohol bottles, gradually increasing the volume of the alcohol that the bottle used to contain, this suggesting how alcoholics get worse as they progress.
My roles to imply OCD is to attempt to order the bottles and clean up the messy paint, signify the stereotypical characteristics of the illness. Also having half of my make up to appear as though melting, to show the inner melt down someone with OCD may have when things aren't as they want. 
The performance will then run as a piece of live art, progressing as the time goes on, so that no audience member will witness the same thing. I think that it an experimental piece because it doesn't have a clear linear plot with no links to Stanislavsky or Brecht. It clearly links with Artaud's idea of effecting/shocking the audience due to it's violent nature and weird concept, therefore showing it is experimental.

Our piece relies heavily on props and what happens we do with them to represent our chosen topic so when showing to the class we explained the concept through the pictures below. 

 

 

We also watched the rest of the class's pieces (pictures below).

Tia and Esme's piece of girls exploring each others bodies

In Esme and Tia's piece, I thought their use of shadow really helped to show their theme of hidden teenage exploration and the frowns up same sex couple still held be parts of society. The contrast of their two shadows made the images we saw confusing but that made it more inviting to watch and work out, although we all said that the two shadows needed to meet more often if they were to have a larger impact of their chosen theme on the audience. I found that contrast of their movements and the use of gentle music created a mellow mood, helping us focus on the piece. The use of music was a key feature of Artaudian methods, as well as the physical movement which helped the performance to show the experimental ideas this term is about.  

Miles and Will exploring blind paintings of heaven and hell

Malachi, Troy and Soloman showing how attitudes to nudity have changed