Our session at the museum and art gallery this week consisted of us performing our 1-minute text pieces. Some presented ideas, others challenged thoughts and there were even a few actual performances. The range of the texts was interesting to see and I enjoyed and took inspiration from many of them.
My text was:
“The painting that I have chosen to base my performance on is by Henry Fuseli and is called Silence. The painting is occupied by a single strong simple form in a cavernous type place. Age indeterminate, it is neither male nor female. It is sitting cross-legged and hunched over, with its face down hidden by long hair. It has a sunken look to it and its limp body has no rigidity or resistance. It speaks in an abstract emotional language, its feelings going inwards and downwards indicative of silence. We know that silence can cause insanity and this is a strong possibility for this figure – a ghost as much as a body – someone that has given up the fight for life; someone you would find in the corner of an institution. By placing this type of figure in real form at the sides of the gallery it would hopefully unsettle people and raise questions about existence, life and death. By playing white noise at random intervals it will add to the unsettling feeling and reinforce the sound of silence. The placement in the gallery should also resonate connections to the surrounding paintings that have also been still and silent for their entire existence.”
-‘The Silence’ by Henry Fuesli
Image taken from: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/great-works-silence-17991801-henry-fuseli-1811332.html
Mine was based more on an idea of what I could do in the space, rather than actually performing something. If I was to do it again, I would make sure I had a picture with me, as I think its hard to imagine a picture and the feeling it gives without it being directly in front of you. I would also have a smaller audience, as I wanted to be loud so they could hear me, but not too loud that it would disrupt other members of the public who were just there to enjoy the art.
When watching others give their performances, some really captured my imagination – the first being that art can have a sound. What we hear and what someone else may hear from looking a piece may differ drastically. Again, as I stated in my last blog, it’s about perception and how we as an individual view and interpret; “Perspective makes the eye the center of the visible world.”(Berger 1972) With my piece trying to make silence into a sound was a challenge but by thinking about the artwork in terms of the feelings it could generate made a sound such as white noise the best choice – a sound that equates to a voluble silence – meaningless without thoughts and interpretation.
Another piece I liked was where modern day objects were on display in the museum. Alongside the theatre/archeology text we read, it made me ponder about past objects and their purpose within their own contemporary time and within different times since then. Everything was once a modern object – functionally or aesthetically valued, but have been essentially robbed of their self-value by virtue of time. They half cheat death by their existence, but not quite, as their value is intrinsically changed over time.
Bibliography
tw1975. 2012. John Berger/Ways of Seeing, Episode 1 (1972) [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk [Accessed: 8th February 2015]
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