The process of making a performance is one that is fraught with changes throughout the piece’s development. This feels especially true for Site Specific, as any piece of research can provide a wealth of information and a new direction for piece. The focus of my performance has changed towards the ideas of the ephemeral, documentation, and preservation. This is as a result of re-viewing the art of Andrew Bracey in the Usher gallery as part of a performance task in one of our lessons. The second viewing reignited my love of these works, and I also took in details that had eluded me on a first viewing, particularly the state in which some of the paintings were. Thus sparking the thought to perform something related to the preservation of artworks, of which some details had been covered in our introductory talk at the gallery. Later I found out that the exhibition of Bracey’s ReconFigured paintings would be gone by the time I came to perform on May 9th, leading me to the consideration of the ephemeral nature of performance and the idea of documentation arose from the culmination of the two previous ideas.

However most importantly I believe that the change was well worth making, as whilst my previous idea I had some strong central ideas it also had a fair share of problems arise alongside it. Mainly concerning the nature of reproductions, an idea that can easily become a piece unto itself, and overpower a work that uses reproduced images or actions. Consequently my motivation towards that particular idea waned as each solution threw up another problem to consider and work around. By working with the ReconFigured paintings as a stimulus it should imbue the performance, and its development process, with the passion that I have for the paintings and in turn hopefully leading to a far stronger performance.

ReconFigure (Conrad Kiesel) from Bracey, A. (2011)Andrew Bracey-ReconFigure Paintings[online] Available from: http://www.andrewbracey.co.uk/page33.htm [Accessed 3rd March 2015]