The first pitch our group devised aimed at incorporating the past with reference to technology in order to make the audience ‘think’ through interaction. It became apparent that these three ideas were too separate to work and after pitching our idea we knew we had to rethink. We still wanted a theme whereby the past was connected in some way with today and became interested in the idea that as technology is advancing, physical mediums, such as letters and documents are rapidly fading out.

As a result, we decided that we could write stories behind certain exhibits and engage the audience by selecting them to read them out aloud; this would enable them to gain a more personal connection with the art works and objects. This could be done through, letters, postcards and emails, to show the advance in technology. By selecting the different types of media, it would make the audience perceive the work in different ways. In the feedback given to us, it was unclear as to what the performance was, and the actual practicality of moving the audience from one exhibit to another would have been very challenging.

From this, we decided to abandon this idea and develop something with a much more clearer core to it. The nude paintings formed the main stimuli for our new performance. We wanted to show how males have shaped women throughout the decades. We decided to have a line consisting of the three girls with the one male shape us into a ‘stereotypical’ female poses – similar to the nudes. Props to aid stereotypical ‘female’ roles, e.g. cooking and cleaning equipment alongside the use of more ‘neutral/masculine’ items such as books and DIY equipment were to be used. The audience would then have the opportunity to place and shape us as they perceived our role to be. At the same time, there would be a track playing only male voices that gave their response to the paintings. The male (Chris) would also be giving statistics about the paintings, for example how many were painted by men or women.

We were given more feedback and told that the track should include both female and male voices or it would be biased, and to change the meaning of our performance. Also the props could be misinterpreted as females not having their own choice as to whether they actually like cooking or cleaning, instead of it being imposed by men. We were told to look at the Guerrilla Girls and Bobby Baker to help us develop and refine our piece.

However, a lot can change when creating a performance piece! After our first pitch, we knew our group had to make some major changes in order to create a decent idea. We then moved away from our original idea, focusing on the concept of the male gaze and how the paintings of female nudes are largely by male artists for a male audience.  Following this decision however, our group underwent more changes and what was a group of four became two pairs. Leanne and I both still wanted to keep with our original theme so worked with that, looking at practitioners and other pieces of feminist work as inspiration for our next pitch idea.