Weekly report 3
- Aug 5, 2018
- 8 min read
Sarah's Post: Movement and Meaning
Week four in the studio and we are making progress at a slow and steady pace. I am aware that we may have reached a sticking point where we will need to focus on our individual line of enquiry and the reading we both need to carry out around these areas. We have used our time this week to focus more on the theme of ‘beauty’ and our own individual response to the theme. We have also worked with Geraldo on some movement warm-ups and exercise.
Last week’s questions
The questions that we had at the end of last week are below with some initial answers that we have formed this week.
How can we subvert the work to say something more than what is on the surface?
It felt as though we were starting, this week, to subvert the work by using discussions to tread deeper and use our own experience and musings to push through the obvious to find the hidden in what we say and what we actually think – the interviews were useful for this and also the discussion of the dictionary definition of beauty.
2 How can we use the concept and notion of CUTTING as a reoccurring theme and through-line?
We haven't revisit the theme of cutting yet in our practical work, however, we did cut out magazine articles to use in another experiment as some point. This process took a long time but was actually quite therapeutic and when I was cutting I made sure to read each word and relate them to our themes. Once all the words were cut out the visual aesthetic of them all together was pleasing and I wanted to include this image in some way in the future.
3. How can we use more push and pull in our movement work?
4. What are our own contradictions that we can include in the work?
I feel that we visited both these points in the interview experiment we did. We need further investigation into these points. We also had contradiction and push and pull in the work we did.
This week’s experiments
We discussed the dictionary definition of Beautyand were able to dissect the words and statements within it. We found many ironies and contradictions within the definition that we would like to explore practically.
We had a more detailed discussion on the reading I found in the book Face Value written by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano. Practically we would like to experiment with me trying to fulfil all the ‘beauty criteria’ listed, such as holding coins between thighs and ankles whilst Sonia throws other information at me – I must then try to incorporate the information she has thrown at me into my practical work as well – all this whilst I am being timed and when the timer runs out …….? Failure?
We read some articles in magazines which were about Beauty and then discussed our own interpretation and reaction to them.
This lead us on to a discussion on plastic surgery and our opinions and views on it.
We also discussed the ‘Beauty Rules of Life’ – nails painted, hair done etc.
Sonia interviewed me for 10 minutes asking me about beauty and what my opinion is of beauty and how to look beautiful.
We repeated the exercise but with Sonia trying to antagonise and provoke me with her questioning – we agreed she could have gone much further (this is something we will come back to).
Geraldo joined us and we used the practice of Mary Starks-Whitehouse: Authentic Movement. We each went into the space for 10 minutes and created our own movement – only when the body wanted to move. While we were observers we were to write down words under the following headings - I see, I feel, I imagine. We then spoke together after each person had performed/ moved and discussed the common ground and differences.
Observations
The main points of observation we pulled from our experiments were:
We made some interesting discoveries this week regarding our inner thoughts and daily motivations- we both have contrasting conflicts on a daily basis.
Everyone thinks their ‘normal’ is ‘normal’! During discussion with Sonia about my holiday I told her I would take 14 bikinis for a 7-day holiday – 2 each day (change at lunch time). This to me is totally normal??! My Mum and Sister would do the same. This is my ‘normal’ – Sonia was horrified.
When being interviewed by Sonia I found that I was able to defend my points and didn’t see them as anything but ‘normal’ – I would like to see how far we could go with this questioning. I think it needs to be offensive from the interviewer to make it a worthwhile process- only then will it be truly challenging of our ideals, morals and values.
The work with Geraldo was very useful – 10 minutes of Authentic Movement was very challenging but rewarding. We found that we were able to move freely and were not tied to restrictions of music or beat, choreography or rhythm. We both said we will repeat this exercise but keeping our individual enquiries in mind so that we may be able to find some interesting results within the movement that is produced.
I am going to be using my time over the next few weeks to listen to pod casts from Susan Calman’s Mrs Brightside. I listened to one initially and as soon as she said “I want to make misery funny” I knew that her views, opinions and general musings on depression and dealing with life when you have depression would be useful and informative for our ongoing work.
I will also be reading and researching.
It had been motivating and thought-provoking to have the faces from last week stuck to the wall in the studio – this is something I see as part of the visual setting for out final performance piece. The faces are very visually stimulating to anyone that sees them and when we were working this week I felt my eye being drawn back to them the whole time and questioning the images in terms of beauty and social acceptance.
Subversion and Questions
Were we able to subvert the work that we produced this week?
As our work was more focused on discussion this week with only some limited practical work I think we had the start of subversion in some of it, but it was limited. I believe we have a better understanding now of what is meant by subversion and it is at the forefront of our mind when considering the work we are producing. We are aware that we need to be stating something more than the obvious in all the work we produce.
The questions we have going forward from here are:
How can we use the authentic movement to explore our themes?
How can we continue to explore cutting as a theme?
How can we use interview technique to reveal contradictions in our thoughts and in societies perceptions and ideals?
What can I personally gain from my readings and podcasts and how can I integrate the information into the work?
Further Experiments & Ideas
Downfall of women – Peaches Geldof, Paula Yates, Whitney Houston.
Being held down with physical weight – sand bags, laundry, detergent etc.
More mask work
Using authentic movement to explore the themes.
Using interview technique to push and challenge our own perceptions and ideals.
Sonia: Dissecting beauty
Week overview
This past week was full of insights. At first I thought we hadn’t done many progresses and even felt stuck. Now, after watching the videos I realised that there is material there that we can use… but only effectively after we lose this fear of offending each other. Another important part was the session we had with Geraldo. It was particularly challenging for me but it also allowed me to see Sarah creating something not prepared.
Stuck in beauty land
Wall of faces: After “making our face wall” it became even clearer that the faces we created looked a lot like our own. The paradox was interesting since we both have features we would like to change in ourselves.
Beauty according to Google’s dictionary: It became really funny when we dissected the definition and realized that to illustrate the visual aspect of the beauty, the example given was related to women and to exemplify the intellectual part of it the example was football. Many of the synonyms presented were often related to sensuality, specially the informal ones. Sarah found them hilarious, I was in shock how “knockout” and “bit of all right” can be applied for the same situation.
Magazines for women: Sarah brought two magazines and we talked about Keira Knightley’s face on a Coco Chanel’s advert, relating that to the dictionary definition of beauty.
Then Sarah read an article about plastic surgery and I started wondering about a few things the interviewed said.
She hoped the death of another celebrity woman could be a wakeup call for people to focus less on their physical appearance;
She wanted to be relevant… to whom?
The industry should have a duty of care towards people who are in those programs (Big Brother and Love Island).
After this I went into a spiral of thoughts about “duty of care”, relevance of beauty, freedom of speech and relevance of women representation in our society… Apart from two or three headaches I felt like I had gained some perspective on the matter but accomplished nothing when it came to our project. It is important to me to question my morals and beliefs but for practical reasons I am very glad that we are going to focus on our individual lines of inquiry for the next two weeks and Sarah will have the folder of beauty in the “ministry of social expectations of women” so I can focus on the social anxiety and depression one… oh well, when I say glad…
Interview: The exercise was me interviewing Sarah asking her to give me a detailed list of what a woman should look like in our society. The idea was to criticise and question her choices and ideas in a funny way. What happened didn’t meet my expectations. As I said before the fact that we listen and try to understand each other makes it more difficult to “make fun” of the other person’s behaviour.
Workshop with Geraldo
Geraldo didn’t see what we were working on, nevertheless working with him was a way to let him in our rehearsal space. The practice was: each one of us had 10 minutes to free our mind and respond to our physical impulses, while the other two wrote down what they saw, felt and imagined. They went first and in both cases I saw, or at least I imagined the movements showed my idea of them. I noticed that Sarah did a lot of her ballet movements and more hand and arm gestures, even though she wasn’t thinking about moving in a specific way. Geraldo moved in a way I am used to see him moving, using his head a lot and interacting with his clothes. Then it was me… My god it was 10 minutes of nightmares! “Free your mind!” they say… what I reply is not polite to say out loud. Nonetheless we all expressed ourselves with movements that showed (at some point) self-exploration, curiosity, attempt and struggle.
Observations
Matching your nail colour with all your outfits would be a laughing joke to me but the way Sarah explained it made sense to me. Her thinking process about deciding what to wear was very similar to mine about planning in advance how to behave in social situations.
Comparing ourselves to other women or to an unrealistic list of beauty traits is like reading those magazines. Naomi Wolf refers about this: “Readers themselves are often ambivalent about the pleasure mixed up with anxiety that they provide” (WOLF, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth, London, Vintage, p.62). We know beauty is relative and we tell ourselves that we look good but continue going after “the ideal look”.
I compare that with me thinking “I am going to make a fool of myself when entering the shop” and saying that I’m just acknowledging the thought, not believing in it at all! We find a sort of pleasure and comfort in self-destructing thoughts and behaviours.
Strangely I also associated this mixed feelings with this song:
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