KASIA COLEMAN

Tilleke Schwarz

2012-02-11T03:52:00.000-08:00

Love the work by this lady, and her attitude to making work is so refreshing - highly recommend her site -
tillekeschwarz.com

The Golden Light Experiment

2012-02-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

Photoshop mock-ups of possible new works in progress...

Suzanne Antonelli

2012-02-06T12:28:00.001-08:00

Wonderful structures, I love the simplicity of the design.

Inspires me to think of - Fields of mark-making... combining with text moving in and out of focus. White noise and thought.

Robert Montgomery

2012-02-06T12:19:00.000-08:00

Just come across this, really wonderful work I salute Robert for the breath of fresh air and beautiful text based work. I love that he puts it out in the public domain too.

Night Walker (Triptych) | DegreeArt.com

2011-11-19T06:01:00.000-08:00

New work now available to buy from DegreeArt.com (now sold, ask me about commissions).

Original mixed media paintings on paper in triptych sold in high quality box frames. Sitting between abstract pattern, landscape and a playful illustrative style creature - The Night Walker takes its inspiration from mythical and dream-like narratives as a bringer of the night over the land.

The first image appears largely patterned with tiny houses in the landscape and a small suggestion of the Night Walker figure, the second image shows the Night Walker wading through the night like water and the third image shows the creature's face amongst a flurry of pattern.

Using high quality gloss paint and matt white ink and pencil the pieces combine intense vibrant colour with a delicate and subtle touch.

Night Walker (Triptych) | DegreeArt.com

Like a Radio Sinking into the Sea

2011-11-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

Pen & Ink on Paper.

The Deer, The Sweet Peas and Space.

2011-11-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

Dye treated mixed media drawing.

The Deer, The Fox, The Rabbit and Space

2011-11-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

Fox in The Garden - new version

2011-11-06T10:09:00.000-08:00

Dye treated mixed media drawing on paper.

Appearance of Objects

2011-11-06T09:50:00.000-08:00

A Dog's Heart

2011-11-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

Mixed Media Drawing on Paper.
2011

Veiled House

2011-10-06T15:21:00.000-07:00

Ink, pen and gouache on paper.

Thinking about... Abandoned places and houses, human abodes and division from natural world, an ethereal undefined atmosphere, the notion of the glimpse and the unseen.

Fox in The Garden

2011-10-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

Ink, gouache and pen on paper.

Thinking about... Marks become images, lines blurred between recognition, emergence of categorisation, labelling and language, dream-like elusive images that are hard to pin down or name.

A Dog's Heart

2011-10-06T15:13:00.000-07:00

Ink and gouache on paper.

Thinking about - our relationships with animals, animals and language, mark-making and escape from language, Bulgakov's A Dog's Heart, civilisation and primal conflictions.

Loaded Knot

2011-10-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

Ink, gouache and pencil on paper.

Thinking about... A preliminary drawing for a poetic/emotional object, to be developed into a symbol or glyph for a phenomenlogical language, a language removed from human sound and verbalisation and returned to natural, sensory objects.

Typographic Drawings

2011-10-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

She See She

2011-10-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

Ink, gouache and pencil on handmade paper.

To The East The Mirror

2011-10-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Book Arts Collaboration with Thea Willcocks.

Super Colliders

2011-10-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

Mark-Making Drawings,

Some things I was thinking of - patterns, maps, particle collision, aerial views, space, hidden veils, prana, rhythmical marks, trying to get into a state of making where specific thought and language is lost.

Design for Aberystwyth University

2009-06-01T02:41:00.000-07:00

More design work! Bring it on!

Frakcija Croatian Performance Journal

2009-05-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

As part of Showroom's contribution to the PSi.15 Conference in Zagreb this June we have created an index for the mapping and collection of the fragments we find at the Living Landscapes conference in Aberystwyth to be transposed directly onto the Zagreb conference which has the theme of Mis-mapping and Mis-performance.

I designed this simple graphic layout using both found and created icons vectorised on Illustrator. The icons will be made into badges and distributed throughout the conference to the delegates, as well as made into a viral poster campaign to infiltrate the conference and highlight Showroom's rap-up sessions where we will performatively present our findings at the end of each conference day.

On Appearance, Published Drawings.

2009-04-29T04:50:00.000-07:00

Richard and I have had a set of Artist Pages published in the lasted edition of Performance Research (Vol. 13 On Appearance). The pages are called Appearing to Play: A Memory Toy Theatre to Cut-Out and Collect. It is a toy theatre version of our performance The Galapagos Man which was developed at Wimbledon College of Art for our MA show and was subsequently invited to the National Review of Live Art at Tramway, Glasgow.

FLUXconcert

2009-02-26T07:04:00.000-08:00

Below are some some photos taken by Daniel Ladnar (random-people.net) of the Fluxus Leaflet Concert that we staged in November 2008.

Original event - Brian Lane 1968 Aberystwyth.
Re-staging Research director - Dr Heike Roms. performance-wales.org
Leaflet Designs - Kasia Coleman.
Flux Machines - Richard Allen - richobject.wordpress.com

Showroom 2009

2009-02-08T09:37:00.000-08:00

Showroom, the performance collective in Aberystwyth has a new look series of posters which I designed for 2009. We curate live-art, animation, short films etc in a social night that we hold at the Coopers Arms once a month.

We also now have a website www.show-room.org.uk, we are currently looking for any proposals to show work at this event, please visit our website for more information.

Thanks.

Fluxus Leaflet Concert

2009-02-08T09:16:00.000-08:00

Below is a selection of some of the leaflets I designed for the Fluxus Leaflet Concert held in Aberystwyth on 29th November 2008. The leaflets are all based upon the documentation of Brian Lane's original event in 1968. Part of Dr.Heike Roms' What's Welsh for Performance project.

F L U X U S in A B E R Y S T W Y T H

2008-11-06T03:16:00.000-08:00

On Saturday November 28th 1968 the UK's seminal FLUXUS event happened in Aberystwyth- the Flux concert organised by Brian Lane, Rainbow Day and the Dream Machine in what was then the parish hall and is now the Castle Theatre.

40 years on almost to the day Aberystwyth will be restaging the Fluxconcert with an evening of the original Flux scores, culminating in a leaflet concert.

Using the event's original abstract face logo I have re-designed the poster for the 2008 event.

Currently I am working on providing a recreation of Brian Lane's original leaflets,
44 beautifully finished typographical works to be launched into the air from high up
in the Castle Theatre by Rich's mechanic constructions - biscuit tin catapults,tennis racket propulsions and hair dryer propelled tikka tape.

Mapping Cardiff

2008-11-06T02:37:00.000-08:00

Dr Heike Roms, a senior lecturer at Aberystwyth commissioned me to draw a floor-sized map of Cardiff for her work at the Experimentica festival at the Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. The project forms part of her ongoing research into documenting and mapping Performance Art in Wales.

Visitors were invited to share their experiences of performance work in Cardiff over the last 45 years by locating them on a large walkable map of the city – and thereby contributing to a growing archive of Performance Art in Wales.

Professor Mike Pearson of the renowned Brif Gof and Andre Stitt performance artist and part of the Trace collective were amongst those who recorded their experiences on the drawing which will be exhibited in Chapter Arts Centre.

Some images from the event are below.

Renewable Energy Tree

2008-11-06T01:29:00.000-08:00

Pictured is an illustration I was commissioned to do by a renewable energy company called Dulas. They wanted a an image to represent the company's ''Shared Values', it is intended to be Flash-animated for their website www.dulas.org.uk in the near future and will be displayed in the company's reception area at their offices in Machynlleth.

The brief was to design a tree with a branch for each different core value and for each leaf to be animated to have the main body of text come out of it. Everything was hand drawn and then coloured in Photoshop.

Here are the leaves:-

Showroom

2008-11-05T15:11:00.000-08:00

Established in July of this year, Showroom an event organised by myself and 5 Aberystwyth based artists and Performance PhD students, provides a platform for new work in the West of Wales. We have had a wide variety of work from short films, animations, collaborative visual arts projects and live art.

My own contributions to the night have been strongly visually based - such as the drawing and design of the logo and poster as pictured.

A couple of projects I am particulary enthused about is the drawing tasks - one being for our audience to colour in their own dancing Liza Minelli for our Cabaret inspired August Showroom event, and the other was a collection of our audience's drawings of their nightmares for our Halloween event.

Superficial as these projects have been, there is something in it which intrigues me, the drawing as a performance event. I like the participatory aspect of the event but also the documentation of this act - the idea of collecting thoughts and drawings from people.

Showroom is on blogger at showroomaberystwyth.blogspot.com and on facebook.

I feel that...

2008-07-25T03:35:00.000-07:00

Have just been to a fantastic website called we feel fine, it logs the feelings of people from all around the world by scouring blogs for the phrases I feel and I am feeling, it them catergorises them in a colourful and creative way so that you can see the feelings of people by city, by weather, by sex by specific feelings. Visit http://www.wefeelfine.org it's totally worth it.So I thought I would contribute as I haven't updated my blog in so long...

I feel a little worried today, I'm waiting to hear if I have got a commission to design an image for a renewable energy company, I also feel anxious because I have to do a trial run in a shop at 2pm and although I don't really want to work in a shop it's a nice place and at least it means I'll have some head-space to think about making some more work-and of course some money. I feel butterflies and also quite excited because I am taking some of my work in to show the owner of an art shop at 1pm today and I really hope she accepts some of it. I feel hopeful that a job will emerge for me at the University, I'm fed up of doing mindless work, I want to be inspired by my work. I feel excited to start teaching in January, I'm going to teach a module on Ideas and Concepts In Art and Design and I'm going to set the (very broad) theme of Man and Nature because Aberystwyth is a fantastic place for Environmental Art and Site Specific work and I want the students to have a broad approach to their work that can appeal to all the senses. I feel very happy living by the sea, it's funny because I have noticed that I've started using far more colour in my work, I think London made me a little dreary at times. I feel like I miss London for my friends and family and for the interesting places to socialise and things to see, but I don't miss the stress or the pace, I feel like I have so much more time to do what I actually want to do here. I feel a little embarrassed revealing my feelings on a blogger and I wonder who if anyone will actually read it. I feel like it's hard to make it in Art and Design and I am envious of people who can afford to do work for free to build up their CV, I wish I could be a full time artist and designer but I wonder if I really have enough spark to make it happen. I feel competetive and enthused at times and defeatist and lathargic at other times, I want to feel inspired all the time. I feel happy when it's sunny here and jealous when I see that London has beautiful weather and we are raining! -but then, even when it rains the sea looks pretty cool. I feel I am very lucky. I feel like I'm dossing too much now and I need to go postering with Louise to advertise our Showroom event - Abersytwyth's only night for live performance in a pub! - we're on facebook - showroomaberystwyth@googlemail.com, we're still doing the website... oh, I also feel excited about mine and my friend Ellie's new website - twohiddenheads.com I feel very ashamed of my cheap advertising ploy, though I feel you can't blame a girl for trying ;))!

Theatre Materials/Material Theatres - Central Residency Project - "Priming The String Machine"

2008-05-17T04:18:00.000-07:00

We (Museum of the End) had a residency at The Central School of Speech and Drama to further the form that we initially explored in The Galapagos Man ,that of stringing everything on wires fed through the structure of the room and into a table or some kind of apparatus.

The objects were sourced mainly from Exeter Quay this time - a treasure trove of antiques. We found this wonderful mink fur (at first we didn't know whether to buy it - for ethical reasons bla bla.. but actually it had been sat in the antique shop unsold for months and months and was too fascinating to pass by).

This picture is horribly blurred - most of them didn't come out well so I'm gonna take
a photo of it separately when I get the chance. The mink (if it is a mink) upstaged Meret the marionette I had made for the piece- see below. Although the expression is purposely quite harrowing the overall doll-ness of the puppet just didn't seem to have any real presence - at least compared to the mink. Perhaps Meret is too clean and perfect, or maybe it is the fact it has no hair, or just that an 'object' that was once alive will always trump one that is fabricated.

The platform provided by the residency really helped to make it clear how the 2 distinct objects (The Mink and Meret) function alongside each other, something we may not have seen had I been confined to a studio making puppet after puppet in the Meret style. As a result the making of objects may start to head in a new direction...

Also in terms of Rich's PhD work I think the distinction has been made clear that Object theatre is a theatre distinct and separate from Puppet theatre - see his blog richvizlang.blogspot.com

For me, I think the next step will be to use combinations of real materials and fabricated as I began to explore during my MA... I want to get grittier again. Also I want to try casting again (this time not using Rich's face - Doug if you're reading this you'll know what I mean!)

Anyhow some more pics from the residency -

The National Review of Live Art Glasgow 2008

2008-02-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

After months of making lists and countless conversations with Rich, The Galapagos Man finally made it up to Scotland...

The 6 hour journey went well, although a little flawed with a van that refused to lock when we wanted it to resulting in two calls out to the lovely Kendal and Glasgow AA men.. the stupendous Elizabeth McBain got us there in one piece despite recovering from the flu.

Once there we sussed out the space - Tramway 2 which was wonderful with high beamed ceilings and natural light, it was a perfect space. The only flaw I would say was that being a small section of a much larger space it was unable to be closed off entirely from other performance areas. This meant that sound carried, big time! Primarily the sound of an American performance artist whose work consisted of drinking 42 cans of beer and singing (rather obnoxiously!) in a durational performance until he either ran out of beer or passed out I suppose!! With our piece being mostly silent with some subtle sounds played over small tape players we were really quite worried. It was a result of unfortunate programming for that space as we weren't the only ones affected. The technicians were on our side however and said they'd wallop him if he didn't be quiet for our half hour slot. [The techies at the NRLA are wonderful especially Dave and Graham].

So he stayed quiet, and we began. It was a bit of a conveyor-belt getting 131 audience members into the space with each one being anointed with alcohol gel and given a small glass bottle with a hand-drawn scroll with our website details on. I don't know whether it really worked..? Oddly it really did turn into a kind of communion, one teenage boy said to me 'forgive me I have sinned' as he came to my sanitisation booth.

The majority of the audience were really young and I think the sanitisation booth provoked a few crude comments according to Liz and Lizzy who were helping us.I don't know whether NRLA was really the right sort of festival for our work as we were really hard pushed to get all of our set up and ready in such a tight get-in that we didn't have time for even a quick run-through. A few things we had never even tried before such as the mother apparatus being pulled along by the newly invented car-jack 'character object' of the father. It didn't quite work as we needed a big crash to occur when the two collided and it didn't, therefore the moment where the light switches on in the control booth wasn't quite as slick. Another thing was that I as the 'nurse' character had to stand in front of the audience for a much more extended period to try to set a more uneasy tension that we knew would be lacking since the audience had not been taken through the set along the white line like they had in Wimbledon. That seemingly small factor had quite a profound affect upon the performance in Wimbledon and I just don't think that the same precedent was set in Glasgow for the audience to feel slightly ill at ease in the space. Especially when the space was so open to other intrusions of sound and onlookers from the adjoining space.

The rest of the performance went pretty well, no major glitches, the 'string machine' looked wonderful in such a space with the light creating a criss-crossing effect of shadows on the back wall. We had a new edition of a standing lamp to light the 'mother breakfast scene' and so we manged to do the piece without using any theatrical lighting whatsoever.

We got a few laughs which was nice and Liz and Lizzy used the scent kit I had created for them in the audience area. But I just don't know what anyone really thought of it. This is partly due to us changing the ending though, by removing the switch to the puppet shadow in the end table which had the audience 'applause' sign and one final drum and sound machine hit (which we both thought was a little tacky) we decided to have another of my stares into the audience before I rang my bell and told people to leave. So no applause, no opportunity for people to I suppose but I feel slightly cheated myself! I think in hindsight I would have liked the sound machine and drum kit to go off again to give it a slightly funny ending. Instead I have to admit I felt it was a bit flat, as I looked into the audiences' faces at the end I just felt we were lacking something slightly.

Anyhow, enough of my criticism, I do think we did really well, and it looked beautiful. The NRLA filmed it for us so we should get a copy for our records which is fantastic. I'm quite glad that Galapagos Man shall be put to bed for a while as it is a damn hard piece to tour!! (You're right Rich despite my dreams to tour the world as a theatre company!!) Although saying that, there is talk of putting it on at the Foundry space at Aberystwyth University... I'd like to do it even for the simple reason of resolving the ending better!.. But part of me just wants to move on to new things now. Exciting projects are on the horizon!

Performance Research Journal : On Appearance

2008-02-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

Just a brief news update - The work for the toy theatre drawings of The Galapagos Man performance (see below) have been accepted to be a part of the performance research journal! The work still needs to be refined slightly and desktop publishing to decide on the layout and font etc, but all in all it's wonderful news to be having the drawings published!

Toy Theatre Progress... Final Drawings

2008-01-14T15:23:00.000-08:00

The Proscenium Arch-

The Lumber Room Backdrop-

An Overview - the theatre and its objects -

The Galapagos Man-

The Sanitisation Nurse -

The Mother Apparatus -

Darwin The Finch -

Dog Dog -

Eggs and Bacon

Briefcase, Pen and Bell -

Toy Theatre Progress..

2008-01-08T12:33:00.000-08:00

Here are some pictures from the progress so far - I did a rough card model to check the construction worked and the scaling of characters/components etc... I also started drawing up the proscenium arch today which is inspired by the Pollock's Toy Theatre below. More pictures to come when it gets finished...

Fantastic Paper Artist!

2007-12-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

Wow! Have just come across an amazing artist- Peter Callesen, that does a lot of work with paper and even crosses over into the performance arena. Here's a link to his website http://www.petercallesen.com/index.html

And here are some of his images...

Book Project Inspirations

2007-12-26T06:18:00.000-08:00

Me and Rich have been given a chance to propose a way to create a Galapagos Man inspired centre-fold pop-up for a research journal so I'm looking for ideas...

It'll have to be easlily reproducable so we're thinking flat card drawings that sit upon a fold out stage similar to the Edward Gorey Dracula Theatre.

We went to the Toy Museum near Goodge Street Stn for inspiration the other week, highly recommend that if you like eerie objects! Here's the link - http://www.pollockstoymuseum.com/index.html

Inspirations - Otto Dix

2007-12-26T06:14:00.001-08:00

Inspirations - Hieronymus Bosch

2007-12-26T06:02:00.000-08:00

Bruno Schulz Puppet/Maquette

2007-12-26T05:46:00.000-08:00

Excuse the terrible picture, I'm getting another one taken as this maquette is now finished and so I've given it to Rich to start playing around with it.

Very excited about this next project for Things on Fire... 'The String Machine'. The plan is to have a hundred or so small scale puppets similar to the Schulz one but with a menagerie of different heads. Visit http://richvizlang.blogspot.com/ to read about Rich the director's insights into his PhD research project.

I Have started to look at the work of Hieronymus Bosch for inspirations, as well as a lovely book called 'Amazing Rare Things'. Still in the drawing phase... I shall scan some pictures in and put them up here when things get a little further along...

Much Ado..

2007-10-30T13:43:00.001-07:00

I have been lucky enough to get some work experience at the National Theatre on a production of Much Ado About Nothing directed by Nick Hytner. I'm working with the costume department as a sort of runner/junior 2 days a week until the 18th December when the production opens.

Nearly everything is being made from scratch and there may even be the opportunity to work with the costume prop guy making the masks for the various masked balls in the play. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that!

As for doing more work for things on fire... I'm still in the very early stages of figuring out how to make a small Bruno Schultz puppet.. I will update details/pictures as I go along...

Galapagos Man Illustrations

2007-09-21T06:03:00.000-07:00

The Galapagos Man

2007-09-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

Thank you to all of you who saw 'The Galapagos Man', your support was wonderful. I am pleased to say that it will have a life ouside of Wimbledon - with an invite to the Glasgow National Review of Live Art next February - Horray!!!

Here are some pictures from the final performance...

Face Cast in Silicone from Plaster Mould.

2007-08-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

the making of Dog Dog...

2007-08-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

the making of...Darwin The Finch!

2007-08-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

Mother Face - Early Stages...

2007-08-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

Inspector Puppet - Early Stages...

2007-08-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

A Vivisectionist's Table

2007-03-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Below are the images from the project I did in the Centre For Drawing.
Continuing with exploring the sensory in performance I took the role of the scientist/creator/mother as I cut and dissected and arranged various fruits, seafoods, seeds and other natural objects I had collected. The camera was placed at times below the glass cabinet and at other times above, I used lighting to create over-exposed shots to add to the sense of being in a harshly lit laboratory or operating theatre. The sensory experience was for me very powerful, at times feeling quite sick at the smells of unrefrigerated fish, the smells permeated the space creating quite a strange mixture of pleasant and foul - melon, cloves, beetroot and fish.

Egg Shells and Arms

The Melon Birth

Galapagos Man of Fruit!

Shadow Play on OHP

2007-03-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Here are some images from the first workshop I held. The materials I had collected for this were all natural objects - leaves. berries etc, I wanted to create hybrid creatures from using doll parts and small scale moulds of body parts. I filmed the footage and the animation of the creatures was the really interesting part to me. A motherly relationship emerged at times between the manipulater and the object, it had the feel that the creature was in a laboratory, and the animator played the role of scientist. In terms of a sensory experience, this didn't really come into play so much, except when filming the footage at the end of the session in full colour, the flat monochrome quality that comes from using the OHP lessens the involvement in the image. However, some beautiful moments were created, some that I'm sure I'd like to follow through in the design for the final performance piece. I like the dark quality of the shadow puppetry, Goya's drawings are an inspiration to me for this work, so I'd like to maintain some of his dark graphical imagery, I may perhaps go on to explore the 2D animating equipment in the MAC suite and use some of my drawings to create a short piece.

Cross Course Crit Images

2007-03-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time coming, but here you go for those who didn't see - the assault on poor old Group D, along with Douglas and Christine, all in the name of exploring sensory scenography!

Any Kylie Fans?!!!

2007-02-14T09:19:00.000-08:00

Hey, just a funny one, clubbing with Kylie. Got this picture from the lady I did work experience with Alice Normington, she was working on Kylie's advertising campaign.

Destruction

2007-02-14T09:12:00.000-08:00

I don’t mean tired old shock tactics, I’m just talking about a seriousness and a preciousness, really about a fear of getting it wrong. It is destruction of the work that breaks it through to a new level, a deeper level. Why are we so afraid to fail, to create bad theatre as we discussed today. The two themes of discussion ‘Is it ok to make bad theatre?’ and ‘more play, less plays’ were very strongly linked. In making something with an air of play without being too precious or serious a lot more creativity can emerge. I came across an interesting interview of David Lynch in the library, it’s in the March issue of Sight and Sound, The International Film Magazine.

David Lynch on his approach to painting in relation to film making:

Painting is different because there’s no script. So if you’ve got a bunch of canvases ready to go, some paint and a place to work, all you need is to catch an idea to get you started. Then it’s action and reaction: the paint starts talking to you, the beautiful process begins and a whole bunch of different things happen. More often than not there’s a point in the action and reaction where the reaction is to destroy the thing: it’s pretty much bullshit surface boloney, and you just want to destroy it to get past it. The destruction is much more free, so you might start building on the thing that was destroyed, another thing comes out and that’s the way it can grow. You can break through to something else, but if you’re not up for destroying you can’t get there.

MA Research Proposal - Accompanying Images.

2007-01-23T06:39:00.000-08:00

Images include -

Edward Gordan Craig's 'Scene' design for a kinetic set.

My sketch for a design where the performer is connected to a micro-environment set, (inspired by Faulty Optic's perfromance 'Soiled').

Artist Peter Seidler's Sculpture.

Julie Taymor's designs.

Futurist Artist Fortunato Depero's 'Fanlike' Costume Designs.

Enrico Prampolini's design for an integrated costume and set.

MA Research Proposal

2007-01-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

The Integration of Performer and Set: How a Synaesthetic Approach to Costume and Set Can Connect The Performer’s Inner and Outer Space.

The research paper will be divided into two chapters, the first will deal with the history of integrating performer with set, looking at key movements that have dealt with this starting with the Futurists and The Theatre of The Bauhaus and moving on through to Allan Kaprow’s Happenings contextualising my work within performance practice. Within this construct I will be concentrating specifically on how the notion of synaesthesia has been used to aid the integration between performer and set.

The second section will look to base the work in a more contemporary setting, becoming aware of theatre’s place in today’s society, considering the synaesthetic space as a total environment as an argument for theatre’s ability to communicate to an audience in a total sense as opposed to via a screen. However, the focus of the study will remain upon the relationship between performer and set as opposed to audience and scene. It is here that I will explore the relationship between performer and set in terms of the boundaries between inner and outer spaces. I will be asking whether these boundaries of inner and outer can be dissolved through the interaction with a synaesthetic or multi sensory environment.

The integration of the performer with the setting was one of the two key conceptual focuses that Futurist performance strived for. Enrico Prampolini stressed the necessity for the ‘unity of action between man and his environment’ in his manifesto ‘Futurist Scenic Atmosphere’. The concept has been further explored by many practitioners and is still of relevance today and in recent times. Allan Kaprow created works where the performers would construct and deconstruct the set. Julian Maynard Smith of The Station House Opera Theatre Company stated that he strives for a theatre where the physical set responds to the performer and the performer responds to the set. This integration and interaction will be the focus for my study. Exploring synaesthesia, the correspondences between the various senses seems a natural progression for the Futurists in their endeavour to unify man and environment for it is in their underlying concern to unify both set, performer, and audience which drives them. Prampolini wrote in his program for his Theatre of Futurist Pantomime that: “The rhythm of the sound and those of the scene and of the gesture must create a psychological synchronism in the soul of the spectator.” (Cited in Kirby.1971.p.97). Linking visuals with music or sound was indeed a concern of many visual artists of Modernism, notably Kandinsky who sought to create visual symphonies with colour. This research document will however focus on performance art’s experiments. Futurist’s artist Fortunato Depero proposed in an unpublished manuscript written in 1915 a costume that would open and close “fanlike contrivances” that would set off “bursts and rhythms of noise-like instruments”. (Ibid.p.114) Although the costume was never actually realised the intention was for a synaesthetic costume.

I am interested in looking at synaesthesia in terms of connectedness and correspondences between performer and set through the use of costume and objects. Hans-Thies Lehmann’s book ‘Post-Dramatic Theatre’, discusses synaesthesia in current theatre practise, it explains its occurrence is due to the human ability to find similarities and correspondences everywhere, and that human sensory apparatus does not easily tolerate disconnectedness. The interconnectedness between the performer and space could be realised in the work as a costume that unfurls into the performance space creating the ‘set’ as the performer moves through the space shedding costume/object elements.

The importance of a multi-sensory environment to the performer relies upon the assumption that the stimulation of the various senses from the outside environment will have a unifying and magnifying affect upon the performer’s ‘inner’ environment. This could be looked at metaphorically where the different stimuli – touch, smell etc. are sent to different sections of our brains, and the synaesthesia which occurs attempts to build connections and synthesise all these outside elements together within the space of our own minds therefore connecting the inside and outside. If the performance space could be seen to be representative of the internal mind space of the performer, it could communicate or investigate our ability to connect with the environment around us, as an attempt to synthesise or unify our experience of the world.

It is an interesting concept, the concept that the outside space is very much a part of our inside space. Gaston Bachelard explores this relationship in ‘The Poetics of Space’ in his chapter on the ‘dialectics of inside and outside’ he uses examples from literature to explore this theme, indeed it is the way in which these writers write about the space around them that he is exploring, it is in the process of perceiving the room that it is internalised. Therefore it could be said that the room is internalised to begin with or even that the two states of inside and outside are interdependent. To illustrate this point, an extract from The Poetics of Space:

In his book ‘Où boivent les loups’ Tristan Tzara writes:

Une lente humilité pénètre dans la chamber
Qui habite en moi dans la paume du repos

(A slow humility penetrates the room
That dwells in me in the palm of repose.)

And Bachelard writes in commentary that “The intimacy of the room becomes our intimacy… The room is very deeply our room, it is in us.”

Bachelard. 1994. p.226

In another extract, Tzara writes:

(The market of the sun has come into my room
And the room into my buzzing head.)
Ibid.

So the integration of performer with the setting is explored in looking at the practise and concepts of other artist’s work as well as questioning the desire for integration in looking at the notions of synaesthesia and the concept the connection between the inner space (of the performer) and the outer space (of the costume and set).

There’s So Much I Haven’t Told You!

2007-01-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

[It's a long one]

I haven’t written about my own personal research project in a good while, thoughts have been ticking over in my head and I’ve scribbled ideas down but now it’s time to try to put it down into words for others to make sense of too.

I’ve always liked the thought of creating a piece where the set interacts with the performer and started to think along the lines of a costume that would unfurl into the space around it, in short the costume would become the set through a process of unfolding that would in some way be the performance.

In the collaborative project I had started to think through ideas around a costume that would behave like a concertina, where the singular form would be pulled outwards to reveal many connected figures, a bit like a paper doll chain. This idea was for the street scene from the Brassai ‘Man Dies In The Street’ series of photographs, so the aesthetic was very much supposed to be monochrome and graphical. I found that I concentrated more upon creating the look of the figures (the outlines of the silhouettes the suggestion of tone and of course all the work that went into printing the textures and patterns we’d found onto tissue paper, (all praise to Charlotte, Su and Ming and all the others that helped with the task of printing and papering the crowd figures). The figures suited the main space in the end so I have to say I was pleased, however, in terms of pushing the idea of a costume that becomes set I think I failed! (So anyhow, I understood that the ‘Eleven: Fifty Seven’ had it’s own requirements and simplicity in my work was the best option for it).

So back to my personal work, and the interest in set and costume cross-overs has led me to look at the work of the Futurists. One of their key concerns in performance was the integration of the perfomer with the setting. This integration and interaction will be the focus for my study. I actually started by looking at the Theatre of The Bauhaus and I’ve worked backwards a bit, but I guess what I hope to do for my critical studies work is to have one chapter that will be more historical in order to contextualise my work, so I will be looking at the 20th Century as a whole beginning with the work of the Futurists and moving through to Allan Kaprow and possibly Julian Maynard Smith as they have also written on the idea of the physical set responding to the performer and the performer responding to the set.

The Futurists were concerned that the set “must create a psychological synchronism in the soul of the spectator”, their demand for a unified spectacle that appealed to “intuition and instinct” derived from a concern with synaesthesia and the correspondence between the various senses. Prampolini stressed the necessity for the ‘unity of action between man and his environment’ in his manifesto ‘Futurist Scenic Atmosphere’. (All these quotes came from Michael Kirby’s book ‘Futurist Performance’).

I need to decide whether to focus on the relationship between performer and set/costume or spectator and scene…

Synaesthesia is an idea which has appealed to me since the days of my fine art degree, I really liked the work of artist Ernesto Neto whose installations were tactile and used spices adding aroma to the air. I did attempt a piece of my own early on in the term which used spices etc, but I really didn’t like it. I much prefer the idea of a costume unfolding becoming the set, but I do think it would be interesting to do this in a sensory way.

I guess that gives me my answer, I want the performer to be the focus, not the audience. Without the performer element, (like in the attempt I made), the work is really just an installation piece, and that was what I didn’t like, although I’d made the work and that can be seen as performative and process based I’m not interested in being a performance artist myself, the presence of the performer is more interesting to me. So I will focus my research on the connection of the performer to the set. The audience/spectator will of course be affected merely through being in the performance space and witnessing the event as well as sensing the event through smell or tactility.

I’ve been reading ‘Post-Dramatic Theatre’ by Hans-Thies Lehmann, it’s a really good book, very current. There is in fact a section on synaesthesia, it explains its occurrence is due to the human ability to find similarities and correspondences everywhere, and that human sensory apparatus does not easily tolerate disconnectedness. This is obviously a really brief explanation but it seems there’s quite a lot of scope to pursue it further.

So to sum up, I am interested in looking at synaesthesia in terms of the connectedness or correspondences between performer and set.

Different stimuli – touch, smell etc. are sent to different sections of our brains, and synaesthesia is the attempt to build connections and synthesise all these elements together within the space of our own minds. If the performance space could be seen to be representative of the internal mind space of the performer, it could communicate or investigate our ability to connect with the environment around us, as an attempt to synthesise or unify our experience of the world.

It is an interesting concept, the concept that the outside space is very much a part of our inside space, and something that I have read about in Bachelard’s ‘The Poetics of Space’ in his chapter on the ‘dialectics of inside and outside’.

In his book ‘Où boivent les loups’ Tristan Tzara writes:

Une lente humilité pénètre dans la chamber
Qui habite en moi dans la paume du repos

(A slow humility penetrates the room
That dwells in me in the palm of repose.)

And Bachelard writes in commentary that “The intimacy of the room becomes our intimacy… The room is very deeply our room, it is in us.”

Again another extract, Tzara writes:

(The market of the sun has come into my room
And the room into my buzzing head.)

So that’s pretty much where I am up to currently. I’m hoping that I can connect all this and that it wont be too weak of a link to speak of the performer’s relationship with the set through a synaesthetic costume that unfurls into the space. (I still like the idea of unfurling and concertina-ing!!).

Little Voice Inside Muffles - 'Let Me Out!!!!'

2006-11-26T13:48:00.000-08:00

Does anyone else find it hard to speak out in cross course crits?

The heavily ladened academic spiels complete with insightfully relevant references throw me into a quiver!

I'm sure all us quiet ones have things to say too don't we?

Does every comment have to be framed in perfectly eloquent (or dare I say occasionally convoluted) ways?

Don't get me wrong, I think it's good to use language appropriately, using the correct terms and vocabulary is something we should all be doing at MA level especially, but what bugs me is when it is used as a kind of assertion of intelligence to impress others.

I think that if we have something to say we really ought to say it, even if it is just a simple comment or question.

However saying that, I'm not sure if I'm alone in this, but when the heart decides to let it's presence be felt by pounding it's beat into your chest speaking out can seem daunting, especially in the company of an Amanda Beech or some other frightfully intelligent mind!!!!

Forced Entertainment

2006-11-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

The World In Pictures

Performed at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith.

Something I really liked about the show was the way in which the various set elements were pulled onto the stage bit by bit by the performers in a very playful and I have to say manic way!!

At the end of the play, as the end of the world in 10,000 years, the set was wheeled away and the floor swept clean, leaving just Jeremy with the feat of trying to cheer us all up despite the knowledge of our impending doom.

I admired the way in which they managed to switch the audience from laughing at absurdities to quiet introspection and back again to the quirky light heartedness that ran throughout.

Also their use of a laptop wired to a TV set flicking up banal imagery of the every day which can be viewed as both another random comic device and a link to personal memories.

The underlying feeling I got from the piece was the realisation at how little attention I pay to the details in my own life, blazening through the days and barely able to recall the faces I see or the places I pass on my journey. The play blunders through the differing ages of man with superficial generalisations and a lot of 'bla bla bla's, etc etc etcs' and through introspection it becomes apparent that this rather blurry account of history is perhaps closer to the way in which we recount our own lives, or rather as the shabbiness of our own memory becomes apparent, the impermanence and absurdity of life becomes more obvious.

Various Experiments with the Trace or Marks left by Objects, Figures and Text.

2006-11-06T15:13:00.000-08:00

Flour Figures

2006-11-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

Flour Figures
Originally uploaded by colemankasia.

Here in the safety of the model box I've been experimenting with drawing and mark making in flour! The figures represent real performers, although I'm interested in playing with scale so using casts or sculptures of figures may be a possibility in the future.

Photogram

2006-11-04T14:57:00.000-08:00

photogram
Originally uploaded by colemankasia.

This is a photogram of a garment I made in cut kaliko, wool and muslin with a transparent plastic zip. The photogram could be an effective way of creating costume pieces for the 'Punctum' collaborative project. Perhaps to be used in the concertina design of the crowd silhouettete formations.

'The Top' by Franz Kafka

2006-10-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

A story has been chosen!
Kafka - because I love his oddness.
'The Top' - because it is simple and very visual - a good starting point I thought, also because of the section I have highlighted below which seems to fit quite nicley with the idea of repetition on all scales.

The Top

A certain philosopher used to hang about wherever children were at play. And whenever he saw a boy with a top, he would lie in wait. As soon as the top began to spin the philosopher went in pursuit and tried to catch it. He was not perturbed when the children noisily protested and tried to keep him away from their toy; so long as he could catch the top while it was still spinning he was happy, but only for a moment; then he threw it to the ground and walked away. For he believed that the understanding of any detail, that of a spinning top, for instance, was sufficient for the understanding of all things. For this reason he did not busy himself with great problems, it seemed to him uneconomical; once the smallest detail was understood, then everything was understood, which was why he busied himself only with the spinning top. And whenever preparations were being made for the spinning of the top, he hoped that this time he would succeed; as soon as the top began to spin and he was running breathlessly after it, the hope would turn to certainty; but when he held the silly piece of wood in his hand, he felt nauseated, and the screaming of the children, which hitherto he had not heard and which now suddenly pierced his ears, chased him away; he reeled off like a top under a clumsy whip.

***

I am keen to apply this story to a fractal like structuring within the space. It would be a structure almost like our nervous system - branching out throughout the space, a network held together by fine wires. There would be layerings and layerings of the image of the spinning top, perhaps a projected film of it spinning, or perhaps hundreds of wooden tops of all shapes and sizes hanging from these branches.

The philosopher's desire to discover the meaning of the top consumes not only the actor but the entire space.

The spinning whirring consumes the space. It maddens it. It transforms it.

The sound and the sight of the spinning top spreads throughout the space, surrounding the audience and performer until the entire space buzzes - hums - and resonates with spinning tops.

From one single point of a story or play- multiple expansions can be created visually. Racing through all scales filling a space, before reaching a saturation point and collapsing back into the one single point again.

...................So that's the idea, the challenge is to make it work!!!!

Flour Fiasco!

2006-10-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

The flour drawings have not yet been developed to their full potential and I will be pursuing it further this term. The principle behind them was essentially to see how the set can be changed by the actions of the performers and indeed the audience.

For the set to have a life of its own - to erode, decay, to be wiped away, transformed and changed. To bare witness to the presence of the people within it and their movements. To record the traces of that presence.

This was to be done through drawings in these ephemeral materials - flour, sand, spices.., but without any clear content or narrative to work from I found the work to be unfocused and wishy washy, so I've abandoned it for the time being. Also I wasn't pleased with the quality of the drawings, nor the flatness of the imagery.

I didn't really go for it enough because of the expense of filling a space, (albeit a small corner of a space), with these materials. Therefore I intend to further explore this idea in a model box on a smaller scale so that I can be more exaggerated and playful with the materials and apply various themes or narratives to the basic idea before venturing out again into a scale large enough for a performer to occupy.

I intend to create 2 model boxes, 1 will deal specifically with the ideas outlined above of ephemerality and marking the presence of the people in the space. The second will deal with how to apply the fractal notion of 'self similarity on all scales' to a space through repetition and fractal structuring or patterning.

So this week so far I have been looking for a short story or extract from a play I like as a focal point so that I can then design for this and apply these designs to these two modes of working.

First Ever Blog

2006-10-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

First ever blog and I've nothing to say yet - hopefully gonna start some practical work in the tutorial space next week. It will involve flour and sand or any other powdered substance I can get my hands on (!!) and I'll be creating drawings, patterns and mark makings on the floor with these temporal materials, walking across the space and allowing the marks to become distorted and broken down. All of this will be recorded and then reprojected onto the floor or the walls.
Basically I'm just going to play around with the idea of pattern, repetetion and fractals with ephemeral materials in a space where the spectator and performer can physically change their surroundings. I'm curious to see the extent to which the physical form of a space can affect the audience in a metaphysical or emotional way.