Claire's Masterclass | Performative Writing | Week 10

Tuesday 27th of November 

In all honesty, I was not looking forward to Claire's Masterclass as anything that revolved around performance did not interest me and I always shyed away from it.  She started to show us these collections of videos and we had to write down what we thought of the happenings in the clips. I have to say I have never been so consumed in analytically watching someone perform or speak.

These are the notes I recorded while watching the videos. Videos that jumped out at me was the first one and the piece where it showed solely a mouth. I think the first one was so effective and stuck to mind as it was in general very obscure and hard to read. We later found out that the woman performing, every time the bell rang she had to perform a different emotion over and over again. It was quite unsettling as some of the actions and sounds being made where devastating and you wanted to reach out and maybe try and help her even though we know it is a performance. It took place in an open public space which made the atmosphere of the whole surrounding environment change. It made it more unnerving to watch but at the same time, you could not look away. 

It was now our turn to become the "performer". I have to be honest I was really nervous and not sure how i felt, i didn't even know what i was going to say! Claire gave us just under 30 minutes to come up with something. My mind was spinning thinking what i could write but then it dawned on me that I could use this activity to support my practise I am currently working on. So by now I am confident in saying that I have many ongoing ideas and/or practises that I have intentions to develop or in the process of doing so.  So one of the topics in the "Psychological and Conscientiousness". Part of that is looking into the affects and the associations we have with colours and why? But more importantly can we or rather I change that? 

So below I have pasted what I read out and I will also attach the recording I took from it as I want to use it for my practise. So to put it simply I read a list of colours.... Ok, so there was a bit more to it than that. I repeated the colours 3 times each time getting faster. After every colour I would leave a small pause for my audience to shout out a word, an emotion or object they associate with that colour. So when I increased the speed in which I spoke it left little time for them to say another word in association and added a lot of frustration, manipulating their perception. On the final time shouting out colours I added on the names i gave the colours to manipulate their betrayal and I will do a separate post on the results of this activity as it really help elevate my practise. It was quite strong and made them think about our perceptions on certain things we are led to believe.

I am glad I went to this masterclass, it gave me inspiration and new ideas in what I can add to my current practise and will help give it weight and help with the context. I don't think I wish to pursue this as a class next semester but like all my masterclasses it has helped me develop my own practise in a way that could not of been achieved in a studio space. I would have never came to the conclusion that adding a sound/performance piece to my practise would solidify its purpose. 

So where do I go from here? If I ever feel that my work needs more context and weight added to it and I am stuck in where to take my practise, these past few weeks have helped me realise you need to step outside of your comfort zone to develop and take your art work to new places. You might be surprised; I was. 

This writing performance in particular correlated very well with the topic "Psychological and Consciousness" and I want to play around more and bring them together as I feel comfortable applying this kind of art form to my own. Thank you Claire!