The Power of Cinema and the ideal of sitting next the ‘other.’

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Jordan Edward Tallis

Now and again as an audience saturated with media and entertainment, Cinema is a huge social gathering to which we can all come together in an intimate space to watch a film of any genre. Sitting down next to a friend or even a stranger at the cinema can feel empowering, especially while your brain processes all sorts of visual and auditory moving images. Whether one might be watching a sad, romantic, horrific or humorous film, we tend to react in ways far more exaggeration than on the outside world. Not only do we react but we respond with a scream, laugh, touch or engage with the ‘other’ sitting next to us. One must question whether it is the intimate dark atmosphere that is present within a cinema that psychologically affects our thought processes. Enabling us to escape from social boundaries and expectations of what is and what isn’t acceptable behaviour. For example quite recently I went to see Sinister (2012). A girl who I did not know began to hide her face with her scarf, a sudden jump scare in the film automatically made her cling to my arm. She later apologise after calming down, but her response was automatic and uncontrollable.

Does being scared trigger intimate behaviour?

Audiences “enjoy the experience of being scared in an environment that is actually safe. Horror films are another example of this phenomenon.” (Fritscher, 2012)

There are many forms of intimate moments within cinema that make people respond to a stimulus such as a film in various ways. However, sitting at home watching the television with family members. Does this still create an intimate moment, a more calming and relaxing intimacy, a more meaningful intimacy?

Sitting with family members or  friends/strangers can have a different impact on intimate feelings within the room. Although family members are much more comfortable with each other, sitting down and relaxing and being intimate with them can strengthen the relationships a lot more than sitting in a cinema. As communication with one another is important in order to enable intimate moments, for in a cinema it is socially unacceptable to talk, we can only express ourselves through physical acts of touching and the occasional whisper.

I think the power of cinema is a lot more intimate than that of sitting down at home, people today constantly enjoy going to the the big screen. Audiences become addicted the idea of sitting with other strangers/friends and sharing intimate emotions that relate  to them. Such as scene’s of someone dying, things that can affect an audience members on a personal level.

Focusing on a image or display tends to help intimacy be created, as it relaxes and represses any awkwardness that could be at the back of their minds.

If your not touching but sitting next to each other, surely sitting next to each other is a beginning phase in being intimate with someone you hardly know within western society?

Written by Jordan, edited by Leanne McKettrick

 Works Cited

Fritscher, Lisa (2012) Psychology of Fear. Online: http://phobias.about.com/od/introductiontophobias/a/psychologyfear.htm (accessed on 9th December 2012)

Posted in Jordan Tallis, Leanne Mckettrick, Rehearsal Process, Research | 21 Comments

Annie Sprinkle

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Jessica Smith

One of the most intimate acts that two people can share is the art of ‘love making’, or in other words sex. This act connects people and incorporates skin on skin contact which creates chemical reactions within the body. Annie Sprinkle is a performance artist whose work centres on sex. She is possibly most famous for her performance of A Public Cervix Announcement. This involved her inviting members of the audience to look at her cervix. On her website, she states:
” I’ve given thousands of people that rare opportunity, by showing my cervix with the aid of a speculum and a flashlight to individual members of theatre audiences who stood in line by the hundreds in over a dozen countries. My “Public Cervix Announcement” has given me great satisfaction and brought enlightenment to many all around the globe” (Sprinkle 2012) .

This kind of performance requires a lot of trust from the audience as well as the performer. This is due to the fact that it is an unusual subject for a performance and some spectators may feel uncomfortable while viewing it. There was the risk of people feeling uncomfortable in our piece too. In order to detract from this feeling we adopted certain techniques, including the lava lamp the sound, and in I personally, stoked the audience’s hands to show warmth towards them. Like our piece, A Public Cervix Announcement created intimacy with the audience. However, it was a different type of intimacy to ours. Hers was more of a sensual intimacy whereas ours was more affectionate.

Works Cited

Sprinkle, Annie (2012) A Public Cervix Announcement. Online: http://anniesprinkle.org/writings-musings/a-public-cervix-anouncement/ (accessed: 6th December 2012)

 

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What is Intimacy?

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Demi Morrison

What is Intimacy?

To me intimacy is where you feel comfortable with the other person/s, where you are never on edge, never unsure as to whether you can voice your opinions or not and most importantly intimacy with someone is when you can express you deepest and darkest hopes and fears without worrying how they will react. Can something as simple as holding hands with someone be intimate?

What does it mean to be intimate? Can intimacy be created by anyone, and for anyone?

Being intimate with someone will often begin with eye contact and move on to physical contact. Many people believe that being intimate with someone, normally results in a sexual relationship. However this is not necessarily the case. I believe that creating intimacy with someone is breaking the normal comfort zones and allowing this person to see more of you and your personality.

Do men and women view intimacy differently?

“When women want to draw closer, we face each other, lock eyes in what has been called the “anchoring gaze,” and proceed to reveal our hopes, our worries, our lives… Men, however, often regard intimacy as working or playing side-by-side.” (Helen Fisher, 2009). This suggests that there are different degrees of intimacy that can be explored. Men seem to be more comfortable without eye contact and women, the opposite.

The question for us to explore then, is which sort of intimacy would we like to develop in our performance? Do we focus on the side-by-side intimacy, or do we explore the intensity of eye to eye contact. One may be more comfortable for women and one for men.

After looking at this information and the way in which we are going to frame our performance, we are aware as a group that we needed to explore the ways in which we position the chairs and ourselves in relation to the spectator.

Are there different types of intimacy?

There are different types of intimacy that can be created when put in a box and framed correctly. Intimacy can be created through lovers, friends, family and we want to question whether you can create intimacy with a stranger. For example; if you had a one night stand with a random person you had only just met, it is likely that you would have created a new level of intimacy with them, however they would ultimately still be strangers. Is that still creating intimacy? Or should the term intimacy only be used when the people involved know each other both emotionally and physically? Or even just emotionally?

Works Cited

Fisher, Helen (2009) How to Build Intimacy in your Relationships. Online: www.oprah.com/relationships/Building-Intimacy-Gender-Differences-in-Intimacy ( accessed on 1st November 2012)

Posted in Demi Morrison, Performance, Research | Leave a comment

Committment

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Leanne McKettrick

So we finally had an idea for our performance. The idea was that each of us would have a separate tent to which we could each explore intimacy in our own one to one performance, whether this be the ideas which interested us or the ideas surrounding the senses and a loss of a sense, we took this ideas to our lecturer to discuss. Wes picked up on the idea of me stating that I wanted to create a space in which I would give my time to someone, for them to take it as they wished and responded by asking if I would kiss them if they asked? My answer was yes, I’d have to because I would have essentially created this environment for them and I hadn’t planned on stating any objectives to the person because I felt that that would ruin the notion of giving someone your time. So, okay he replied so what if someone wanted to have anal sex with you…Oh, I was stopped in my tracks. I knew what my answer would be, no, but how could I say no when I would have promised and created this environment for someone, stating that it was purely for them to do what they wanted.

This conversation brought up the notion of commitment. As a group we had to ask ourselves, how far were we willing to go for our performance? Could we give ourselves fully to the performance?

Marina Abramović is an example of an artist who does fully commit herself to her performance. In 1974, she put on the piece Rhythm 0, as explained in the audio below, the performance consisted of a table where 72 objects were placed on a table, these were a variety of objects, including such things as honey, a rose, a gun and a bullet. For six hours Marina encouraged the audience to use these objects on her as they desired.  This really highlights the commitment Marina has for her art, to a point where she put her life in the audiences hands as she states in the interview, “it was six hours of real horror” (Abramović: 2012)  to which she goes on the explain how the audience become increasingly more aggressive towards her and their acts become more violent.

As a group we had to discuss exactly how far we were prepared to go in this performance and what we felt comfortable with. From the ideas we had generated and developed so far, the notion of exploring intimacy seemed to be a occurring theme in these ideas. Taking this idea, we discussed what would be comfortable for each person, and there appeared to be a path emerging. Jordan wasn’t comfortable in taking the notion of intimacy with a stranger to far, whereas Demi was prepared to go to a certain extent, further than the majority of us. From this we discussed the idea of gradually building up intimacy with our audiences, through a number of separate one to one performances. The participant would begin by simply sitting with one of us, to then holding hands, to cuddling to then kissing a member of our group. This idea appealed to us all and it also allowed for us to do what we were comfortable with, which we believed was vital in what we was exploring because it meant we would be able to commit fully to our performance, thus providing our performance with a truth, a factor we all agreed was vital in creating an effective one to one performance.

Works Cited

Long: Abramović, Marina (2012) Audioguide interview: Rhythm 0. MoMa Online: http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/190/1972 (accessed: 3rd November 2012)

Posted in Leanne Mckettrick, Rehearsal Process, Research | Leave a comment

Trial and Error – Further Experiments

Posted on November 1, 2012 by Jessica Smith

Already we have had a few different ideas of what our performance could contain. However, we have also found reasons why these will not work. One idea that we have had came from the fact that Leanne wanted to do a one-to-one performance in which she could give her time to somebody else and feel intimate with them. This idea developed from there. We were going to each have a tent/den in which we would sit. Each of our tents would contain different things inside. Leanne’s would have a bed inside which she and the audience member would sit on. While in there she would give them her undivided attention and time in which they could do whatever they wanted, whether it was to just talk to her or even cuddle her. Jess’ tent would contain a bed and a chair. She would sit on the chair and the audience would sit on the bed and then they would talk about anything that was troubling them, similar to a therapy session. Demi’s tent would surround ideas of the female body while Jordan’s would include telling ghost stories. We were going to use beds as an option as they are often seen as a place of comfort. However, while reviewing this idea we decided that it would not work, due to a few reasons. Firstly it was too similar to Adrian Howell’s Foot Washing for the Sole and then there was the fact that it just felt like there was too much happening and as if we had over complicated it. Therefore we stripped back the idea.

So going back to the idea of human contact without an agenda , we decided to experiment with how the spectator would react if the performers were missing a sense. Every member of the group had their own personal space for spectators to share their time with, for example for Demi’s section she would be blindfolded, so she would be unable to see the spectator.

We developed other problems with this idea. Look for the next post ‘Commitment’ which will explain in depth why we then also decided against this idea and to use the core concept to experiment with more.

Despite the fact we have experimented and developed our ideas so much, we have come to realise that we should not be too worried as that is what this module expects from us. The module is called Contemporary EXPERIMENTAL Performance; highlighting the fact we should be experimenting with different ideas.

 

Posted in Demi Morrison, Jessica Smith, Rehearsal Process | Leave a comment