Last Tuesday we had the pleasure of participating in a workshop run by Kira O'Reilly. She came into Goldsmiths and took over our three hour period, to help us develop new ways of working and new methodologies that she has found successful in her career.
I will briefly explain each of the activities we did and outline what they involved and what they achieved.
Initially we began with the classical drama introduction of moving about the space, stretching our bodies and attempting to focus our thoughts on the upcoming session. after this short warm-up, we began a few workshops;
Firstly we formed a line along the far wall and were asked to face into the centre of the room, making sure we were aware of our postures and focus. we were then drawn an imaginary line around three metres away and told to walk slowly towards the line, taking around three minutes to reach it. we were asked to imagine a piece of ribbon flowing from our backs, keeping our necks long and straight and heads up. We were told to focus not necessarily on where we were going, but where we were coming from.
After the three minutes we were asked to then form two lines either side of the room, facing in at each other. We were then told to repeat the same exercise, but this time to walk towards the person opposite. This i believe was again an extension of the warm-up as a way of focusing us, and preparing us mentally for the forthcoming session.
the second part of the workshop saw us sat in a circle in the middle of the studio, with a pen and some paper in hand. this task was outlined as re-imagining our own autonomy, or recreating an alternative autonomy. this task began with being asked to draw the insides of our mouths. we were asked to use our tongue in order to locate and familiarise ourselves with the inside of our mouth then had three minutes to draw what we felt. we repeated this task two times. the first time we did the task i attempted an accurate account of the inside of my mouth, attempting to master scale, depth and texture. this however ended in a poorly constructed generic mouth, i was basing it on how i felt a mouth should lokk, and not on what i felt with my tongue. however the second time we came to doing the drawing we were asked to do it with our eyes closed. and this resulted in a more honest drawing, although not technically accurate, it was based more on feeling and impulse and helped rid the drawing of the falseness from before.
after this we were asked to inhale and exhale and to again draw internally what we felt when we did this. again we all did this task with our eyes close and although the images didn't display a biologically accurate process of inhillation (diaphragm and lungs expanding and contracting) it did have a truthfulness to it which in a funny way was more honest than the biological truth.
This task was very useful as a way of getting us to think about our bodies in alternative ways. it helped us remove the generic image of bodily parts and helped us find a truthfulness by shutting our eyes and drawing what we felt, what we saw without the use of vision.
The next task we engaged in was we made a pile of books in the centre of the room and all sat around the circumference of them. going clockwise around the circle, we would each pick up any of the books or articles before us, without thinking about which, open the text at random and start reading from where our eyes first go. we would each read a sentence or two before stopping, replacing the book and waiting for the next person to go.
I found this task, in the context of the lesson, rather unproductive and relatively tedious. There was no rhythm to the exercise and instead of creating a new text from these old texts, we were simply seeming to read random lines aloud. i think this could have been improved if before everybody was given a book at random and they would be prepared with a line before their turn. not as in they'd chose a line, but they'd place their finger without looking on a section of the text and when it was their turn would begin reading immediately. the exercise was a bit slow and lacked energy and therefore didn't make much of an impression. however, i do feel like if this was pursued individually, then the results may be far more interesting. it may be something i chose to do alone sometime even though it didn't really lend itself to the circumstance in which we used it.
The final task was to make a short, individual piece of performance, based on what we had learnt or achieved so far in the workshop. the only rules we had were that it could be no longer than one minute in duration, we had to focus on a small area of our bodies, we could use any props that happened to be in the room, and finally we had twenty minutes to experiment and create the piece. what i thought good about this exercise was that it got us thinking about our own bodies and the uniqueness and interest of certain parts of them. it helped us to channel all our focus into one small area, again highlighting that it's best to rinse one idea than explore many different ones. at the end of the session, we had a running order and one by one we would perform in the space. the atmosphere was very professional, with the artist directing where the audience must stand and there was no clapping in between pieces.
The workshop was thoroughly useful in all areas, and even in the one workshop which i found a bit tedious and pointless, i do feel like i may visit it again in the future but in a different environment. the things which i feel were most interesting and useful about this workshop was the creating an alternative autonomy and that it's best to create performance from one simple idea than a number of different ones. It also helped to set up a professional working environment with all of us taking ourselves seriously as artists and gave a useful insight into the etiquette of performance in art.
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