First Object: the Space
Second Object: The Performance
Third Object: the Sound
Monthly Archives: March 2016
Show Don’t Tell
Triptych
- Audio
2. Performance
3. Visual Object
Show Don’t Tell ~ Don’t drop the beet
Juxtapositions: Enraged Edibles
Reflect + Write
Emerging Themes/Ideas
Memories/Lost Memories
- Phoebe’s ELI5 and Show Don’t Tell (The struggle of remembering something truthfully, whatever that means)
- John’s 5/50 “Short Term Memory (I love the line: I forgot what the stars looked like”, and it seems to be its own sort of theme; it’s cropped up in several juxtapositions)
- My 5/50 “Peter” (“It’s so much easier to just…forget)
Myths/Legends
- Gabrielle’s 5/50 “Icarus”
- Molly’s 5/50 “The Origin of Love”
- My 5/50’s “Orpheus” and “Arthur”
- Molly’s 5/50 “Adam and Eve” and Paige’s Juxtaposition
Audience Participation (This appeared in many forms, both intentional and unintentional, in really interesting ways, and with varying degrees of audience agency)
- Carina’s Juxtaposition “Human Again”
- My Federalist Papers Show Don’t Tell
- Rearragning the letters in Gabrielle’s name from her 5/50
- Phoebe’s pokemon trading cars in her juxtaposition
- Bailey’s eating of bread and honey/oil in 5 Senses
- Paige’s counting game in Show Don’t Tell
- Creating a map with Molly’s Show Don’t Tell
Things I’m interested from what I’ve made
- Federalist Papers Show Don’t Tell: I was fascinated in how the reading of the papers escalated so violently, even though I’d given no instruction for that to happen.
- 5/50 “Peter- Glitter”: Flushing the glitter down the drain was both incredibly violent and a little sad to me, sort of a distortion of beauty that I found interesting
Things I found interesting from what others have made
- Carina’s Show Don’t Tell performance: there was something heart wrenching and terrifying about watching her run back and forth across the street in the cold and wind, but I also recognized my own hesitation to go out to help, which I think spotlighted an interesting problem of being an audience member.
- Kimmy’s Juxtaposition: I liked seeing how images that had brought humor before could be twisted and changed to make something so tragic.
- John’s Hotels Across the Country: There is something simple and beautiful about a homemade map that I really love, particularly one that feels like it belongs to people who are going somewhere, or have been somewhere together.
Show Don’t Tell
topic: Syria
Reflect + Write (Sophia)
Emerging themes:
- Being demanding on the “audience” was a feature (in form and content) of most of the performances from the last assignment and most performances we’ve done so far in general. Putting people in total darkness, hand-feeding them, having them read aloud, making them fill out forms, taking them up to high vantage points, etc. Tending towards “immersive theater” which I mentioned on the first day! But how demanding can we be with non-classmates participating?
- Childhood/nostalgia, as seen in Phoebe’s juxtapositions, Omar’s ELI5 and triptych, Madeline’s “Candysand” and “AAAAA PPPPRINCESS?”, Omar’s “Land Before Time”, David’s “Three Little Pigs” and “Toy Story”, Bailey’s “Spy Kids”, Kimmy’s “Don’t Forget Your Mission (Thanks Yonce)” and “A Summer of Sisterhood”, etc.
- Eerie atmosphere, as seen in Molly’s triptych, Bailey’s triptych, Bailey’s 5 senses, Carina’s juxtapositions and Bailey’s mask, Gabrielle’s juxtapositions, my cosmic egg (or potato as people were calling it), probably my Gnosticism triptych, etc. In general the most memorable things were either creepy or funny, or both.
Things made by me:
- “The Job Hunt of David Carter” – I think there’s a lot more to that story, and I really liked the aesthetic of the Osaka Red Light District combined with the existential dread of not being worthy of hiring. #latecapitalism
- “Descent/Ascent” – Again I like the aesthetic I came up with, combined with the performance history significance of the Demeter/Persephone/Hades myth as the initiation rite of the Eleusinian mystery cult… I sense an affinity with Bailey’s 5 senses here.
Things made by others:
- Bailey’s triptych – because of the strange experience of being 14 disembodied heads.
- Omar’s spoken word (and haiku readings) – because they were so amazingly hilarious and I want to laugh that hard again.
- Paige’s juxtapositions – because it engaged with this foundational (to Western culture) story in such an original and nuanced way.
Reflect + Write
Word/Text Art/Play
-John My Father is Secretly A Nudist (5/50)
-Omar Puns (As a form unto themselves)
-Gabrielle’s Letters in Easter, 1996 (5/50)
-Paige “Calling All Nymphets” Lolita (5/50)
-Bailey “Deer” Live Forever (5/50)
-Paige “My OCD Is Not/Is…” Obsessive. Compulsive (5/50)
-Sarah “Youth Man” Peter (5/50)
-Kimmy Five Senses “Sight” and “Sight and Touch”
-John Brail in Five Senses
-Kimmy Posters for Black Panther Party
Romanticized or Perverted Memory
-Bailey “Bailey and the Bruja” (5/50)
-Carina “Titanic” (5/50)
-Gabrielle “Juxtapositions: Love is…”
-Molly Show Don’t Tell “Show me what you found”
-Phoebe Show Don’t Tell Memory
Coping with Mortality
-Bailey “Brothers” (5/50)
-Phoebe “Ouija Board” (5/50)
-Sophia “Cosmogeny” (5/50)
-Carina Show Don’t Tell
-Molly Cremation (5/50)
Thing I Made:
“Wind” and “Blue”
There’s something interesting to me about creating something hypnotic or lulling that is either punctured by the middle finger in “Wind” or just unsettling like the pigment in “Blue.”
“Show Don’t Tell” (and sort-of the quick little piece from Will’s class)
I think they both ended up playing with a performer’s relationship and responsibility to the audience; I like the dance between making the viewers invisible and reaching out to touch them.
Things Other People Made:
David’s Juxtaposition: Quarter Life Crisis with Sophia’s The Story of David Carter.
The combination of the two was so unsettling and incredible, not to mention that I think that the transcript of David’s archive of his performance would make a great monologue.
Carina’s Juxtaposition
The use of the space, the unique way of putting the audience on stage in this exposed compromised way are all things I would really love to see this expanded into a larger piece.
Maddie’s “A combination of cacao powder and sea salt, served on a plastic spoon. Should taste like dirt, blood, and tears.”
That text was brilliant and hilarious and, with that put into my head, tiny taste on a finger tip (much like how you would taste blood, tears and dirt) it made strange even though I could very much identify the salt and the bitterness of the cacao.