Shaman

The aim of this project was to create a body of work for an exhibition. After securing an exhibition space in Glasgow we then had to come up with a theme to work along. After looking at costumes and masks we ended up with the theme of shamanism. I was never completely happy with this theme as it is such a massive area to research into but we stuck with it. I found it hard at first to research into it as I didn’t know where to begin and this really held up the project. For a long time I think we concentrated too much on costumes and performance side of shamanism rather than taking the aspects of shamanism and taking it forward into a modern day performance. After finally researching more we picked out some of the points that interested us, such as culture, community and humour. Part of a shamans role is to bring together the community so we decided to do a performance on this. We looked into parades as they bring people together into having fun. Our first performance was based on this. We were relatively happy with the way it went and we got some good reactions but we still knew we needed to improve. The problem we had was it looked too much like we were mocking tribal performance, like two guys just messing around. We decided to talk to Christian as we knew he did performance art. This really helped us gain direction and made us feel more relaxed and positive. He told us about ‘Carnivalesque’ which is a type of performance art. Dave and myself latched onto this as it worked well with the ideas of humour and culture. We tossed around some ideas between us. Most were around the idea of taking aspects of culture and turning them on their head as to make it funny but also reenforcing it.

We finally settled on an idea based around stereotypes. This involved David and myself dressing like weirdo’s that you wouldn’t approach, with a child’s ride trying to get people to pay for a go. We were really happy with the results we got. We got some very good reactions from people, one man even saying “are you guys serious”. It made people laugh but also others look at us with weird expressions.

We wanted to do the performance again but ran out of time before we had to head to Glasgow so we decided to do it again when were up there. This time we were joined by our friend studying fine art up there. We planned it out much better the second time round so each of us knew what we were doing. We all had different types of characters to play. The dumb one, the nasty one and the intelligent one. This time we got some even better reactions and even got removed from places which was very amusing. We did get some people taking photos on their phones which was slightly annoying as we didn’t want it to look to much like we were just larking around.

All we had to do now was set up the exhibition space. We had a few problems with some fourth years work which was in the exhibition space but we were able to move it.  We set up a small living room for the video piece and added props to make it seem like the home of the characters we were playing.

The exhibition opened at 5.30 and there were quite a few early people, clearly for the free booze. The people kept coming though and we were relatively happy with the turnout. It wasn’t rammed but we realised later that we had in fact chosen a bad day for the exhibition as the day after was the final years hand in deadline.

Overall I am happy with the way the project turned out. After getting off to a slow start I think we salvaged the project towards the end with some good ideas and performances. 

I think we completed what we aimed to do which was to enjoy ourselves and hold an exhibition which others would enjoy. I would really like to organise more exhibitions but in Leeds. Over the summer I am going to try and find some possible exhibition spaces. I would like to organise a illustration and photography exhibition at some point.

If i was to do this brief again I think I would definately choose a different theme at the start. I think this really hampered us along with the fact that we didn’t do enough research early enough. Hopefully I cant take these negatives though and improve on them next year.

As we are now looking more into carnivalesque for inspiration we came up with more ideas based around humour. One idea I am doing is make some wellingtons into anti gravity boots and glueing them to the wall.

davidcrossland:

The space we’re exhibiting in. A lot of the stuff in there has been cleared out now, some 4th years were using the space as there degree show is soon. It’s pretty big with lot of little areas and a strange den under the stairs.

Photos of us setting up the exhibition space

davidcrossland:

These are some props for re-doing the fun fair performance in order to play it during the exhibition. We ‘found’ the toy ride in a primary school, re-painted the sign and now we will be having music playing during the performance. James’ friend Richard plays lots of sythesizers and we have a tape he made of apparently ‘disco’ music but i think it suits the fun fair thing really well. So we’ll have that playing on a battery powered tape player.

We took some portraits of us in costume to use as props in the exhibition. We plan to play our final performance on a television set within our made up living room. This is where the photographs will go along with various other props that makes the living room feel like it belongs to the characters.

One of our other humour based idea’s revolves around glueing a football to the floor. James will hide above the exhibition space on a platform until quite a few people arrive and them appear and shout for his ball back. For this performance James will be dressed as a child. It will be interesting to see peoples reactions when james appears and also when they realise the football is glued down.