Month: May 2024

Unit 3

Week 2

Post author By Lu Wang
Post date 30th May 2024
No Comments on Week 2

Monday:

I went to assist an artist for some street shooting. It is a great chance to dig deep into art by working with artists. And here are some street photos I took:

Tuesday:

Our course leader introduced us the dragon den and hotroom, and course tutor shared with us the knowledge of time management and project management, I find the form she invited us to fill in very useful and I kept a blank one to pin it on my pinboard so I can use sticky notes to manage my time every week. I also did a test on which learner I am and it turns out I am actually quite balanced. She also introduced us the 5Ps: Prioritise, Plan, Productivity, Proactive and Personal, which made me reflect on the thinking of adjusting a way of blogging to make myself work like myself, but I am still figuring it out. And we are also invited to complete these 3 tasks:

Draft plan/design of your project management strategy
Draft timeline with your goals/milestones mapped out over the Summer Independent Study Period
Update your blogs with your reflections/thoughts on the session

As I already shared with my reflections on the session, I will attach my draft of project management strategy and timeline of my indepent study at the very below.

To immerse myself into art, after class, I went to see BA Fashion Communication Show:

Wednesday:

This group’s speakers debate is so welcoming that everyone was keeping asking questions, and I am so encouraged to be bold by their story.

During the break, I went to watch BA Fashion Show

Thursday:

We had online tutorial. And my tutor suggested me to think about the following questions / tasks:

1 What is my definition of performance art?

2 What is the skills that classifies a performance artist? Which part I want to explore？

3 Do a bit more research!

Friday:

I went to UAL art business society exhibition 2024 to support my friend’s first exhibition. By doing that I also approached art.

Saturday:

I explored my body movement through a Queer Salsa workshop.

Sunday:

A chill day to sleep and walking around London. At night write this blog.

General:

This week, I was browsing around the internet searching for some summer school I want to attend, and accidentally found this term experimental art. I had deeper research on experimental art. It might sounds I broadened my research field. But it actually means a lot to myself since I am new to this field. And I realized this word can better describe what I am interested into. But don’t worry, I will look into it deeper. And this term might have an answer to Thursdays question, and I will try to answer it here:

1 What is my definition of performance art?

My definition to myself is different from my definition to the world.

To myself, performance art is using body movement or certain behavior to express certain ideas, and it is usually abstract, it is more narrow sense.

To the world, my own definition is more broad sense, it can cover all the performance such as stand-up comedy!

Why there is a difference is bacause I want to narrow myself down to something I am not good at, to challenge myself, to open-up myself.

2 What is the skills that classifies a performance artist? Which part I want to explore？

The first question is still devided into two aspects. To me and to the world, I have different standards. For myself, I want to explore body movement.

3 Do a bit more research!

I did some research around experimental art.

And I also had an idea about a combination of my art and my comedy tour. I am having a comedy special tour around Europe from June 21th to July 7th, it will be no less than 7 shows covering Manchester UK, London UK, Madrid Spain, Valencia Spain, Barcelona Spain, Milan Italy, Frankfurt Germany. And a tutor once suggested that I can make full use of this opportunity to test my intervention. I thought I can record some video of my work (and the art work is related to my comedy material) and use projector (since it is easy to carry) to project it at the entrance of the comedy show, I will also put some sticker notes in case someone want to interact with it (but I think there will be so many better ways to interact than just sticker notes) and the audience can decide whether they want to spend time watch it or even interact with it (so far the interaction I want is to gather what they think what I am doing), and after my show, when the audience leave, they can watch is again at the entrance and write down what they think I am doing again to see if it is more clear or not. It is to test if comedy can make performance art more approachable to wider audience.

For the 3 tasks:

Draft plan/design of your project management strategy
Draft timeline with your goals/milestones mapped out over the Summer Independent Study Period
Update your blogs with your reflections/thoughts on the session

As I already shared with my reflections on the session, here is my draft of project management strategy and timeline of my indepent study at the very below.

For the management strategy, I did read all the strategies course tutor shared with us on Tuesday, but for me, I think what works most is a combination of using my calendar on my phone, my physical paper calender, my reminder board. And I used it for a long time ago, here is the evidence:

And here is my time line:

Unit 3

Week 1

Post author By Lu Wang
Post date 30th May 2024
No Comments on Week 1

This week is a little bit too chill and I might had too many relax.

For Monday tutorial, I really liked it as this is the first time we are stepped out of campus building and embraced some sunshine near canal and sat at a table near entrance fountain. It is so good to spend some time in this beautiful sunny day. I was recommended by course tutor the book named Grapefruit. And she also recommended me to contact performance department. And on Tuesday, programme director shared us with some ideas and some shows he found interesting and course tutor shared us knowledges ralated to blogging and autoethnography, the class ends with us creating memes, which I enjoy the most. On Wednesday, it was our group’s turn of speakers debate and we did great! Thursday is a fruitful day, I went to watch two showcases at CSM platform theatre and studio theatre, BA Performance Design & Practice: Text Night and Now: Through our lens… On Friday, I went for a walk along Thames River. Saturday, went to the area near TATE mordern and found out some art on chewing gums on Milennium Bridge, I do think whoever did this is a change maker to change disgusting leftover chewing gums into enjoyable little art pieces. Sunday I basically spent a whole day sleeping. But at night during those days, I made a lot of handmade 6-color-rainbow bracelets hoping to share it with people at the coming pride parade in June. During the process, I thought about one possible performance art I can do and discussed it with my friend: I can go to a public place such as Hyde Park and spend hours or days just make 6-color-rainbow bracelets, from nothing to cover my arm with rainbows, I make the pride inside of one’s body (my body) visible, if I want to draw more attention, maybe I can wear in rainbow.

Evidence:

Some memes and things I shared at Padlet on Tuesday class

BA Performance Design & Practice: Text Night

Some art on chewing gums on Milennium Bridge

Project 5

Week 5

Post author By Lu Wang
Post date 20th May 2024
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This week I did pop-up intervention and handed in my written proposal and being so stupid to find out in the last day that learning agreement is acutallly a prepared form to fill in, not those encouraging sentences I wrote before. But anyways, I did it! Bye-bye unit 1!

For my intervention, I did the version 4 as I planned last week and I am happy to see people are interested about it but I still didn’t have the courage to draw the whole room’s attention to do some serious performance, it is still like a conversation I explain to people what I am doing, that part can be done better.

For this week’s art journey, on Wednesday, I went to CSM Foundation show to see some artwork, some of them gave me inspiration, some of the gave me courage to dive into the new field for me which is art. On Thursday, I went to see CSM BA Fashion show, it is amazing, I was so impressed by all those creative ideas, the clothing combined with the background music and the way they chose to perform, whether by just walking or by performing, all made the clothing alive. On Friday, I went to UAL high holborn for a doctoral school launch event, not to do some academic stuff, I went to watch Vicky’s, an UAL PhD student, improv performance art show. I imagined myself at the same position, I think I still don’t have that much of courage and very smooth body expression. On Saturday, I went to my very first voguing old way dance workshop. I cannot bend my knees too low because of my previous knee injury, but I am still happy to experience the half-improv-and-anything-can-happen-without-any-judgements kind of body movements. More than that, I also had an experience of very strong sense of LGBTQIA+ community, I have a better understanding of this aspect of the world, because community can mean neibourhood in my language and I didn’t have too much understanding of this word before. On Sunday, I had an invitation of a private view of an exhibition named NOWSHOWING. I am really happy to have a private view because the artists are basically all there to guide us to watch the art piece and sharing their thoughts on the art work, which is really helpful for me. Also, I came across my alumni, PhD students I had conversations before and people from MACCC cohort, so it is also a great opportunity to establish networks. But I was too introvert to speak a word and I turned on my silent mode and walked away silently. I should be more open up to communicate with people next time.

That’s all for the week and I attached my final written proposal down below to save it as a record.

Evidences:

Shaping Futures – Launch Event: New Doctoral School

Written Proposal

What:

The area I intend to research is performance art, and the precise question I will be addressing is: How can performance art be more related to wider audiences?

Why:

This topic is valuable to me because become an artist is a next level of my life journey, and performance art is the most approachable kind of art for me now, and I really want to open-up my body since I used to be an uptight person. To the world, this topic is of great value because I want to make performance art more approachable to wider audiences.

How:

To accomplish my project in practical terms, I want to create a series of light and life-related performance art and test it with wider audiences. As a fresher to performance art, I will use literature review to know more about theory and history of performance art. To make my performance art come true, I must combine theory with practice, thus, I will watch many different kind performance both online and offline and go to different kinds of body movement workshops both at campus and society. I will make full use of intervention pop-up showcase to test my idea, and when there is no pop-up showcase scheduled, I will get feedback by chatting with my peers, go to office hour to chat with tutors, or interview people, or posting my work on social media, very rarely I might use questionnaires (but personally I want to avoid using questionnaire because it is usually too simple to get deeper feedback and I can barely find questionnaires interesting). I will also consider testing my series of performance art with my upcoming stand-up comedy tour around Europe.

My rough schedule is:

May-Mid June: Get to know about performance art by second hand research and watch some performance shows which is highly related to body expression. Start to participate in body-related workshops.

Late June-Mid September: Try to make my performance art, directly perform it or record and play it and gain external feedback.

Late September-November: Make my performance art into series and prepare for graduation showcase festival.

What If:

I hope this project can make performance art more approachable to wider audiences. I want to break the situation of the wider audience cannot understand performance art, and find it hard to link the written introduction with the art itself. I want the art itself be more down-to-earth instead of being too high to be popular. At the end of the course, I want to position myself as an artist or a performance artist. And for my stakeholders, I hope more people can be the audience of performance art and can relate performance art more to their daily life. At the mean time, I fully understand those who love or wants to create abstract art. Those people currently are not my stakeholders.

Reading List:

McCarthy, K. F. (2001). The Performing Arts in a New Era. [Online] Google Books. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=zh-CN&lr=&id=JZDcgYr0-ukC&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=performance+art&ots=gIQJ7yTENV&sig=CRwU-ZICdTtCtVARSxnnvnhElpU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Howell, A. (2000). The Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to its Theory and Practice (1st ed.). London: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315079813.

Project 5

Week 4

Post author By Lu Wang
Post date 13th May 2024
No Comments on Week 4

My question now is: How can performance art be more relatable to wider audiences?

This Monday, which is the public holiday, I went to CSM to see NuMoment Nutalents, which is a music show with artistic installation. Tuesday I had a very useful lecture on how to do presentation and storytelling by Sasha. I was impressed once again and gained self-confidence to get rid of slides. On Friday, I went to Goldsmiths to watch RE-ALIGNMENTS: BA Curating degree show 2024. This Saturday, I went to a blindfolded dance movement workshop near elephant and castle. I tried to open up my body but find it hard to fully trust the surroundings when I am blindfolded. But I do get to know new people and gain new experience from it. I challenged myself to make the movement bigger and by doing that I am doing a bit better than when I first step in the classroom. And on Sunday I watched a Chinese stand-up comedy show, trying to refresh my mind with a more speaking-related performance. This week, I searched Marina Abramović and watched some performance art on the app RED, and I found some very interesting and life related performance art which gave me inspirations of my intervension. And I also had a conbersation with my classmate, she gave me a very different point of view by pointing out she actually wants art to be abstract because she can feel all the feeling without the pressure of feeling the very “real world” thing, and she thinks that if art is required to be relatable to wider audience, that also limits artists a lot. That made me think deeper of my question, how can I balance the accessibility of the wider audience towards art and not to limit the expression of the artist and not to spoil another part of audience who wants abstract art.

For my intervention, I thought about 4 versions and decided on the last one.

Version 1: Create 2 pieces of performance art in the same theme, one is abstract and another is more life-related. Record it and use laptop to present it.

Version 2: Make video, use my word to reinterpret abstract art in a funny light way, make the video replace the written introduction beside the artifact.

Version 3: Record a video using abstract body movement to express that a lot of kids look at my hand especially in public transportations. They whisper to their parents in their own way, which is a very loud whisper, then more people look at me. I want to record my inner feeling and my own feedback in an abstract way, then link my laptop with a headset, if you only watch without the headset, you may not understand or have your own understanding, but if you put on the headset, you can hear me tell you what I am expressing in a funny light way which is very different from what you see.

Version 4: New Possibilities of giving somebody the finger. Interactive performance art. Let the audience choose a middle finger for me so I can curse people with my right hand, they can use anything, either provided objects here or any other things. Reinterprete the action of give the finger.

Evidences:

Project 5

Week 3

Post author By Lu Wang
Post date 5th May 2024
No Comments on Week 3

This week I went back and forth with the question and drove myself crazy but at the end I met my academic angle and she gave me the courage to finally decide on a question that my tutor gave me inspiration before on my tutorial: How can performance art be more relevant to today’s living?

Since I attached a mind map and a process snail that my course leader recommended us to do in this week’s class, and it shows the process, there is no need to review how I stuggled to find my question again. Everyone can be struggled at some point, it’s just a common thing. Other than that, I want to show my progress of being a performance artist. On Sunday, I decided to make a seek love poster as I find dating app very inefficient and I never tried campus love in my life. On Monday, I printed 27 copies of my seeking love poster and posted all over CSM and on Tuesday my friend helped my to post 6 copies at LCC. So far I got many friends taking pictures of themselves and my posters and one person from LCC messaged me. But the outcome of whether I can find a lover or not doesn’t matter that much. I just want to take the first step to be bold and do something I dare not to do and overcome or drench myself in the inner awkwardness to get used to future action of performance art. The seeking love poster is like a kindergarten towards performance art to me. On Thursday, I went to a workshop called Moving to Reflect at M103 CSM, and tried my first move of expressing my body, I made a vedio record, I know I am very far from being artistic but I am open to any judgement. Laugh at me as you can, I am brave enough to try. Laugh at me when I have my 1st piece of performance art work, laugh at me if I am successful, laugh at me if I failed. Laugh at me as hard as you can. And I will survive and be tough from it. Okay, enough for the little “poetry”, let’s move on. After that I went to see Stage 1 BA PDP Festival and saw many well-prepared performance art, this is the very first time I ever saw performance art in real life, and I was amazed. I gathered some inspiration not like directly knowing what I want to do, but opened a gate for my potential future work. After that, I came across a broken hand model at CSM swap shop and made a series of photo with the help of my friend, which I think is also a nice try of making art. On Friday, I hosted an online sharing session for Chinese comedians in Spain for about 2.5 hours, since stand-up comedy is also a kind of performance, I think during my sharing session, I gathered my thoughts once again on how to get prepared for a performance show. On Saturday, I went to see arts dance showcase at CSM platform theatre, it contians so many different kind of dances and was really good, I also came across an alumni who basically has a map of voguing in London in her mind and she introduced me a lot of old way voguing classes, which I always wanted to try but didn’t find any ways to try before.

After a fruitful week of struggling, learning, sharing and absorbing new things, here I am to proudly present my draft towards this question:

What:

The area I intend to research is performance art, and the precise question I will be addressing is: How can performance art be more relevant to today’s living?

Why:

How:

To accomplish my project in practical terms, as a fresher to performance art, I will use literature review to know more about theory and history of performance art. To make my performance art come true, I must combine theory with practice, thus, I will watch many different kind performance both online and offline and go to different kinds of body movement workshops both at campus and society. I will make full use of intervention pop-up showcase to test my idea, and when there is no pop-up showcase scheduled, I will get feedback by chatting with my peers, go to office hour to chat with tutors, or interview people, or posting my work on social media, very rarely I might use questionnaires (but personally I want to avoid using questionnaire because it is usually too simple to get deeper feedback and I can barely find questionnaires interesting). And for now I want to make a closely-life-related performance art as my outcome. But my outcome might change through my process of developing my idea.

My rough schedule is:

May-Mid June: Get to know about performance art by second hand research and watch some performance shows which is highly related to body expression. Start to participate in body-related workshops.

Late June-Mid September: Try to make my performance art, directly perform it or record and play it and gain external feedback.

Late September-November: Make my performance art into series and prepare for graduation showcase festival.

What If:

Reading List:

Howell, A. (2000). The Analysis of Performance Art: A Guide to its Theory and Practice (1st ed.). London: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315079813.

Learning Agreement:

1 Be bold and crazy, be unlimited.

2 Have faith, never let words put you down.

3 Leave sometime to explore the world, that is also an important part to contriburte to the project.

4 Spend more time to sleep, keep energetic.

Evidences: