As a group we have been meeting up regularly and discussing the potential avenues our performance could journey through. So far we have decided that we are all interested in doing one-to-one durational performances and we feel that if we each have our own station where we could do this within our overall performance, then we can effectively achieve our goal of everybody doing a one-to-one performance. The durational aspect comes in as we have been allotted the time space of 10:30 – 13:30. So we will have a durational performance lasting three hours. We have also decided that as our performance is currently based on one-to-one performance, there will be a great deal of intimacy between the performer and the participant. I am using the word participant now as we feel that having the audience members perform alongside us is where we want our piece to explore. Due to this heightened state of intimacy that will occur in this performance medium, we have decided that as a group we will explore the concept of intimacy between one another privately before we completely settle on the idea of having this as the bedrock of our performance.

As we are now researching into intimate, one-to-one performances I have turned my attention to the following video as I go about developing my own personal one-to-one experience.

In today’s Contemporary Experimental Performance class we explored how a performer might choose to use media in performance. To do this Shellie and I put on a set of headphones each and went outside the building. The headphones were wireless and gave us complete freedom of movement as long as we stayed within the wireless range, which we did. This was the first lesson I learned today, that although technology can give you freedom that freedom has limits. In this case, the limits were the range of the wireless headphones. Once we were outside we were then given instructions by Gabriel to perform.

This style of performance is called Task Based performance. It is achieved through the performer doing either specific or random tasks and the process of performing and completing the tasks is in itself the performance. The tasks related to the question the performer(s) are trying to explore.

The fact that we didn’t have any knowledge of what Gabriel was going to tell us to perform at any moment was both liberating and terrifying. To not be responsible for your actions because you are just following orders is a wonderful feeling. On the other hand, you could be asked to perform anything and you might not be comfortable doing a specific task, in which case you then experience a conflict between performing a task and your own comfort zone. This relates back to my previous post about the body being a meeting place for different worlds. Anything you do while experiencing this internal conflict is in itself a performance devised from the meeting of the different worlds within the body – in this instance those worlds would be fear and being told what to do.

I would like us to experiment with using technology and media in our performance as a way of giving the audience members the experience of both the freedom and limitations that these two bring with them. As of yet, I am not sure how this could be incorporated into my previous idea of durational one-to-one performance.