day four: 05/22/07
subtle eleven (revisited): park bench There is a man sitting within the boundary I drew. He seems settled with no intentions of moving. I sit on an opposing bench and draw a line around the same foot as the day before.
subtle twelve: smoking boundary lines
I have found lines that demarcate an area for smoking. I lean slightly outside the line. A man, in passing, informs me that I am slightly off balance.
subtle thirteen: campus stairs
There are two young women sitting beside me. They are deep in conversation and take no notice of me. One of them gives me a quick glance when I pull myself up the wall methodically, but looks away as soon as I notice her looking.
This invisibility is in stark contrast to the large audience I have accumulated from the festival. People sit at a distance forming an audience. I am back on stage within the context of a college campus.
subtle fourteen: between two parked cars I want to hide now. I have a following that I am attempting to divert. A man asks me if I am okay, a car stops to see if I want to cross the street.
5 comments:
hi emma,
i don't know if u received the first comment cuz this google account thing and me are having slight differences...but i think i have it working now.
just wanted to say hi (hi), that i am following your work and your blog (and tagny's blog) and i think you and i may share certain concerns (but not all), so it is nice for me to read your entries and reflect on my own questions. like the questioning of visibility and what happens when we feel ourselves observed (for me this is not only an art framework question), and also the question of how to have the intent or desire to share without placing yourself outside the framework of being. (probably not articulated very clearly.
anyways emma, i know tagny and nicole and irene (although irene and i met only briefly during a performance chic event), so could you please say hi to them for me and let them know i am glad to feel this kind of connection through tagny's blog to the work and the festival.
karen
hi emma,
me again. i just realized you have an official blogspot domain (not too swift on these matters yet) and so i am hoping you might be o.k. with your blog address on my blog ... if this is not cool with you, ket me know and i won't do it.
k
Hello Karen,
Thank you for your feedback and your support. I would be happy to have this blog address linked with yours, so please feel freee to do so. I am new to these methods of communication and excited that it is seemingly easier then I had previously thought. I hope this will become a productive forum for a continued dialogue around these issues, documentation of performance, the aesthetics of failure, and the multiple issues that arise when making...performance art. Thank you again for your contribution,
where can I find your blog?
Emma.
hi emma,
o.k., this is weird, now i don't have 2 sign in at all...
thanks. u r now listed on my blogroll. my blog is: www.dreamlistener.wordpress.com
yeah, the blog world is new 2 me 2.
just a note to add that you and your camera, documenting the sites of your performance...do you see this act of photographing as part of your performance? as giving a clue to onlookers, to viewers of yr photographs, to yourself, that you have some "intentionality" beyond the act? (beyond the act as in the future, or "for" something or someone else.)and then when u post the photos and the texts do u c this as part of yr (creative) work...or as a document? or both? and do u c this as undermining or contradictory to yr intent of disrupting the audience/performer relationship? hmmm. many questions.
karen
hi emma,
to explain a bit about the question of the photographing and how you c this in relation 2 your practice...
I photograph each cardboard dream after attaching it, or propping it, or placing it somewhere in montreal. at first I felt super self-conscious, as if I was drawing attention to myself, as if now people would know the dream holder was not just a dream holder, but a person with “something else” in mind. I felt awkward, like I was betraying some intent inside myself. but I kept on photographing, even when my camera started to go wonky, (the perfect time to stop and take the camera to the repair shop.) I even started looking at architectural photographs to see how “they” frame buildings and stuff.
meaning, I am getting into the photographing as something in and of itself. I like the photographs. so today I tried to pay attention to my feelings while photographing. I felt like a performer. I mean, with the camera in my hand pointing at the dream I squint into the camera (it’s hard to see exactly what I am getting in the screen,) I cross the street, I stand on stuff, I squat. and all in all I take between 5 and 11 photos per dream. that’s a lot of photos. that takes time. that’s a performance for sure. I’m more active when photographing than when I’m standing and holding the dream.
you see, the thing is, before, I would purposefully have refused to photograph. maybe keeping used markers as a physical trace, or the marking down of the location on a map, but never all these photographs and all this text stuff. shifts happen I know, but I am unsure of the why maybe. other than pleasure I guess. which is reason enough for anything…I mean I can list off the reasons why, it’s just the other side of the reasons for the why not, but … I am interested in seeing where the real root of this is.
so really, emma, this is why I asked you that question, I am genuinely interested in your answer. for selfish reasons. I am hoping you can help me, even if it is only positioning myself in relation to your position.
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