Thursday, June 22, 2006
Whitstable Beinnale
These notes should have been pasted up a few days ago, but due to an unpleasant incident last week my schedule is somewhat behind.
Here some notes I made during my stay in Whitstable for the Biennale. It was great fun and I got to camp by the beach for a week and worked with artist Gary Stevens. Also got to hang out in pubs with a few of my heroes.
Gary was working with a group of students including myself on a performance called ‘Thought Bubble’. During the rehearsals for the performance we were improvising various everyday activities and we found some cleaning equipment in a cupboard that we thought might make useful props. Gary said this was a good idea but insisted that the women did not do the hovering because this might make the performance look like a statement on gender and he didn’t want this. On the way to the chip shop at lunchtime I tried to quiz him on his attitudes. I wanted to know how he avoided association with body politics which had become such an issue for myself. Pheobe, who also part of our performance group and was on the way to the chip shop concurred, saying that when she had done her own performances she had been accused of being a feminist when it was not her intention. Gary replied that he tended to work in mixed groups to avoided any specific body type coming to the fore.
Even when Gary performs on his own he is very sensitive of these things, as I said earlier it is very hard to describe his performances and this also means it is very hard to find specific statements in his work. During my our rehearsals Gary directed things so a performance happened but no real focus on any moment or individual could be found within it and therefore no firm conclusion could be drawn. There were no grand statements, things just going on.
I learnt a lot from Gary in how he creates his performances by evolving structures in which improvisations can take place using what is available to him.
The theme of the Biennale was Art and Comedy and I got a chance to a symposium on Art and Comedy. It was a strange affair, which highlighted the fact that theorising about comedy is not actually very funny. You can either not think too much about it, or think too much about things and not be very funny. Gary Stevens made a good point that art audiences think too much about things and don’t know how to take a joke. The reverse is also true, that comedy audiences only want to be entertained and don’t think too much about anything else.
The first speaker at the symposium was a stand-up comedian named Adam Bloom who was very funny even though it was clear he didn’t know what he was supposed to talking about. He said that “The object of stand-up comedy is to make an audience laugh”. Perhaps this is were art maybe has something to offer because though it can make people laugh, it doesn’t have to do just that, it can do many other things too.
Half way through the lecture Bob & Roberta Smith asked Adam Bloom if he had a mental health problems. The artist with the ginger beard elaborated on this and explained that most great comedians had suffered manic depression, such as Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, Peter Cook and many others. Adam Bloom replied that he didn’t really have mental health problem and neither did many of he comedian friend, expect one who was in rehab for some drink problems.
At the end of the Art and Comedy Symposium Bob & Roberta Smith took everyone down to the harbour to float concrete boats on the sea. However the joke went terribly wrong because the tide was out and there was no sea, just some mud which nobody really had suitable footwear to wade through.
While I was in Whitstable also I ran into the poet John Hegley in a pub and I had a conversation with him about how great artists, musicians and poets die young. He was not comfortable with this idea because he was getting on a bit now and wasn’t dead which suggested he wasn’t held in such high regard where as I was only 26 and still had a chance of being great. I realised I was also not too keen on the idea of being dead soon. Am planning to do a show with John Hegley at the Poetry Café in July which is quite an exciting honour.
Here some notes I made during my stay in Whitstable for the Biennale. It was great fun and I got to camp by the beach for a week and worked with artist Gary Stevens. Also got to hang out in pubs with a few of my heroes.
Gary was working with a group of students including myself on a performance called ‘Thought Bubble’. During the rehearsals for the performance we were improvising various everyday activities and we found some cleaning equipment in a cupboard that we thought might make useful props. Gary said this was a good idea but insisted that the women did not do the hovering because this might make the performance look like a statement on gender and he didn’t want this. On the way to the chip shop at lunchtime I tried to quiz him on his attitudes. I wanted to know how he avoided association with body politics which had become such an issue for myself. Pheobe, who also part of our performance group and was on the way to the chip shop concurred, saying that when she had done her own performances she had been accused of being a feminist when it was not her intention. Gary replied that he tended to work in mixed groups to avoided any specific body type coming to the fore.
Even when Gary performs on his own he is very sensitive of these things, as I said earlier it is very hard to describe his performances and this also means it is very hard to find specific statements in his work. During my our rehearsals Gary directed things so a performance happened but no real focus on any moment or individual could be found within it and therefore no firm conclusion could be drawn. There were no grand statements, things just going on.
I learnt a lot from Gary in how he creates his performances by evolving structures in which improvisations can take place using what is available to him.
The theme of the Biennale was Art and Comedy and I got a chance to a symposium on Art and Comedy. It was a strange affair, which highlighted the fact that theorising about comedy is not actually very funny. You can either not think too much about it, or think too much about things and not be very funny. Gary Stevens made a good point that art audiences think too much about things and don’t know how to take a joke. The reverse is also true, that comedy audiences only want to be entertained and don’t think too much about anything else.
The first speaker at the symposium was a stand-up comedian named Adam Bloom who was very funny even though it was clear he didn’t know what he was supposed to talking about. He said that “The object of stand-up comedy is to make an audience laugh”. Perhaps this is were art maybe has something to offer because though it can make people laugh, it doesn’t have to do just that, it can do many other things too.
Half way through the lecture Bob & Roberta Smith asked Adam Bloom if he had a mental health problems. The artist with the ginger beard elaborated on this and explained that most great comedians had suffered manic depression, such as Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, Peter Cook and many others. Adam Bloom replied that he didn’t really have mental health problem and neither did many of he comedian friend, expect one who was in rehab for some drink problems.
At the end of the Art and Comedy Symposium Bob & Roberta Smith took everyone down to the harbour to float concrete boats on the sea. However the joke went terribly wrong because the tide was out and there was no sea, just some mud which nobody really had suitable footwear to wade through.
While I was in Whitstable also I ran into the poet John Hegley in a pub and I had a conversation with him about how great artists, musicians and poets die young. He was not comfortable with this idea because he was getting on a bit now and wasn’t dead which suggested he wasn’t held in such high regard where as I was only 26 and still had a chance of being great. I realised I was also not too keen on the idea of being dead soon. Am planning to do a show with John Hegley at the Poetry Café in July which is quite an exciting honour.
