Title Sounding out: performance drawing in response to the outside environment Type Thesis URL http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/5455/ Date 2011 Citation Foa, Maryclare (2011) Sounding out: performance drawing in response to the outside environment. PhD thesis, University of the Arts London. Creators Foa, Maryclare Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact [email protected]. License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author Sounding Out Performance drawing in response to the outside environment Maryclare Foá PhD Fine Art 2011 Camberwell College of Arts University of the Arts London Abstract My enquiry focuses on how a drawing, when made in response to the outside environment, might be conditioned by that environment, and in turn how that environment might be influenced by that drawing. Examination of texts by, among others, Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty and Baudelaire have contributed towards understanding ideas about humankind’s physical memory of landscape, phenomenological experience in relation to the outside space, and ideas concerning the interaction between the practitioner and the outside space. Four key issues related to drawing are explored in this research (each is the subject of a chapter in the thesis). Firstly, the practitioner’s stance in the process of drawing is examined, in particular the practitioner’s gesture, which mimics the form of the subject, and performs the subject into being. The practitioner’s position is addressed in relation to how the gaze of the other fashions that position into a performance. Secondly, ‘movement’ is identified as a crucial material component of the process of performance drawing. Movement’s capacity to energise the work, stimulate engagement with the subject, and promote the continual development of ideas is also investigated. Thirdly, a number of interpretations of the outside environment established by individuals who work in different professions are examined. These different readings of place identify ‘signs’ as conditioning the character of place, and as being read by passers-by as directions through place, thereby revealing an interaction between place and humankind. Fourthly, while exploring how to performance draw in direct response to place, the methodology is developed through three stages. The traditional mark-making onto paper was found to keep a distance between the practitioner (observer) and the subject (the environment). The mark-making transferred onto the outside environment was found to retain a distance, held by the tool, between the subject and practitioner. And the practitioner by using her body and voice was found to bridge the space between subject and self. The drawing with sound methodology was found to map, signal, and measure place in direct relation to practitioner, while also revealing an interactive conditioning between place and practitioner, through sonic reflection and resonance. Critical analysis and documentation of findings concerning the practical work are interspersed throughout the written text, and a DVD of audiovisual documentation of practical works is also included as an attachment to the written thesis. Maryclare Foá Sounding Out: performance drawing in response to the outside environment PhD Camberwell College of Art 2011 Contents page Introduction 1 1 Performance Drawing 4 2 Movement and Suspended Motion 52 3 Reading the Outside Space 83 4 Sounding Out 120 Conclusion 155 Appendix 162 Bibliography 239 DVD Index 266 DVDs 1, 2, and 3 attached Maryclare Foá Sounding Out: performance drawing in response to the outside environment PhD Camberwell College of Art 2011 1 Introduction In the 1970s I became energised and inspired by the process of making drawings outdoors, while also becoming aware of the presence of passers-by. I learned how to negotiate (as I perceived them to be at the time) interruptions, through finding concealed working spaces and by appearing to be unapproachably immersed in my work. This attitude served my purpose well until, in the process of drawing and being filmed by documenting cameras, I became conscious that I was performing my drawing for the sake of the recording eye (see Chapter 1, Documentation in the Live experience, pages 42–50 and Appendix 222). I now recognise that making a drawing in any public space is a performance, because the action is shaped by the awareness of the possibility of a witness. By consciously planning my attitude and position in relation to the ‘interruptions’ of the other I had performed a role, and come to understand that a drawing (see Chapter 1, pages 5, 15, 42) conditioned by the presence of the other is a performance drawing. Through making drawings in response to the outside place, I had begun to suspect that an influential interaction occurs between the environment, the practitioner and the work. This led me to consider the key question in this research: ‘How might a drawing, when made in response to the outside environment be conditioned by that environment, and in turn how might that environment be influenced by that drawing?’ As a graduate student twenty years after my first outdoor drawing experiences, I began to investigate the position of the practitioner in the outdoor place. Initially, tutors used the term ‘performative’ to describe the process of making drawings as an action in front of another. Yet a performative – as coined by philosopher of language J. L. Austin,1 and described by performance theorist Peggy Phelan2 and gender theorist Judith Butler3 (see Chapter 1, page 5) – repeats the meaning. That is to say, speaking the words ‘I choose you’ brings into being that choice. In the process of mark-drawing, an idea in the mind’s eye or the perceived eye directs the hand to mimic that idea in marks onto a surface. This metamorphic translation from the idea in the mind, to marks on a surface in the world, is a repeat. The hand endeavours to repeat the idea in the mind, as marks on a surface in the world, and in this way drawing is a performative process. Whether produced through a conceptual or an observed method, drawing repeats and brings into the world that which is being drawn. However, the performative in the process of 1 J. L. Austin, British philosopher of language, invented the word ‘Performative’ as a term to describe speech acts, such as ‘I promise’, in his 1946 paper ‘Other Minds’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplement 20: 148–87. 2 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 149. 3 J. Butler, ‘Critically Queer’, in Identity: A Reader, ed. P. du Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman, London: Sage Publications, 2000. 2 drawing is different from the methodology of performance drawing. Performance drawing occurs as an action in front of, and conditioned by, the presence of another. Not all drawing is a performance drawing because not all drawing is made in front of a witness. However, a drawing made in front of another as witness is a performance, and if that drawing is made in the outside public space then that drawing will be conditioned by the practitioner’s awareness of the possibility of passers-by witnessing the process. Because my work is made in the outdoors in public spaces, Performance Drawing became a relevant description for my practice research: that is, making a drawing as an action, in front of another as witness, in the outside environment. The term ‘Performance Drawing’ was coined by Catherine de Zegher in 2001 as the title of Drawing Papers 20, published to accompany ‘A series of five solo exhibitions of artists who explore the intersection of drawing and performance’ at The Drawing Center, New York (see Chapter 1, page 6).4 I began this research by examining a number of different artists’ working processes, and in this way I investigated how performance drawing methodology evolved out of the performative, repeating process of drawing, I have traced the emergence of the methodology of present-day performance drawing from its performative roots, into a contemporary practice (see Chapter 1, page 30). While making works in the outside space, I began to notice that motion was becoming an important aspect of my drawing practice, and I examined ideas about the affects and effects of motion on the creative process, and also on the work being made. That is to say how motion influences the creative process and the work, and the results of that influence on the creative process and the work (see Chapter 2). I also investigated how the environment was interpreted differently by individuals who work in different professions, whose various experiences shaped their reading of place (see Chapter 3). And while making works in the outside environment I sought to evidence a possible interaction that might occur during the working process, reciprocally affecting the practitioner, the work and the environment (see Chapter 3, pages 96, 100, 112–113). In my practice I explored different materials and methods to evidence this possible reciprocal interaction, and I came to understand that because of its spatial, descriptive and mapping qualities, sound could also be used as a drawing material. Sound is traceable as it moves through a place, and sound also reveals the material and spatial qualities of place, as it moves through place. And because sound is an acoustic wave 4 The Drawing Center’s Drawing Papers 20 ‘Performance Drawings: Make something in the street and give it away – Alison Knowles, Street Piece, 1962’. 3 which reveals itself three-dimensionally in relation to place and vice versa, sound can be employed as a means of measuring its source in relation to place, and mapping its source in the world (see Chapter 4, pages 123–128, 130–140, 143–146).