Perspectives, The Abyss and Uncertainty

Perspectives change the way people view things. Each person has their own perspective which can be moulded by nature, nurture, situation and maybe just how they were feeling in that moment. A perspective could differ from one person to the other, but on the other hand they could overlap and have interlocking themes but without being the same. For example, someone could look at a tree and see a home for birds and another person could see a place to shade themselves from the sun. Two opposite perspectives are linked through the tree being used as protection.

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Using this thought and the instructions I was given, ‘A place where you can stare at an endless horizon’ and ‘An abyss to fall in’, I took this picture. The picture shows a seemingly endless overcast sky. The horizon stretches across buildings and beyond, and once I took this picture I could see an abyss, a vast open space where anyone could easily fall into. I tied in perspectives by taking the photo at an angle, this makes it seem like the buildings were further away than they actually were. By flipping the image,

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the idea of an abyss is more prominent than in the original. The black ledge, now at the bottom of the photo, could be viewed as a platform to jump from into the unknown mass of cloud; again it is down to how a person chooses to view the image.

Coming from a ‘straight acting’ background, the idea of site specific performance is daunting and challenging. Overcoming the fear and unease of the unfamiliar will be the major obstacle for myself over the coming months, but by opening my mind to view my surroundings and course with different perspectives will allow me to become more open minded as an actress.

Love at first ‘Site’

It certainly wasn’t love at first sight for Site Specific and I. When first approaching the given task my heart sank. Drawing attention to myself in public, standing out from the crowd, was something that never came naturally to me. However I’m all for throwing myself into challenges head first, and once I let my guard down, I started to realise what Site Specific performances were all about. For me, the reactions of passersby fascinated me. I thrived on the thought that we had shaken their day up somehow, broken the formality of everyday journeys to and from places and made them realise what was around them. Fiona Wilkie stated that ‘Site-Specific performance engages with the site as symbol, site as storyteller’ (Wilkie, 2002, 150), and it was this sense of purpose behind the performance that I began to favor. Such as the symbolisation of the everyday office job in Glob Squad’s Work (1995), and the public demonstrations of government control from The Space Highjackers and The Surveillance Camera Players. Using site specific performances for public education or enlightenment really interests me, and is something I would like to explore further.

 

Wilkie, F. (2002) Mapping the Terrain: A Survey of Site-specific Performance in Britain. New Theatre Quarterly, 18, 2.