So today we had our technical rehearsal and as we don’t actually have any tech it was our chance to see the space, to play with our final layout and to test our back up plans in case of no audience members.  We got a lot achieved today, after our meeting last night and the feedback I got in my tutorial with Michael, we made our changes and worked on making sure the piece was good enough with all the last minure changes we had made.  We reduced the audience members by taking out some of our chairs, I wish we had done this sooner!  We used envelopes and our clocks and set out the space.

At this point we had to decide how we were going to distribute envelopes.  This is a conversation that we have had many, many times before and the decision had continued to, to and fro.  We decided FINALLY today that we would have envelopes on chairs already and we would simply remove them from chairs to suit the number of audience members we had.

Today we also had a jar to put batteries in which we describe as a gradual and discreet installation.  The point of it is to symbolise the idea of stopping time and preserving what is happening here in this room, in this building.

We were also very fortunate today that we got an audience of class members to sit in our performance so we could see that everything was running properly, we also got some last minute feedback and suggestions as to how we could frame the performance and put it in more context, also how we could tidy up the ending a little.  This being said, the response overall was very positive and we are very excited (all be it a little nervous) about next week!

So for a while now the group has decided that we will use our time in the space during the final performance to build an installation to represent The Waiting Room and how we as individuals and collectively feel what the space represents to us.   For all members of the group the idea of installation art was a new one and we were struggling, at least I was, with a definition that gave us clarity of what we could do.  I stumbled upon an article from the Tate online that states: “In the 1960s, the word installation was employed by magazines such as Artforum, Arts Magazine and Studio International to describe the way in which an exhibition was arranged, and the photographic documentation of this arrangement was called an installation shot. The neutrality of the term was an important part of its appeal” (Bishop, 2005).  This was the definition I need to understand that I would never have a definition for the term installation, I have seen so many different examples of ‘installation’ pieces that have all been completely different that I think I was waiting my eureka moment to understand that as long as something has a meaning it can be classified as an installation piece (or maybe I still don’t understand the concept).

Up until very recently all of our installation ideas have revolved around paper airplanes and the idea of freezing time and remembering what has happened in the space.  Ideas and inspiration came a great amount from installation piece by Dawn Ng  titled I fly like paper get high like planes.

I fly like paper get high like planes.

The image of being stood amongst so many planes going over your head is, to me anyway, very striking and I was very excited about the idea of creating an image like this in the grandstand. It soon became apparent that we would not have enough time to build an installation to this scale and also it may not have been possible in the space as we discovered with a room that we rent every week, it is not our space and we probably wouldn’t get away with putting holes in the walls in order to hang everything up.

In developing the piece and from feedback we received about the success of having audience members each fold and throw a paper airplane we decided to just have one airplane folded and thrown; this way there was still the lovely sound of the paper folding but without the unpredictability and mess of it happening on a larger scale. After this development we obviously had to start thinking about new routes to take with our installation piece so we went back and though about the site and our performance and what they meant to us. For me, there was a great sense of combining the idea of time passing and the concept of preserving the grandstand.  When you’re in the space you can see instances of where the room isn’t looked after or where it has decayed over the years, particularly so on the much appreciated RFC mural.

While we were in the space I captured a few of these moments of decay:

Lack of care in the grandstand

You can see on these images how the mural is damaged and the windows are cracked and left without repair.  These thoughts led the group to toy with the idea of preserving the space.  We went through a process of talking about how to keep things from damage and discussed ideas such as trying to put everything in glass or Perspex boxes as if on display to be appreciated but this wasn’t an achievable goal in regards to the space and how late in the process we were having the idea.  We then went on to discuss bubble wrap and how it’s purpose is to protect but still we didn’t have any ideas that screamed brilliant so me moved on from that idea as well.

Our deciding moment came once we stopped thinking about it so much, we were discussing how in one of our very first visits to the grandstand we took a gift and discussed the idea of leaving something behing to change the space.  We discussed this idea of preserving the events that happen within the walls of the grandstand, and half in jest Alice suggested that we bury a time capsule.  This, combined with adding the Stop all the clocks poem while we collected in batteries, decided how we would end our time at the grandstand.

Works Cited

Dawn Ng: I fly like paper get high like planes, 2009.

References

Bishop, C. (2005) But is it installation art? [online] London: Tate Modern. Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/it-installation-art [Accessed 29th May].

Ng, D. (2009) Dawn Ng. Available  at http://www.dawn-ng.com/new/paperplanes/4.html [Accessed 1st May 2014].

The whole time we have been developing The Waiting Room performance we have been focused on the idea of empathy and how we can connect ourselves with what people are waiting for in that way.  We have written narratives in first or third person in response to our survey results; we have discussed what people wait for and the idea that the waiting room setting, like you would see in a doctor’s surgery, makes strange what you actually do when you wait for something.  Many of the results from our public survey suggest that what people are waiting for is something in the future, something huge and important and exciting, not for something like a doctor’s appointment where you sit idly by because you can’t do much else.

What we haven’t looked at are studies, real life waiting room behaviours, what people in this setting would do. How your condition, mentally and physically, and what you are waiting for affects how you behave and changes the behaviour of those around you.  A study on the “Anxiety of Patients in the Waiting Room of the Emergency Department” by JungKyoon Yoon and Marieke Sonneveld showed that within the waiting room “three important groups were discovered that affect concerns and responses of patient; Fear, uncertainty and confusion, and annoyance.”  The idea of The Waiting Room is to demonstrate the passing of time while being in control of the audience, asking them to follow instructions and read narratives, we want to take away their control of deciding how they feel and so far all we have tried to impose upon them is empathy.  This study from the Netherlands gives me the impression that we should be making the audience feel more, not necessarily scaring them but making them fearful; maybe this is done by changing our narratives or adding new instructions to the piece or maybe we need to, at this late stage, add a new element into the piece.

Another article I found online discussed how you respond to behaviours in the waiting room setting, this article by Dr Maria Yang spoke about a specific incident where a woman is screaming at the top of her voice and nobody reacts. She writes:

“Two men and one woman are seated across the room. The woman continues to dip her crochet hook into the yarn; the hook has not stopped since the shouting began. One man has his arms crossed; his chin is tucked in and his eyes look closed. The other man rests his elbows on his knees, his fingertips lightly touching, and his eyes stare at the floor. If he has flinched, no one has noticed.”

Now, in my opinion, Dr. Yang is wrong, I think the other people did notice but didn’t know how to react. As creators of this performance it is important to think about what is normal behavior and whether we endeavor to challenge that.  We are already making strange the idea of waiting because who really sits and waits for 40 minutes for something to happen?  As a group we need to make the decision, are we going to push this even more?

My opinion is that we need to make the whole piece more uncomfortable, we want people to be checking the time thinking that they get to leave in however many minutes, we want to passing of time to be slow to emphasise the point that a lot has happened in this room and in our lives and all we can do is try to feel it.

References

Medpage today, 2013, The other people in the waiting room. [online] Available at <http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/04/people-waiting-room.html> [Accessed 1^st May 2014].

Yoon, J. 2010, Anxiety of Patients in the Waiting Room of the Emergency Department [online] Available at < http://tei-conf.org/10/uploads/Program/p279.pdf> [Accessed 1^st May 2014].