Tag Archives: Linford Butler

‘Under the red light’: Contemporary artistic impressions of the photographic darkroom

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The popular image of the photographer’s darkroom, from William Bock’s installation of Dark Room. Morgan, M. [Performance still from Dark Room by William Bock] 2013 [image online] Available at: http://williambock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Darkroomlr.jpg. [Accessed 25 March 2014].

The popular image of the photographer’s darkroom, from William Bock’s installation of Dark Room.
Morgan, M. [Performance still from Dark Room by William Bock] 2013 [image online] Available at: http://williambock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Darkroomlr.jpg. [Accessed 25 March 2014].

In considering the role of photography in performance and in developing my own piece of site-specific work informed by the mediation of photography between subject and site, the photographic darkroom has become a space and an image of great interest. My site-specific performance brings the audience into the photographer’s darkroom, where they are asked to engage and interact with the processes and mechanics of the setting, and consider the way in which the development and subsequent forgetting of a photograph could be seen as an extended metaphor for the construction and gradual disuse of the Grandstand site. The photographic darkroom, for me, has become a space which is central to my performance. Therefore, I was interested to conduct research into other contemporary and (ideally) performance-based impressions of the photographic darkroom, which might prove useful in the continued development of my site-specific performance.

The image of the darkroom appears to be a readily-used one. My research into performances which engaged with the idea of the photographic darkroom led me to understand the varying understandings of the darkroom’s function and use within a wider theatrical context, and has led me to identify four different ways in which the darkroom is used within theatrical art:

  1. The darkroom as a performance setting – the darkroom in its literal sense and form;
  2. The ‘dark room’ – a place of little or no light, or a place of dark, gothic potential;
  3. The darkroom as a catalyst space of creative potential and experimentation; and,
  4. The darkroom as a static archival space.

Considering the research I have conducted in the course of writing this article, the performance artworks I have considered can roughly be filed into one of the four above categories.

Many performance works which concern themselves with photography and the photographic form use the darkroom as a ready-made image, setting narratives about photography within the darkroom to manage expectations and to play on the ever-present thematic link between the two. Martha Jurksaitis locates her performance Revelation in a Dark Room as “situated in a photographic darkroom” (Jurksaitis, 2012), with the image of the red light used as a shorthand for ‘photography’ as a theme but also as a lighting technique: “The audience were invited in while the red darkroom safelight was on, but once they were all in and the door closed, the light went off and the piece began in pitch blackness.” (Jurksaitis, 2012). Metro-Boulot-Dodo’s 2002-3 production, Blownup, focusses on the narrative between photographer and muse, inviting the audience to “enter the darkroom as [they] expose the very private world of photography” (Metro-Boulot-Dodo, n.d.). Similarly to Jurksaitis, the company present the darkroom as many would expect to see it, bathed in a red light or lit by camera flash (Metro-Boulot-Dodo, 2008). The performance also suggests the surrounding scientific narrative of the darkroom space, playing on the dualistic photographic and narratological meetings of the word ‘development’ in marketing material: “In the dark room developments occur” (BBC Lincolnshire, 2002); a “chemical soaked fusion” (Metro-Boulot-Dodo, n.d.).

Metro-Boulot-Dodo’s Blownup takes place under the red wash of the developer’s light, a familiar representation of the darkroom. Metro-Boulot-Dodo [Production still from Blownup] n.d. [image online] Available at: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5207/5222937999_2e0db20c78.jpg. [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Metro-Boulot-Dodo’s Blownup takes place under the red wash of the developer’s light, a familiar representation of the darkroom.
Metro-Boulot-Dodo [Production still from Blownup] n.d. [image online] Available at: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5207/5222937999_2e0db20c78.jpg. [Accessed 22 March 2014].

The darkroom is often used in its literal sense: a ‘dark room’, a space with little or no natural or artificial light, and the distinction that this impression engages with, between light and darkness, often leads a darkly gothic surrounding narrative. The Crispin Spaeth Dance Group’s performance, Dark Room, is performed “in a lightless room for a small audience equipped with night vision apparatus” (Novek, 2006), and the night-vision goggles – an almost exclusively militaristic gadget – introduce an element of violence into the concept of the darkened space. The Dark Room, by the Black Swan State Theatre Company and written by Angela Betzien, aligns the title with the “dark and dangerous territory” (Black Swan State Theatre Company, 2009) of the play’s setting, and the space itself appears to disturbingly isolate and separate the characters and their stories, even when in close proximity to one another: “the three narratives end up in the same room, all in their own time and space” (Locke, 2009). The claustrophobia and lightlessness of the darkroom is emphasised to varying effect, and the image of the darkroom is used to infer gothic ideas of blackness, darkness or isolation.

Within the wider theatre industry, the darkroom space is often emphasised as one of creative potential and experimentation, and as a catalyst for creative development. Body Narrative’s Collective’s choreographer, Julia Carr, identifies how “a dark room to her was always a ‘creative place for imagination’ – much like a theatre” (Spontaneous, 2013). The wide number of open-space programmes named ‘Dark Room’, which provide a stage for new and untested material, are a testament to the understanding within the theatrical world of the darkroom as a space for breakthrough and development. Battersea Arts Centre’s The Darkroom is “a retreat/laboratory environment” (Jubb, n.d.) within “a unique development programme for devising theatre companies” (Jubb, n.d.). Similarly, The Dark Room at the Cleveland Public Theatre is marketed as “a venue to workshop plays, novels, poems, or any other written work in a supportive, yet critical environment” (Cleveland Public Theatre, 2014) and as “a place where writers take center [sic] stage and their work has a chance to grow” (Cleveland Public Theatre, 2014). The idea of a “safe space for artists from all different fields, all different genres, all different styles” (New Light Theatre Project, 2013) is common to many programmes presenting new work across the world, as is the idea of work “developed in the Darkroom” (New Light Theatre Project, 2013). Within Body Narratives Collective’s work Dark Room: The Realm of Symbols, Science and Memories, the theatre black box and the dark room are aligned as “blank canvasses and magic is created, light is added” (Sumar, 2013), in which the theatre is used as “photographic studio and dark room to reveal the process of creating photographic images as a performance medium” (Roundhouse, n.d.). Martha Jurksaitis’ work also touches on the idea of creative potential in noting that “the French word for film developer is ‘revelateur’, which means something that reveals” (Jurksaitis, 2012), suggesting the darkroom’s potentiality to reveal ideas or breakthroughs to the creator.

Body Narratives Collective’s art is informed by and creates photography, such as this image of the light traces of their dance. Body Narratives Collective [Production still from Dark Room: The Realm of Symbols, Science and Memories] 2013 [image online] Available athttp://vanvantage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Light-Dance-2.jpg. [Accessed 24 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective’s art is informed by and creates photography, such as this image of the light traces of their dance.
Body Narratives Collective [Production still from Dark Room: The Realm of Symbols, Science and Memories] 2013 [image online] Available athttp://vanvantage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Light-Dance-2.jpg. [Accessed 24 March 2014].

Finally, the idea of the darkroom as a space almost frozen in time or held in stasis is another that some pieces of contemporary performance confront. Ellen Carr’s The Darkroom is the story of “an old man whose only way of remembering things is to write them down and order them in his shed, the darkroom” (Hutton, 2012 – quotation reformatted), in which the darkroom becomes an archival space of memory outside the realm of time. Similarly, Body Narratives Collective approaches the darkroom as a temporally static space, asking the audience: “what if there was no beginning and no end; no linear progression through time.” (Body Narratives Collective, 2013). It approaches performance like a photograph, foregoing ideas of linear narrative and focussing on the static and the captured, and going so far to create photographs as part of their performance: “These long exposure photographs reveal the traces that remain from light dance pathways. Is this how you remember the dance? Is this what you saw?” (Body Narratives Collective, 2012).

Within contemporary theatre, the image of the darkroom stands for many interlinked but distinct ideas. Ideas of darkness, gothic potential, creative potential, experimentation, catalyst, archival and staticness are all bound up within the familiar, red-tinted aesthetic of the photographer’s hideaway. The widespread use of the darkroom as an image and title within theatre betrays a strongly-rooted thematic link between the theatre space and the photography space, between the theatre and the darkroom. Performance and photography share a number of themes which cannot be dismissed as entirely disaffective of one another. Creative forms influence and inform one another, and the theatre-photography link is no different. The black box theatre is the actor’s darkroom, and the photographic lab is the photographer’s stage.

 

Performances cited

Black Swan State Theatre Company/Angela Betzien: The Dark Room (2009)

Body Narratives Collective: Dark Room (2012-13)

Crispin Spaeth Dance Group: Dark Room (2006)

Martha Jurksaitis: Revelation in a Dark Room (2012)

Metro-Boulot-Dodo: Blownup (2002-3)

William Bock: Dark Room (2013)

 

References

BBC Lincolnshire (2002) BBC – Lincolnshire Stage – On stage. [online] Lincoln: BBC. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/stage/theatre_whats_on.shtml [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Black Swan State Theatre Company (2009) The Dark Room by Angela Betzien. [online] Perth, Australia: Black Swan State Theatre Company. Available from: https://www.bsstc.com.au/about/archive/2009/the-dark-room/ [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective (2013) Performance Projects. [online] Vancouver, Canada: Body Narratives Collective. Available from: http://bodynarrativescollective.wordpress.com/projects/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective (2012) Dark Room (Preview). [online video] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enxD4TkBXHU [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective (2013) Dark Room Promo Sept 2013. [online video] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvK3tMwsEDg [ Accessed 22 March 2014].

Body Narratives Collective [Production still from Dark Room: The Realm of Symbols, Science and Memories] 2013 [image online] Available from: http://vanvantage.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Light-Dance-2.jpg. [Accessed 24 March 2014].

Cleveland Public Theatre (2014) The Dark Room. [online] Cleveland, U.S.A.: Cleveland Public Theatre. Available from: http://www.cptonline.org/theater-show.php?id=44 [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Hutton, D. (2012) Theatre Reviews: “The Darkroom” by Ellen Carr. [online] Available from: http://dan-hutton.co.uk/2012/08/18/the-darkroom-by-ellen-carr/ [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Jubb, D. (n.d.) What is the Darkroom? [online] London: Battersea Arts Centre. Available from: http://www.darkroomtheatre.com/What-is-Darkroom/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Jurksaitis, M. (2012) My live film performance ‘Revelation in a Dark Room’. [online] Available from: http://cherrykino.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/revelation-in-dark-room.html [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Locke, A. (2009) Review: The Dark Room | Black Swan State Theatre Company. [online] Perth, Australia: Australian Stage. Available from: http://www.australianstage.com.au/reviews/perth/the-dark-room–black-swan-state-theatre-company-2518.html [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Metro-Boulot-Dodo (n.d.) Blownup. [online] Leicester: Metro-Boulot-Dodo. Available from: http://www.metro-boulot-dodo.com/blownup.html [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Metro-Boulot-Dodo [Production still from Blownup] n.d. [image online] Available from: http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5207/5222937999_2e0db20c78.jpg. [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Metro-Boulot-Dodo (2008) Blownup promo. [online video] Available from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epxTcZ25lF0 [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Morgan, M. [Performance still from Dark Room by William Bock] 2013 [image online] Available from: http://williambock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Darkroomlr.jpg. [Accessed 25 March 2014].

New Light Theatre Project (2013) Darkroom Series. [online] Available from: http://newlighttheaterproject.com/darkroom-series [Accessed 23 March 2014].

Novek, Y. (2006) Dark Room. [online] Available from: http://www.yannnovak.com/works/score/dark-room/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Roundhouse (n.d.) Dark Room. [online] Vancouver, Canada: Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre. Available from: http://roundhouse.ca/ai1ec_event/dark-room/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Spontaneous, C. (2013) A Union of Disciplines and Minds: The Body Narratives Collective and Their Upcoming Production, Dark Room. [online] Vancouver, Canada: Vandocument. Available from: http://vandocument.com/2013/11/a-union-of-disciplines-and-minds-the-body-narratives-collective-and-their-upcoming-production-dark-room/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

Sumar, F. (2013) E=MC2 IN THE DARK ROOM. [online] Vancouver, Canada: Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre. Available from: http://roundhouse.ca/emc2-dark-room/ [Accessed 22 March 2014].

A Process of Discovery: photographs from our first exploration of the site

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This gallery contains 16 photos.

Click on the images above for full-resolution versions and Harvard-referenced citations. Further to my previous blog post, entitled “Considering Image: Performativity, Aesthetic and the Documentary Process“, which discussed in some detail some varying theories on the ways in which photography … Continue reading →

Considering Image: Performativity, Aesthetic and the Documentary Process

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Vason, M. (2013) ‘Collaborative Actions #1’. [electronic print] Available at: http://lncn.eu/dkx4 [Accessed 28 February 2014].

Vason, M. (2013) ‘Collaborative Actions #1’. [electronic print] Available at: http://lncn.eu/dkx4 [Accessed 28 February 2014].

“On top of these possible points of convergence, performing arts and photography share a conceptual apparatus in which terms such as theatricality, performativity, representation and visuality [sic] function as important points of reference.”(Vanhaesebrouck, 2009, 98)

For the purposes of this article, ‘photography‘ should be understood as relating to performance photography solely, rather than photographic practise in general.

The capturing of a photographic image during the documentary research process involved in site-specific performance is an interesting process to study. Since our first outings to the Grandstand, our experience of the site has been largely mediated by the confines of the camera viewfinder or screen, our interaction with the site framed through the production of visual images. With the production of aesthetic documents being such a central part to the interactive process between student and site, it is interesting to consider the ways in which photography and performance intersect and interact with one another.

At what point does the photographic image irrevocably fuse with the performative act or site? Karel Vanhaesebrouck’s study into the use of photography in performance identifies how “photography has always held a tense relation with theatre practice, […] contaminating each other in a permanent and systematic way” (Vanhaesebrouck, 2009, 97) and how photography can “serve as dramaturgical matière brute, or it can be utterly performative in its own right” (Ibid., 98).

There is a strong academic argument behind the idea that performance photography and the performance act are interwoven, that “theatre photography is an integral part of the signification process which is at the very heart of performance studies” (Ibid., 97). The performance act relies on a system of signification, utilised by the performer to translate meaning to the audience, a term taken very loosely here not to mean just the live spectator of a performance, but also the viewer of a photograph or the inhabitant of a performance site. To this extent, the peritextual documentation surrounding this performance – the flyer, trailer, programme, newspaper interviews, reviews and, naturally, the production photography – can only be considered part of the signification process of that piece of performance art, due to the fact that each of them are involved in giving meaning to an audience about that performance. To this extent, performance and photography cannot be isolated as separate elements; instead, the two make up a dialogic activity, in which “performance – even if it is a performance in the strict sense of the word, namely that of performance art – is mediated by means of film or photography” (Ibid., 104). Joseph Beuys’ performance I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) was made up not only by the performance itself, but also the extra-performative elements – “the preparations, the flight to New York and back, transport in an ambulance from the airport to the gallery” (Ibid, 104) – which were all documented through photography, a clear example of the way in which performance and photography interact at a basic level to create one piece of work. The photographic documentation of a performance can be seen as an equally valid part as the set, costume or actor, in itself valuable to the signification process of that piece of work.

However, one can also see photography as being in itself a performance act. If we agree that “one cannot consider theatre photography […] to be a direct residue of an event that disappeared from the moment it was acted out” (Ibid., 100) then we accept the fact that performance photography can never truly capture the performance in all its detail; photography fails to capture the complex temporal and spacial rhythms of not only the performance, but also the interactions of audience and passers-by with the performance, technical elements and the site itself. Paul Simpson’s study of the space-times of street performance identifies this, stating that “an image or series of images cannot necessarily fully capture or evoke such rhythms and their qualities.” (Simpson, 2012, 425) Therefore, images of performance have to be to some extent considered to be their own sub-form, trapped between independence from and reliance upon the performance act. Melissa Heer calls this separate form the “photo-performance project” (Heer, 2012, 538). The performance photograph can be seen as interdependent upon the performance itself, but cannot present unadulteratedly the exact experience of that performance: the performance captured in the image becomes something distinct and different, through the act of capturing and processing the image. The photograph is in itself a performance site, a stage for the “continuous play between illusionistic realism and self-reflexive artifice” (Ibid., 538) of performance. Manuel Vason, whose photography seeks to “bridge photography and performance” (Vason, n.d.) is a notable artist within this area, his work “largely transcending the exclusively documentary” (Vanhaesebrouck, 2009, 105), establishing a form which is “photography as an autonomous performative practice” (Ibid., 105). When viewed in such a manner, the performance or site captured within a photographic image can be seen as its own distinct space, and certainly as a separate artistic enterprise, rather than just an aesthetic representation of the original thing photographed.

Photography, therefore, can be seen in two lights with relation to photography:

  1. As an unisolable part of the performance act, part of a continuous process of dialogue whereby the performance act informs the photographic image, and vice-versa; or,
  2. As a separate ‘space’ or ‘site’ from the live performance, unable to fully recreate the true conditions of the live act, and as such a separate or distinct space.

To relate these two conclusions to site-specific performance practice, the images produced during the exploratory developmental process of the work can be seen as either an intrinsic part of that work, in which the two are so bound up that the whole piece can never be captured by an audience member without an intimate knowledge of both the final work and its photographic contextual documentation; or as separate spaces or sites altogether, the site and site-specific performance within the image fundamentally different to the live art experience.

Having had our experience of the Grandstand so far largely documented and mediated through the use of photography, I find it personally interesting and enlightening to consider the way in which, when taking those photographs, we are engaging in a process of creation and documentation which is involved directly in the cycle of signification along with the site itself and the work we create there. I have specifically avoided uploading images I have taken of the Grandstand within this article, as I feel their inclusion may in some ways divert attention from the complex argument being made here. However, in creating images of the site throughout the rest of the process, it is important that we each consider the artistic responsibility we have to the site and to our work when creating photographs which will ultimately inform and affect what we do.

 

References:

Heer, M. (2012) Restaging Time: Photography, Performance and Anachronism in Shadi Ghadirian’s Qajar Series. Iranian Studies, 45(4) 537-548.

Simpson, P. (2012) Apprehending everyday rhythms: rhythmanalysis, time-lapse photography, and the space-times of street performance. Cultural Geographies, 19(4) 423-445.

Vanhaesebrouck, K. (2009) Theatre, performance studies and photography: a history of permanent contamination. Visual Studies, 24(2) 97-106.

Vason, M. (n.d.) Artist Statement – Manuel Vason. [online] London: Manuel Vason Studio. Available from: http://www.manuelvason.com/artist-statement/ [Accessed 28 February 2014].