Activism is a social event that uses freedom of speech as its main strength aiming to achieve change towards the cause in question. I believe activism starts within the community and for the community and as an artist/choreographer I belong in that community. Research the community as audience, the community as passers-by, the community as performers is an investigation that will make us understand that in an activist performance there is no separation between artist and audience/community, we are all together working for a cause. From a community point of view, any result is always more powerful and real when we understand the social matters that are in line and we do it together.

PURPOSE

RECODING

 

Understanding and appropriation the message can be a problematic process


PUBLIC / AUDIENCE RECEPTION

Public reception is a prominent research area within the broad spectrum of cultural and media studies. A whole text, performance, media presupposes an audience and even sometimes even builds your own audience. According to Sonia Livingstone, public studies "focus on the interpretative relationship between the public and the environment, where this relationship is understood within a broad ethnographic context". It addresses questions like - where does the meaning of a text lie? Is it within the text or somewhere in the relationship between the text and the audience? Thus, public studies are fundamentally concerned with the process of interpretation and construction of meaning. The search for understanding the social role of mass media and the phenomenon of media consumption. Although it has always been there in research in communication, it became part of cultural studies in the 1980s with the works of Stuart Hall, especially the first essay Encoding / Decoding. That proposes mass communication, highlighting the importance of active interpretation within relevant codes.

DECODING

The message contains more than one reading. Perception and interpretation of the message

3 CENTRAL PERMISES

THEORY

ENCODING

 

Creating a specific message in more than one way

EXPERIMENT

PUBLIC SPACE EXPERIEMENT Video

Questions arising as the experiment was being developed.

 

- How the awareness of the performers change?

- How the inputs changed? What they receive and give?

- Identify the sound to stimulate the movement?

              * The sound you produce 

              * How to interact between the changes; the group being only women.

 

 

PUBLIC SPACE Experiment

I experimented with a group of young performers an improvisation task that I worked first in the studio and after applying it to the public space. This experiment was one hour and 30 min long in the public space, relating to the natural sounds of the body, as well as the sounds of the real world. In times of pandemic, the being free in a public space has its limited time, limited spatial action, limited contact between the performers and the audience, limited audience. The group of performers are all females and the same of the task in the studio.

STUDIO EXPERIEMENT

STUDIO Experiment

The task in the studio consists on being in a closed space with 4 white walls, meaning the inputs from the real world do not exist. Relating to the natural sounds of the body and the sounds the body can produce and create on its own and with external inputs. To try to move and search the physicality through the sounds that can be produced form the body, with the body, and that the body can create and manipulate. The performers have available to explore in the improvisation task: harmonicas, microphone, guitar, sound effects machine and an accordion. The group of performers are all female.

Documenting the performers through audio recording after the experiments. The questions are the same for both: Studio and public space 

 

-          How did you feel in relation to the space? What was the outside input from the environment of the experiment?

-          Could you express your difficulties in both experiments?

-          How did you feel in relation to the other performers?

-          How connected with the experiment did you feel?

-          How did the space interfere and affected your movement exploration? And your emotions?

-          How aware of the audience were you in both cases? How did they influence your performance?

Movement research in relation to one's breath. The harmonica was presented to the performers as the responsible to amplify the individual breath and how from this amplification of someone's breath into sound and everything that we can relate in it can affect and be the stimulus of the research and exploration of the physicality.

THE EXPERIMENT ANALISES

 

The experiment rised a lot of different questions, but mostly it was very interesting to focus on the changes of the performers. The ability to change and adapt to the different atmospheres.

 

The experiment in the studio made them more aware of themselves and of the performance itself. Almost like they felt responsable for delivering interesting material to entertain an audience. The pressure and total awareness of being observed and in control of the stage was very clear and present even though it was a improvisation performance experimentation.

The fact they depended on each other was another interesting fact. Inside 4 walls, with no outside inputs or set or textures or even sounds they felt empty, almost like you need others to inspire you to.

They had to relay in their body in a more choreographic way to make the performance more appealing, maybe, to the audience.

They used the instruments to produce sound and the sound to produce movement. After 30min. into the experiment they started connecting into the enviroment created by them. It was clear to see how they are so dependent on each other in orther to keep going with the experiment. At some point it even felt some how fake as the emotional connection was not present and it was hard to connect with what was happening, however it was interesting to watch but with no depth. The relation with the internal sound amplified by the harmonica was very rich and with a lot of potential to achieve or develop the emotional charge but it did not get there. 

 

The experiment in the public space had very different layers and many interesting points to it.

It was very interesting to observe the growth of the experiment. Different points that straight away were very strong and clear and very different from the studio. 

The performers relation to the space, the enviroment, the atmosphere, the colours, the arquitecture, the objects, the rules, the audience or passers by, the weather...

It was all so full of inputs that the first 40min. they were just discovering the space, connecting with what was around them, not worried about each other or the performance, or the audience. They were focused completely on their own experience and their own discovering.

The experiment was for 90minutes, under the rain and in times where a pandemic lock down creates limitations not only in the performers, but mainly in the audience. Connecting for some passers by was extremely difficult as they felt at this time people show not be doing public space performances. There was a passer by that for some reason called the police and said people were vandalising the streets. The police stops by to understnd what was going on and after a quick explanation about what we were doing the police officer, gave me the thums up and told me that it was great to see that happening and wished us a great day. At this point the experiment was happening for about 60minutes and many questions starting arising.

 

- A group of 12 women being free in a public space area.

- Women acting how women should not act in public according to steriotipes.

- The sensation of freedom that gave audience due to the Pandemic restictions and lockdowns

- The performers total heart given during the experiment for their own richness

- The performers need to be free and performing

- The performers freedom as women of society

- The audience influence on the performers level of engagement