For our usual 5 minute presentation slot I decided to build on what I did last week. I decided to challenge the limits of the audience’s comfort zone.

I divided the audience into two and performed two things which I oscillated between. I wore rubber gloves throughout, saying that I “didn’t want to get my hands dirty”.

The first was a mild strip tease which involved me tying up a male member of the audience and taking my clothes off slowly in front of him. The other involved putting a member of the audience in danger, as I began to do the ‘Five Finger Fillet’ to them.  The diagram below shows the setup of the performance.

The idea of this piece was to explore the boundaries of comfort in audience members. By setting it like this I was able to see which people found what the more uncomfortable.  I wanted to see if audience members were glad that they weren’t watching the other performance.

First let’s analyse the ‘strip tease’. To start I put on gloves, and got a member of the audience to tie the ‘victim’ to the chair. To which I then put a police hat on top of him. I got very close to his face and began slowly taking off my clothes. To end it I sat on his lap in my underwear.

The five finger fillet had a similar layout to the week before, by spending time to set it up it created a tension in the room already. This time I put newspaper on a table. Already members of the audience remembering it from last week were already starting to panic, especially when I brought out the knife and laid it on the table. I then said for somebody to sit behind the table and three more audience members to watch them.  I placed their hand on the table and told them to spread out their fingers – already they began to worry. I then got the knife and slowly started the ‘Five Finger Fillet’ game, contrasting last week. I did this for two rounds, slightly faster on the second go. I then asked the ‘victim’ if they felt uncomfortable to which my reply was a scared nod of the head and a muttering of “yes”.  Then I asked, “Would you feel uncomfortable if I was to push this knife into my hand?” Again the same response and also the people watching it began to say “No! No! Don’t do that!” To which, of course, I then pushed the knife into my hand, through the glove and what looked like into my hand. To the audience’s surprise and indeed the victim’s, blood began to pour from the hole, onto the newspaper and onto the victim. The video below shows how this was constructed under the glove.

As you can see with the knife being pushed into the Clingfilm sack of blood, from the outside the audience would just see it looking like I am plunging the knife though the glove and into my hand. As the sack is pierced blood pours out and the area around the sack can be pressed to make more blood seemingly ooze out.

Feedback from this proved beneficial. The responses of fear and the notion of challenging comfort zones was certainly achieved. The group who had the striptease decided that they felt left out a bit as I seemed to focus more of my time on the other group. They also thought about the possibility of moving the two pieces around so it faced each other and to see if it worked well if it was just one-to-one. This was only a simulation for next weeks presentation.

Levels of comfort are quite possibly something I would be willing to look at for my final piece. But whether, it is physiological, physical or audience based yet, I do not know.

7/2/14

For my performance today, I decided to look at the ‘game’, ‘Five Finger Fillet’. It was inspired by Marina Abramović’s ‘Rhythm 10’, where she played the ‘Five Finger Fillet’ game and every time she cut herself she would pick up a new clean knife. She cut herself 20 times. She had recorded the sound of it and played it back. Next time she played the recording back and matched up the relevant cuts and misses to that on the recording.

This got me thinking about how I could perform something similar and I came to the conclusion of doing it psychologically, looking at the build up to it rather than the execution.

I did not speak through the duration of the piece. I wore a shirt, trousers, shoes, a tie and a jacket. I began by organising the audience to sit on the floor in a semi-circle, where I then placed newspaper at their feet.I continued to do so until the whole area had been covered in newspaper. I took my time with this. I then placed a large wooden chopping board in the middle of the space, again I took my time. I then took off my shoes. I then placed an empty to litre bottle onto the chopping board and pulled out a knife. I then demonstrated to the audience, how sharp it was by shearing the top off the bottle with ease.

I then placed my hand down onto the chopping board and flexed my fingers; I then removed my tie and jacket and rolled up my sleeve. I placed my hand onto the chopping board raised the knife, hesitated then stopped.

I then put on blindfold and repositioned my hand. I raised the knife and will one almighty bang I plunged it into the chopping board, just missing my hand.

As for the feedback, my presentation had the desired effect; the audience was in ore and of course fear. The build-up of the presentation is what allowed the audience to construct the fear into their own minds. This phscological build-up is something I want to take forward to my final piece in order that I can “Scare the s**t” out of people, but done so in a contolled and stylish way. Below are some of the reactions as the performance took place:

31/01/2014

The room was dark and lined with bodies, uncomfortably touching. The Undertaker paced around the bodies and began his story. The story of one man in prison, befriending an undertaker, to escape his hell. Only to find his escape short lived…

Our task for today – to create a five minute presentation that would unsettle the audience.

The story I chose was a story involving a man befriending an undertaker to escape prison. He goes into the church late one night and lifts a casket. Yes there is a body. And gets inside. The following morning as the casket is delivered to its destination it is put into the ground and dirt is piled up on top. The man inside getting ever more impatient to escape the casket. Time passes and it seems no one is coming. He gets a lighter out of his pocket, and realises that the body he was lying on was that of the undertaker.

From speaking to some of the class it was evident that they were unsure as to why they were lying down, with their eyes shut. But as the story was painted, the audience realised why they were lying down, uncomfortably, intimately touching each other – that they were bodies in a coffin. The sudden realisation of the finale of the story made the audience unsettled and as their eyes were closed they imagined the horror of what was happening.

The idea to have the audience lying down as if they were bodies in a casket was a spontaneous late decision. On reflection it would be interesting if I was able to move the audience to face each other without them knowing to make them feel more uncomfortable, like the prisoner facing the undertaker’s body.