Covent Garden Entertainment (Sarika Patel)

A pub that is dedicated to Punch and Judy. (The first entertainment which was a puppet show that was recorded in Covent Garden

                                      David Marcus, The street performer I interviewed. 

My Weekday Trip

Street Performer struggles to attract a big crowd on a weekday.

Attracts attention by taking his clothes off, the crowd got bigger! 

Jeeves and Parsifal

In addition to the three concerts I described, and the effect of their space and audience on the performances, I will proceed to analyze two theater works I have seen in a similar manner. These two staged performances were of Andrew Lloyd Webber's By Jeeves and Richard Wagner's Parsifal. By Jeeves was a very low-budget performance, taking place on the first floor of a pub with only three rows of seating surrounding the stage. The small, dark space did not provide the actors much room to move, and so there was no defined boundary between the audience and the allocated performance space. As part of the show, for example, one actor handed out sandwiches to random audience members, making us feel and appear to be onlookers not only to the musical, but also to the character of Jeeves himself as if we were in the musical. Even though the car Jeeves drove was clearly a cardboard box, the low-budget production of the show did not detract from its believability since the audience felt like part of the show. On the other hand, seeing Wagner's five and a half hour performance of Parsifal at the English National Opera was a very different artistic experience. This time, I was one of hundreds of audience members, overlooking the elaborate staging from a balcony. Most of the audience looked much older and more well dressed than I was, creating a social gap and disconnecting me from the overall experience a bit. However, the man snoring behind me made me feel much more like a part of the experience than some. The costumes looked like they were elaborate, though I could hardly see from my seat, and seeing this work was much more introspective than any others I have gone to lately. Yet, it was during the two intermissions, one being forty-five minutes long, that the social interactions and connections mostly clearly took place. From this fact, and my observation that they did not seem to talk much about the performance during this time, I believe that being at the show, rather than the show itself, is more to some of the audience's interest. Whether seeing a couple kissing or an old man sleeping, I was led to feel a strengthened connection with the performance because of my actual interest in seeing and hearing it, which is further emphasized by the fact that I went to this five and a half hour event alone. This performance reminds me a bit of West End art galleries, filled with student tour groups, meandering tourists, and people who are looking just for the sake of it, rather than By Jeeves which is more like the smaller and more obscure galleries that are generally only found by those who are truly interested.

AZ

Robyn

On 3 March, I went to see the famous Swedish electropop artist Robyn performing at the Roundhouse in Camden, a much larger venue with a larger and more diverse audience. Unlike the Glasser and James Blake shows where I was only a few rows away from the stage, at this show I could hardly see the stage from where I was standing. The audience members did not quietly listen to the music this time, but were jumping, dancing, singing, and shouting, making it difficult for me to experience what was on stage. Rather than absorbing, the audience this time was very clearly emitting. In this sense, the energy of the audience was a very strong part of my experience, and thus a part of the art and performance. Just as Carol Duncan describes the art museum as a place of ritual, this large, dome of a music venue had a strong feeling of a sacred space. Visually, the stage had two large pinwheels and Robyn's name written with an electronic robot appearance. The massive pinwheels made me feel even smaller as an audience member, and the technological theme also emphasized my feeling as part of a large, complex system of people. It was almost as if Robyn was an electronic power source, energizing the audience both directly and indirectly in this 'sacred' space of shared experience and interest.

AZ

James Blake

In contrast to the Glasser performance at XOYO described in a previous blog post, I have attended a much smaller popular music concert in Shoreditch as well. At Rough Trade East, on 7 February, I saw experimental electronic artist James Blake. Being only a CD store, this was a very small performance space open only to those who were quick enough to purchase his new CD there that morning and obtain a wristband. James Blake, a recent graduate of Goldsmiths, gave a relatively short and down-to-earth performance, although the quality of his music is very otherworldly and unique. The small audience was very quiet and receptive of this strange music, absorbing both the sounds and the artistic collage of CDs, vinyl, and music posters surrounding them in the store. In having a performance here, it is almost as if the store itself has come to life, replacing the material CDs with their original source. This show was even more intimate than Glasser's, but a bit more detached since James Blake almost seemed like an item in the store, nonchalantly being observed as he sat on display. The show was effective in that it emphasized that the city as a whole is art, since one does not have to venture into special music venue but can experience worthy performance art in a store just by buying a CD.

AZ

South Bank (photos by Jonathan Porcasi)

National Theatre, notice the brutalist architecture that make up most of these buildings.

The Undercroft, underneath Queen Elizabeth Hall

Skateboarders and the graffiti walls that make up the Undercroft.

Street Performers, impersonating celebrities

Newgreen spaces that make up South Bank

View of the Hayward

Book Stalls along the Bankside

Painting Transplant

For our painting we decided to go with The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, by Paul Delaroche.  We decided to take this painting and place it in a locked prison cell in Holloway Prison in Islington.  Holloway is a female prison where five inmates were executed through the course of the 20th century, the last being done in 1955.  In 1969, the death penalty was abolished in Great Britain.  We feel that by placing this painting in a locked cell it will raise some questions in the minds of the viewers, and create an interesting dialogue on ideas related to capital punishment, since many other countries still practice it, like the United States.

JP

The Coral Reef

A few weeks ago I went to The Tate Britain, which is the national gallery for British art. Having it the first time I’ve been there, it seemed like just another museum to me, paintings on the walls, different collages, sculptures and other typical artwork you would see. The Tate holds collections of famous paintings and different kinds of installations. The Tate Britain is a very formal museum, you see people walking around quietly, observing and educating themselves about the work the artist have presented.  The exhibition “The Coral Reef” by Mike Nelson installation is far different than the other displays in the Tate. This display at the Tate Britain encompasses doors, passageways, Rooms and signs of occupation but also decaying. When you first enter you’re hesitant to open that first door. When you enter you’re confused on how to approach the exhibit, should you be worried about people popping out and scaring you? Can you interact with the objects around you? Or should you just pop your head in and move on to the next door? There were many different ways people took in the experience of the exhibition. Many would take a glimpse of each room and walk to the next, others such as a group of high school students would play hide and seek pretending it was a haunted house. We were dropped into this maze without any warning, no maps, no labels of each room, most of all no indication that anything in the rooms does or ought to mean something. According to Nelson, he wanted the viewers to feel “lost in a world of lost people.” When going in you could see people trying to find something when in reality art was right in front of them, other just assumed they were lost so in panic their only goal is to find their way out. As for me I went through all the doors and tried to figure out what the artist was trying to say because I knew I might as well enjoy the experience until the way out presents itself.

Glasser

On Tuesday, 22 February, I went to see a concert by the American artist Glasser. Despite occasionally being mentioned on music sites such as Pitchfork, Glasser is not very well known in the US and is perhaps even less known over here. I was fairly surprised to find out that her 10 pound gig was not even sold out on the night of the performance, but I was glad that it was going to be a fairly intimate performance and experience of her art. I was only a few rows of people away from the small, underground stage, and the relatively small audience's sense of community could be felt in her performance. Glasser is an artist not just in the sense of music, as she wore a dramatic headdress, an unusual dress, and maintained a sense of mysterious theatricality throughout her mesmerizing performance. Such an experience of her art, music, and drama would not have been so effective in a large space, and I would have to wonder how she would change if she were to become more mainstream. Her only album, Ring, was written such that its nine tracks could be played over and over in a cycle like a ring, and I feel that this sense of a closed loop played an effective role in the performance space as well.

-AZ