Teaching and Learning

by Ruth Barker, 30 Nov 2009

Hello,
busy week here at PAR+RS last week, as I’m trying to organise a PAR+RS-sponsored event that will take place during Glasgow international. I can’t confirm anything yet, but conversations so far seem to point to something quite special – yet another reason (should you need one) to save the Gi dates in Spring: April 16 – May 4th. Very exciting, but also kinda complex logistically…

I was also at Glasgow Uni this week doing some teaching that touched on my own practice – working on an undergraduate module in the Theatre, Film, and TV department called Writing for Performance. I was hugely nervous, but the students were without exception brilliant. We had a great conversation about site specificity in relation to performance, and some of their questions and comments have really stayed with me. In particular was the issue of Control. I went out of my way to try and describe all the elements of a context that an artist might want to think about, and to make their work in relation to – things like the economic content, as well as the ergonomic, historical, and so on. But I think I explained this badly, and one student rightly picked me up on it, questioning my need to control every element within the location. I came across as some kind of wierd obsessive intent on manipulating the world to my own advantage. The only way I could think of to try to dig myself out of the hole was to admit my inarticulacy, beg their understanding, and try again, this time talking about the site specific work as a gift that the artist bequeathes to a space, and that that they must know the context intimately to be able to donate appropriately. With I guess the proviso that you’re also within your rights to give a gift that you know might jar the recipient. But that idea of site specificty as an article of control has stayed with me. The student touched something there, and I need to think more about it.

Later I set them an excercise – 15 minutes in which they each had to come up with a performer, a place, and a ‘why’, before pitching their proposal in 5 minutes flat. I was mightily impressed with the stuff they came up with, and the diversity of ideas and associations that were raised. The proposals were by turns funny, disconcerting, affectionate, thoughtful, generous, critical, personal, epic, and revealing. It’s a shame in a way to pick out particular examples, because each and every student deserves a congratulatory mention. I don’t have time to do them all justice though, so instead I will, despite myself, try to cherrypick a few just to give you some idea of the range.

There was the alternative guided tour of Glasgow city centre, with an open-top bus load of passengers treated to a psychogeographical derive composed of both historical and personal legacies – a potent mix of slavery and inebriation.

There was the intimate history of a single bench in Queen’s Park on the South Side of Glasgow, combining the narrative of the bench-maker with the social function of the object during a single summer’s day.

There was the billboard or newspaper ad that asked volunteers to meet at a given place and time. Unprepared, they are then met by John Hurt, who leads them into the darkness of a night-time forest, before telling them suitable stories.

And of course the evocative idea of the performer who walks the length of Erskine beach making visible (or audible) the multiple and contradictory histories of the place as they pause, recount a story, and walk again, all with the shadow Erskine bridge – notorious as a suicide spot – at their shoulder.

Brilliant. Well done all. You make me jealous of your lively brains.

more later,
R

Forgot to say – went to the CCA on Saturday for the bookfair and launch of 2HB and was wowed by performance work by Sarah Tripp and Katherine Elkin (the latter work scripted by Elkin and abley performed by Shelly Nadashi and Martine Myrup). A real treat!