After we had shared our ideas and images about Surrealism, Mr Fearnehough showed us some images.
This is the first...
(Artist Rene Magritte. I just showed my sister, an art student and incredibily bright girl, this image and asked her what she thought/what feelings she had from the image and she replied "nothing, it is a pipe)
I am still not 100% sure on the point of this but it is something allong the lines of langauges inadequacy. In Richards blog he wrote "The idea was to show that objects and names exist separately and that even though automatically we use word associations torationalize and object this is something Artaud wanted to break, break this normal reality of word associations and see something as a symbol and this was the aim of al surrealist artists where they hoped to limit these associations and let the imagination take hold and thus leading us to see that language is limiting." And in A new language, a new theatre, "The meaning of a word can almost be the opposite of its conventional meaning... Spoken in this sense 'house' loses its meaning. We have to discover its new significance in the context of all the actors movements."
Personally when I saw this image all I thought was that is wrong, it is a pipe, but I guess that is just me not being open minded enough. I take some comfort in the fact that like me Maria seemed to think it was nonsense, and I think Richard has understood something, but it is actually not what Artaud intended. To kind of like consolodate our knowledge of this langauge thing we played two games. In one we walked around pointing at things and saying their names as fast as we could and in the second we walked around and gave the objects different names, still trying to say it as fast as possible. In another, we had to have an arguement but by calling the other person a grape, or a shoe. But still as if we were very much insulted and annoyed.
Instead of visiting Golfech Tuesday, we decided we would much prefer rather to have our double drama lesson. We continued our work on the Humpty Dumpty rhyme we started last week. I actually really enjoyed this, I wanted it so we all did the same movements at the same time and so played the same character at the same time, I think like this is made the actions much more powerful. We all started off as Humpty Dumpty, me and richard sat side by side on stage identically, so our legs were crossed and we held our hands in the same way. Maria kneeled behind us to make us more of an egg shaped shape, she also held her hands in the same way as Richard and me. We made our faces into an almost grotesque, very exaggerated fixed smile that alsmost looked painful or a grimace, so our faces became a mask. We then swayed side to side in time, humming frere jacque. This wa the Humpy Dumpty sat on the wall part. For the Humpty Dumpty had a big fall part we stood up and changed our faces from the smiling face to a look of pure fear and terror, we then started breathing heavily (in a frightened way) as we dropped to the floor. We then writhed on the floor and used jerky movements to show breaking part while we screamed in pain. We then all became all the kings horses and all the kings men, Maria moved forward, Richard moved to the left and I to the right. We then stood up and moved back to the centre raising our knees high with our arms out in front of us making a sort of hutting noise (? - you know like hut hut hut). When we reached where Humpty Dumpty had fell we dropped to our knees and began putting him back together again. We each put our hands in front of us and then brought them back, while making noises as if hard at work. Our noises and movements quicked as we became more depserate untill we reached a climax screamed and fell backwards. I have only described this in such great detail as I was really happy with how it turned out.
For fridays lesson, we had to read Artauds play 'Jet of Blood' and watch Ignites versian on Youtube. Wow, it is so weird. I also watched some more versians on Youtube to see how different people intepreted the script, they were all so very different. I am still trying to work out what I make of it. I reckon Artaud was simply having a laugh when he wrote it, he is probably sat in heaven now looking down, laughing and thinking look at what these silly people are doing. (I decided to read The Monk as well to see if all his writing is like that, so far its pretty good and written like 'proper', Jet of Blood could not even be staged the way it is written).
We are considering doing an Artaud versian of Sarah Kanes play 4;48 Psychosis as our final play. I have already seen a few adaptions of this on Youtube when I looked for other Artaud performances. Sarah Kane quite reminds me of Artaud, her first play 'Blasted' dealt with themes such as; rape, sex, voilence, eye-gouging and cannibalism. Since her death (Sarah Kane hung herself in 1999) a lot of attention has been on her final play, 4:48 Psychosis, the name was due to the fact that it was 4:48 am when Kane would often wake. Some people have called the play a "thinly veiled suicide not", her brother says that "this simplistic view does both the play and mu sisters motivation for writing it an injustice."- Simon Kane also says " It is very narrow and trivial to look at the play simply as an expression of someone's biography - it limits interpretation and closes off other possible meanings. her work is much richer than just an expression of personal anguish." Charles Spencer, a Telegraph critic, wrote "you feel her work owes more to clinical depression than to real artistic vision". Graham Whybrow, Royal Court literary manager, said "each new play was a departure and to some extent an investigation of form. She left behind a body of work which is consistent in vision and diverse across a range of subjects." These two conflicting views reminded me of a book I have recently read, "The Psychopath Test" (Jon Ronson, I am definitely reccomending this) in one chapter a lady named Mary Barnes is mentioned, at the time staying in Kinglsey Hall a place were the mentally ill were allowed to express themselves in a creative way. Mary Barnes became a famous artist with people buying her art in order to understand the mind of someone mentally ill. This strikes me as somewhat Artaud, and makes me think of why people would watch 4:48 Psychosis ... Despite not being seen as normal it is fascinating for us to watch people who are not "quite right" and we want to know what it is about.
Georgia
Personally when I saw this image all I thought was that is wrong, it is a pipe, but I guess that is just me not being open minded enough. I take some comfort in the fact that like me Maria seemed to think it was nonsense, and I think Richard has understood something, but it is actually not what Artaud intended. To kind of like consolodate our knowledge of this langauge thing we played two games. In one we walked around pointing at things and saying their names as fast as we could and in the second we walked around and gave the objects different names, still trying to say it as fast as possible. In another, we had to have an arguement but by calling the other person a grape, or a shoe. But still as if we were very much insulted and annoyed.
Instead of visiting Golfech Tuesday, we decided we would much prefer rather to have our double drama lesson. We continued our work on the Humpty Dumpty rhyme we started last week. I actually really enjoyed this, I wanted it so we all did the same movements at the same time and so played the same character at the same time, I think like this is made the actions much more powerful. We all started off as Humpty Dumpty, me and richard sat side by side on stage identically, so our legs were crossed and we held our hands in the same way. Maria kneeled behind us to make us more of an egg shaped shape, she also held her hands in the same way as Richard and me. We made our faces into an almost grotesque, very exaggerated fixed smile that alsmost looked painful or a grimace, so our faces became a mask. We then swayed side to side in time, humming frere jacque. This wa the Humpy Dumpty sat on the wall part. For the Humpty Dumpty had a big fall part we stood up and changed our faces from the smiling face to a look of pure fear and terror, we then started breathing heavily (in a frightened way) as we dropped to the floor. We then writhed on the floor and used jerky movements to show breaking part while we screamed in pain. We then all became all the kings horses and all the kings men, Maria moved forward, Richard moved to the left and I to the right. We then stood up and moved back to the centre raising our knees high with our arms out in front of us making a sort of hutting noise (? - you know like hut hut hut). When we reached where Humpty Dumpty had fell we dropped to our knees and began putting him back together again. We each put our hands in front of us and then brought them back, while making noises as if hard at work. Our noises and movements quicked as we became more depserate untill we reached a climax screamed and fell backwards. I have only described this in such great detail as I was really happy with how it turned out.
We are considering doing an Artaud versian of Sarah Kanes play 4;48 Psychosis as our final play. I have already seen a few adaptions of this on Youtube when I looked for other Artaud performances. Sarah Kane quite reminds me of Artaud, her first play 'Blasted' dealt with themes such as; rape, sex, voilence, eye-gouging and cannibalism. Since her death (Sarah Kane hung herself in 1999) a lot of attention has been on her final play, 4:48 Psychosis, the name was due to the fact that it was 4:48 am when Kane would often wake. Some people have called the play a "thinly veiled suicide not", her brother says that "this simplistic view does both the play and mu sisters motivation for writing it an injustice."- Simon Kane also says " It is very narrow and trivial to look at the play simply as an expression of someone's biography - it limits interpretation and closes off other possible meanings. her work is much richer than just an expression of personal anguish." Charles Spencer, a Telegraph critic, wrote "you feel her work owes more to clinical depression than to real artistic vision". Graham Whybrow, Royal Court literary manager, said "each new play was a departure and to some extent an investigation of form. She left behind a body of work which is consistent in vision and diverse across a range of subjects." These two conflicting views reminded me of a book I have recently read, "The Psychopath Test" (Jon Ronson, I am definitely reccomending this) in one chapter a lady named Mary Barnes is mentioned, at the time staying in Kinglsey Hall a place were the mentally ill were allowed to express themselves in a creative way. Mary Barnes became a famous artist with people buying her art in order to understand the mind of someone mentally ill. This strikes me as somewhat Artaud, and makes me think of why people would watch 4:48 Psychosis ... Despite not being seen as normal it is fascinating for us to watch people who are not "quite right" and we want to know what it is about.
Georgia
