TEMPLATES

Throughout the MFA I have been subject to comparisons between my work and social/scientific experiments associated with control and obedience. It is true that each of the situations I produce is reliant on a structure to obtain a level of commitment from the participant and has a psychological element, in terms of the particular types of behaviours I aim to draw from a given experience.

 

I have, however, stood by the point that I am not intending to manipulate but rather encourage a level of participation. That is to say, what I want to take from each installation/performance is not to be done so at the participant's expense. It is more to do with setting parameters. In this sense the level of control has to be subtle, and parameters quite loose, to ensure a potential participant can engage freely. This is not to be confused with the relational/antagonism argument.

 

The Stanford Prison and Milgram experiments have often been mentioned and I looked into a
re-enactment of the latter by the artist Rod Dickinson (The Milgram Reenactment, 2002). What I learnt from this work was that the straight re-enactment of a historic event/experiment lacked something. As a viewer of the work I couldn't find an emotional connection and I couldn't see what Dickinson wanted to achieve above making a carbon copy. I wanted to create controlled situations that participants could emotionally invest in, as would be attempted in What Are Other People Like...

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“I chose those particular events that are almost like templates and can then be mapped onto other places and times” (Rod Dickinson).

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What I did find useful was Dickinson's idea about the template. I could now see that my fascination with the Encounter Group and theatrical structures like improvisation and rehearsal could be useful. These could become the templates that would hold all the relevance to my practice and house the ideas I wanted to explore through my work.