In The Window Placement - Bound Unbound Performance and End of the Exhibition

For this performance, I was a little less nervous in the run up to it than for the one before. I was excited after the previous performance receiving positive feedback and excited to finish my placement. It was a little sad to see the exhibition come to an end but great to feel like it was completed successfully. I was ready to reflect on the the exhibition, the performances and the placement, especially after the delay due to lockdown; I started this placement five months ago! The past two weeks have been so intense and so fast after being unable to work on anything tangible during the lockdown period but it is has been an amazing experience. 

The performance was less rigidly planned than the one the week before and I had worried it would not be long or strong enough. It also had a larger turnout of friends and fellow students passing-by after posting about the previous performance online which made me more nervous. All in all I felt the performance went well and has given me a lot of things to think about and ideas for future. The response from the audience and from Glen at AirSpace was really positive, which gave me a lot of confidence. 

During the performance, I cut the ties to the suspended mask as part of the installation which could not be easily suspended again after performing.  After the previous performance, the changes to and traces in the space served to improve and evolve the exhibited work but this time the removal of this soft sculpture from one side of the window left it looking less effective and slightly unbalanced as there were only objects and traces in one half of the space. After discussing the performance and congratulating me on a. job well done, Glen asked if I would like to leave it up until the Monday or remove the work the same day as the performance. I felt like removing it that day would be best but had only viewed the exhibition post-performance from within the window, I went outside to see how it looked before coming to a final decision. Having seen the space, I felt it was time to clear out the exhibition as what was left was not as strong as what had been previously exhibited and the posters had advertised the exhibition being on up until this date. 

Clean up was so quick! I only had to remove the camera for documentation purposes, the chair and then sweep the traces on the floor into my case. I also took the posters out of the clip frames to the side of the window and that was everything done. The great thing about working with fabric on this scale and performing using minimal props is that everything is so easily set up, taken down and transported. Although whilst writing this have realised I have left some loop head screws in the wall and window in the space so will be sure to email Glen about it! 

The day after the performance, I selected, uploaded and edited the photos from the performance taken by my partner and sent them over to Glen before posting them online. I also sent over the video footage to be edited! Glen asked that we meet to discuss the placement in a couple of weeks and will be sending me a Google Form to fill in to evaluate my time there, which will be a useful tool and exercise before completing my placement evaluation for assessment. In the meantime, I will gather feedback from those who I know saw the exhibition and/or performances to be used for both the Google Form and my own evaluation. It will be great to know what people thought of the work, how it made them feel and what they disliked about the work or what they might change. It feels great to have completed my placement - bar, obviously, the evaluation|! 

[Photos by Gary Birch]