Unit 4: I Object Project

I Object

Project Workshop 30/10/18

In this class we began a new project, working a commission piece for the British Museum to accompany the new exhibition by Ian Hislop called "I Object". We sat down and defined a series of works linked with the piece we would be devising and the exhibition:

the) Establishment

A business organisation, public institution, or household. For example, the government, police. Those who maintain the 'status quo'.

Orthodox

Following the traditional or generally accepted rules of beliefs of a religion, philosophy, or practice. For example, an orthodox church goes exactly by The Bible.

Subversion

The undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution.

Subversive

Seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution.

Dissenting

Hold or express opinions that are at variance with those commonly or officially held.

Dissent

The holding or expression of opinions at variance with those commonly or officially held.

Satire

Mockery and ridicule of those usually in politics or other positions of power/authority and influence.

Authority

Individuals/organisations with the power to enforce decisions/give orders/unsure obedience.

Protest

A statement/action demonstrating disapproval or objection.

Objection

An action of disapproval disagreement.

Ridicule

To make a mockery of someone/something.

We were then shown pictures of some of the objects in the exhibition like the pussyhats worn to protest Donald Trump's misogynistic comments about grabbing a women "by the pussy". 

We made posters with the topics we know have or are protested around the world:

Project Workshop 5/11/18

In this project we talked about what we would object to. I had a long list of things I would protest but eventually came up with the slogan "Your Country Kid Needs You" based on the famous war poster with the tagline changed from "God Save The King" to "God Help Our Generation"

 We then went off to individually come up with 4 movements on our own to represent our protests. We were then put into pairs, I was partnered with Nehemie and luckily our movements were quite similar so we could combine our movements very easily with a couple of new movements so make a sequence of 8 movements. 

We then joined another pair, Tilia and Leah and combined our sequences to make a much more extended sequence both implicit and explicitly symbolising different types of protest.

British Museum Visit 1/11/18

Instead of project we visited the exhibition on this day. We filled out sheets about what part of the exhibit we found the most interesting and why. 

Project Workshop 12/11/18

In this lesson we began with a warm up and then practiced everything we had worked on in the previous lesson. We worked on what could make our 4 person group gestures better and more protest-like. We then merged with the other 4 person group. We stuck with our same movement sequence with our group of 4 but this continues and we begin to do the same movements as the other group- making the class unified apart from Marshall and Rina's dance sequence in front of us.

Project Workshop 13/11/18

Today in project a woman from the British Museum came in to see how our piece was coming along. This was the first time we'd performed it in front of an eternal but I felt it went quite well and she was very impressed with how the piece was developing.

We added speech to our piece today, each saying one sentence to sum up what the protest we'd each chosen was. Mine is "Your kid needs you."

We brain stormed possible costume ideas with the woman from the museum- looking at what we could wear to show our protests. Nothing really stood out as a possible link to mine so I came up with the idea of writing the tagline of my protest on a white t-shirt- "God save our generation"

Project 19/11/18

We started this project class by warming up and began working on solo pieces to incorporate into our piece.

We re-capped the solo movement sequences that we'd created at the very beginning of the project but with some new elements. To help inspire us to make this movement link with our protest subjects we created mind-maps with themes and gestures that link in with our topics.

After creating our solo pieces we were put into pairs. My partner was Tilia who was protesting plastic in oceans: 

Tilia and I managed to incorporate the gestures and moves we'd decided on very well even though our protests aren't very similar.

Project 20/11/18

In this project class we continued to go over our solo and duet sequences to re-cap what we did in the previous class. Tilia and I had a discussion about how our duet movements linked in with our protest topics. For example, Tilia's reaching movement represents the sea calling for help and for change in how plastic is killing sea life but it also could represent a neglected or abused child calling or reaching out for help.

Another movement that links to both our protests is also when we put our hands over our mouths. This represents how the ocean and sea life can't vocally ask for help because they are unable to speak but also shows how abused children are often too scared to say anything.

To further develop our piece I came up with the idea of making the 'oceans' movements more violent so it could link in more to my protest. We started to make sure there was more contact between us.

Later during the lesson Nick from the British museum came to see how our performance was getting on. He really enjoyed it and said it was better than he expected and could really see our protests come to life throughout the piece.

To make our performance better we could be more in sync in the whole class sections of the piece as they are currently quite messy and don't look as effective as they would if it was all synced together.

We started to work on how to make a smooth transitions from the whole class sections into our duet and solo sections.

Project Workshop 26/11/18

In this lesson we worked on getting our piece a lot cleaner before our performance. I think overall the piece is very effective and thought-provoking but could be more so if it was more in-sync during the whole class sections. We also need to work on making spacing better as it would look a lot cleaner if this was to be altered slightly.

College Performance:

British Museum Performance:

Evaluation Essay

 I Object by Ian Hislop. Unit 4 Project

The Exhibition and its Themes:

The I Object exhibition is an exhibition curated by Ian Hislop, the editor of the magazine “Private Eye” and presenter on the satirical T.V show “Have I Got News For You. He used items in the British Museum storerooms to put together a collection of objects that show objection and dissent. Objects in the exhibition range from a deeply unflattering painted interpretation of King George III to protest his reign and policies over 100 years ago to pussy-hats worn during anti-Trump rallies in the last year in retaliation to his comments about grabbing a woman “by the pussy”.

2 Objects I Found Interesting:

Although I have already mentioned a couple of the objects in the exhibition, the 2 that caught by eye above the others were 1: the yellow umbrella from the Yellow Umbrella movement in 2014 based in Hong Kong, China and the collection of badges they had.

The yellow umbrella protested the restrictions and conformity of the communist Chinese regime. The yellow colour represents difference and individuality which many people felt they weren’t able to have because of the communist regime pushed onto them. This really stuck out for me as it is putting protest and spreading an important message with such an everyday mundane object which I found incredibly interesting.

The badges covered various different topics. They had campaign badges from the 2016 American election supporting Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as well badges from anti-Trump rallies. Other badges included positive LGBT messages and feminist slogans. These caught my eye as I have a collection of badges, many of which have similar messages and knowing that I’m speaking up for what I believe in just by having those badges really made me feel like I was doing something positive and I thought it was really nice to have something I could relate to in the exhibition.

The Development Process and Building On My Ideas:

We began the development process by talking about protests and social issues that we cared about as well as what exactly dissent and objection meant.

We then created a solo movement sequence of 4 moves based on the protest slogan we’d come up with previously. Mine featured running towards someone like I’d attracted their attention before backing up to show I’d been ignored as children often are if their parents are doing something else.

After we’d created this sequence we were put into pairs. My partner was Nehemie and we had similar movements which we integrated and made into a sequence of 8 movements which featured mimed shouting, slamming our fists on the floor and locking our elbows to represent “chained” protests.

After we had perfected this sequence we joined up with Tili and Leah to create a group of 4, we joined up our movements to create a much longer sequence featuring movements we’d all had in solos and making it into a group piece.

We then performed our piece along with the other group of 4 in the class and this worked really well as we were able to run through them and be involved in each other’s pieces will still keeping our own ideas.

We then moved on to involve Marshall and Rina in the next section which meant it was the whole class moving together. We used some of the choreography Tracy had taught the class the week before to give the piece structured and synchronised movement to show unification and a common cause which was just as important as displaying individuality. We then decided to shout our slogan as well as the tag line “Our opinions matter” before going back into a different duet, this time my partner was Tilia and we successfully were able to integrate our old solos in to make sense for both our arguments although they were very different.

Finally, we all came together at the end, saying the opposite of what our argument was (I said Kids don’t pay the bills) and finishing by chanting the words “I Object” and Marshall putting up a yellow umbrella like the one displayed in the museum.

My Protest and My Message:

My protest was “Your kid needs you” and was focused on parents not spending enough time with their children. The reason I thought of this slogan was because I remembered the famous old war poster with the slogan “Your Country Needs You” which was used to encourage young men to sign up for the army. I thought this was a twist on a traditional British value to match a modern problem and used the picture from the poster and wrote the old slogan but I crossed out country and instead wrote “kid”. I built on this idea and changed the tagline that was on the original poster (“God Save The King”) to “God Help Our Generation” which I wrote on a tshirt and wore as my costume for the performance.

My research for this was both primary and secondary. Primary because I know first-hand the effects of parents often being busy or having to work and while having been in after school club for my entire primary school life wasn’t pleasant I also understand that m family didn’t have another option, so my protest is more focused on parents who spend more time with their laptop than with their kids. I know now especially a great deal of parents often see their phone screen more than their children and this was my secondary research. I remembered a video that had come out last year (despite my best efforts I haven’t been able to find it)of people asking children what their number 1 wish was and an astounding number of them said their biggest wish was for their parents to put down their phones and pay attention or play with them. This really struck a chord with me as it showed how while technology is often thought to bring people together it can really put a strain on your relationship with the people in front of you.

Protest Performances:

 Underneath

The first protest performance piece I watched a dance video called “Underneath”. Underneath is a contemporary dance piece supporting the “#MeToo” movement. The dance features comments that have been said to the dancers such as “Why don’t you just sit there and look pretty” “What did she expect with her legs out like that” “Don’t go to school dressed like that- you’ll distract the boys” to make a point about how much these comments, many of which are societal norms can really hurt. The dance finishes which each girl taking off her blue robe to show a nude leotard underneath each with a name each of the girls have been called before such as “Slut” “Attention Seeker” and other such names. This dance is an incredible example of a protest performance as it so clearly shows the fact that women still aren’t treated well as well as being a beautiful piece of art and fantastic choreography.

Swan Song

The second protest performance I watched was “Swan Song”, which is a dance show commenting on the issue of police brutality. I watched a short snippet of the show where the person who is being interrogated is being mocked by the two police officers. This was protesting the flaws in the law and justice systems as there are so many cases of corrupt, violent and even murderous police officers going on in every day news. This of course, isn’t an old issue as shown by decades and decades of history where police have been violent and brutal for no good reason. The dancing managed to convey the fact that the 2 men playing police officers were mocking and degrading the person being interrogated. This piece was really effective as it conveyed a very powerful message without any dialogue which is what we were aiming to do with our piece, except for shouting at limited moments during the piece.

Ensuring a Successful Performance:

To ensure a successful performance we did the following things:

1. We walked through the piece in the space before we performed so we would know exactly where we needed to go and if we needed to adapt.

2. We extended the space to ensure that the piece would be successful however still be as safe as possible.

3. We blocked off the space so there wasn’t any chance of any members of the public coming too close to us.

4. We looked at the space when we visited the museum so we knew what it was going to be like when we performed while we were still rehearsing, making sure we were as prepared as possible for the performance.

Evaluating the Performance:

Upon reflection, I felt that the performance went really well as I projected well and could be heard although the space was huge, I knew what I was doing and kept in with the group. I think the group as a whole worked very effectively together to create a moving and thought-provoking piece that accompanied the exhibition very well. However, I know that one improvement I could have made would be to have no talked across someone during the first performance which happened accidentally but hopefully wasn’t too noticeable overall. I felt that we remembered everything well and I managed to also act and use a range of facial expressions throughout the piece to make it more effective and engaging. To conclude, I think the ideas that went into the performance, the development and precautionary steps really paid off and made for a very interesting and unique performance.

Risk Assessment 3/12/18

In this class we looked at how to fill out a risk assessment for our I Object performance at the British Museum: