Marking time: investigating drawing as a performative process for recording temporal presence and recalling memory through the line, the fold and repetition

This research seeks to identify drawing as an alternative exemplar for investigating memory and temporal presence, while determining its potential as a performative tool for negotiation and transformation, throught the line, fold and repetition. The aim is to position drawing in the dynamics of movement, using the journey as a trope and the physical act of repeating the line to evoke memory and disrupt concepts of linear, orderly time. The investigation, driven by my ongoing practice and concerns of dislocation and exile, was inspired and informed by Gilles Deleuze's notion of 'becoming' as a fluid in-between. His reading of memory through Henri Bergson (habit and pure) and Marcel Proust(voluntary and involuntary), provided the context for examining drawing's memorial potency along a past-present-future continuum. Deleuze's ontology provided a reflective and reflecive methodology for addressing my own work alongside artists who share similar concerns. My practice focused on not what the line is but what it can do or be, where drawing is predicated on touch and derived from thought and memory, rather than appearance or observation. Inside the studio and outdoors in the landscape, moving between familiar yet changed places. I marked the paradoxical experience of time, its flows and ruptures. The resulting body of drawings and photographic records offer the principal outcome of this inquiry. The research findings present drawing as a fluid multiplicity that shifts between the haptic and optic, visible and invisible, control and chance, notation and photography, studio and street, with one often constituting the other. The condition of 'seeing' is not a prerequisite; drawing exists with and without seeing. It resides in a gap between, where time itself unfolds and things are forgotten as well as remembered, liminal and open-ended. This thesis proposes a new theoretical understanding of drawing as generative of memory and a process of continual negotiation and temporal becoming

Drawn Together: Collaborative Performance

In the collaborative work of Drawn Together, a group formed by the artists Maryclare Foá, Jane Grisewood, Birgitta Hosea and Carali McCall, diverse practices are collectively materialised through performance drawing. Focusing on the notion of fragmentation has been instructive in identifying how the collaboration binds together a series of fragments and discontinuities that are enacted and reassembled in unpredictable and new ways

Skype versus night sky

A live performance connecting London and the island of Papay Westray as part of the Papay Gyro Nights Festival, Orkney. The stars that burn in the night sky were used as an ancient guide to navigation. This live telematic drawing performance will contrast ancient and modern forms as it travels via telecommunications satellites at the speed of light between Papa Westray and London. A camera in Papa Westray will point at the night sky and transmit video images and atmospheric sound live through SKYPE to London. These sounds and images will be projected in a gallery space and the group will make spontaneous drawings as they chart the night sky in Papa Westray. A camera in London records the live drawings as they are created and a live video feed will be sent back to Papa Westray via SKYPE, where it will be projected onto a wall in front of festival attendees

Clogging the machinery: the BBC's experiment in science coordination, 1949–1953

In 1949, physicist Mark Oliphant criticised the BBC’s handling of science in a letter to the Director General William Haley. It initiated a chain of events which led to the experimental appointment of a science adviser, Henry Dale, to improve the ‘coordination’ of science broadcasts. The experiment failed, but the episode revealed conflicting views of the BBC’s responsibility towards science held by scientists and BBC staff. For the scientists, science had a special status, both as knowledge and as an activity, which in their view obligated the BBC to make special arrangements for it. BBC staff, however, had their own professional procedures which they were unwilling to abandon. The events unfolded within a few years of the end of the Second World War, when social attitudes to science had been coloured by the recent conflict, and when the BBC itself was under scrutiny from the William Beveridge’s Committee. The BBC was also embarking on new initiatives, notably the revival of adult education. These contextual factors bear on the story, which is about the relationship between a public service broadcaster and the external constituencies it relies on, but must appear to remain independent from. The article therefore extends earlier studies showing how external bodies have attempted to manipulate the inner workings of the BBC to their own advantage (e.g. those by Doctor and Karpf) by looking at the little-researched area of science broadcasting. The article is largely based on unpublished archive documents

Performance drawing: new practices since the 1960s

When does a drawing turn into a performance? Is the act of drawing in itself a performative process, whether a viewer is present or not? Performance Drawing: New Practices Since the 1960s is an exploration of interdisciplinary artists who actively use the word or express the ‘performative’ in their drawing practice, and who are connected by both performance and drawing. Through original interviews, reflections on and analysis of artists’ works, the authors illuminate what it might mean to perform, and what it might mean to draw, in contemporary practice since the 1960s. As the first book to be published on this subject, the term ‘performance drawing’ is used as a trope, or a thread of thinking, to describe a process of drawing dedicated to broadening the field through resourceful practices and cross-disciplinary influence. While engaged in the act of drawing as a performative process, the book addresses themes of ephemerality and immediacy that encompass body and energy, time and motion, light and space, intention and execution, liveness and documentation. It examines dynamic interactions through cross-disciplinary influences, addressing key developments and future directions that are dedicated to broadening the field of drawing and inspiring a diverse range of approaches to performance drawing. Featuring a wide range of international artists, the acclaimed practitioners from the 1960s, such as Alison Knowles, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Tom Marioni, Trisha Brown and William Kentridge, have been instrumental in instituting and exposing the relationship between drawing and performing. This book provides the foundation behind these pioneers, alongside a platform for current and emerging artists, and for those working between the boundaries of the genre. Merging experiences and disciplines in the expanded field has established a vibrant art movement that has been progressively burgeoning in the last few years

Performance drawing: new practices since 1945

When does a drawing turn into a performance? Is the act of drawing in itself a performative process, whether a viewer is present or not? Performance Drawing: New Practices Since 1945 is an exploration of interdisciplinary artists who actively use the term or express the ‘performative’ in their drawing practice or are connected by both performance and drawing. Drawing upon their own practice-based research, original interviews, literature review, reflections on and analysis of artists’ works, the authors illuminate what it might mean to perform, and what it might mean to draw, in contemporary practice since 1945. As the first book to be published on this subject, the term ‘performance drawing’ is used as a trope, or a thread of thinking, to describe a process of drawing dedicated to broadening the field through resourceful practices and cross-disciplinary influence. While engaged in the act of drawing as a performative process, the book addresses themes of ephemerality and immediacy that encompass body and energy, time and motion, light and space, intention and execution, liveness and documentation. It examines dynamic interactions through cross-disciplinary influences, addressing key developments and future directions that are dedicated to broadening the field of drawing and inspiring a diverse range of approaches to performance drawing. Acclaimed practitioners since 1945, such as Alison Knowles, Carolee Schneemann, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Trisha Brown and William Kentridge, have been instrumental in instituting and exposing the relationship between drawing and performing. This book provides the foundation behind these pioneers, alongside a platform for current and emerging international artists, and for those working between the boundaries of the genre. Merging experiences and disciplines in the expanded field has established a vibrant art movement that has been progressively burgeoning in the last few years

ARC: you draw for us, we draw for you

ARC is a collaborative performance drawing process generated from written instructions. The concept of ARC grew from the visualisation of communication technology, the image of a signal beaming from its source (in one location) and arcing over to its receiver in another place. These instructions are action relayed collaborations, hence the acronym ARC. The ARCs are transmitted by hand-written or typed notes, telephone, SMS messages, email and Skype. During Drawn Together’s ARC performances the transcribed instructions are laid face down on the floor for the performers to pick up and action