Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now (2001) plays with the idea of presence within a space. The players in the game are dropped into a virtual city and become digital performers online, trying not to get captured by the members of Blast Theory. Photography is used in the performance as an element of capturing the moment of the here and now. This is something we could incorporate into our performance as a way of documenting our piece.
We have done some research into popular sweets that were eaten in the early 20th century and liquorice seemed to be a common like during this time period. The idea of eating sweets is generally associated with ‘happy memories’, however alongside our theme of the First World War creates a very juxtaposing effect. Our drift is going to take the audience up Steep Hill and past the sweet shop. We will then take the audience member into the sweet shop and purchase some liquorice, inviting them to eat some with us. Whether or not the audience member likes liquorice will create a very different experience for each of them. After eating the liquorice, it will change the colour of the person’s tongue/teeth. This moment will never really leave if we document it in a photograph and will express the idea of the here and now. Douglas Crimp wrote ‘… institutions can be named at the outset: first, the museum; then, art history; and finally, in a more complex sense, because modernism depends both upon its presence and upon its absence, photography.’ (Crimp, 1980, 2).We could then gather all of the images into a photo album to create a final product. This idea of ‘’producing’’ something also portrays our idea of Women in Lincolnshire in 1915. This time was all about the change women were going through after the repression of their feminine identity, and how they went from producing things within the home to being allowed to work in factories. This will also show in our monologue by the character Florence Bonnet as she discusses leaving school at the age of 13 to work in the William Foster factory, constructing the tracks for the tanks.
Crimp, D. (1980) The photographic activity of postmodernism. MIT press.
Hannah Taylor