Greg McLaren Portfolio PhD in Practice 2012

Work, recent and relevant to this submission covers two interconnected areas: Documentary / Portrait and Structures for Active Spectator.
More works and info : www.gregmclaren.com

Documentary / Portrait
I work with individuals and groups as documentary evidence or self-performed portraits (e.g., Graciella Taquini, 2007) or portray myself in the context of presenting new knowledge (Doris Day can Fuck off , 2011). This area includes inpersonation and using speeches, or found text for performance (El Cuidador, 2007; Speech to the House, 2011).

Graciella Taquini
I spent a great deal of time with her, becoming good friends. I was interested in the distance and conflict between her body and mind as space within which to create the portrait. She is a video artist and curator. She sits, seemingly suspended in a dark room, lit only by the light of her personal DVD player.

After a while she starts to speak a list of 100 people that mean something to her. She cries. By her own admission she is a greedy woman. Through the tears she starts to eat biscuits, there is a microphone very close to her mouth, the crunching of the biscuits and the intimate labio-dental sounds fill the dark room.

She tells us she has problems with her body, that she doesnt walk too much. the platform she sits on recedes into the darkness and her body falls from the light. A moment of blackness. The space is filled with bright light as Graciella swings down the length of the hall. She starts to sing Amazing Grace. She is a pendulum marking her time across space. As the swinging naturally stops, she steps from the harness and shuffles out of the room.

Doris Day can Fuck off

This solo performance was the result of a decision to swap speech for song for two months. All vocal interaction was discretely recorded and following rhythms and stories discovered therein was built into an operatic soundscap. Through an investigation of the history of the voice in humans juxtaposed with primary recordings of the artist trying to encourage individuals to sing back to him, this work critiques the commercialisation of singing and its consequent disappearance from our mouths. www.ddfo.tv

El Cuidador
An audience is invited to a peculiar spot in a city cemetery, the Pantheon Boxeadores where the bones of the famous boxers of Buenos Aires are stored. The artist, impersonating the caretaker, welcomes them. He introduces himself and the surroundings. Clearly, there is something not quite right. His Spanish is strange, his clothes are too big, he seems to young.

He continues, taking the audience through a little speech that most visitors to the Pantheon would hear. Gustavo, El Cuidador, presents some objects that are dear to him, that he has made with his own hands his Mat, his satchel. He walks the audience around the Pantheon pointing out his favourite boxers, reminiscing about when as a boy he saw them fight. The group return to his little hut from where he brings out some photographs of his children, his wife, and his back covered in a pox. When his story is finished, he walks away to the end of the corridor of coffins, turns, and makes a boxers pose. Finally, he tells the audience he must go back to work. He disappears down the stairs, but just as he goes out of sight, another man passes him on the way up. Hola! he says, Soy Gustavo, soy El Cuidador del Pantheon. The real Gustavo then takes the audience through exactly the same script.

Geraldine

Presentation of suject and impersonator at the same time. One is a professional cook, the other a professional actor. The actor learnt the cooks movements as she boiled and ate an egg. Presented first in series then parallel, it raises questions of artistic labour and truth of action.

http://vimeo.com/15925392

Speech to the House (with Sara Lehn)

17th March 2003: with one of the finest speeches in British political history, Robin Cook, leader of the house of commons resigns from the government on the eve of the invasion of Iraq. We consider political speech to have much in common with the character of an artwork. With the context stripped away and random characters imposed upon it, we explore this speech as source material for performance. The Rathaus Schneberg which is at the same time a public space and represents politics was our private stage.

http://vimeo.com/37660749

Structures for Active Witness

Here I use Working with pre-existing systems of group behaviour e.g., the riot, attending an event, individual encounter, in which the audience have as much stake as the performers, if there are any (Riot Pilot, 2005), or the non-artistic social event (Live Art Speed Date, 2008). I employ the familiar notion of Scores to invite audience/participants to ask questions and guide the action, always with the caveat that they are to decide whether to follow their part, do something different or, nothing at all, thusly equalising the discrimination process across all those present (A Golden Dreamers Night Out in Tottenham, 2011; A Score for Audience and Performer Nos. 2 7, 2011) and in fact providing space and means for the participants to perform a self portrait of themselves, to exercise their own knowledge tool.

RIOT PILOT
A group is taken through the story of a Hackney riot via an historical re-enactment society. Together they build up a 3d cardboard map of the riot terrain. At the climax they are released out onto the real terrain (which has been visible from a window)

Live Art Speed Date

A multi-performer mini-festival of intimate performance encounters. In each city artists are commissioned to create a four-minute encounter for an audience of one that will be repeated sixteen times throughout the evening. The audience select the performance they want via a stock exchange style trading-floor.

A Golden Dreamer's Night Out in Tottenham

This is a score based riot for assembled groups. Each person has a task to complete burst a balloon; Set fire to someone. The cue for each task is an action carried out by someone else. It is up to the individulas whether they do it or not.

During the second movement, the audience stands in a circle with their hands on each others throats... Were all in this together.

Score for Audience and Performer

Here the audience are given index cards upon which text is written. The audience is asked to speak or do the text (they decide which) at a specific time. There is an audible countdown and a corresponding timecode on each card.

Score No. 5 hinged on a live Skype link up with Madera art school, Mexico. Each location had a sympathetic score concerning identity in the city. The artists are ostensibly boiling their hands in submission to an audience request to do so.

This score (no.7) was performed for a theatre audience. They quiz the two characters, discovering that one is a dead female helicopter pilot who, during the London Riots, crashed her aircraft into a protesters. The other is a Steve Jobs look-a-like who died on the ground. In the context of post riot London the collective responsibility of the audience was brought to the fore.

Delete Your Own Adventure

Delete your own adventure - a text about lost oral history that can be emphasised or deleted by the reader. the text is printed onto a long strip of paper, loaded onto a tape cassette, and activated by a modified tape player. Five Years Gallery 2012.