A letter by alaa minawi Assessment 1
HKU Scenography 2016
Dear Henny and Tjallien,
I hope that all is well from your part. I felt that the best way to present the assessment would be by writing it in the form of a letter so it sounds like I am talking to someone while writing down the details. This letter will be divided into sections for clarity. It will be in the form of an introduction, Make, Play and experiment evolutions, theory discussions, workshops and talks with artists, plays that we watched and their effect on my perspective.
At start I would like to describe in short how I ended up in HKU and what were my interests and the concepts that I have reached in the process of working in theatre after this introduction I will start stating the changes that the first semester has brought on me and on these concepts.
Introduction:
After working in the theatre as a light designer for more than 10 years, light has become a breathing living entity by it self. It has a presence, it has an action, a motion, a role, entrance and exist time, a narrative and a plot. In other words, light has become an additional character on stage. I started to experiment and light design projects with these beliefs in the back of my head and slowly I found myself expanding to out side the walls of the normal theatre and to the exterior environments. Eventually I started making light installations.
The last phase of exploration I was going through before coming to you was an installation that tackles the subject of the people who were forced to leave their homes. After that installation I also went into exploring the themes of belonging.
After joining HKU with the first weeks of discussions that focused on spectatorship and spaces I started to shift my attention towards spaces in a different way. I thought of putting my work on light as an additional character on stage on the side and to go through new experiences.
First experiments:
I started to take several photos at start of anything that could come to mind
Then I started looking back into the artists that actually inspired me a lot like Robert Wilson’s performances, Andrie tarkovsky’s films, and Mondrian’s paintings. I started collecting photos of these artists and then so many similarities struck me. The lines that are created in all of their works were quite close to each other, the use of space and time in a way that equated their presence.
Then I started to find similarities between my photos and these artists that I admired and found out that I was really affected by their works.
In the process I started working on belonging again. How do objects belong to spaces?
How do they mold and become integral or natural to an environment. We as human yearn to belong to a space. Does this happen also for objects?
A letter by alaa minawi
Assessment 1
HKU Scenography 2016
Then the process of play and experiment came in progress. However, I was not sure how to tackle that process since I always started with themes and concepts that came from somewhere deep inside me then it is followed by a need to transform them into physical objects filling the space. It was hard to put myself into the situation of starting with unplanned playing and then give my self the time and freedom to experiment and may be reach somewhere. So may be this process went in a way where I should first start with filling the space and then the materialistic results will trigger a surprise.
To make it easier for me to understand I related play and experiment to the “Out Side In” acting method that requires the actor to use the physical movement to reach the core of his feelings.
Two Rooms one real one virtual:
Based on all the above I started working with two rooms. One that had a window that overlooks a narrow alley then a street and a river and the other room was a windowless room. (See images)
I first worked on the chairs and how to distribute (see images), thinking about the spectator and the different experiences that he/she might go through.
Having the spectators sit on a chair sounded very important as it gives them the time to contemplate more than a standing position.
The final result was placing three chairs, where the community, experience- sharing part (three people) is there and at the same time it was not too crowded to overwhelm the spectator.
The audience go first to the windowless room and they sit on the three chairs facing a wall on which the same window of the other room was video recorded and projected.
The audience stays for 1 minute
Them when the door opens they are asked to go to the other room with the windows
The other room has the same chair placing. However, they see the real window with real people walking and a real river.
This transition from the virtual projection to the real here and now window was intended to focus the attention of the audience to the value of the real versus the non-real. How the window belonged to its place on that wall while the projection of the window did not. This was the first attempt to experiment on how the real innate belongs to a space more than the virtual.
Second experiment:
This same room stayed on my list of spaces that I wanted to explore more. I started connecting it to the theme of belonging. I wanted to explore more the lines of the room and started planning for adding elements to the room that could change its identity. Like blocking the window, adding artificial light, play with color.
The basic main experiment that followed was after a three days workshop with Joris Weijdon that was actually rounded on the subject of technology. An intense workshop to understand a software program named Isadora that actually helps
A letter by alaa minawi
Assessment 1
HKU Scenography 2016
create interactive mediums between projections and sensors and the spectator or physical objects.
The result of that play was an installation named the interrogation room
The interrogation room
Process
It was collaboration with my colleague in the masters Tacier, working with someone else in the same position proved to be interesting. It demanded a lot of compromise and understanding from both parties. It also helped in creating new things or adding positively on ideas. We started with a mutual agreement that we will use live streaming projection and sound functioning as a catalyst that will trigger a change in the image.
The first part was the technicalities; cables, projectors, connectors, tripods, etc. the technical part that usually requires a lot of physical rather than creative inputs took two days.
After that we started from no ideas in mind except the above-mentioned mutual agreement. Playing around with the software. Checking the effects that it can do on projections. And as we played we started selecting the things that intrigued us.
We built a set of effects that would be triggered by the sounds. And decided to work on the factor of time delay in a certain way that makes the spectator observe him/her self. As we kept on playing and trying we noticed that the whole effect looked like a surveillance camera. We thought more about it and found out that the identity of the room has changed and it somehow looked like an interrogation room. We added a chair in the center of the room and that also made the room look more of the new identity it had worn.
The installation ended up like this
Spectators open the door and go inside the room
They see a window over looking the street a chair in the center of the room and two black and white projections on two walls of the room.
After 10seconds the spectator see themselves in the projections as they have been taken through live cam with delayed projection
Whenever anyone of them makes a sound, the images get distorted.
In that installation one of the factors that I noticed is that we thought of the spectator during the creation process. We thought of their engagement and that was something new to me. Somehow thinking of the spectator during the creation process makes him a partner in that process.
Third experiment
A workshop with Marloeke Van der Vlugt
This workshop focused on sensors and the use of Makey Makey sensor system was for me one of the most interesting projects as it helped me somehow to see
A letter by alaa minawi
Assessment 1
HKU Scenography 2016
the potential that lies in sensors and the possibility of engaging the spectator through them. We were asked to play and experiment with the Makey Makey and it eventually lead to a small interactive process.
Process
A phone is next to the laptop
If you are working on the laptop you turn on the sensor
At anytime the person working on the laptop tries to touch the phone the sensor will be triggered and a voice comes out saying: “not now please” asking the person who tried to touch the phone not to get distracted by the phone and to focus on the laptop.
The spectator as an influencer partner in the plot planned was an interesting discovery.
Fourth experiment
Rimini Protokoll
A seminar and an implementation of its work
A seminar with a group that uses a mobile application that the spectators download and then follow instructions that take them in a journey through found spaces stories based on sound recorded instructions. The spectators are divided into groups and each group is hearing different instructions and narratives. Eventually each group of spectators becomes the performer for the other group without them realizing.
Later on we were taught about how to use this app and try to implement it.
Process:
We were a group of four and we started searching for locations. We found a very big tree inside the university and we thought of it as a base to start working on a story around it. We started recording a made up story about my grandfather.
The story that was sound recorded and the spectators hear in the app tells how now the city is full of cement blocks and there were not trees any more. So if I needed to see a tree I had to go back to the village which is many hours ride away.
But eventually the cement blocks started going to the village and the trees were vanishing. So I decided to take an action where I carved my name and my date of birth on the tree hoping that the people who cut trees might think that this particular tree is my property and thus would not cut it.
A voice asks the people to get closer to the actual tree and they actually see a carved name and a date. It some how mixes a tree in Utrecht with a tree in a village in Lebanon.
Then the recorded voice asks the people to walk towards a small building that has a praying carpet inside. It was a multi faith room in the university. So the story continues around the found space
I start explaining that there was a room in the village next to the tree where my grandfather used to pray. I ask them to go in the room and inside they see a prayer mat.
A letter by alaa minawi
Assessment 1
HKU Scenography 2016
Then a voice asks them to leave the room and go outside the garden where the tree. My recorded voice says that now I am living in Amsterdam but whenever I see a chair next to a door I remember my grandfather his garden and his praying room. The spectator is then asked by the voice recording to look to a certain direction and they would see a chair next to a house entrance.
The interesting discoveries about this whole process were for me first, the ability to engage the spectator in the process without having a performer to exist n a bodily manner and thus the annulation of the physical presence of a performer and replacing it with the physical mobility of the spectator.
The other main one was that in able to create the story and have it coincides with an effective impact we needed to use elements of the found space. Thus we needed to respect and embrace the presence of the space and have our story integrate with it.
These discoveries will help me later in my fifth experiment that was went back to the basis of my research considering the theme of belonging.
Fifth experiment: Seeing invisible lines
After the above-mentioned workshops, seminars, and experiments combined with recovering the old fascinations and inspirations I decided to work on the fifth experiment.
After watching a number of found-spaces performances and after doing the above mentioned experiments I wanted to tackle the subject of how to belong in a found space.
Process:
I chose a space in Pastoe and decided to accentuate the invisible lines in it by extending the lines of the structure and the elements of this space with tape.
So I started trying to make the invisible lines visible.
The interesting discovery was that every time a line is created it drives me to see another line to have it connected. In other words, making the invisible line visible lead to creating new invisible lines that were not perceived by me before.
This whole connection lead to a structure that looked like a house, after revealing the lines of the space I started adding my own lines and waiting for the new discovery that comes out of it.
The main observations that came to mind was that to work in a space I need to reveal all its invisible line and respect or at least acknowledge their presence. After acknowledging that presence I can later add my own set of lines or elements that will some how belong to the space.
In other words, the first step for belonging to a space is by acknowledging its presence and the weight and significance of that present.
A letter by alaa minawi Assessment 1
HKU Scenography 2016
Dear Henny and Tjallien,
In order not to extend this letter into further pages I would sum up in a nut shell other projects and plays that had an impact on my way of thinking.
Miss Julie, was one of the most interesting experiment where for the first time I guide my self to seeing the world from the eye of either savage, tactile, objective, or stenographic. Then choosing words that had significance to that then making an installation out of this process. What was more interesting than the process was looking at a play as a possible inspiration for an installation and thus instead of making a set design we had the possibility of making installations in the theatre play.
A series of plays and installations that we watched but the ones who actually affected me the most were Speak low if you speak love, De Warme Winkel speelt De Warme Winkel, Internet of Things, Olafur Eliasson installation. These performances gave me a hint of how the art scene is currently going in the Netherlands and what kind of subjects that are currently being tackled and through which mediums of aesthetics. Simplicity is my current conclusion. Even in Speak low if you speak love with all the variables in the performance the scenography and the performing was basically simple and almost minimal for a performance of such a scale. Out reach to the audience in many times is another significant element, like in Olafur Eliasson installation where the spectator is a doer.
I am still looking for my artistic statement that combines belonging with light or would transform belonging to light or vice versa, but I am interested in the discoveries that are going on along the way looking at spaces form the perspective of their lines, dealing with the spectator as partner in the creation process by thinking about them in that phase thinking of objects as n motion even if they are not human, trying to understand the stories that hide within these objects, theatre and its basis. I can sad that in the next phase I will start exploring light and space by making a design with the use of light then try to manifest this same design with physical elements.
sincerely yours alaa minawi