Output details

The story of how we came to be here, what we did before we got here, how you have forgotten why you asked us here and why we cannot remember why we came, or: Is this what brings things into focus?

Joanne Tatham and Thomas O'Sullivan are each submitting 2 distinct outputs, 4 in total. The collaborate on all aspects of conception, development and application of their research.

'The story of how…' was a commissioned performance devised for ‘Blinding the Ears’, a curated project at Artissima, Turin. Curated by Andrea Bellini (Director Castello di Rivoli, Turin), fourteen contemporary artists, including Michelangelo Pistoletto and Matt Mullican, were invited to produce works that engage with contemporary art and theatre. Talks and screenings programmed by RoseLee Goldberg accompanied the commissions and contextualised them within the wider history of performance art.

The performance was constructed to investigate the current relationship between contemporary art and theatre. The primary research question was 'How might contemporary art utilise the history and context of theatre within a framework of expanded-field practice?' with a sub-question 'Could this produce an artwork with a renewed potential for a transformative or critically engaged audience experience?'

The performance was based on a dramatic monologue delivered by one performer that took the form and convention of an extended narrative joke. This device allowed the performance to draw on the contexts of stand-up comedy, vaudeville and the Theatre of the Absurd.

The performance utilised the skills and experience of professional theatre workers in a process of ‘devising’ the performance - a methodology particular to contemporary performance theatre. The performance included staged heckling to draw further attention to the structure - both physical and conceptual - of the theatre experience.

The significance of the research was extended through its re-presentation at Tramway, Glasgow, December 2010 and at Studio Voltaire, London, August 2011 (with funding from the Henry Moore Foundation). It will form an exhibit in the opening exhibition of the Tadeusz Kantor Centre Cricoteka in Krakow, 2014, with a new commission made in response to the Kantor’s influential, radical cross-disciplinary theatre and art practice.