Francis Faye and Eleanor Lawlor

The final presentation was a performance workshop by Irish performance artists Francis Faye and Eleanor Lawlor. Firstly the group started off by doing some exercises to loosen up.  We form a circle and were told to hold hands and when our hand was squeezed we would have to squeeze the other persons opposite hand so that the pulse like motion would flow around the circle like a Mexican wave.

We where then put into pairs, blind folded and guided around the room by our partner by just a touch between the shoulder blades. I found this particular exercise very interesting and at the same calming and almost freeing. It allowed by mind to wander although at the same time I should have been focused on my surroundings. As I hadn’t got to focus on how to travel around the room myself I just had to put my trust into the person guiding me to make sure I was okay but then also the blame would fall onto them if anything went wrong.

 We were then, still in pairs, given a long wooden dowel which we had to balance between our sternums. The objective of this exercise was to make us more relaxed and comfortable so eventually as the rigidness went away we would become braver and try to position the dowels on other parts of our bodies. This exercise allowed us to free ourselves and almost laugh at ourselves showing me that performance wasn’t should a foreign idea when it came to my art practice and it didn’t have to involve such a complicated range of materials to make it happen

Lastly we sent outside to find the first object we could find and bring it back to the seminar room. Then individually we were asked how we could use these pieces to create a final performance piece. This I found rather peculiar because, usually when viewing an object I would never stop to think what the functions of it are beyond what it is originally intended for. For example, my object was a large safety cone. The first and only thing I ever expected from a safety cone was traffic related but by Francis using it as a hat, to amplify his voice and even as a balancing point, he took away my practical thinking and began me thinking about the possibilities objects have beyond what they are made for and how I could push them to their limits.

This workshop greatly benefited and enhanced my overall thinking as an artist. Even if I were to never become a performance artist or use performance in my practice I put to use what I have learned in that even the most mundane object can become more than it is originally intended to be.