I was thinking about our project and how I use venn diagrams when I am trying to understand the concepts we are working with. Initially the venn diagram was about the roles we were to play, or as I thought of it the spaces we were to occupy. The artists, the public and the technicians involved, plus the physical space of the goods lift the theater/cinema and how these overlapped.
It was always going to occupy or hopefully span the space between theater and Art. We were calling it performance installation but is it? was it, as it was first envisaged, overlapping theatrical traditions and fine art equally as I hoped?
Initially we were to make a space using painted plywood that would be reminiscent of cinemas through the ages not specifically re-creating an era but definitely not of today a time out of time 'fantasy'. We wanted to evoke childhood memories of trips to the cinema, I was thinking of making the painted cinema have a child's eye perspective, we discussed using photographs of Hyde park Cinema in Leeds as the frontage for our project, reproducing them on huge banners at entrance to the lift area.
I think it was as we were discussing the perspective that I thought of drawing the frontage using a loose wash of colour rather than the photographic approach.
Eva and I had talked about the costumes which were based on children's cut out paper dolls clothes that we both remembered from childhood and we each had made for our drawn paper dolls.
Eva suggested we make the 'set' out of a thin voile material which could be painted or sewn on to create an ethereal memory of cinema, like a membrane between the reality of the goods lift and the cinematic space we were creating.
What it reminded me of was making dens out of net curtains as a child. We both liked this playful childlike element that was coming through.
This development in our choice of materials started me thinking about the spaces occupied by art and theatre and their individual traditions and materials associated with each.I liked the concepts of LIFT, but initially I felt our project could easily be viewed as a
I felt happier now about this straddling of the two worlds we were naturally being drawn to the traditional tools of art drawing.
