!

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT:

A PERFORMATIVE CONFIGURATION

OF TRANSITORY SPACES

Bernice Ong

A thesis submitted to the School of English, Media and

Performing Arts at the University of New South Wales
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Honours degree of Bachelor of Arts

2011

Word count: 7 050

!

ABSTRACT:

Led by the question of how it might be possible to accommodate a

plurality of understandings in the theatre through the audiences’

sustained consciousness, I turned to the sociological subject of the

immigrant experience to help frame this research. As a Singaporean

residing in Australia, I have found myself to be aware of a myriad of

cultural differences, making every day an experience at adaptation. This

experience can be understood by experimental psychology’s theory of

the ‘orienting reflex’, which has been used to explain the brain’s handling

of new external stimuli. Having experienced displacement myself and to

heighten the audiences’ awareness that this experience is not exclusive to

the ‘immigrant’, I became interested in replicating the immigrant

subject’s active response to new environments in the theatre through a

configuration of transitory spaces. Having a background in the visual

arts, I found myself needing to shift my focus and draw on the work of

disparate artists and thinkers for this research. I inclined towards the

image-based theatre and started working with a deliberately paced

temporal setting. In order to accommodate a simultaneity of different

understandings in the theatre through the audiences’ heightened

consciousness, my project proposes that clear but non-prescriptive

external structures of time and space are necessary to provide a stable

starting point from which responses can then be generated.

!

Contents

Introduction 1

1. Operations of Space
Visual Communication 8
Medium of the Performance-Installation 12
Site-Specificity of the Theatre 17
Interpretation of Figure 20

2. Mapping Immediacies
Co-presence: Space and Time 23
From External to Internal 25
Continuity and Self-Sufficiency 31

Conclusion 33
Appendices 37
Bibliography 43
!

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Production set of The Ideal Condition 11

Figure 1.2 At the table with brick companion 21

Figure 2.1 Selecting knives 26

Figure 2.2 Slicing a jellybean 28

Figure 2.3 Final stage image when audience members 31

leave the venue
!

INTRODUCTION

Performance enables artists and spectators – made

inseparable from each other – to experience and to think the
extent to which a given identity, or indeed subjectivity itself,
is moored to a physical place or its discursive determinants.1

(Adrian Heathfield, Live Art and Performance)

Undertaking this research as a Singaporean residing outside my own

country, I understand cultural difference on an everyday basis that is not

intrusive but certainly ever present. I wanted to create a space in which

my audience was required to experience this constant adaptation through

a performance that emphasised their awareness of the space between

seeing and understanding. The title-phrase ‘The Every/Day Immigrant’

is used to frame the ongoing complexities of adaptation through

reference to a sociological subject. Although I have begun by examining

the navigational processes of an immigrant in a new environment as a

means of framing this research, my interest in this experience of

unfamiliarity is not solely limited to the immigrant subject. In my view,

the redefinition of geographical and infrastructural boundaries

commonly sighted in developed countries can share a similar effect of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1
Adrian Heathfield (ed.), Live: Art and Performance, London: Tate Publishing, 2004, p.11
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT INTRODUCTION 2

alienation, as so does globalisation, diaspora, and the meeting of cultures

they generate. My experience of the world therefore, also finds it to be in

constant flux.

While studying the mental processes involved during the

movement and meeting of cultures, psychiatry professor and researcher

Bruce E. Wexler has described the immigrant experience to be of

“distress and dysfunction followed by a prolonged, effortful

restructuring of the internal world to match the now-changed external

world.” 2 What Wexler identifies as the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ are

important for my research as these terms draw the link between the

activity of the mental and psychological space, and the unfamiliar

external reality. This kind of experience has also been known in

experimental psychology as the dual process theory of ‘orienting reflex’

that is the neurological process of adaptation, and ‘habituation’, which

refers to “a response decrement to repeated stimulation”.3 Habituation

thus, can be the reason why a process of adaptation comes to a halt.4

Another way of looking at the effects of “repeated stimulation” is that it

conditions us to a regularity of change as it occurs, speeding up the

orienting process. What this means in the inhabitation of a changing

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2 Bruce E. Wexler, Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change, Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 2006, p.183
3 Richard F. Thompson, Stephen D. Berry, Patricia C. Rinaldi, and Theodore W.

Berger’s, “Habituation and the Orienting Reflex: The Dual-Process Theory Revisited”
in The Orienting Reflex in Humans edited by H.D. Kimmel, E.H. Van Olst, J.F. Orlebeke,
Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 1979, p.22
4 ibid.
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT INTRODUCTION 3

environment is that a surface recognition of differences, without a

proper understanding of these newly-introduced cultures and

environments, can lead to the false impression of familiarity. As I am

more interested in the orienting experience where senses are always

active and heightened, and where perceptions are prone to change, my

performance has therefore aspired to keep within this navigational and

internal restructuring process. From Wexler’s articulation of the internal

response as a reaction to an external world, I have gathered that to

invoke the reconfiguration of the internal, there has to be essential

components of reality that need responding to.

My project proposes that, in order to accommodate a

simultaneity of different understandings in the theatre through the

audiences’ heightened consciousness, there has to be clear external

structures of time and space, which are not to be prescriptive but rather

provide a stable starting point from which responses can then be

generated. As I find the process of adaptation to be one with universal

coherence, I also wanted the space and my movement to be designed

and devised towards an experience that can be shared between people

who come from different backgrounds. Through concurrent practical

and theoretical research, I have come to understand certain avenues that

may allow for such open possibilities. My prerequisites of a clear space

and time are by no means to be understood in definite terms, but they

take form in stable structures. Some of my chosen approaches were to

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT INTRODUCTION 4

have the performance within an installation, recognise the theatre venue

as a specific performance site, and to have myself as performer follow a

sequential list of actions and be omnipresent throughout the show. I

have found that it is through a clear presentational platform and its

hosting of changing elements that can help to keep the audiences alert so

that they might access a whole range of other meanings that hold within

the work.

I chose to adhere to the framework of a performance-installation

for my production The Ideal Condition. My particular project was

presented during the 30th of August to the 1st of September 2011, at the

venue of the black box theatre Studio One in the University of New

South Wales, Australia. The primary interest was in exploring a pseudo-

absolute like ‘ideal’ and questioning how it could be understood. For the

set, a structure was constructed as if a room, to accommodate a range of

yellow furniture and objects, a solitary performer, and audience seating.

In the performance, a series of events occur within the meticulously

arranged space of the room, initiated by a lone figure in a yellow

jumpsuit. As the audience enter, she is lying on the ground with lemon

slices on her eyes. In a few moments, she begins to put on makeshift

outfits from cleaning material and goes through a selection of knives.

Quietly violent lemon-fuelled activities follow, leading on to a brief

dance and swirl sequence and the dizzy climbing of a ladder. A toy brick

companion is retrieved from a display and they both partake in actions

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT INTRODUCTION 5

of consumption, leading finally, to the downing of freshly squeezed

lemon juice shots.

Through my setup of a performance-installation, the performer

and the space are acknowledged from the outset to be co-generators of

meaning. For me, the site of The Ideal Condition is a way of reconciling our

connection with and ownership of the land on which we live through an

increased awareness that continues through the performance. The

construction of a site to be inhabited within the duration of a

performance is intended to create an other world that will allow a specific

area and a specific body to be framed as objects to be observed in

conjunction with each other throughout the show. The contingency of

spatial and bodily semiotics within a performance, as expressed in

Heathfield’s quote at the beginning, is important to this project as my

direction is towards a performance work that is built on unstable and

shifting perceptions. As such, my time-based performance-installation is

essentially in operation as an exhibit, prolonging the state of observation

and understanding.

The importance accorded to an awareness of the visual takes its

cue from several creative disciplines such as in my painting and video

practice where I often use a minimal palette to re-interpret aspects of

specific sites and environments while allowing for open readings. In

performance, I am also inclined towards image-based devising, which the

author of Postdramatic Theatre, Hans-Thies Lehmann, aptly describes as

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT INTRODUCTION 6

‘visual dramaturgy’. 5 This is not to mean “an exclusively visually

organised dramaturgy but rather one that is not subordinated to the text

and can therefore freely develop its own logic.”6 Even though I have

chosen, at least at this time, to abandon text in my performance

altogether, it is important to note that Lehmann is not excluding the text

from the image-based theatre, but rather, is suggesting that an over-

adherence to the text can pose structural limitations. A non-linear

treatment of space and form can disrupt a uniformity of logic, which I

find to be an effective method for encouraging a stronger awareness of

difference for the audience.

With such creative practice, my performance is geared more

strongly towards a visual arts experience where I recognise the audiences’

internal psychological and mental spaces as being more extensive than

the work’s visible qualities. When the forward thrust of events in a

performance is impeded in a way that is similar to the experience of

being in front of a still visual work, our response can begin to operate in

what the Australian theatre director Jenny Kemp refers to as the ‘vertical

time frame’ where “past, present and future coexist” 7 . While I look

towards a more dimensional presence that need not be chronological, I

also recognise that temporal frameworks are still necessary to manage

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, London New York: Routledge, 2006, p.93!
5
6
ibid.
7 Mark Minchinton with Jenny Kemp, “Landscape of the Psyche: the Dream Theatre of

Jenny Kemp” in Allsopp’s Performance Research: On Place Volume 3(Issue 2), New York:
Routledge, 1998, p.78!
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT INTRODUCTION 7

this experience. Due to its controlled temporality, my production needs

to avoid the open viewing intrinsic to a gallery setting. Therefore, the

choice of a theatre set up was so as to uphold the carefully configured

temporal experience of my performance.

With reference to The Ideal Condition, this research paper will

consider the operation of deliberate spatial and temporal setups while a

continual orienting process is aspired towards. The objective of the first

chapter ‘Operations of Space’ will be to review the workings of the site

of performance. Here, I will be explaining my reasons for keeping to a

visual focus, and will also be examining the performance-installation as

medium. Identifying the theatre as a place of presentation, I will proceed

to analyse the site-specificity of Studio One and referential spaces from

where associations may also be drawn. This will be followed by a

discussion of how the performing figure may open itself for

interpretation through certain body-spatial configurations. Next, my

second chapter ‘Mapping Immediacies’ will analyse the experience of a

live work by looking at my performance’s particular treatment of

temporality. This chapter will firstly explore how a co-presence can

operate to uphold a heightened awareness, and later, how a configuration

of the ordinary time of reality can emphasise the audience’s experience.

Finally, I will be discussing the importance of the audiences’ entrance

and exit for the world of the performance that is being set up.
!

OPERATIONS OF SPACE

Visual Communication

Cities today are host to a multitude of social groups and cultures.

As an artist living away from my home country, it is important to me

that the theatre relates to a whole range of people. For me as a person of

Asian heritage, the English language text-based traditions of the dramatic

theatre read as being essentially European. As such, even though I am

familiar with English as lingua franca, the text-based work still carries for

me a Eurocentric otherness and thus, is one that I can never fully

embody. On the other hand, the image-based devising process has

allowed me to respond intuitively and dramaturgically to bodies and

environments. In order to dislodge a performance from associations to a

predominantly verbal cultural context, I drew on the semiotic

subjectivity enabled by the image-based approach. Such a postdramatic

aesthetic, as the theatre researcher David Barnett observes,

“articulates a new modality of using signs in the theatre in

that the relationship between signifier and signified no
longer requires clarification and thus poses an audience a set
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 9

of questions that the stage refuses to answer.”8

This image-based approach embraces relativity, in that any response to a

signifier within the work can be considered equally valid because there is

no right or wrong in its interpretation. The visually motivated process is

unsurprisingly, my approach of choice when deciding upon a multi-

perspectival performance.

Through the visual forms of installation and film practice, I have

come to understand how aesthetic formalisms can reinforce visual

awareness to aid the presentation of an open experience. The artist

Christo, who was famous for spectacles such as Valley Curtain in Rifle

Gap, Colorado and Wrapped Coastline at Little Bay in Australia, relies on

the phenomenological impact of scale and colour fields in his works.

Through Christo’s intervention, previously familiar landscapes become

new again when their formal qualities are accentuated with their covering

of a mass volume of a single coloured fabric.9 Because of its grandeur,

the sight of the work, or even of its documentation, will often persist in

memory. The limited palette of early monochromic moving pictures also

works in a similar way. Operating within the basic frame of black and

white, their communicability is dependent upon form and composition,

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
8 David Barnett, “Christoph Marthaler: The musicality, theatricality and politics of
postdramatic direction” in Delgado and Rebellato’s Contemporary European Theatre
Directors, London & New York: Routledge, 2010, p.185
9 Albert Maysles; Ellen Hovde; David Maysles; Christo, Christo’s Valley Curtain [VHS],

New York: Maysles Films, 1974. Viewed on 30 June 2011.

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 10

as does Christo’s use of a singular colour. Of several examples present in

the history of film, I will make brief mention of the film At Land (1944)

by American experimental filmmaker Maya Deren to demonstrate the

function of formal structures. The film is based on a discursive dream

narrative and symbolic imagery, and is wholly devoid of text.10 It features

Deren herself as the protagonist, flicking in-between inconsistent

personal identities.11 In order to simulate and identify different states of

being within non-prescriptive and illogical content, it is important for

imagery to be simple and not overly didactic, and for image transitions to

recognise the general shapes and forms that accompany them.

With a similar discursiveness of content in my performance, the

production will therefore need sharp aesthetics for a presentational

clarity, so that signs and symbols may be more easily identified. I decided

upon a colour-coordinated design of onstage properties and costumes

for the production, recognising the potency of colour fields within the

performance’s limited duration. Essentially, the set consisted of yellow

paraphernalia within a yellow-floored structure, framed by walls that

were both yellow and red. The function of a constant colour was to

highlight actions and forms, and encourage the extensive range of

objects to be read as unique entities.12 The other prominent colour was a

warm red, which was used to coordinate the upper portions of the
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10 Maya Deren, Collected experimental films, New York: Mystic Fire Video & Cherel Ito
distributors, 1986. Viewed on 14th September 2011.!
11 Ibid.
12Appendix (List of properties can be viewed in production spreadsheet)
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 11

Figure 1.1 - Production set of The Ideal Condition, Studio One. Photography: Heidrun Löhr

structure as a visual framing device to bring the focus back to the yellow.

The twenty red seats for the audience, scattered within the yellow floors

of the set as well as on the original black flooring of the venue, also

suggest some form of difference when juxtaposed with the centrality of

the yellow. Together, both the yellow and the red colours can serve as

indications to the clear divisions in this staged world.

All this is important because many of the actions undertaken are

based on the everyday, but temporally and physically re-contextualised.

For me, yellow operates by pulling this world out of the ordinary, so as

to reflect a place of otherness. On first sight, its vibrancy can be

instinctually responded to in a usually positive fashion. I am interested in

locating ways in which a configuration of performed actions with select

objects within the space can move these readings. For my particular
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 12

treatment of yellow within the performance, possible binaries as I

identify them to be may be identified as ‘delightful’ and ‘disturbing’. This

points to the earlier mentioned interest in the mental space between

seeing and understanding. From this production process, I have come to

realise that these discoveries are more likely to be reached through

practical activity such as the actual building of the structure, existing

within, and devising around the potentials of the space.

Medium of the Performance-Installation

The American curator Mark Rosenthal describes the installation

with the following analogy, “Just as life consists of one perception

followed by another, each a fleeting, non-linear moment, an installation

courts the same dense ephemeral experience”. 13 In other words, the

installation is always asking to be responded to and the experience it

shall offer up is by its nature transitory. Both the live performance and

installation are similarly invested in real time experiences. The

performance writer and critic Peggy Phelan famously argues that

ontologically speaking, performance is representation without

14
reproduction. From this emphasis on the present moment of

experience, it might be said that the medium-specificity of both forms

share overlaps.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
13 Mark Rosenthal, Understanding Installation Art: From Duchamp to Holzer, New York:
Prestel, 2003, p.27
14 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London & New York: Routledge,

1993, pp.146-166!!
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 13

Depending on how liveness is performed, a present body may or

may not draw attention to its possible cultural associations. I find

performances that operate firstly on bodily memories, such as that of

performance artist Mike Parr’s politically motivated act of nailing his arm

onto a gallery wall in Malevich (A Political Arm) for example, to be more

accessible than a performance built solely on contextual information

such as the conventional script-based play, which in my experience is

often based on a cultural-specificity that can sometimes be alienating.15

In this light, the transient offerings of both live performance and

installation can also be said to grant both these mediums an openness to

function as a bridging language for people of different cultures.16 My

presence in The Ideal Condition is bound more to sensorial and task-related

memories in hope that human experiences can be reframed so that it

may be more attentively observed. The type of live presence is thus,

important to consider in this respect.

Drawing on the environmental theatre’s desire to eliminate the

conventional distance between audience and performer through an

immersive spatial setup, I had also aimed to set up a total space that

offered all-round stimuli in the theatre. For The Ideal Condition, a structure

was designed and constructed to include both performer and audience

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15 Michelle Jamieson, Artlink Vol. 22 No.3, Malewtisch (A Political Arm) Mike Parr, 2002.
Viewed on 8 October 2011. <http://www.artlink.com.au/articles/2656/malewitsch-
5Ba-political-arm5D-mike-parr/>
16 Rosenthal, op. cit., p.71
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 14

on level ground, together enclosed by asymmetrically outstretched

overhanging walls. The performance’s situation within an installation

gives emphasis to the design and function of the space. The walls have

been meticulously paneled as in an elaborate piece of architecture. The

conventional black of the venue also framed the colour-coordinated

yellow and red structure, enhancing the installation’s sensorial presence.

As for the chairs, their positioning within the installation provided an

invitation for the audience to come onto the set. In order to indicate the

validity of choosing to view the performance standing or even sitting on

the floor, the quantity of chairs available were intentionally insufficient

for seating all the audience members. These are design decisions made to

foster a greater inclusiveness of the audience members and offer unique

stimuli, so that the audiences may feel more enabled to decide for

themselves what they would like to take away from the experience, rather

than have to receive unspectacular information presented to them. I

have found that the combination of both mediums of performance and

installation provide for an immersive spatial configuration directed at an

awareness and creation of unfolding perceptions. The performance-

installation therefore offered me an ideal communication platform to

convey a transitory world.

While negotiating performance and space, several artists have

been important in helping me think through the relational strategies that

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 15

I was attempting to set up. The German theatre practitioner Bertolt

Brecht is one example. He engaged the technique of Verfremdungseffekt,

also sometimes referred to as defamiliarisation, to achieve the aim of

social awareness.17 Stanton B. Garner in Bodied Spaces, describes its effect

to be “the estrangement of the body as phenomenal site”, thus indicating

a point of difference. 18 Being both a staging aesthetic and an acting

theory, what defamiliarisation usually involves is the combination of the

styles of naturalism with analytic acting, situated within an epic set.19 The

video artist Krzysztof Wodiczko also emphasises the un-naturalness of

site and scale, but simulates real interactions through the spectators’

participation in the subject.20 Wodiczko often utilises large-scale video

projections in his works and later converges this space with the viewer’s

reality. In the CECUT Project for example, women who work in the

"maqulladora" industry in Tijuana had their faces projected on the façade

of the CECUT Omnimax Theater in the background as they speak

through headsets about their experiences.21 Although their methods are

dissimilar, both strategies of Brecht and Wodiczko work with a

dichotomy of differentiation and realism aimed toward the uncovering

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bertolt Brecht, ‘On the Experimental Theatre’ in Corrigan’s op. cit., pp.200 !
17

18 !Stanton B. Garner Jr., Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary

Drama, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994, pp.164-5
19 ibid.
20 Nick Kaye, Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, London: Routledge,

2000, pp.35-36
21 Interrogative Design Group, “CECUT Project”, Krzysztof Wodiczko. Adam

Whiton, Sung Ho Kim. Viewed on 3rd October 2011.

<http://web.mit.edu/idg/cecut.html>
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 16

of the “performances of the places into which they intervene”. What

seems to be is that a clash of styles can often provide an awakening

effect to direct attention to the subject of exploration.

Likewise, through the partaking of real actions within the built

site of a room in part-surreal part-everyday décor, my performance has

used an evident stylistic disjunction to highlight performed actions.22 On

the possible dialectics at play between different styles of presentation,

the French philosopher Michel de Certeau observes,

By a paradox that is only apparent, the discourse that makes

people believe is the one that takes away what it urges them
to believe in, or never delivers what it promises. Far from
expressing a void or describing a lack, it creates such. It
makes room for a void. In that way, it opens up clearings; it
“allows” a certain play within a system of defined places.23

For de Certeau, and indeed through the “production of an area of free

play” in performance, room for perception and consideration is

magnified through the awareness of these stylistic differences.24 Utilising

this approach, I hope to have created a kind of distance so that a viewer

may more effectively read the content of the work. In my view, this can

welcome a more substantive response to unfamiliarity for the audience.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
22
Kaye, op. cit., pp.40-41
23 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1984, p.105!
24 ibid.
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 17

Site-Specificity of the Theatre

Taking the focus from structures within the production, to the

offerings provided by situating the piece in a specific theatre venue, and

subsequently, the broader frameworks on which the performance sits,

more ways of understanding could be identified. The writer Nick Kaye’s

description of the site-specific performance is one where performance

and place are interdependent.25 In discussing notions of site-specificity, I

would like to first begin by positioning this investigation around the site-

specificity of a theatre. By acknowledging the theatre as site, as the

minimalist artists do towards the gallery as a viewing space, a

performance can harness a different potential through an audience’s

discernment of its presentational function.26

An example of engaging the site-specificity of the theatre as a

place of exhibition that gave me confidence to engage the unusual

definition of site-specificity but also provided a way of managing the

particular temporality I was working towards, can be seen in Il Tempo de

Postino (Postman Time). Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe

Parreno, their driving question for the show was quoted in a brief

descriptor of the event as being: "What happens if having an exhibition

is not a way to occupy space, but a way to occupy time?"27 A series of

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
25
Kaye, op. cit., p.55
26
Kaye, op. cit., pp.25-33
27 e-flux, “Art Basel: Il Tempo del Postino”, New York, 2009. Viewed on 20th

September 2011. <http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/6815>.

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 18

time-based art performances were ‘exhibited’ in a theatre setting and the

artists involved were mostly from a visual or new media arts background

rather than performance.28 Keeping in mind the aim of the event, the

delivery of Il Tempo del Postino to the audience in its controlled

presentation time of an event, rather than in a time of the audience’s

control as in an exhibition, is an essential structural decision that I drew

upon.

One of the participants whose work I found useful in identifying

the theatre as an active place of exhibition is the video artist Doug

Aitken, who presented the collaborative performance The Handle Comes

Up The Handle Comes Down. 29 The event occurs in a classic theatre

auditorium, with vocalists as performers operating and moving within

the audience in an unpredictable sequence. 30 As such, there is

information fed from all directions and is in constant renewal. The

rectangular backdrop of the stage begins in complete darkness but gets

visibly brighter as time passes. 31 Aurally, the cacophony of cattle

auctioneering voices together with a percussion rhythm carries with it an

infectious energy geared towards the atmosphere of a live auction.32 If I

begin to consider the site of auctioneering with only humans and no

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
28 ibid.
29!Doug Aitken, “The handle comes up the handle comes down”, 2009. Viewed on 16th
September 2011. <http://www.dougaitkenworkshop.com/work/the-handle-comes-
up/>.
30 Ibid.!
31 ibid.
32 ibid.!
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 19

other properties, a possible reading might have looked upon the event as

a reference to the history of slavery.

On a very fundamental level, my installation references the

generic site of the room, a private space, and even the space of memory.

In this instance, the definition of ‘site-specificity’ in the theatre may be

negotiated in The Ideal Condition to reference a performance devised to sit

within my specifically-built room to accommodate wider personal and

social associations with the referential generic site, while also alluding to

a diversity of other lone experiences. More strongly applicable however,

is the site-specificity of Studio One as the venue for the performance.

Although my production is not overtly political, my visual approach to

performance is certainly to do with my current research being positioned

in this specific time and place that is Sydney, Australia. As a Singaporean,

my particular background is of a migrant-Chinese heritage but I have

lived through a westernised upbringing, influenced by aural

environments of the Hokkien dialect, alongside the English, Mandarin,

Malay and Tamil main languages. At the University’s venue of Studio

One, it is to my knowledge that the theatre scene is largely frequented

and presented by Anglo-Australians. Here, either text or movement-

based theatre productions are more commonly based in western

tradition such as the ‘well-made play’. I am sharply aware of my

discomfort in acting out the modes of being demanded by these

productions. Therefore, it is important for me to question the traditions

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 20

of this site through non-conformity to its conventional programming. As

my background is not distinctly derived from a particular tradition, it

poses the question of what approach would be most suitable to create a

performance work I can claim as my own. For me, the spatial and

temporal emphases of my performance-installation have accorded me

some ability to define for myself a comfortable mode of communication.

Had I undertaken this research in my home country of Singapore, this

option might perhaps not be the one I would have instinctively taken.

Interpretation of Figure

Previously in the introduction, I explained that my chosen artistic

direction has been towards an emphasis on the audiences’ understanding

rather than depend solely on the logic of the performance’s external

presentation, as I believe that this can allow for a wide spectrum of

responses due to its experiential focus. From this vantage point, I argued

that stable external frameworks of time and space are necessary to

provide a starting position for response to be demanded, before any

change can be effectively put into practice. French thinker Umberto

Eco’s concept of the ‘open work’ can be explained as the duality of

“completeness” and “openness” as described by the aesthetic theorists.33

My performing figure and her activities can be considered within such a

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
33Umberto Eco, The Open Work, Cambridge & Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1989, p.4
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 21

Figure 1.2 – At the table with brick companion. Photography: Heidrun Löhr

context and is deliberately open to interpretation. In my opinion, Eco’s

stance should be celebrated for his diverse allowance of views. His

perspective acknowledges the existence and importance of the internal

world, rightfully arguing for experience to be the most valid treatment of

an object, or in this instance, a performance’s semiotic contingency.

As this audience experience that I speak of is non-definite and

relative, I need to consider how it is the performing body can be

presented so that I can yet again draw attention back to the audiences’

own mental processes as they attempt to decipher presented

information. I have found that theories in psychology offer useful

observations supporting the discursive dream logic and non-linear

persona development I was intent on. Although all sections of my

performance are grounded in the same space, the purposes of this space
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT OPERATIONS OF SPACE 22

as recognised by the figure can be quite distinct. In the private space

described in The Ideal Condition where furniture pieces, outfits, objects,

and a mirror, provide opportunities for self-reflection and pretense, the

figure is able to move through a playfully dynamic series of actions as

she copes with being alone. The sociologist Herbert Blumer’s theory of

Symbolic Interactionism, an area of study belonging to the behavioural

sciences, is founded on the premise that “human beings act toward

things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them”.34 The

human geographer David Ley had also argued for the dialectic between

place and identity in his expressing that “place is a social construction”.35

These views justify a more direct co-relation between person and place,

rather than focuses on a linear progression of identity as assumed in

traditional theatre pedagogy. Applied within a theatre performance, I

have found that the non-predictability of the performing figure can

break up the easy flow of stimuli for the audience, therefore requiring a

constant effort to be interpreted in relation to the space and objects with

which she interacts. As such, this approach can pose a continual demand

on the internal world of the audience.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
34 Herbert Blumer, Symbolic Interaction: Perspective and Method, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1969, p.2
35
Steve Pile, The Body and the City: Psychoanalysis, Space and Subjectivity, London:
Routledge, 1996, p.55!
!

MAPPING IMMEDIACIES

Co-presence: Space and Time

The theatre appeals as much to the eye as to the ear. It is not

a series of pictures, like the cinema, but architecture, a
moving structure of scenic images.36

(Eugene Ionesco, Experience of Theatre)

Ionesco’s personal view of theatre as “a moving structure of scenic

images” describes a lived space that is multi-faceted and experienced

anew every minute.37 I read from the above quote that the theatre is a

three-dimensional space and that it needs to be constantly navigated.

Broadly speaking, central to any conventional live performance is a

physical and temporal co-presence of the work and its viewer. A key

thinker with regards to the ontology of performance is Peggy Phelan

who argues for performance to be representation without

reproduction.38 I tend to agree with Phelan’s ontological stance as the

qualities of unpredictability and ephemerality in my performance are

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
36
Eugene Ionesco, ‘Experience of Theatre’ in Robert W. Corrigan’s The Modern Theatre,
New York: The MacMillan Company, 1964, p.831
37 ibid.
38 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, London & New York: Routledge,

1993, pp.146-166
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 24

highly regarded in the facilitation of a continual consciousness of the

audience. For me, the transitory nature of a performed presence is to be

celebrated for its ability to encompass subjective responses. Heathfield

refers to the renewing presence of the performance by using the term

‘Eventhood’, which involves “bringing the reception of the artwork into

the elusive conditions of the real, where the relation between experience

and thought can be tested and re-articulated.”39 Heathfield’s description

of the live event has helped me to shape my actions towards a focus on

the moment of its occurrence. In Artaud’s essays on the theatre, he had

argued that a production should structure itself upon a demonstration of

40
unrepeatability and unexpectancy. For Artaud, these views on

performance are directly related to the quality of actions, which for him

is always differently experienced each time and is also always open to

different outcomes. Equally, as demonstrated by the mid-air lemon

slicing in my performance for instance, I find that devising a

performance dependent on its situational contingency supports a greater

tangibility and immediate sense of being that helps give value to the

present moment.

In my view, any recording of video can serve only archival

purposes. Inevitably, any documentation will fall short in conveying the

experience of my production. With such documentation viewed post-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
39
Heathfield, op. cit., p.9
40
Christopher Innes, Avant-Garde Theatre: 1892-1992, London & New York: Routledge,
1993, p.63
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 25

performance, there is for example, the option of fast-forwarding the

duration of un-concealment. That is for me the speeding up of the

orienting process, which I had earlier expressed my desire to keep within

so that sufficient time can be accorded towards a consideration of the

changing mix of visual stimuli. Fast-forwarding will unavoidably

undercut my production’s controlled temporality. Furthermore, as all my

audiences take on variable sightlines – within and outside the set, sitting

and standing, being in the first row just centimetres from the action, or

gazing through gaps in the seating arrangement – the single perspectival

recording that may work for the archival of a conventional stage play

would prove itself unsuitable to convey the all-round experience of my

performance.

From External to Internal

The external reality I will be discussing refers simply to the

sequence of events that occur in the show. The extensive list of actions

evidenced in the performance score, which can be found in Appendix B,

are quite simply task-oriented and follows a logical time structure.41 The

everydayness of such actions, taken out of their everyday context, and

re-positioned within a theatrical framework, asks to be interpreted as

simultaneously unique and continuous events. As an extension of this

idea, I am reluctant to provide a synopsis in the program and

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
41 Appendix B (Performance Score)!
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 26

promotional material due to the performance’s dependency on the

gradual unfolding of events. Like Ziarek who undertakes Heidegger’s

‘postaesthetic’ approach to the seeing of art as the “temporal event of

unconcealment” and thus to emphasise the value of a live performance,

I do not wish to intervene with the element of surprise and revelation

that characterises such work.42 The pleasure for the audience is simply

accorded to the following through of a process and action. Any form of

live art can be associated with a similar unpredictability. In my view,

these basic qualities of an event can encourage a more multi-dimensional

temporality, thus reproduce something of the state of the continual

moments of discovery experienced by the immigrant subject into

Figure 2.1 – Selecting knives. Photography: Heidrun Löhr

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
42
Krzysztof Ziarek, The Historicity of Experience: Modernity, the Avant-Garde, and the Event,
Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001, p.4,5
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 27

contemporary experience.

The recent understanding of live works as performance has

brought about discussions on temporality, until now more commonly

found in the vocabulary of performance art writing, to the forefront of

critical performance discourse. Since the onslaught of the historical

avant-garde movements at the break of the last century, the lines

between theatre and performance art have been increasingly blurred.

There are certainly distinct differences between performance as viewed

in conventional theatre, and performance as experienced in performance

art practice. Nevertheless, held between these binaries are also hybrid

and unique forms embracing manifestations of both genres. Within

these last decades, there have been the Environmental Theatre,

Happenings, and increasing variations of digitised presentational forms

within performances. In that my own production of the The Ideal

Condition has a specific start and finish time, it refers to the rigorous time

structures in place within a normal theatrical production, but the

temporality that it depends on is perhaps more akin to the paced

external deliberateness common with performance art works.

In his book ‘Analyzing Performance’, Patrice Pavis describes the

distinctive qualities of External and Internal time. Namely, he describes

the External as objective and quantifiable, and the Internal as subjective

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 28

and qualitative.43 Internal time is thus immeasurable, and I am interested

in accessing this expansive internal dimension. Kemp’s observations

Figure 2.2 – Slicing a jellybean. Photography: Heidrun Löhr

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Patrice Pavis, Analyzing Performance: Theatre, Dance, and Film, Ann Arbor: University of
43

Michigan Press, 2006, p.155-157

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 29

about the relationship between the external and internal time are also

useful to study in this respect. During an interview with Mark

Minchinton in Performance Research: On Place, Kemp expressed that to

facilitate the awareness of this inner action, our everyday temporal

linearity has to be dealt with. 44 She explains, “We have to depart from

cause and effect, beginning, middle and end; to stop travelling in a

horizontal direction and open up a vertical time frame.” This vertical

time frame Kemp describes is the temporal space of imagination and

dreams. The stationary image in the visual arts is observed as having the

capability of bringing the viewer into active thought, in contrast with the

sometimes-undesired impact of the over-active theatre compelling a

passiveness within the audience.45 In my handling of the performance’s

temporal space, I tried to amplify an awareness of the internal time and

have the audience question their own experience through a lingering

external time. For the production, I looked at reintroducing other

temporalities through slow deliberated actions. Heathfield, in his

writings on live art comments,

“…slow moves provide an opportunity to de-habitualise and

de-naturalise perceptions of time, to de-link the demands so
prevalent in contemporary culture for instantaneous
relationships between art and meaning, intention and
realization, desire and fulfillment.”46

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
44 Kemp, op. cit., p.78
45 ibid.
46 Heathfield, op. cit., p.10!
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 30

A sensory time is entered, time is altered, and as Heathfield also

describes, the experience becomes a “time out of time”.47 The onstage

figure is observed sequence after sequence, and as little as there is to

conclude, it would be unfair to doubt the fullness of that persona. In

terms of everyday logic, the logic of the work may be difficult to

identify. But, experienced ‘internally’ it is limitless and open to a

multitude of possibilities.

I drew on these ideas to shape the experience of time in the

controlled pace of The Ideal Condition. 48 Understandably, a theatre

audience may experience some discomfort in having to succumb to such

uneventful-ness. My approach to the impeding of a sensible forward

logic was more to do with unfolding events that do not define anything

about the situation of the performer at its end as in its commencement,

except to throw up possible ways of understanding. Although the pace

of time established is really not so far from the normality of everyday

behaviour in a private space, such temporality in a theatre setting can

seem unusual and be uneasy to sit through, especially as it looks at

exposing our experience of time as a product of the body, senses, and

perceptions.49

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
47 Heathfield, op. cit., p.8
48 Appendix B (Performance Score)
49 Heathfield, op. cit., p.8
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 31

Continuity and Self-Sufficiency

As for what the audience do encounter of the event,

atmospheric noises are playing over the sound system continually.50 The

performer is also onstage prior to their arrival and remains onstage even

at their departure. In such a setup, a performance is in its presentational

existence prior to its start and continues even after its end. The

experience that this offers up is one of continuous time. With such

structural choice, the performance can give the impression of a limitless

duration. Of course, the performance is still heavily bounded within a

certain time frame, that being within the allocated duration of the

Figure 2.3 – Final stage image when audience members leave the venue. Photograph taken on
evening of dress rehearsal. In other versions, the figure sits on other side of the table.
Photography: Heidrun Löhr

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
50 Appendix C (Technical Requirements)!
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT MAPPING IMMEDIACIES 32

twenty-minutes for the production. But framed also by the audiences’

entrance and exit, this ‘continual’ event can in an indirect way challenge

capitalistic exchange systems that demand for the presentation of a

performance to the audience.

The staged world can also identify itself as self-sufficient through

its ‘continuity’. When a performance ‘pre-exists’, the audience is faced

with an immediate ‘reality’ upon their entrance. Especially as the

performance is hosted within a theatre venue, it might be assumed that

staying through this planned duration is expected as in conventional

practice. Thus, following their entrance, the audiences are compelled to

conform with the spatial and temporal logic of this other world, and

have to adjust and come to terms with a sudden change of pace upon

their entrance. This is a performance, but it also breaks away from the

conventional structure of performance in terms of its not having a start

and end framed by the audiences’ entrance and their exit. The main

point of difference is that the work is encountered because of the

audiences’ efforts. It is not simply presented to them as they await its

commencement. In fact, it might even be plausible to say that the

audience members are presented to the performer. For my purposes of

creating a place of otherness in which changing perceptions can

hopefully be encountered, this temporal formalism I have chosen to

employ was put in place to provide a distinct world for the audience to

both enter and exit, and for myself as performer to be inhabit.

!

CONCLUSION

I still often ask myself: What was it specifically about the

cultural, social, and temporal connotations of ‘The Every/day

Immigrant’ that had prompted an entire research project? Afterall, this

project had argued for the displaced experience to be a subjective one

and that it can be approached from so many angles. Through the year,

my perspective on otherness and difference has moved through many

stages. I have come to understand the existence of scientific theories

that corroborate with my experience of reality and have gained a more

refined awareness of possible manifestations of such experience in

contemporary performance. It would even be appropriate to say that the

project started as a reaction to unfamiliar territory, furthered only

though a personal insistence to pin down how it is I can understand

these prevailing experiences of difference. On a neurological level, my

outsider experience is simply a result of my different sensorial faculties

being alerted by environmental stimuli. During any process of

adaptation, these perceived differences are amplified then inwardly

manifested. This project recognised the phenomenon of unfolding

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT CONCLUSION 34

perceptions, and attempted to probe elements of communication we

take for granted. I made the decision that this discourse would be better

explored through practical means, and so through my particular

configurations of time, space and the body in The Ideal Condition, I hope

that the audience might have found the process of orienting themselves

in the performance thought-provoking.

At various points in the paper, I have described the visual

approach as an open form, more accommodating of multiple

perspectives than the text-based work. I hold this view only on the

premise of the audiences’ heightened awareness, which can be facilitated

through precise spatial and temporal configurations. The forebears of

the image-based theatre are the artists of the historical avant-garde

movements, who have in their different philosophies and practice

pursued strategies to relinquish the hierarchical structures of the text-

based dramatic work. The philosophies that these strategies are founded

on were often in opposition to each other, but within differences they

quite often shared emphases on an experiential rather than logical

interpretation. As such, I have taken from the density of the ephemeral

presence as acknowledged by the early art theatres, and have aimed for a

sensorial experience that I believe replicates that of the immigrant

subject’s heightened consciousness. I am drawn on the image-based

theatre as I find it to be more readily equipped to complement a

transitory and multicultural world. Even while I pursued the subject of

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT CONCLUSION 35

difference in such visually obvious ways, my approach to the handling

and navigating through information has always been more subtle than

aggressive, in that I have aimed to recognise the validity of different

claims on reality without being didactic.

It is important to remember that subjectivity and contingency,

for all the pluralities they encompass, need to rely on creative

formalisms for most effective communication. In my first chapter, I

looked at configurations of space that can allow for multifarious

readings to be made. My project has been very reliant on design as a

semiotic tool, and through this I have understood the necessity of a

clear aesthetic direction. In the second chapter, I examined the

constructions of time through external and internal logics as well as

durational frameworks. I find temporal regulations, such as the

performer’s continual presence in the space, and my decision to keep

with an ordinary task-dependent time within the performance, to also

operate as a presentational platform and thus are useful to be in place

from the outset. This is to convey a clear external time frame that will

consequently provide entry into a more expansive inner space.

While attempting to put in neat categories how my design and

devising choices have affected the audience experience of the

production, it became clear to me that much more has been articulated

post-production. My process has been dependent on both instinctual

and pre-meditated decisions, and the trusting of both these pathways

THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT CONCLUSION 36

have given me a comfortable flow of ideas to compare and examine in

the culmination of this research. The subject of transitory spaces can be

approached from so many directions. I take the stance that because time

and space are never permanent in the theatre, it is worth trusting in a

creative process that is intuitive and which continuously offers new

perspectives. Just as it is in reality, there is little of our experience of life

that is homogenous and conclusive, and so rather than by-pass these

differences, it is important for performance to recognise and facilitate a

place for understanding.

!

APPENDICES

A. Production Spreadsheet for Costumes and Properties

Costume and Properties Qty Cost

1 Yellow Unitard 1 $38
2 Leg Warmers 1 $3
3 Poncho 1 $1
4 Sheet Cover 1 Personal
5 Linen 1 Personal
6 Scarf 1 Personal
7 Swimming Robe 2 Personal
8 Bath Towel 1 Personal
9 Plastic Container 1 Found
10 Organic Orange Juice 1 $5
11 South American Roses 5 $25
12 Gerberas 6 $18
13 Toy Car 1 $5
14 Toy Bricks (Figurine) 1 In-kind
15 Storage with Yellow Cover 1 Personal
16 Shutter Shades 1 In-kind
17 Eye Goggles 1 In-kind
18 Clown Wig 1 In-kind
19 Feather Boa 1 In-kind
20 Converse Shoes 1 Personal
21 Polyester Rope 1 $5
22 Vuvuzela 1 In-kind
23 Rubber Ball 1 $3
24 Play Dough 1 In-kind
25 Toy Spade 1 In-kind
26 Set of Knives 1 $6
27 Cleaver 1 $3
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT APPENDICES 38

28 Cleaning Cloth Roll 1 $2

29 Wiping Cloth Roll 1 $3
30 Washing Detergent 1 $2
31 Furniture Polish 1 $2
32 Window Wiper 1 Personal
33 Bucket 1 Personal
34 Coles Tidy Bag Roll 1 Personal
35 Lemon Squeezer 1 $0.69
36 Lemon Juicer 1 In-kind
37 Jelly Tray 1 In-kind
38 Shot Glasses 5 In-kind
39 Set of Plastic Bowls 1 $3
40 Large Salad Bowl 1 Personal
41 Wide Vase 1 In-kind
42 Bottle Vase 1 In-kind
43 Mirror 1 Personal
44 Ladder 1 In-kind
45 Garden Table 1 In-kind
46 Chair 1 In-kind
47 Tall Plinth 1 In-kind
48 Broad Plinth 1 In-kind
49 Long Drawers 1 Found
50 Regular Drawers 1 Found
51 Large Frame 1 Personal
52 Small Frame 1 Personal
53 Lemons 40 $20 (approx.)
54 Jelly Beans - $7
Additional Miscellaneous - Personal

Total $151.69
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT APPENDICES 39

B. Performance Score

The venue is a black box theatre. The space (refer to stage plans) is a built one,
accommodating the set, single performer, seating, and the audience. It is mainly
yellow with red. The two triangular overhanging walls within and on the outskirts
of the set are red. Red chairs/stools are positioned on the yellow floor panels of
the set, as well as off, on the black floor of the theatre. They are loosely
positioned apart from each other, offering a sufficient sightline to view most
aspects of the set where action will occur. The number of chairs is limited to
good sitting sightlines. All other audience members are to stand for a good view
or if they wish, sit within the set. In the centre of the seatings, there is a gap
where no chairs/stools should be placed. This offers the few back seats a
sufficient viewing space, as well as standing audiences a perspective of action that
occurs on the ground. No seats should be allocated.

Figure is lying down on a bed linen unevenly spread. Her head is directly under
the hanging light bulb. She is wearing a yellow unitard with yellow/white-striped
leg warmers. She has a slice of lemon on each eye. There is a plastic container
beside her outstretched hand with more slices of the lemon and a knife with a
yellow handle. Doors to the theatre open and audience enter. When they settle,
the figure continues to bask in the lemon facial for about an extra minute.

She gets up. She gets cleaning cloth to clean bit of lemon mess off the floor. She
picks up yellow roll of cleaning cloth and wraps it around her body. She goes to
drawers and picks out the waist tie off a swimming robe to keep the cleaning
cloth in place. She retrieves a large bowl from the table and goes to select lemons
from the foot of the mirror. She comes back to the table to select from a
collection of knives, comparing their sharpness with the light of the bulb. She
may be partaking a pretend action or seriously considering knives. She finds a
cleaver. She chooses the cleaver. She picks up bowl with lemons, stands to face
mirror. She picks up lemon and considers herself in the mirror. She holds up
cleaver in right hand. She throws lemon up and slices lemon in air. She repeats
the action with the same lemon. She collects lemon halves and returns to the
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT APPENDICES 40

table. She squeezes juice with a lemon squeezer. She pours juice in a glass bottle
through a funnel she selects from her collection.

She changes out of her cleaning outfit. Her bed linen from before is still on the
floor. She proceeds to fold it up first. She returns carefully folded linen to the
drawers. She pulls the cleaning cloth out flat and starts rolling it from one end
with the cardboard centre. She spots a toy car and rolls it on the long length of
cloth. She may do this more than once. She watches the car go. She continues
rolling the cloth. She returns the cloth to the bucket.

She heads to the drawers to put on yellow poncho. She watches herself in the
mirror, and balances on one leg in a yoga pose. She tries some dance and yoga
poses while still on one leg. She attempts to turn to her right while balancing. She
attempts some awkward dance moves. She tries spinning. She continues
spinning, self-absorbed. Abruptly, she approaches the half-opened ladder next to
her and pulls it open. She whisks a rope loosely tied to the ladder round her
waist. She climbs the ladder very quickly and faces outwards, starting into the
hanging light bulb. At this point, she could be dizzy. She may be on the building.
She may be looking at the sun. She looks down. She jumps. She descends. She
pulls the rope off herself.

Putting on a wig, shutter shades, and eye goggles, she looks for a spade and picks
up a container of playdough. She splits the dough up into even round shapes. She
moves closer to the centre of the room and rolls six even balls of play dough. She
violently whacks four of it flat, fitting the round ones between the flattened sides
and compressing it to make some kind of a macaroon or burger. She places it on
the cover of a storage container, using it like a food tray. She places it at the table.

She pulls a toy brick figure from behind a vase of large blossoming yellow roses
and dying yellow gerberas. She carries it with one hand carefully to the chair,
sitting it carefully as if any quick movement may cause the brick structure to
collapse. She picks up a jelly tray from the floor and props the brick figure higher
up. She sits on the same chair, behind the figurine. She distributes some yellow
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT APPENDICES 41

jellybeans and slices them with the dinner knife. She feeds the brick figure one-
half of the jellybean. She looks intently at the figure. She waits. She eats the other
half. She also eats the half the figuring was being fed. She does this a few times.

She moves to the corner of the room and removes box of toys from the short
plinth sitting by the corner. She pulls the plinth forward with effort and lays it
down on its side around the table. She sits on it. She empties the objects on her
Frisbee and places it in front of her like a plate. She serves herself jellybeans. She
cuts herself a slice of the play dough food. She serves them both lemon juice in
shot glasses. She drinks. She looks at her brick companion. She drinks. She looks
up ahead. She drinks.

The performance is timed to twenty minutes. A crew member opens the exit
door. Front-of-house lights fade up. Audiences leave the space in their own time.
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT APPENDICES 42

C. Technical Requirements

i. Lighting
Incandescent 240V bulb at 50% (x 1)
• Hanging central of the space, approximately 2.2m off the ground.
• It is almost an equal distant from ladder and table and mirror.

Fresnel on full (x 1)
• General wash aimed at central area of space.

Fresnel on full (x 1)
• Aimed at back corner where plinth and vase of flowers are, from corner
of Wall C and D.

Fresnel on full (x 1)
• Aimed at table from corner of Wall A and D.

Fresnel on full (x 1)
• Aimed at ladder from corner of Wall A and D.

Fresnel (x3)
• Used for Front-of-House
• Creates linear pathway towards exit.
• To be lit at the end of twenty minutes.

All lighting except those used for Front-of-House, are lit constantly from
before the audience enter, till they leave. There are no lighting cues during the
performance.

ii. Audio theidealconditiontrack.mov

• To be played from laptop, connected to venue’s sound system.
• Volume for laptop on full, L&R on sound system at 60%

The audio track runs for 31 minutes. The duration of the performance is
approximately 20 minutes. Audio track is a constant ambient sound recording
of the natural soundscape of the backyard, with indication of birds, vehicles,
and the wind. The track is to begin before audience enter and will run at a
constant volume throughout the performance. There are no sound cues.
!

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Video, and Performance

Cheer Up Kid [Performance]. By Nat Randall, Erskineville: PACT

Theatre. 07 May 2011.

Christo’s Valley Curtain [VHS], (1974). By Albert Maysles; Ellen Hovde;

David Maysles; Christo. New York: Maysles Films. Viewed on 30
June 2011.

Cold [Performance]. (2011). By Lars Noren. Dir. Shiereen Magsalin.

Kensington: NIDA Parade Space. 13 May 2011.

Collected experimental films [VHS]. By Maya Deren. New York: Mystic Fire
Video & Cherel Ito distributors. Viewed on 14th September 2011.

Executive Stress / Corporate Retreat [Performance]. (2011). By Applespiel.

Erskineville: PACT Theatre. 07 May 2011.

Imaginary Landscapes: A film on Brian Eno [VHS]. (1989). By Duncan Ward;

Brian Eno; Gabriella Cardazzo. London : Filmmakers Ltd. Viewed
on 30 June 2011.

Machine Atlas [Performance]. (2011). Dir. Caitlin Newton-Broad.

Kogarah: Kogarah Town Square. 25-28 August 2011.

Platform 2 [Performance]. (2011). By Tess De Quincey, Martin del Amo,

Nikki Heywood. Sydney: Fraser Studios. 05 March 2011.

Rubbings from a Live Man [DVD]. (2008). By Warwick Broadhead. Dir.

Florian Habicht. Auckland NZ: Live Man Films Ltd. Viewed on 05
May 2011.

They’re a Weird Mob [DVD]. (1966). Dir. Michael Powell. Sydney:

Williamson-Powell International Films. Viewed on 2 August 2011.
THE EVERY/DAY IMMIGRANT BIBLIOGRAPHY 48

Web

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th
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