Reflection On The Protest Part 3

With all of the feedback and my own personal reflection, I feel as if I can now give a satisfactory conclusion to how the protest went as well as the positives and negatives.

In terms of the idea, in terms of the song choices and the scouting of areas and timing and locations, these for the most part were good, i feel that for my first ever public protest i created an interesting piece of work about something most people don't feel is important which is i chose to protest negativity.

I think the grey area about my protest subject meant it didn't deliver the same impact as it potentially could have, I think my use of the areas as well as my lack of interaction and my lack of really making the most out for the contradictions of my protest were the issues I faced in the performance, if I were to do the protest again I can take what I've learnt and apply it and see if the protest becomes more of a powerful thing.

So reflecting on what i learned i now realise how difficult putting together a street performance can be simply due to the large amount of legal red tape you have do deal with, I also realise that doing my protest alone really dented it's ability to make a larger impact on the public.

I acknowledge that while the idea and the planning were good, the execution and actual performance were less than stellar but knowing what I know now I can make changes and improve upon my work, this small failure in my work will lead to better work later on and personally I feel that it's better to make mistakes like these while I'm still in the safety net of the university and learn from them and use that knowledge to improve my future work and credibility when i do work outside of university and educational safety nets, so while I didn't do brilliantly, i can see where errors were made and that in of itself is a much more educational experience.

Reflection On The Protest Part 2

As i began discussing in the last post, i wanted to look back at my protest in greater detail, looking at what went right and what went wrong.

Firstly i feel that i should talk about my own perspective on the overall protest,
i feel it went well, it wasn't great by any means but i can't help but wonder if my message was conveyed, but i managed to sing the songs correctly.

I feel that even though the mask had been adjusted it actually was a hindrance when trying to project my voice, especially in a town centre where noise is reasonably loud, however i think that the ability to stand and watch myself perform was much easier on the public as they could walk around me or avoid me altogether if they so wished.

I personally felt that my adherence to health and safety was commendable as city centres to carry many risks to performers if they don't research the area and get a good idea of general pedestrian traffic and spaces available.

I felt the mask helped to enforce the idea that i was protesting but i don't think it carried the desired effect in getting people interested in my performance, i feel as if it grabbed attention but people thought i might have been a busker or street performer instead of a protester.

So things that went well were as follows:

Timing and itinerary of the protest,
the performance had actually been timed out about a week before the actual performance and that was done a number of times to see if there was a point to being in certain locations and if certain songs would work better in different locations,

i actually cut my performance down to three songs
which were:

Could You Be Loved?-Bob Marley
Happy-Pharell Williams
Powerful-Jussie Somelett & Alicia Keys
 as specified in the post from the first of December in which i discussed looking at cutting a song because of the lack of meaning in singing at one of the locations as well as not finding a song i felt was acceptable.

Contrast between my singing and the power of the Guy Fawkes mask
the mask which is often seen as a symbol or rebellion and chaos was employed in a peaceful and non-aggressive way which leads to a series of new questions how masks can affect protest.

And then I'd like to cover what could have gone better or just not been done at all

The Mask and vocal projection:

The mask i used for the performance was a thin plastic version of the Guy Fawkes mask, i did this in order to adjust it if i felt i couldn't sing as well as helping with air and breathing, personally I seemed to be fine until midway though could you be loved where the air in the mask became hot and instead of my breath gong out of the mouth-hole and projecting instead went into the mask creating a Dutch oven sort of effect where i got hotter and hotter as time went on, this was alleviated slightly when i moved between locations but it was extremely unpleasant

While i'd adjusted the mouth-hole to account for that i obviously didn't do enough on that front, my vocal projection was also weakened by the mask, so if i were to do the protest again i feel either a more modified mask would need to be used or no mask at all.

The area in the spaces:
i think i was correct in my use of the space however in the feedback I received about my protest it was felt that my use of the space was not well thought out, there wasn't any choreography in my piece to keep passers-by interested in what i was doing which contrasted some of the other performance space use from other groups, some interacted with the public or were very personal but mine didn't seem to want to interact with the audience or rather it simply did it's own thing and the audience could join in.

Lack of promotion
I think one of the major things that might be questioned is my lack of promotion of the protest, you know letting people know when and where i would be doing the protest, besides the lecturers and a few fellow students who were in the group, i wanted to focus on sudden-impact surprise protest, as opposed to planning it with a group of people which i will look at doing if i ever do it again, but mostly i felt that if people knew then it might take away from what i wanted to achieve with the protest.

Attitude to protest:
while i obviously practised my protest behind closed doors i did put a few hours in trying to get the vocals and general protest just right, but i personally always felt that i treated it as a performance instead of a protest and that might of carried over in how i presented my protest, an actual protest focuses on being colourful and drawing attention to itself as well as using chants and even slogans, however i chose to forego this and instead tried to focus more on the power of the mask and the power of the silence when not singing, this may or may not have been a mistake.

Audience:
I think that my lack of engagement with the people of Worcester was the biggest issue with my performance and this was due to my insistence on not interacting with the public as much as possible as well as focusing on just trying to perform in the spaces as opposed to creating great moves which would draw people towards me, i think my tendency with working by myself for the performance lead to some great ideas which i refined but i feel my lack of others to test the performance on and get feedback in relation to the audience was my major downfall here.

This will conclude the second part of my reflection, in the third and last section i will summarise the protest and note what I will look at changing on my next attempt when i chose do protest again

Reflection On The Protest Part 1

I think given the nature of the task it was never going to be a simple or easy process, mainly because unlike your typical performance there isn't the quote on quote safety of the performance environment, there isn't someone to clap at the end and ask questions and give feedback on the spot, i feel for the most part it takes performers who usually work on the stage out of their comfort zones.

I feel that my performance overall was good, i managed to perform where i should have done, i remembered the lyrics and and i kept the time to twenty-five minutes, and while it was fine as a piece of performance, i feel the reason it didn't go better is because i always treated it as a performance and never as a protest i'd be willing to die for.

i feel the issues i had whilst performing could have been more carefully avoided, whilst i thought i'd solved the issues i might have, actually doing the protest out on the street obiviously threw up challenges i wasn't expecting.

for now i feel that giving a brief summary now of my feelings will help when it comes to the second part where i go into detail about what worked and what didn't.

music used in the protest 10th decemeber

Powerful-Jussie Smollett and Alica Keyes

Could You Be Loved-Bob Marley

Happy-Pharell Williams

YouTube Protest Announcement Video(for you the greatest day of your life, but for bison it was a tuesday)

i created this video to quickly highlight what I'd be doing during Tuesday the 8th december when I will be doing my performance 

Music and Performance changes for december 1st

With there being a test run yesterday on the first of December, I discovered a number of small problems or things i disliked about my as well as some timing issues with trying to keep the protest under half an hour.

So i ran the performance twice but I did the route three times, once to show where i would go and then the two performances after were timed runs, once with an audience and once without.

after doing the performances i decided that due to time and also due to lack of reason for it to exist, i felt that removing doing a song at the hive location was wise due to it not making much sense but as well as finding that the performance went 37 minutes with the song at the location, however it went 29 minutes if there wasn't a song at the hive.

there was also a change in the music being employed as well, the audience run had the questions raised about some of the music used, they felt it could be used better, and there might be a good idea to swap where certain music is being used.

so the new music being used is:

Powerful-Jussie Smollett and Alicia Keyes
Could you be loved-Bob Marley
Happy-Pharell Williams

These songs i feel convey my protest message in a much better way than the previous choices, the new songs also stay more in ethnic culture as people from black ancestry are more knowledgeable in using song for protest due to the civil rights movements in the 1950's and 60's.

i feel the reason i also didn't use a fourth song was because there wasn't a song i felt worked outside of the hive and thus i am choosing to not sing a fourth song

Music Choices

Happy-Pharell Williams

Could you be loved-Bob Marley

Redemption Song-Bob Marley

Change Is Gonna Come(Cover)-Seal