One thing that has become clear during this making process was a need to work within some form of structure. Be this either a dramaturgical structure or a pre-existing structure that sits out side of the work but is integral to the understanding of the work.

An example of this is the use of true to life police process to interrogate our work during the making process. We would make images surrounding crime and criminal acts, then ask ourselves if these where true to life images, we weren’t concerned at that particular moment if they did resemble crime or not. What we were concerned about however was had they been made following true to like process?

 Had we ensured the crime scene was secured before we entered and extracted evidence? Had we notified the next of kin of any death before releasing details to the press? All of these processes had to be followed in the first instance for us to be able to fully understand what the image was, and to ensure it has been created with a structural backing behind it (that of police process).  

Whenever I make work, I am always striving to have a deeper understanding of what contexts sit within and outside of the material and how they influence the development of the work. It seems to me then that this project needs a structure or structures to help it achieve what it set out to do. (A Postdramatic response to the assassination of Spencer Percival)

It could for example be in the detail where the work comes to life, we are making material that is linked to real crime investigation. Searching, collecting, interviewing and hanging. What we need to find is a real way to follow these procedures, to interrogate each and every moment from our images, but doing so as a real investigation would run. It is then ever more important that this work follow a clear process of investigation; investigation of the crime, investigation of the process (to follow police structure) and investigation of the work. Buy employing this compositional process to our work then we will be able to understand more clearing exactly what the work is, and it will allow us to interrogate the making process as we work.

For example, if we are conducting a fingertip search for our audience, in the making we need to follow this as true to life as possible to enable us as makers to understand the realities of how this should happen. Are we walking to heavily or too fast, might we trample the evidence if we do so? By understanding this we are understanding what it means to make that image and the reasons behind we have done so. It’s not until we follow this structure to its strictest rules can we begin to make a conscious decision to contaminate the image, growing it and creating something new, with the original always underlying.

We have to first follow the structures in order to allow ourselves to make a conscious decision on what the work actually is, yes we might search as an investigation would do, but then we may find our own way of searching whilst always thinking of the original and its intended purpose. We must build the first thing in order for us to progress to the next.

I am reminded of anthropologist Tim Ingold while I write this, who talks of building a house. He suggests that the building and the making are one thing, and the occupation and residency are another. They are two separate things that exist apart from one another, but one can’t exist without the other. ‘Residence begins when building ends, much as the use of an artefact follows from its making. We have already seen however, that in the case of the artefact, to draw a line between making and using means marking a point in the career of a thing at which it can be said to be finished…’ (Ingold 2013: 47).

What Ingold suggests on residency and making, is that it can only begin once we have built the frame work for which residency exists. We need to draw our own ‘lines’ between making and ‘using’ to fully understand where ‘residency’ (in our case performance) begins. We cannot make something of our own until we have first followed the rules and structures that have allowed us to create such imagery.