May 12, 2016 – Site and the City

May 12, 2016Holly Margaret Lomas No Comments

There’s Non-Place Like Home: Holly Lomas final blog submission

Framing Statement

Site Specific performance is a genre of performance art which has been defined by many theorists: Nick Kaye explains in Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation that the relationship between the ‘event’ and the site should be focused on, writing that site specific art should envision “articulate exchanges between the work of art and the places in which its meanings are defined” (Kaye, 2000, 1). The performance There’s Non-Place Like Home (2016) – which will be the centre of my discussion – focuses on the social relationship between the performers, the audience and the location.

The Stonebow arches, a great landmark in the city of Lincoln, was the site of our performance. Initial interest stemmed from its appealing structure and historic value, but the intentions for performance within this space were much more methodical. Our primary influence came from Marc Auge’s theory of place and non-place, which we explored through practice. We also took inspiration from a number of other practitioners as we developed our piece, and following on I will include a variety of practitioners and the influence they had on our process.

There’s Non-Place Like Home was performed on the 5th May 2016 from 10.00am for six hours (including setting up the site). The wide time scale allowed for variety of interaction from the public to gather a range of conversations. The piece incorporated a conversation between audience and performer in a home-like environment which was created under a section of the Stonebow aches; offers of tea and biscuits were also used to relate to feeling at home. Moving on I will explain our performance process, including how we arrived at each practitioner, what influence they offered to our piece, and my transformation of knowledge about site specific art and how this was portrayed in our final performance.

Process of Performance

When studying Auge’s theory of place and non-place, I immediately noted that a large portion of the High Street (the main street running through Lincoln city centre) is a non-place. Auge explains the difference between place and non-place in Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity: “As anthropological places create the organically social, so non-places create solitary contractuality” (Auge, 1995, 94). In this sense, ‘place’ is somewhere in which social life can organically develop, whereas ‘non-place’ is merely an area of transit and social communication cannot thrive. We can see this theory in practice in Partly Cloudy Chance of Rain (2002) by Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley and Lee Miller. The performance involves the couple renewing their wedding vows (a highly social interaction) at Roadchef Sandbach Services (a non-place) after drawing a connection to the M6, the road they travelled “as regularly as 5 times a week” (Whalley and Miller, 2005, 138) to see one another.

Primary Research

From our analysis of the High Street as a non-place, I noticed it is too vast to be confined to this one theory. For instance, the High Street, whilst filled with a constant flow of passing people, is occupied with many chairs, tables and benches. It can be argued that the presence of these allow people to break from their transit and encourages social interaction. Because of this, I broke down the High Street into sections of place and non-place. The Stonebow arches stood out as a definite non-place: a small passing area with no benches to stop and interact. My performance group conducted experiments to scrutinise whether the site was definitely a non-place; these experiments also regarded connections between the public and the archway. To start, we conducted a sound test for two minutes (see fig. 1), as we believed this recording would assist our understanding on how social or unsocial the site is. The results showed that any conversations were only spoken in transit and no one used the space primarily as a social place to talk. This supported our theory that the archway is a non-place for the general public and not somewhere where social life is naturally generated.

Fig. 1. A sound recording of Lincoln Stonebow arches.

I also gathered a video of the feet of passers-by (see fig. 2). This was my favourite form of media to collect as the video showed people not only walking far away from the camera but also walking very close to the camera, showing urgency and a feeling of negligence as the public did not take time to avoid or even notice the camera.

Fig. 2. A video of Lincoln Stonebow arches.

This sound and video research showed me the attitudes that many people have when passing: urgency, negligence and next to no interaction. We wondered whether our performance could change this.

History

Historical research into the site allowed us to discover that the Guildhall, an old council building situated above the archways, still holds council meetings from when it was built in 1237. Inside, The Mote Bell rings for five minutes before every meeting to indicate the gathering of the council; we liked the idea of using a bell as a method of summoning, and considered this for our performance. Further history research revealed that the site used to be a prison: The Lincolnshire Echo newspaper accounts that “the eastern wing of the Stonebow was used as the city prison until 1586 […] In the Stonebow there were four rooms where prisoners were kept” (Lincolnshire Echo, 2013). We found the prison aspect extremely interesting in terms of place and non-place; discussing that a prison is a temporary place and home for prisoners. We extended more on the notion of home and went on to discuss homelessness: Lincoln High Street is a dwelling place for homeless people, and the archways are a popular place for them to sleep. For them, this is their temporary ‘home’ for the night (in terms of place of residence – their bed for the night) and therefore a temporary place, meaning in history the archways have been in fluctuation between place and non-place. After reviewing this research, the idea of changing a current non-place such as the Stonebow arches into a place became appealing to us. We decided to do this through the creation of a home-like environment with social interaction between ourselves and the audience.

Practitioner Influences

The direction of our social interaction was inspired by Adrian Howells and his work on confessional exchange in Salon Adrienne (2005). Dressed as his persona ‘Adrienne’, Howells welcomed audience members into his makeshift ‘salon’ and encouraged the participants to “engage with the inevitability of aging” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 3). Participants were motivated to speak with the prompt of Howells acknowledging his personal confessions first. Relating to this notion of exchange, we were prepared to answer any questions that were asked in our performance, and we aimed to offer up stories of our lives so as to encourage participants to speak about theirs. In Salon Adrienne the domesticated space “intended to reassure the audience-participant, engendering a sense of safety, familiarity, and security” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 3). I believe that the domestic setting we created in our performance was significant to the feeling of ‘safety’, ‘familiarity’ and ‘security’ that Howells references above, and allowed for a relaxed flow of conversation. To contribute to this domesticated feeling, we conducted a survey which asked people what drink they associate most with home. The results were overwhelmingly in favour of ‘tea’ and so we took this information and incorporated the offer of tea and biscuits into our performance.

As the performance context started to form, our group began to consider what outcome the performance should have. Whilst studying Sophie Calle’s work, we saw a link between our performance and hers. In 1979 Calle began following people in Paris in order to connect to the city, as she no longer felt a connection to her former home after spending time away to travel, this manifested into her work Suite Venitienne (Calle, 2015). She describes her feelings in a conversation with Bice Curiger:

“I had come back to France after seven years of travelling, and when I arrived in Paris, I felt completely lost in my own town. I no longer wanted to do the things I used to do before, I no longer knew how to occupy myself each day, so I decided that I would follow people in the street”

(Searle, 1993, 29)

There are similarities between her motives for following people and our motives for exchanging dialogue. As students, we have only lived in Lincoln a short time and generally it becomes a struggle for students to call their university city ‘home’. Our performance therefore aimed to help us find a connection to Lincoln through conversations; as Tim Creswell explains, “most people are familiar with the attempt to make somewhere feel like home. Even if there are many instances where they do not succeed, the attempt is important” (Creswell, 2004, 93). We were not expecting to wholly succeed in this motive, but our attempt at this helped realise our association towards Lincoln as ‘home’.

Reviewing the art of GPS mapping and ‘psychogeography’ directed us to explore the connections between performers and participants through the form of ‘mental mapping’. ‘Psychogeography’ is analysed extensively by Christian Nold; he explains how GPS mapping works to

“record the geographical location of the wearer anywhere in the world and pinpoint where that person is when these ‘emotional’ changes occur […] The Bio Mapping tool is therefore a unique device linking together the personal and intimate with the outer space of satellites orbiting around the Earth”

(Nold, 2009, 3-4)

This type of performance art is also practised by the likes of Sophia New and Daniel Belasco Rogers (together known as ‘plan b’), who have created many GPS pieces such as Crossing Paths (2012) and have each documented their travels since 2007 and 2003 respectively. By studying this alongside the development of our piece, it enabled us to consider these modes of performance art differently. From this we produced the idea of ‘mental mapping’, where instead of viewing “a visual track on a map” (Nold, 2009, 4), it is a mental journey – discovering connections between our own stories and somebody else’s. Due to the nature of our performance, the possibility to make these connections with participants were available through Howell’s method of conversational exchange.

Experimentation of Content

As our piece continued developing in detail, worries began to surface; mainly surrounding the lack of control we had over the conversations as the content was exceedingly reliant on audience participation. This is exceptionally risky as audience members may not be willing to give interesting interaction which leaves high potential for ineffectiveness. Deirdre Heddon explains that in Salon Adrienne “there is also an element of improvisation since Adrian cannot script the conversation in advance. He remains attentive to the moment, responding to and feeding off what is being said by his co-creator” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 4). Whilst Howells is skilled in this method of performance, we were concerned that our inexperience would result in the conversation falling flat. These apprehensions caused us to reassess our performance content. We were suggested to look at On the Scent by Curious (2003). I was influenced by how the artists controlled the situation by doing most of the speaking, and audiences had to listen and watch. We began analysing the incentives for our performance, seeing how we could adjust it to be more in control like Curious. Immediately we identified the focus we have on binaries:

place/non-place
safe/unsafe
comfortable/uncomfortable
trapped/not trapped

All of these hold connections not only to the feelings of home, but also to the historical reference of the Stonebow arches and the prison that once occupied the building: fluctuation between a place and non-place for prisoners, and feelings of discomfort, being trapped and being unsafe. We began experiments to bring these binaries into our performance, creating a brief piece which also involved the deconstruction of domestic items, but as we performed in the site it was clear that this did not work within the space. Instead we discovered how comfortable the site felt when we set up with props, and how the setting was indeed strong enough to hold a stimulating conversation with participants. We received feedback to return to our original idea, as this new direction was quite irritating to the audience member, and it didn’t mirror the transition from non-place to place accurately.

From our examination of binaries – particularly safe/unsafe – we gained information on John Newling and his performance Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1991). His use of lights and heaters in the street created a space which felt safer and more communal than normal, and caused both the public and homeless to gather in the performance area. This encouraged us to expand the array of lights used within our set, as we wanted to relate to the feeling of safety and comfort just as in Newling’s piece. We also decided to completely simplify our performance so that its main focus was on the conversation. We left the physical use of the bell, and instead embodied its purpose of summoning through an invitation into the site.

Performance Evaluation

Our final performance began with us building our home, this action reflected us ‘moving in’ and ‘making a house a home’ – or in our case, ‘making a non-place a place’. An example can be seen from fig. 3.

Fig. 3. A video of the performers transforming the space.

We concentrated on small details when creating the home environment so that it would appear as authentic and as comfortable as possible; audience participation was essential for the performance to be successful, and so their comfort was key to us. Without them, our performance would merely be an installation art piece and the transition from non-place to place would only be partly successful. This feeling of comfort was successful when measured by the reactions of participants and passers-by.

Fig 4. A picture showing interaction between participants and performers in the space.

Fig. 5. A video showing final transformation of the space in detail.

The numerous reactions from passers-by showed that many people were surprised by what we created; you can from see fig. 4 a photo of the final set and interactions within the space, and a tour of the final product can be viewed from fig. 5 – this video shows the difference between a bare archway, and the archway that we used to create our piece.

Fig 6. A video of us interacting with participants.

The variety of conversations we received was certainly a strength of our performance, we successfully enticed people into our home with the interest it collected, and many people accepted our offer of tea and biscuits which can be seen in fig. 6, verifying that they felt comfortable and at home. One response in particular that I valued was a homeless man explaining to us that he didn’t like the term ‘homelessness’ as he believed that ‘home is where the heart is’. He explained that he preferred the term ‘houseless’ or ‘without accommodation’. Also when conversing with another audience participant, I managed to relate to her through a discussion of our hometowns – we drew similarities and discussed elements such as the train we get home and how long it takes to get to the closest city, evidence of this conversation can be seen in fig. 7. This form of mental mapping enabled me to connect to someone’s memories of home, and in response, they were able to connect to mine. When asked by another participant later on to say what home meant to me, I struggled to answer. After the extensive research we had conducted into place and home, and after discussions with participants – especially the homeless man, I began to wonder whether I have more than one home because of where my heart is and where my roots are (family, friends, Derbyshire and Lincoln are just some of the things I signify as ‘home’); this thought-provoking experience was therefore beneficial to both performer and audience as this performance not only permitted me to question others on home, but it also succeeded in me being questioned.

Fig. 7. A participant and I in conversation.

This process and final outcome introduced me to a new way of performing, transforming my knowledge of site specificity to understand how history and theory can develop a new type of interactive performance, which not only challenges the audiences thought process but also my own process as an artist. Our use of interrupting transit was a challenging move, yet it taught me that the best results come from bold performances and confident, sociable interaction.

Word count: 2681

Works cited

Auge, M. (1995) Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Translated from French by John Howe. London: Verso Books.

Calle, S. (2015) Suite Venitienne. Los Angeles: Siglio Press.

Calvert, O., D’Arcy, H., Elmer, F., Lomas, H. and Soyza, R. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home. [performance art] Lincoln: High Street, 5 May.

Curious (2003) On The Scent. [performance art] Birmingham: FIERCE! Festival, 4 June.

Heddon, D. and Howells, A. (2011) From Talking to Silence: A Confessional Journey. PAJ – A Journal of Performance and Art, 33 (1) 1-12.

Howells, A. (2005) Salon Adrienne. [performance art] London: Battersea Arts Centre, 3 October.

Kaye, N (2000) Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London: Routledge.

Lincolnshire Echo (2013) How Lincoln’s Stonebow played its part in both local and national history…. 26 January. Available from http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Lincoln-s-Stonebow-played-local-national-history/story-17946800-detail/story.html [Accessed 14 March 2016].

Lomas, H. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home [photos and videos] Lincoln: Stonebow Arches, 5 May

Newling, J. (1991) Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Nottingham: Market Square, November.

Nold, C. (ed) (2009) Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self. Canada: Creative Commons.

Pavis, P. (1998) Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analysis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Plan b. (2012) Crossing Paths. [performance art] Leuven: Stuck, 17 February.

Searle, A. (ed) (1993) Talking Art 1. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Whalley, J. and Miller, L. (2005) A Dwelling in the Screen, at Least for a Little Time. Performance Research – A Journal of Performing Arts, 10 (4) 138-147.

May 12, 2016Joseph Peter Turner No Comments

Site Specific Performance Final Blog Post

Framing Statement

High bridge, which was our location for our site specific performance, is the oldest bridge in the country. As the name of our piece High Bridge Histories suggests we were interested in focusing on the history of our site. It was not the literal history of the place that we were interested in but rather the relational history and social potential of the site because of the seating and café which are now present in the space. The aim of this assessment is to analyse the methodologies used throughout the process of creating our site specific performance. The main goal of the piece was to provide an audience with an aural history of high bridge and represent the transformation of the site from a non-place to a place through the performativity of everyday life conversations and interactions. Our main influence in doing this was Marc Augé and his notions surrounding places and non-places. Augé defines a place as ‘relational, historical and concerned with identity’ (Auge, 1995, 77). Using this concept and the methodologies of Georges Perec, we focused on the relational history of the high street and created a soundscape to create a piece which combined the interactions of the past with those of the performance day. Whilst Perec and Augé were the foundations of our piece we also took influence from other practitioners to establish and evolve our ideas into the final performance piece. These practitioners included: Cathy Turner’s ideas concerning palimpsest and layering, the concept of narration in John Smith’s video piece A girl chewing gum, Sue Palmer’s additions to the idea of space and non-space and Erving Goffman’s notions of performative everyday life. All of these will be analysed in more depth throughout this assessment.

After three months of research and development our performance took place at 12pm on Thursday 5^th May 2016. The soundtrack was played through portable speakers that were connected to our phones/I pods. Having four speakers playing different parts of the soundtrack created the effect that the audience would only hear glimpses of the conversations attempting to emulate the real life atmosphere of the high street. Each person would enter roughly 90 seconds after the previous person, creating a staggered effect to the piece and making it visually interesting to watch as an audience member. Conversations were played through these speakers into the space, along with the dates on which the conversations were originally documented in the space. These dates were written on the floor, merging the layers of past and present, before we began narrating what was happening around us. Certain sound effects had actions that accompanied them for example when laughter was heard through the speakers we would leave the space and then enter it again whilst keeping straight, neutral faces.

This continues in the same manner until the end of the track at which point the track loops and we exit the space. The reason the track loops was to show that life doesn’t stop, our everyday lives continue on repeat again and again, us walking through the space with the track repeatedly playing was supposed to be representative of this. Whilst it was important for the piece to relate to the site, it was also important to relate it to the audience. We did this via a business card which we handed to them with a brief description of the piece, a line from the soundtrack and a link to the blog in case the audience member wanted to research into our piece further. In this way we were able to provide an insight to the audience without spoon feeding them what exactly we were trying to achieve.

Figure 3 (Lucy Workman, 2016) — Figure 3, The business card which were handed to the passers by (Lucy Workman, 2016)

Analysis of Process

After being introduced to the field of Site Specific performance, I began to consider how I could incorporate Lincoln and its history into a performance which engages with both the audience and Site in a contemporary setting. Mike Pearson and his book Site Specific Performance (2010) quickly became the main point of reference when it came to researching site specific theories in relation to our piece. We were also introduced to Cathy Turner and her theory of layering and palimpsest and it influenced our piece greatly. The layers of binaries including past/present, sound/visual and verbal/physical were all cornerstones of our piece. One element of palimpsest is the addition or removal of layers whilst still being able to see the original layer. Cathy Turner in her article, Palimpsest or Potential Space? Finding a Vocabulary for Site-Specific Performance (2004) she states that ‘practitioners have similarly come to view space as a layered entity’ (Turner, 2004, 373) re-emphasising her views on space and how it is created of many layers which we as performers implanted in various ways. We implemented this concept into our piece by writing the various dates (both past and present) on the floor in chalk, we then added a thin layer of breadcrumbs on top of the chalk dates, whilst leaving the initial layer visible. When the Pigeons inevitably came and ate the bread that was equivalent of erasing a layer making the previous layer completely visible again. We rehearsed different means of erasing the footsteps which we marked on the pavement including instantly erasing them and leaving them to the end to erase, playing with the idea of life lasting a fleeting moment and the idea of leaving literal remnants in the space.

Initially we were interested in looking at the architectural history of Lincoln due to the fact that when we were exploring the high street something that we noticed was the ornate architecture of the buildings which are now corporate shops such as Fat face and Jack Wills. After spending time contemplating the idea of architecture and its history, our interests developed to incorporate a specific site and the personal history people share with it. This notion of personal history remained with the piece throughout its conception and development although the medium changed. I initially had the idea of a collage consisting of pictures, objects, audio etc. which could map out a person’s personal history of a place thus making the spectator view said space in a way in which they haven’t before.

The introduction of practitioner Mark Augé and place and non-place changed our thinking towards site specific and our site in particular. His ideas state that a place is somewhere where social interactions take place, where people are human, whereas a non-place is a transient space, which is a ‘frequented place, an intersection of bodies’ (Auge, 1995, 79) where people only ever pass through on their way to somewhere significant. Throughout our devising process we viewed the high street as the transient non-place through which people pass to get to the various shops and the high bridge (the seated area in particular) as the ‘place’ where people go to socialise and interact with each other. As Walter Brueggemann states in Site Specific Performance, ‘place is a space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made and demands have been issued’ (Brueggemann, 1989, 26). In other words, the seated area has social potential which only becomes activated by the people who socialise within that space, a statement which is clarified by Sue Palmer who states that ‘it’s not just about a place, but the people who normally inhabit and use that place. For it wouldn’t exist without them’ (Pearson, 2010, 8). The transformation of High Bridge from a non-space to a space happens when we literally activate it by entering the space with our recorded conversations playing through the speakers.

Our initial main performance idea was in the shape of a map which was going to be hand drawn onto a whiteboard and wheeled up and down the high street. On top of this map there was going to be two layers of acetate each containing writing in different colours creating a literal palimpsest as well as a metaphorical one. The idea of palimpsest and layers was of constant interest and featured in all of our performance ideas. The metaphorical palimpsest was the layering of people’s thoughts and emotions of Lincoln to portray the multi-dimensional community which Lincoln is made up of.

Our relationship to the audience in our piece is informed by practitioner Miwon Kwon who, in her book one place after another (2002), states that ‘an artist cannot accurately represent a community and, in attempting to do so, ultimately represents himself and his own work’ (Kwon, 2002). In our original idea this community engagement came from the audience writing their perception of Lincoln as a place to live. This concept stayed within our thinking and is prevalent in our final piece as it challenges the notion that an artist cannot represent a community due to the fact that, in our piece, it is the communities’ voice which provides one of the core elements for the performance.

After discussing the potential of the whiteboard idea as an installation idea with the acetate changing every hour showing the change of activity in the high street throughout the day. I quickly became concerned about the shallowness of our piece. It looked more like a piece which was marketing Lincoln for a travel brochure and had lost any potential of the space transcending meaning for the audience. After much deliberation I came up with a new concept focusing on the primary purpose for high bridge which is conversation/communication. After discussing the theme of communication with the rest of the group, we created an idea which involved playing a recorded conversation and miming over the top of it. This brought up the question of authenticity and ownership and whether someone else’s words become mine if I speak them and whether the words lost their original meaning if repeated out of context. We attempted to introduce palimpsest by documenting people’s conversations using the methodology of Georges Perec in his work an attempt at exhausting a place in Paris (1982). We found that we only caught snippets of conversations which gave a brief glimpse into people’s lives ranging from the random and chatty to deep and meaningful conversations. The resulting manuscript was similar to the work Craig Taylor’s book One million tiny plays about Britain (2009) in which he uses everyday conversations stitched together to create scenarios to create funny and serious mini plays. The difference from our piece to Taylor’s work is that his conversations are put together to make cohesive stories whereas we want to maintain the element of hearing random lines of conversations as would be the case in the high street in real life.

Initially the piece was about recreating a moment in life in our site and questioned ownership and authenticity. Although the theme of ‘the moment’ was still present in the final performance it became more about the repetition and monotony of everyday life as shown through the dates, repeated soundtrack and the addition of us marking our footsteps. The concept behind these steps was that by marking our footsteps in the space we are making clear the footsteps that had been before whilst marking them in the present day, once again blurring the distinctions between the past and the present. We also experimented with different sound effects and different activities to go alongside those sound effects such as childish drawings on the pavement and putting dummies in our mouths.

13235847_10206534712311366_218563417_n — An example of the childish drawings, Figure 3 (Joe Turner, 2016)

To blur the lines between past and present further and also create a thicker textured sound we originally planned to speak the lines along with the soundtrack. This however looked scrappy when we experimented with it in the space so we therefore looked back on previous practitioners and came across John Smith and his work Girl Chewing gum (1976) who we became aware of early on in the devising process. Within his piece, Smith narrates a recorded piece of footage in an almost director like way as though conducting the world around him. In a similar fashion to Smith we overlaid the recorded conversations with us narrating the world around us, not just the people but the animals too. The difference between our piece and Smith’s is that his narration was retrospective on a recorded piece of footage whereas ours was live creating a live layer on top of the recorded one.

Performance Evaluation

On performance day, there was a stubborn busker in the space, meaning that we were unable to rehearse the piece in the space under performance conditions. Because of this there were a number of small things that went wrong which would normally have happened in a rehearsal period such as the chalk snapping and the phone falling out of my pocket. On reflection one thing we particularly struggled with was the notion of character and acting. In his book Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Goffman states that

‘When two teams present themselves to each other for purposes of interaction, the members of each team tend… to stay in character’ (Goffman, 1959, 166).

This was something that we were cautious of throughout the rehearsal process, this however became an issue because of what Goffman states above. When a captive audience of twenty plus people were placed in front of us, the natural ‘character’ that Goffman speaks of came to the surface.

Conceptually the piece was strong, with audience members saying that they heard snippets of the conversations, as was the intention, but the general aesthetic of the performance was not as striking as it could have been with better execution. Members of audience did however come up to us after the performance and say that they would never see the space in the same way again because of our performance which was one of the intentions of the performance (to make the audience view a space in a different light that before) and we successfully gave them the means to go away and look up the project if they wanted to in the form of a business card with the blog address on. If we were able to perform the piece again I would ensure that the piece was well rehearsed and slick to make for an aesthetically pleasing piece, I would also make it longer in order to make it clear to the audience what it was were attempting to portray as I felt like the moment the audience began to engage with the piece it was over.

Sight Specific Performance has broadened my preconceptions surrounding performance and has opened up numerous possibilities for performing in non-conventional venues in the future as I now feel as though I can tackle these venues, fully equipped with the knowledge and understanding necessary to create an engaging and intellectually stimulating piece.

Word Count – 2451

Bibliography

Auge, M. (1995) Non-Places introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. Verso: London.

Brueggemann, W. (1989) ‘The land’, in Lilburne, G. (ed.) A sense of Place: Christian Theology of the Land. Abingdon Press: Nashville

Ewwtubes (2012) John Smith – The Girl Chewing Gum 1976. Available from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+girl+chewing+gum [Accessed on 3 March 2016]

Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Penguin: London.

Kwon, M. (2002) One place after another, Site specifc art and locational identity. MIT Press: Massachusetts.

Pearson, M. (2010) Site- Specific Performance. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke

Taylor, C. (2009) One million tiny plays about Britain. A and C Black: London.

Turner, C. (2004) Palimpsest or Potential Space? Finding a Vocabulary for Site-Specific Performance. New Theatre Quarterly, 20(4, November) 373-390.

May 12, 2016Mary-Jane Philip No Comments

Final Site-Specific Blog Post – ‘Edward and Eleanor 1254’

Framing Statement

Eleanor and Edward, 1254 is a piece celebrating the relationships of the people of Lincoln, it contains both installation and performance elements, and was performed on 5^th May 2016. It is influenced by the story of Edward I, his wife Eleanor and the Eleanor Cross. Upon Eleanor’s death “Edward ordered for crosses bearing statues of the Queen to be erected at places where the [funeral] procession stopped overnight. (Eliot, 2008). This piece was influenced by multiple theorists such as Marc Augé’s Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. and pieces of site-specific performance for example Lee Miller and Joanne Whalley’s 2003 Site-Specific Performance Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain. These influences will be explored in the analysis of our process.

(A drawing of the Lincoln Eleanor Cross. Available from: https://researchwelllincolnshire.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/the-eleanor-cross-at-lincoln/)

Framing Statement: The Performance

As a group we created a procession with an invited audience from the path before the railroad tracks up to Stonebow. This mirrored the last trip Eleanor and Edward took together from London to Lincoln, where she died. Here we placed a large wooden box; our version of the Eleanor Cross. On the box are carvings, these are the initials and dates of couples who’s stories we have gathered over our creative process. We then formed a cross with the large box in the middle using smaller boxes which we stood on:

(A diagram I made presenting the location we stood at and the cross formation we were in.)

Once in position one member of the group walked to the large box in the centre. When they were there they called out the first 3 locations the Eleanor Cross was built at, then began carving more initials and dates from the stories we’ve gathered. The rest of the group began to tell the stories of the couple’s we’ve spoken to during this process. This was mainly in a town crier fashion, inspired by earlier research into Speakers Corner but if parts of the story don’t fit with this style, we would step off the boxes that we are standing on to tell them. This rule also applied to speaking to audience members. After around 3 minutes the carver stopped and went and stood on their box, another member of the group walked to the large box, called out the next 3 locations the Eleanor Cross is built in, and the process began all over again. Once each member of the group had been a carver we each took our smaller boxes, stood around the large box and one by one called out “Eleanor and Edward, 1254” before sitting and carving. Once the performance was over we walked back down the High Street to our original location in a procession with the large box. This mirrors the funeral procession for Eleanor. The performance itself takes around 20 minutes and for the hour before the performance we carved into the box at the starting location.

Our audience is invited to the procession at the beginning of our piece meaning they take an active role within it. This also means they help to bring the performance to life. This was primarily inspired by a video by Joshua Sofaer called What is Live Art?. In it Sofaer explains that Live Art “comes into being at the actual moment of encounter between the artist and spectator”. (Sofaer, J. 2011.) This is very much the case in our piece and prior to the audience joining as a procession we are not performing. After this we can only interact with our audience when we are not stood on the boxes being town criers. To come off the boxes means to come out of role, meaning we can tell more detailed love stories and talk to our audience.

Analysis of Process

The first weeks of this process focussed on ensuring we had a good background knowledge of Site-Specific Performance and the theory behind it. This meant that groups and ideas could begin to form. A good summary of what was explained to us comes from Michael Pearson’s Site-Specific Performance:

“[Site specific performance] refers to a staging and performance conceived on the basis of a place in the real world…A large part of the work has to do with researching a place.” (Pearson, M. 2010, 7)

At the beginning of this process I became interested in Mark Auge and his book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. In this book Auge deals with the idea of a location either being a place or non-place:

“If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as rational or historical or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (Auge, M. 2009, 27)

Taking this definition is it easy to define the High Street which is my site for this module, as a non-place. Although it can be argued that it does contain the above factors, the High Street is a place of transit. It is not usually a place for social interaction and the history behind it is left unknown to many who travel through it. After establishing this I decided I wanted to create a place within the High Street, and taking Auge’s idea that “the social begins with the individual” (Auge, M. 2009, 19) I wanted to do this through the people that transit through. This idea is supported by Tim Ingold who says that “a place owes its character to the experiences [of] those who spend time there”. (Ingold, T. 2000, 26) Having solid theory behind my idea of using the people of Lincoln to create a place in my performance I decided that I wanted to focus on people’s relationships, which Pearson supports stating that “places are about relationships”. (Pearson, M. 2010, 14)

Once groups were formed in the first few weeks I explained my desire to do a piece based around relationships. The group agreed to make this the theme after some research within the city. Whilst looking for possible places in our site to inspire ideas we stopped outside Lakeland. Noticing that the building looked like it could’ve been a court, we went into the shop to investigate. We were informed that it was in fact the location of the old train station, and within Lakeland was an original timetable from it. (Pictured below) A member of staff within the shop explained that it continued on through to Argos and that they had some original photos in the store. We moved on to Argos to look at these photos, and whilst doing so an elderly couple approached us telling us that they remembered when the station was originally there. The gentleman explained that he took the train from Lincoln to Newark to see the woman who is now his wife. This story gave us confirmation that our theme of romance would create an interesting and captivating performance. It also confirmed that couples will be willing to tell us their stories, and that it won’t just be our peers that want to take part.

(A picture I took of the old railroad timetable in Lakeland)

Now that the theme was established a recent debate that took place in class brought across the concern of invading our audience’s privacy. We were influenced by Sophie Calle’s work in which she follows people around Paris to reconnect with the city. We wanted to take this idea and use the people’s stories of romance to allow our audience to reconnect with Lincoln in a new way. Calle’s work however sparked a debate about where art and performance crosses the line into invasion of privacy. In her book Suite Vénitienne she describes following a man out of Paris:

“At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him.” (Calle, S. 2015, 2)

This spurred further research into Calle’s work during which I discovered her observation goes far into the region of invading privacy. In her work, The Hotel, Room 47 she “was hired as a temporary chambermaid”. (Tate, 2005) Her observing included reading letters and diaries of the guests, listening through the hotel doors at their conversations, even spraying herself with their perfumes and eating their left over food. This research has resulted in our groups desire to avoid any possible violation of people’s privacy. We still want our audience to connect with Lincoln through people’s personal stories but any information obtained from audience members will be done with their consent for it to be used in performance.

The next task was to decide upon a location. We were immediately drawn to the building in the centre of Speakers Corner (see picture below) due to the ability to attach things to it, and the intricate designs connecting the poles. This was because our idea at the time was to decorate our site with the stories of the couples we’d spoken to, along with photos and flowers, whilst we pose as Town Criers which we felt appropriate because of the location, declaring the stories. To justify our decision I researched Speakers Corner and Town Criers. I discovered that Speakers Corner only came to be in 2010, and a Lincolnshire Echo article from 2011 explained that “since its launch Lincoln’s Speakers’ Corner has remained virtually silent”. (Lincolnshire Echo, 2011) Due to the lack of historical background, and lack of relation to our theme of romance we decided against using this location.

(A picture I took of the building at Speakers Corner)

The research into Speakers Corner reiterated to our group the importance of the history of a place to Site-Specific Performance. Miwon Kwon supports this in her book One Place after Another, explaining that “site-specific art can lead to the unearthing of repressed histories”. (Kwon, M. 2004, 53) During my research into Speaker’s Corner I came across the story of Eleanor and Edward I, and realised I had seen this story before in Argos when our group was talking to Colin and Cathy (see picture below). The group agreed that to recreate our own Eleanor Cross to celebrate the couples in Lincoln today was the best way to uncover the history of our site and the history of the people that transit through it every day. However due to the fact the original has a religious symbol on it, we couldn’t do an exact replica, but we felt this fit with our intention of modernising this declaration of love for our current audience. As well as the cross itself we wanted to recreate other parts of this story, such as the last journeys taken by the couple, from London to Lincoln together, and Lincoln to London after Eleanor had passed away. This lead to the idea of mimicking the journey through a procession with our Cross from near the railroad tracks which is a direct link to London up to Stonebow as the street continues up to the Cathedral, where the original Eleanor Cross is, and then back down. In addition to this Stonebow allowed us to create a cross formation, adding another level of reference to our piece.

(A picture I took of the display in Argos)

Throughout this process we had been obtaining couple’s stories via social media but wanted to obtain them from people personally. Taking inspiration from Lee Miller and Joanne Whalley’s 2003 piece Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain during which they exchanged bottles of urine they found on the road with personal items of their own we decided we would exchange love stories for flowers. They did this because “knowing that these were the product of people, [they] felt uncomfortable about simply taking them, and so it was decided that [they] would make an exchange”. (Whalley, J. and Miller, L. 2003) People on the High Street weren’t very responsive to this and didn’t want to interact with us. So instead we decided to allow our audience to approach us while we were carving the box, and we would carve the initials of them and their partner in exchange for their story.

In the final weeks we showed our work to Steve our Lecturer and Conan the Module Leader. The response we received was overall positive. They suggested that when telling our stories we be on some form of box, to add to the position of Town Crier and only talk on the boxes in a Town Crier fashion. This lead to us deciding to only talk to audience members and tell detailed love stories when off the boxes. They also suggested painting the cross so that the carving stands out more. The pictures below shows that this made a huge difference to the appearance of our piece. Other than these changes they were ultimately happy and our final piece was ready to be performed.

(Left: A picture Chris took of the wood before and after it was painted Right: A picture Rayanne took of the box carved into.)

Performance Evaluation

Our performance was as described in the ‘Framing Statement: Performance’ section of this blog. Before starting the performance we were carving at our start position and several people came and interacted with us, as we were not performing we were able to answer their questions in an informal manner. At 4pm we began our Procession and had an audience of around 3 walk with us up to Stonebow. Considering we had invited mostly our peers, a lot of whom were also doing their performances at the time, this number wasn’t unexpected. The amount of people who watched us at Stonebow was much larger, with people stopping in the street to watch our performance, as well as invited audience joining them throughout. In terms of interaction it was limited, not many people approached us. I believe this was because of the performance’s theatrical style, the audience felt like they shouldn’t intrude. This included a vehicle that was trying to go through the High Street, rather than interrupting us to move they allowed us to perform. We weren’t aware that this vehicle was waiting until an audience member told us afterwards. I believe this shines a positive light on our performance as audience members were willing to stop in transit to watch. Confirming that we had succeeded in creating a place through relationships in a non-place, a place of transit. Other than this the strongest moments of the piece were those in which we told more detailed stories, they appeared to flow better and engaged the audience more than simply calling out names and dates. Improvements in this piece certainly would have come from more rehearsal, visually it was captivating but the speech was sometimes sloppy meaning the town crier effect was lost. If I were to perform this piece again rehearsing the piece more would be essential. In terms of changing other aspects I would want more audience participation as the people of Lincoln are the driving force for this piece. I would want to ask audience members for their love stories during the performance, perhaps getting them to stand on the boxes and declare their love and the story behind it.

Site-Specific Performance was something I had never done before, nor had I ever performed in a non-traditional venue and so this was very much a learning experience. Through a variety of theorists and studying other performances I have learnt the importance of a performance location and the impact it can have on your piece. By looking into the history of Lincoln, as advised to do by Michael Pearson’s definition of Site-Specific we discovered a love story that completely changed our performance and our view of the city ultimately creating a piece wildly different to the one we began with. “Site-Specific performance engages with the site as symbol, site as story teller, site as structure” [Pearson, M. 2010, 7) and this could not be truer of my experience of site-specific. Making a non-traditional venue into a symbol of love, telling the stories of its people and creating our very own Eleanor Cross as a result.

(Both photos are of our final performance taken by an audience member)

WORDS: 2729 (Including titles and captions)

References

Auge, M. (2009) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso.

Calle, S. (2015) Suite Venitienne. California: Siglio Press

Eliot, S. (2008) The Eleanor Crosses: A Love Story In Stone. [online] Available from: http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/history/eleanor.shtml [Accessed 27^th April 2016].

Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment. London: Routledge.

Kwon, M. (2004) One Place after Another. London: The MIT Press.

Lincolnshire Echo (2011) Bid to Break Silence at Lincoln’s Speakers Corner. Lincolnshire Echo, 27 July. Available from http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Bid-break-silence-Lincoln-s-Speakers-Corner/story-13016847-detail/story.html [accessed 6 March 2016].

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Sofaer, J. (2011) What is Live Art? [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOUxv4Do01g [Accessed 2nd March 2016].

Tate (2005) Sophie Calle: Room 47. Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/calle-the-hotel-room-47-p78300 [accessed 26 February 2016].

Walley, J. and Miller, L. (2003) Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain: A Case Study. Available from http://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/99/1/RR_Partly%20Cloudy,%20Chance%20of%20Rain_190613_nid237.pdf [accessed 10 May 2016]