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FINAL BLOG POST: INBETWEEN

Framing Statement:

On Friday the 6th of May 2016 Myself, Laura Potente and James Crawford performed a durational site specific performance in the bottom unit of the waterside shopping centre. The performance was titled ‘Inbetween’ and began at 11:30am and finished at 4:30pm, our performance involved a multitude of technology inside the unit. The layout of the empty unit was that of a shop, two large glass windows facing out with a large entrance between them facing the shopping centre and multiple pillars within the space. We placed two monitors inside the shop and behind the glass facing outward, then we placed two cameras facing the same way but connected them up with a live feed. This way audience members and passers-by could see themselves in the frame of the camera on the screen and we as performers could see ourselves. Then we placed two larger wider lensed cameras next to the previous cameras again one on each side of glass and connected these larger cameras to two projectors placed at two different points of the space. The projectors were connected via a live feed and displayed on two sections of the white wall inside the space, and showed the same image of the smaller cameras. Then three chairs were placed inside the space, one in front of each projection and these chairs were for audience members to sit and watch the conversation that the performers did (See Fig.1) . The third chair was for the Usher and that was placed in the entrance of the space.

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Fig. 1 Projection and spectator (Sargent Elliot, 2016)
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Fig. 1 Ushers chair (Veal Francesca, 2016)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As performers we operated in a shift like manner, at all times there would be two performs outside within frame of the camera and the other performer would have a job role similar to an Usher, they would be free to move around the space with tasks such as: Checking battery life on the cameras and changing them if necessary, inviting audience members into the space and guiding them and making sure projections are correct and performers are in frame. The two performers outside each had two card pads, pad A and pad B each containing a different conversation. The process of our performance went as such, the usher invited audience members in and guided them to the chairs if it was a group the usher would pick two people and again guide them to the chairs. The usher would then sit in their chair and signal for the performers to begin, conversation A would start and when it finished the usher would ask the audience members to swap chairs then the usher would sit back down and conversation B would start and when that finished the audience were asked to leave and then on of the performers would swap with the usher and would so repeat.

Our performance allowed the audience who were shoppers within the centre who were always moving and busy, to sit down and take a break. Shopping is built upon the process of transaction,you give something in exchanged for something back, it has and always will be about that exchange and that’s what our performance truly highlights and shows the audience. It’s a chance for them to give us their time and for us to give them our words. The performance that we achieved at the end of our process was inspired and developed by exploration and experimentation we had developed the piece and then deconstructed it when finding out it didn’t fit “Generated through trial and error, through improvisation and the testing of proposals over a protracted period” (Pearson, 2010) We would take small pieces that we have previously and attempted again and eventually we ended up with a performance much simpler but more creative than we had at first.

Analysis of Process:

Right from the beginning we wanted to begin performing practically and experiment, our first was to go out of the LPAC building and at every left and right turning we would ask a passer-by what direction to go in. and then continue in the direction given until we found another turning and then would ask another member of the public, we noted each turning and by the end had created a map of our journey (See Fig.2). This experiment had taken a lot of inspiration from the piece of work Navigating the everyday by Daniel Belasco Rogers and Sophia New (See Fig.2), this performance involves the two of them recording their everyday journey using GPS devices and recording their moods at certain times, finally creating a map of their journeys. “This mood diary enables them to compare their emotional life with the GPS traces of their movements and collected text messages” (Lutz, 2016) We really liked the idea of the mapping out what we explored, our experiment took a different turn than this project, we wanted to embrace the unknown and explore our map through chance and this later evolved into our theme of surveillance.

Fig.2 Paths taken (Crawford James, 2016)

Our second experiment took place the week after and like the first one was based upon Navigating the everyday the three of us went down to the Ritz at the bottom of the high street and drew a continuous line of chalk all the way up to the British heart foundation (See fig.3). One person drew the line of chalk, another used a sweeping brush and cleared the pathway in front of the drawer and the other filmed and held a sign saying ‘Is this a test?’ This experiment in our eyes meant that the brush was sweeping a clear and clean pathway, the chalk line was the physicalization of the route or road being constructed and the chalk board and filming was the documentation. During the experiment many members of the public asked us questions and became quite interested with what we were doing, people asked what it meant and where we were drawing up to and we loved how people stopped and watched. The most interesting thing was when we filmed walking back to the spot we first started, no one looked down at the line or questioned why it was there and we gathered that when people watched this line being created it drew attention and people questioned but after we had finished it became mere nothingness to the public and merely left a mark on the floor.

Fig. 3 Site Specific: Chalk experiment (Sargent Elliot, 2016)

The week after myself and Laura went to watch Andrew Westerside’s company Prototype perform their new piece of work A Machine they’re secretly building this had major themes of surveillance, conspiracy and people rights of information. We instantaneously became inspired and majorly influenced by this piece of work and went around the streets of Lincoln and realised how many security cameras there are, we then had the idea of taking photographs of all the CCTV cameras that we could see and perhaps make a map of Lincoln and mark each point where a camera had been stationed similar to how the Mood diary by Daniel Belasco Rogers and Sophia New highlighted points on map where their moods changed. We also saw a few articles online about new cameras being developed that could target members of the public that could be threat to people’s safety based on their ethnicity and if they had any erratic behaviour for example running or shouting in a public space. By deepening our research into these cameras we found votes for these cameras to be installed within universities over the country and we originally wanted members of the public to be aware of these issues. The reasoning behind creating a map was our chance to show and raise awareness of just how many cameras are placed around Lincoln, for the audience to see the statistics and locations not to make them fearful or anxious but to make them remember they are being watched and recorded.

 

It was now time for the three of us to finally find a location that we felt would be suitable for the ideas gathered, we eventually though of an empty unit in the bottom of the waterside shopping centre. After getting into contact with the Waterside shopping centre we found the space was not functional, it had no running electricity and no working lights. It was at that point we managed to acquire the other empty unit in the centre, this was essentially a large white space which provided many opportunities (See Fig.4)

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Fig. 4 Empty space (Sargent Elliot, 2016)

It was now time to show the rest of our group an idea that we had created, so we got our group involved with an experiment this involved them going to different parts of the shopping centre and myself, laura and James being recorded on an smartphone application called Facebook Live. The application allowed us to broadcast online a live video (See Fig.5), we then held a sign saying ‘ANY REQUESTS’ and allowed the online spectators to comment and ask us to perform actions some involved perform star jumps or randomly burst into song. This was a unique way for us to see how an audience would react if they were watching a performance and not in the space, and what they thought of watching a performance through a screen in a completely different location but knowing that it was live. We had very positive reactions online and in person, we had comments saying that it felt like a great way for people at home or in another country to watch a performance and try and piece together what was happening without knowing the context behind it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z_ZjEAzWtM&feature=youtu.be

Fig. 5 Facebook Live experiment (Potente Laura, 2016)

Our next step was the creation of our shop, the three of us wanted to transform the space into a shop. We had an empty unit inside the bottom of a shopping centre, between two shops which resulted in being the perfect location to create one. Our shop was layed out in Figure 3 (shop layout photo) four main sections, Confessional, archive, shopping area and the blacked out room. From the beginning all three of us became very interested in Adrian Howells piece Salon Adrienne  this transactional performance where “Adrienne offered each visitor a shampoo and head massage as well as asking questions far more profound than where you plan to go on your holidays” (YouTube, 2016) was interesting and we inserted our own exchange the shoppers would come into the confessional space and tell us something about them and we would take a part of their body e.g. a toenail or a strand of hair and place it in our other section which was the archive this was our version of the exchange which was physical. The shopping area was comprised with a desk with a till and several racks filled with hangers, the hangers held photographs of security cameras and restricted places, we sold these as free. This was what we believed worked for our shop, a completely minimalist shop selling photos of restricted places for free and simply taking an email address as payment barely giving the shoppers information and meaning.

 

Evaluation:

Our plan for the performance on the day was to gather our equipment from the LPAC early and arrive as soon as possible at the space to begin setting up and preparing the space, our goal was to begin the performance at 11:30am. Our assessed performance would be at around 2pm so between 11:30am and 2:30pm was our chance to practice with the public, to see how they would react and how we would perform. This was our most difficult and stressful time, before this we had not had an opportunity to use the equipment and fully see what our layout and the space would look like with the projectors, cameras and monitors. One problem that we found early on is that the projections were not as clear and crisp as we hoped, outside the lights were very bright and they bled onto the inside causing problems with the image so in hindsight we could have improved by testing smaller projectors and seeing how well they performed. Our biggest difficulty arrived the day before, one of the staff running the shopping centre went back against their word saying we could not move a display in the front of the space and we originally thought that would severely impact the performance but on the day of the performance we all saw that it in actual fact it worked in our favour. It gave the image of our space trying to be a shop but not actually being a shop, being in the same space as a shop, and having products and mannequins displaying items that of course would normally be found in a retail shopping environment but juxtaposed our white box space.

 

We managed to set up quickly and were on time and ready to perform at 11:30am, at first we found it difficult to attract people to come in but after a few fellow students came in the general public became influenced and interested. Many people responded well and were very curious about what our performance meant and why it was chosen in that location. We had a particularly interesting response from audience members, one member even said it truly evoked a connection with them and the child they were with. One of our strongest elements within the performance came out of chance on the day of the performance, we placed both chairs between the projector and the projection and created an interesting image of the spectator being within the frame and almost coming into contact with the performer (See Fig.6).I have been looking at CREW who are a Belgian-based company who have creative and immersive uses for technology and they say “Technology seems to have a conceptual and symbolic layer, while at the same time it can be used as a very instrumental, pragmatic, material thing to obtain a certain goal” (Nedelkopoulou et al., 2014) and after reading some of their articles I feel that if we did the performance again we could incorporate the spectators shadow for example When we show the board ‘I wish we could hold hands’ the performer could reach to the shadow of the spectator through the camera, this immerses the spectator even more and brings them much deeper into the performance and would potentially encourage them to reach out and then they themselves would be a part of the piece.

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Fig. 6 Shadow in frame (Veal Francesca, 2016)

Conclusion:

I have extremely enjoyed my time over this module and am very proud of the performance we created, I feel the this unit within the waterside shopping centre is a brilliant space for site specific given the amount of pathways it presents.

I feel that we as a group  we have created an engaging and connecting performance that made effective use of such a big and simple space, there are still many ways we could have developed it but I feel it was a welcome change to visitors and shoppers at the waterside shopping centre. From studying this module my creative knowledge has been broadened and my thoughts and ideas have been extended.

 

Bibliography:

Lutz, A. (2016). artlaboratory-berlin.org – planb – Navigating the Everyday. [online] Artlaboratory-berlin.org. Available at: http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org/html/eng-exh-25.htm [Accessed 13 May 2016].

Nedelkopoulou, E., Joris, E., Bekaert, P. and Vanhoutte, K. (2014). On the border between performance, science and the digital. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 10(2), pp.246-254.

Pearson, M. (2010). Site-specific performance. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Potente, L. (2016). live. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z_ZjEAzWtM&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 13 May 2016].

Sargent, E. (2016). Site Specific: Chalk expriment. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8B4XnAQjjc&feature=youtu.be [Accessed 13 May 2016].

YouTube. (2016). Salon Adrienne- Adrian Howells. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7XcWo2GzSo [Accessed 13 May 2016].

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Final Submission

A FRAMING STATEMENT

‘In-between. A chance for you to sit, to think, to watch and to experience. A chance for you to give us your time and for us to give you our words.’ (Potente, Crawford, Sargent, 2016)

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Figure 1, Taken by James Crawford (2016)

In-between was a live art multimedia performance which took place on the 6th May 2016 at the Waterside Shopping Centre Unit RU1 situated on the ground floor between H&M and Roman. The piece was a durational performance which ran from 12:00 until 16:30. The performance was open to the general public as well as having an invited audience of both Drama students and Lecturers. Over the course of the four and a half hours we ended up having between 25- 50 audience members some of which participated within the performance, others took more of a passive approach.

In-between was inspired by ethnography, which is the study of watching, as essentially the piece was watching passing people doing their day to day things. However, we played on this by creating a more intimate feel. 2 audience members were invited to sit on 2 chairs and then we (myself, James and Elliot) performed in a non-performative way by turning pages on placards. The words and phrases on the placards were emotive in a way which created an almost intimate performance for the audience members sat in the chair, as they felt we were connecting with themselves and only themselves. We created a dramatic feel without being dramatic at all. As performers we did ordinary things such as stand and wait but because we were doing this in an open and busy environment it became out of the ordinary.

Our piece was also heavily influenced by Michael Pinchbeck’s piece Sit with me for a moment and remember (Pinchbeck).  As we wanted to mirror the intimacy which he created with the audience.

Pinchbeck also played with the concept of imagination, ‘close your eyes’ (Pinchbeck) which allowed audience members to imagine and create images of longing for something/ someone, where as we created a longing for someone using out emotive words.

We also created a cinematic feel with just projectors and cameras. As the space felt more gallery like, being that it had just been refurbished and painted white, the walls were perfect for projecting a clear image of the outside shopping centre into the space. As we found that with site specific performance it is not just the space around but everything outside and leading up to the space. Site specific performance spills and ruptures into the surrounding area.

 

AN ANALYSIS OF PROCESS

Week 1. My initial ideas. So after my first site lesson I felt so inspired and excited to create a piece of not just drama but a piece of art, that I went home and brainstormed many different ideas. First of all I thought about doing an almost art attack idea by creating a map of Lincoln entirely out of materials found amongst the high street. For instance elements of shops, bags, coat hangers etc. I also like the idea of bringing people together, bringing the community without the people of Lincoln necessarily knowing they were all part of something, much like Stephen Fossey’s piece where he brought and entire community within a block of flats together by inviting each of them to turn on their lights. Another idea which had been circulating my head, was writing you are here in the centre of either a mirror, or glass, or even paper. Then collecting words from the people of Lincoln. Furthermore, I felt that I could layer this performance with a sound scape of voices from recording the words from the people.

Week 2. Developing my concept. So within the workshop and seminar of week 2 we looked at place and non-place. According to Marc Augé, a French anthropologist, non-places are spaces of transit, ‘nothing meaningful or social can happen in a non-place’ as non-places are regarded as a waiting area for someone to pass through to be somewhere else. From this we each experimented with instructions which was loosely based on Carl Lavery’s article 25 instructions for performance in cities. (Lavery, 2005)

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Discuss as a group significant places in Lincoln that you relate to with an emotion. Pick the closest one and go there. People watch for 2 minutes (taking in where you are, what you see/smell/can touch) designate your group into A,B,C. A- Picks a member of the public and creates a back story for that specific public member. Record your findings in detail and compare the significant emotions you had to that place to the emotional significant that place has now. Has it changed? Repeat the sequence from B+C’s significant place and allow them to change to the role of A. Ten minutes per each place. Figure 2, taken by Laura Potente (2016)

After following the instructions given to us by our pears, my group ended up at Lincoln train station where we sat, watched and waited for a while. After spending about 20 minutes within the train station site, I felt that it was no longer just a station where I waited but a place with so many stories from so many people. To me the train station is about my journeys to and from Lincoln, to others it’s a place of goodbye kisses.

Week 3. Let’s find a group and explore. Within week three we finally consolidated ideas amongst each other and organised ourselves into groups we then went off to explore our site, the city of Lincoln. After last week’s instruction and direction exercise I and my newly found group members decided to continue with experimenting. So we left LPAC and asked ‘Which way should we go?’ to the general public whenever we came to a junction. We often got laughed at or ignored but we also got some really interesting directions displayed below.

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Figure 3, taken by Laura Potente (2016)

From this experiment, I found it really useful to see how much the general public were willing to get involved and this would later aid me in my site work.

Week 4. Experiment. Line drawing exercise- we went into pound land on the high street and purchased chalk and a chalk board. We then drew a line from the outside of pound land to the subway (as we ran out of chalk) we then left a sign at the entrance of the subway

What I loved about this experiment was the fact that all the public could see what we were doing yet once we had finished it was like it never happened. No one questioned why there was chalk on the floor and everyone just got on with their day to day lives.

Week 5. Find a site ASAP! As we were fast approaching Reading week, we took week five as a chance to cement where our site would be. I was heavily inspired by the frequency light festival that took place in the waterside in November 2015, where they transformed one of the shopping units into a light display. After explaining my interest to the rest of the group about having the performance within a unit rather than out on the high street, we all agreed that we needed to get in touch with waterside shopping centre and get in the unit! We also started to consolidate our ideas and looked at Adrian Howells site specific performance, Salon Adrienne (Howells, 2007).

We found it really interesting his use of a ritualistic confessional where words were simple exchanged. From this we decided that during our final performance we would set up our own confessional. Furthermore, during week 5, Elliot and I went to see A Machine they’re Secretly Building (Westerside, 2016) which eventually became a huge influence on our piece. We immediately fell in love with the idea of CCTV, mass surveillance, archiving and storing other people’s information. We felt that we could use the confessional concept from Adrian Howells and manipulate an audience into giving up their own information, to see how easy it would be as well as to make others aware that this is what’s happening every day.

Moreover, we looked at Fran Tonkiss’ book Space, the city and social theory and her concept of why not knowing everyone is a good idea. Linking it back to mass surveillance and everyone knowing everyone. Therefore I and Elliot took it upon ourselves to find out more about surveillance in Lincoln, we therefore took photos of CCTV cameras and places that show restriction. Once we had discussed it with James, we immediately thought why not set up shop in our site and sell the photos which we had taken but for free, playing with the lexis of free.

READING WEEK

Week 7. Let’s go live. So after a week’s break we went back into our space were we decided to do another experiment? This time using a live feed and social media. We went live on Facebook for all users to see.

https://youtu.be/0Z_ZjEAzWtM

Week 8. Bring it back to consumerism and archiving. After a week of discussing what we wanted to do, we realised that we had all gone off topic. We were in unit in a shopping centre but yet we had photographs of CCTV cameras, and there were no direct links between the two. Therefore we came up with the idea of having a camera in one of the shop windows with a monitor next to it saying ‘CCTV, smile your on camera.’ Emphasizing the fact that the public is being watched. Furthermore we then thought about this being projected onto the back wall of the space as part of an archive where information would be stored.

Week 9. The space is a shop. During week nine we needed to make the performance more site specific so we all thought about what is usually in a shop? Rails and mannequins. Because we were using a shopping unit we had to keep relating it back to the site. If we were to move the piece from the unit we needed to make sure it couldn’t be performed else were. If our work were to be moved it would make it irrelevant, as we are placing this work into the public’s everyday life – a shop. Taking the ‘shop’ out of it, gives too much of a performative meaning to the piece and places the audience on a level where they will have preconception and presumption of the performance. When the work is an actual shop the audience is able to be engaged with the piece on a passive level, but then are forced to question the realms of the ‘shop’ and in turn their everyday life. we also needed to take into consideration the other shop window which we did. I suggested blocking of the window like the shop is undergoing refurbishment, by doing this we could create a private space which would be separate from the outside world. Furthermore, if we made a tiny slit in the blocked of window we could create an intimate viewing area.

EASTER BREAK

Week 12. Gathering resources. Throughout week 12 we began to gather resources from shops on the high street such as Dorothy Perkins and New Look and begin to install them into the space so that we could get a real feel for the piece. we also decided that we should use music expressing freedom.

Week 13. 2 weeks to go. so within week 7 we had both our module leader, Conan and our module tutor Steve come to review the piece and give us improvements. As so as Conan walked into the space he said that it was a gallery and therefore when we explained, they both could see that we had far too much going on. We needed to simplify the idea as we’d lost the concept of the piece and the greatness of the space and site. Therefore we took the camera in the shop window and projection on wall and decided we could make something beautiful from something so simple.

Week 14. The final hurdle. we needed tech equipment and quick so that we could see how it worked within the space. Through correspondence with Darren Page we finalised the equipment we needed and successfully were able to obtain it for the day.

Week 15. Performance week.

 

 

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

On the 6th May 2016 it was finally performance day. It was finally time to present the piece we had been working on, developing, simplifying and adapting over the past 15 weeks. Although we had never actually done the piece due to tech equipment not being available, I felt somewhat at ease that after everything it was finally time to show Lincoln what we had been working on. So after a late night preparing the placards and finalising tech equipment such as tripod and camera batteries, we all had a 9’o’clock start at LPAC. Once we had all arrived at the Waterside shopping Centre, I was informed by a member of security that the equipment which we were using had to be brought in through the delivery entrance rather than dragged through the shopping centre. This was due to health and safety reasons as the shopping centre was open to the general public. Once we had started to set up for a start time of 12:00, we became concerned of the lighting and the projectors.

Furthermore we had to put the projectors on the floor as we were not able to have them at a height due to not having the equipment and time to make it possible. However, this caused a shadow to appear in the frame from the chair. Although this was accidental, the shadow became a great asset to our piece, creating a different depth of performance allowing the audience member on the chair to actually become part of the performance as it looked as though they were in the frame.

So at 12:00pm the shutter to the store was open and our performance had officially started. We started off with two audience members both of which were Drama students and had been invited to watch the piece by ourselves. It then went considerably quiet not only within our piece but the shopping centre itself. I can only assume that this was due to it being lunchtime as well as it being considerably ‘nice’ weather outside. But then from nowhere it became noticeably busy again. This continued throughout the entire day, fluctuating numbers of the public. However, In-between seemed to be attracting quite a few people as a lot of the general public were very interested in what we were actually doing. During one part of the performance I had two audience members ask me what I was doing in which I explained it was a site performance for a module on Drama at the University of Lincoln, they responded with, “it’s sad to see empty shop units, makes towns and cities look run down. But you are using it in an exciting way. It’s something different. Good to see.”

Other audience members weren’t so interested in coming in the unit and viewing it instead they enjoyed the use of cameras in the shop window. Whilst our assessors were in we had a husband and wife playing with the cameras. The man pulled faces to the camera and was running in and out of shot where as his wife, still in shot, was laughing and telling him to stop. This for me created an innocent outlook on our piece. Yes we were creating an intimate performance for the 2 people on the chair, but we were creating something more for the passive audience. An almost technical playground allowing people to ‘act’ towards the camera or just pass by.

If we were to repeat In-between I personally feel would should make use of the shadows more, ‘I wish I could hold your hand’ was just one of the phrases where we could of made it so that the shadow created by the audience member could have reached out and grabbed the hand on the projection.

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Figure, Taken by Francesca Veal (2016)
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Figure, Taken by Elliot Sargent (2016)

Furthermore I would have loved a bigger audience, so that more people could have taken a moment with us. I feel the smaller audience numbers were due to the fact that it was a warm Friday as well as the fact we had very little advertising for the general public.

In-between was, surprisingly to me, a great success. Even elements of the performance which had incidentally happened such as the soundscape created by the echoing space, music and noise from the shopping centre, created something special for our piece, something that if we were ‘to move the work is to destroy the work.'(Serra, 1994)

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Howells, A. (2007). Salon Adrienne.Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmUn2ZTzeY0 [Accessed 3 Mar. 2016].

Lavery, C. (2005). Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 25(3), pp.229-238.

Pinchbeck, M. Sit with me for a moment and remember. [Online] Derby, Leicester, Manchester, Nottingham and Sheffield. Available at: https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-1155917-dt-content-rid-2084469_2/courses/DRA2035M-1516/DRA2035M-1516_ImportedContent_20150807123831/Sit%20with%20me%20for%20a%20moment%20and%20remember%20-%20Conan.mp3 [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016].

Potente, L. Crawford, J. Sargent, E. (2016) In-between. [Performance] Lincoln: Waterside Shopping Centre RU1, 6th May.

Tonkiss, F. (2005). Space, the city and social theory. Cambridge: Polity.

 

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Deliberation – Natasha Bailey – Final Blog

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Clarkson, C. (2016) “Deliberation”

Framing Statement

If “…theories are only made to die in the war of time” (Shukaitis, 2013. P.251) then I believe the site specific performance I created will soon be irrelevant to both the site, time period and audience. This, I find is the beauty of Site Specific performance for the end product created may be considered pointless and meaningless if taken out of the correct context.

My performance, Deliberation, took place Thursday 5th May, at one pm in Speaker’s Corner, Lincoln, for twenty minuets.  The audience consisted of members of the public ranging through all ages and through out my whole performance. I really wanted the audience to stop and watch through their own choice, seeing is freedom and deliberation were factors of my final piece. the majority of the audience remained silent, as I remained silent. Personally, I found this a great success that strangers were willing to silently watch me work and engage with the phrases on my placards and the words I was writing on myself.

Lincoln City holds a great history and as I researched this history and walked around the city I found myself asking, how can I remind my community of our past and encourage them to, make the changes that will influence our future. In 1908, the suffragettes held a rally at the Cornhill Exchange and in 2010 this site was name Speaker’s Corner, the cities official space for political activism, because of this I chose Speaker’s corner as my site.

I personally believe my final work was influenced my greatly by the Situationist International, this avant-garde group, who carry on from where the Dadaist and surrealist left off. What really resonated with me about their work is how they “speak of a unified vision of art and politics” (Knabb, 1981, p.16) and I hoped my work will do the same, however they also were clear that their work does it recommend “any sort of subordination of art politics” (Knabb, 1981 p.17).

La Ribot’s writing on the canvas hung from her neck and how she embodied herself within her performance also inspired me as I’ve spent this whole process fascinated by the idea of palimpsest and how my body can be a part of the performance without putting myself as a person in the performance.

 

Analysis of Process

A PLACE FOR OUR VOICE.

I started my research and devising process by spending time within my site and observing how others made use of it. I was initially hoping that I would be overwhelmed with a great sense of community, but found that my site is merely used it to cut through to another place or to quickly make use of the benches and ATMs. This had me question whether Speaker’s Corner was really a place or a non place. Personally, I felt my site felt more like a place of transition and I found this to be quiet disheartening, given in 1908 this site was the home to one of the suffragette’s rallies in Lincoln.

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Bailey, N. (2016) Speakers Corner today
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(Speakerscornertrust.org, 2016) Suffragette Rally at Speakers Corner in 1908

 

Marc Auge suggests: “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical or identity will be non-place” (Augé, 1995), however I believe my site challenges Auge’s theory. Speaker’s Corner was given the identity as Lincoln’s official space for the community to voice their opinions, it’s our given space for freedom of speech and political activism. Yet this identity and the site’s history is being overshadowed by the modern presences. This lead me to question whether Lincoln had lost its care for a public voice or they we’re afraid to stand out and use their voice. This has confirmed with me that I want my final piece to remind the community they should be using their voices and honouring the fact we have a safe place where we can freely fight for change.

From research, I found Emily Wilding Davison’s Great Granddaughter, Dr Helen Pankhurst, believes the suffragettes would be fighting to; “Increasing the numbers of female voters”, “A more diverse Government”, “Ending Violence against women”, “the growth of the pornography industry worldwide”, “the rape culture that blames the victim” (Pankhurst, 2013). I wanted my final performance to highlight these issues and to encourage the public to use their voice and use this space. Unlike the Suffragettes, I’ve decided to take a less obvious and violent approach to my performance. I want my performance to be simple but cause the audience/public to leave questioning what they just saw, the issues it addresses, as my main aim for this performance is for the the audience to start talking about these issues and expressing their opinions freely.

 

Making Progress and Having a Script.

I’ve started practically exploring my ideas and one idea which I am keen to incorporate into my performance is Détournement. Détournement is “an artistic practice conceived by the Situationist International for transforming artworks by creatively disfiguring them” (Oxfordreference.com, 2016). The idea of creating a political statement through my actions and not my voice really resonates with me, as I am a firm believer actions speak louder than words.

A massive part of today’s rape culture is the campaign material published by the police force and government. This campaign material is supposed to ‘fight rape’ but in fact blames women instead, telling them how they could ‘stop’ themselves from being attacked.

Pictur2e1
(Google.co.uk, 2016) ‘Anti-Rape Poster’, that actually victim blames. Originally published by the NHS

Similar to Situationist International, I plan to ‘deface’ these posters as they openly victim blame. Victim blaming is a regular occurrence in the campaign posters created by the police forces and government. By doing this I hope my audience will also believe that instead of victim blaming and telling women what not to do, we should be targeting the predators. I also think it’s important to note how these posters target women, though men can be and are also victims of sexual assault.

 

Layering and Costume.

I decided my costume should be a part of my performance. I’ve decided wear white for this performance and shall deface this white outfit with words and phrases that are often linked to victim blaming. La Ribot’s project, Panoramix inspired this idea, as she says “To write is to let oneself be swept along by a tongue of black ink, that glides slowly without gesture or character…” (Live Art Development Agency, 2016). Though I intend not to characterises myself at all within this performance or use it as a form of political propaganda of my opinion, the words I write on myself are words that have already attracted my attention. Which disappointingly means to some extent there will be a part of myself and my own opinion within this performance, the only way I can conceal this is by the gesture in which I write on myself. Which I believe will work best if I perform the gesture of writing without any emotion, almost as if I was hypnotised by this gesture.

This idea of palimpsest (layering) should help me bring together the site’s history, the suffragette movement and the change I hope will be our future.

 

 Being Specific to my Site.

I began to realise my performance should be less about what the suffragettes and more about having a voice and fighting for your opinion. The suffragettes fought for suffrage, using my site to air their voice. Today, Speaker’s corner, is our designated location of political activism, yet it became obvious to me the commercialisation of the space was more important than the political activism. I believe as a community we’ve allowed for our space of political activism to be over consumed by capitalism and commercialisation.

I’ve been very intrigued by the Situationist International and their artistic, political activist approach and from reading academic journal articles about their styles I found a quote which explains my view on Speaker’s Corner perfectly. “But theories are only made to die in the war of time” (Shukaitis, 2013. P.251). Relating this to Speaker’s Corner it become clear that the idea of having a place of political activism was just an ideal. Just like the suffragette movement, this history seems unimportant to our everyday uses of the site.

From this I developed my final performance. I decided my performance, Deliberation, should completely silent in which I write on myself, whilst wearing sandwich boards with political statements written across them. I found a sense of irony that I’m encouraging my audience to use their voice whilst not using my own. I want the audience to focus primarily on the written work as I believe written words  have a bigger effect on the public than oral speech.

These placards will also bring together the the two histories of this site that I’m exploring whilst making them relevant to today. On one side I will have a statement which the suffragettes themselves used when protesting and on the other side I will have a statement taken from one of the speech’s given at the opening of Speaker’s corner. This use of placards has very much been inspired by the Gurrila Girls and how they used placards and posters to broadcast the change they’re fighting for. Which I’ve tried to get across in my placards too, which can be seen from the pictures below.

 

 

Bailey, N. (2016) Mock designs
GGs+abortion+march-2
Guerrilla Girls, (2016). Their political placards.

 

The Final and small changes.

I’ve decided to make some small changes to the aesthics of my piece. The first change I’ve made is too the content on my sandwich boards. I’m now using four short phrases; ‘Politicising Their Bodies’, ‘To Deal With Personality And Internal Contradictions’, ‘How Politics And History Work’ and ‘Stir The Souls Of Democracy’. Having, shorter and snappier phrases seemed more effective in rehearsals than longer ones. They gave the reader more to think about without giving too much away.

I’ve also returned to the idea of palimpsest by writing on myself. Wearing a white boiler suit, I intend to write words such as ‘Deliberation, Refugee, Expression, Cuts, NHS, Freedom, ect’ as these contrast my sandwich boards. I’ll be performing in a site which is riddled with political history on the day of our local elections. The town will be full of public members who will have hopefully just voted or about to go vote for their local councillors. The contrast of the sandwich boards and the current affairs which we should be addressing as a community, will encourage and hopefully inspire the audience to use their voices in a manner which fights for change and freedom.

 

Performance Evaluation

My final performance lasted roughly 15-20 minuets, as I personally felt if the performance lasted any longer it would have become tedious and the meaning would have been lost. I started stood outside Santander in my normal clothes, standing still staring blankly at my audience for a small period by time, I slowly changed into the boiler suit on top my clothes. I then picked the scissors and tape on the floor next to me and slowly taped out the original stage in which the suffragette rally was held, this being outside Santander. Returning to the centre, I put on my first sandwich board and again paused, allowing the audience to wonder what was about to happen next.

Then slowly I started to walk across the space whilst writing on the boiler suit, words such as “deliberation, freedom, NHS, refugee, cuts, voice, vote, expression, money”, words that relate to current affairs. I found this part a struggle because the sandwich board kept hitting me as I wrote preventing me from seeing what I was writing. On reflection, this could have seen to be an intentional metaphor for the sandwich board which represented our politics was obstructing myself from writing about the currents we need to change, meaning politics could metaphorically be obstructing our need for change. When I reached the Speaker’s Corner sign, I took off the first placard and started out the whole process again, making the journey back to my starting position. I found repeating this process between both stages, allowed me to connect both histories with today and hopefully the audience questioned why those two places were so important and perhaps researched for themselves.

 

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Bailey, N. (2016) Placards.
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Bailey, N. (2016) Placards.
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Bailey, N. (2016) Placards.
Bailey, N. (2016) Defaced Boiler Suit
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Bailey, N. (2016) Placards.

I started with an audience of three and by the end of my performance a bigger group of public members had collated to watch. Though there was no intentional audience involvement on my behalf, I found the audience followed me on the journey I made and afterwards were reading the sandwich boards and discussing what I had chosen to write on them. I found this alone to be a success as I hoped that the outcome of my performance would be for people to discuss politics more and freely voice opinions which happened.

The greatest success, was the college student who spoke to me and discussed my performance with me afterwards, asking me not only to explain but then telling me how now he knows the context that it was a great performance.

The final performance made me realise that actually the site and those who fill the site hadn’t lost their purpose or voice but perhaps just required a leader to lead them when using their voices as they needed that security and the confidence to do. For example, as they realised I wasn’t speaking they stayed silent too. The silence created, I found emphasized the performance and the words that had been written.

The final performance could have been improved by taking advantage of the silence and lengthening my pauses. I personally feel that by lengthening the silence I could gathered a bigger audience and triggered more questioning. On reflection, I feel I should have rehearsed with sandwich boards more, so writing on myself whilst wearing them wouldn’t have been so hard. In retrospect, the short amount of time I had to change my final performance was a major factor in the little rehearsal I eventually had.

I now I believe the site gave me a little but too much history to work with and at times I found myself weighed down with too much research and not enough practical work. I found that my methodology, through prioritising research over practical development actually slowed down my devising process.
I feel I know understand site specific theory and practice more than at the start of the module. At the start of the module, I thought Site Specific would have been easier than what it was, I also thought it was about the history of the site and not actually the site itself. However, it took the whole process for me to learn that the history had to still be relevant to the site for a piece to work. For example, though the suffragette rally at Speaker’s Corner was immense, it didn’t make sense to try to recreate anything similar today as currently everyone, who is a legal citizen in the UK, has the right vote. Therefore, making this history not irrelevant to the city but not relevant enough to create a piece of site specific drama.

 

Word count: 2700

Bibliography:

Augé, M. (1995). Non-places. London: Verso. PP 77-78.

Bailey, N. (2016) Defaced Boiler Suit.

Bailey, N. (2016) Placards.

Bailey, N. (2016) Mock Designs.

Bailey, N. (2016) Speaker’s Corner today.

Clarkson, C. (2016) Deliberation.

Google.co.uk. (2016). Redirect Notice. [online] Available at: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwjxl_TBqNfMAhUhIMAKHUJ1AHoQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.co.uk%2F2014%2F07%2F31%2Fnhs-dimisses-outrage-over-rape-posters-victims_n_5636953.html&psig=AFQjCNE6DKYfDG_mKCO8dykWKgagOZ4VqQ&ust=1463238012233902 [Accessed 13 May 2016].

Guerrilla Girls. (2016). PROJECTS. [online] Available at: http://www.guerrillagirls.com/projects/ [Accessed 13 May 2016].

Live Art Development Agency. (2016). La Ribot – Projects – Live Art Development Agency. [online] Available at: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/projects/la-ribot/ [Accessed 9 May 2016].

Oxfordreference.com. (2016). Situationist International – Oxford Reference. [online] Available at: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199239665.001.0001/acref-9780199239665-e-2519 [Accessed 10 May 2016].

Pankhurst, D. (2013). Feminism: what would the suffragettes be fighting for today?. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/9825131/Feminism-what-would-the-suffragettes-be-fighting-for-today.html [Accessed 3 Mar. 2016].

Speakerscornertrust.org. (2016). Lincoln | Speakers Corner Trust. [online] Available at: http://www.speakerscornertrust.org/speakers-corner-projects/uk-projects/lincoln [Accessed 13 May 2016].

YouTube. (2016). “Deliberation”. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MDVtxp-14k [Accessed 13 May 2016].

Posted on No Comments on There’s Non-Place Like Home – Final Blog Post – Rowanna Soyza

There’s Non-Place Like Home – Final Blog Post – Rowanna Soyza

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There’s Non-Place Like Home – Rowanna Soyza

Performed with Holly Lomas, Franki Elmer, Hannah D’Arcy, and Olivia Calvert.

Fiona Wilkie defines Site Specific performance in Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation to be ‘performance specifically generated from/for one selected site’ (Wilkie, 2002, p. 150, cited in Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, 2000, p. 8). This definition establishes the necessity for the performance to be solely influenced by the location.

We could choose our site anywhere on the high street of Lincoln City. Our group came to the conclusion that the aesthetically enticing Stonebow Arches in the centre of the high street was where our performance would take place. Through this we researched its historical transformations and decided Marc Augé’s theories on places and non-places could interestingly explore this site. We drew upon the practitioner Adrien Howells to develop our performance, as well as John Newling and Sophie Calle. Although Augé, Howell and Newling were our predominant stimuluses, there were also other practitioners that influenced our piece through the development process which I will discuss later in the ‘Analysis of Process’.

On the 5th of May 2016 our group performed There’s Non-Place Like Home in Lincoln City’s Stonebow Arches to the public. The start of our performance was 10:00am at which time we proceeded to set up the Arches with our props and furniture that created a living room whilst engaging in conversation with the public. We provided cups of tea and biscuits and exchanged conversation with members of the public who wanted to participate in our performance. We continued to do so until 4:00pm at which time we decided our aims had been fulfilled. Following I will discuss the justification for this final product and furthermore demonstrate the advancements we made to get us there.

Analysis of Process

Through the study of Marc Augé our group was introduced to his theory of place and non-place. We discussed the binary meanings of these two words and established that a ‘place’ can be defined as ‘relational, historical and concerned with identity’ (Augé, 2009, p. 77). Moreover, we can generalise this to mean that a ‘place’ is somewhere that interactions can and have taken place and a space that does not meet this criteria is subsequently categorised as a ‘non-place’. This proposes that a ‘non-place’ is a space that cannot offer opportunities for interactions within a community or area. Joanne Whalley and Lee Miller have exercised these boundaries within their own piece called Partly Cloudy Chance of Rain (2002) in which they renewed their vows at a place of transit: Roadchef Sandbach Services. This demonstration of love is an interaction that Whalley and Miller have imparted on this ‘non-place’ which consequently transforms this space into a ‘place’.

This exploration of palimpsest within the theory of place and non-place sparked my interest. I began to examine places of non-place within our given site and eliminated the street that granted access to the shops as non-places due to the benches that provide opportunities for conversation. There are many areas of the city that I classed as having possibilities for relations which left me questioning if there were any. Upon further discussion within our group we identified an area that we all agreed could be adequately described as an area of transit: the Stonebow Arches. I began to recall my personal experiences there and concluded that I had never stopped and interacted with anyone within this space, nor had I seen anyone else do so. Upon this epiphany our group travelled to this site and discussed the aesthetically appealing nature of the arches. We observed the public and how they interacted with the space.

Fig. 1 – Observing the public at the Stonebow Arches.

Our hypothesis that this site is definitively an area of transit was substantiated with this video evidence. When revisiting this video observation we documented that there were no examples of interaction or even stopping at the Stonebow Arches. Furthermore, we observed that despite the fact that we were filming, the public had no interest in us which demonstrated further that no interactions were to happen in this space. It was at this point that we decided to use the Stonebow Arches as our site.

I proceeded by researching into the history of the Stonebow Arches and learned that the building above the arches is called the Guildhall. The Guildhall was built in 1237 in which council meetings took place and has remained so through to present day. The Guildhall offers a tour and we decided that knowledge of this building would help inform us of the history of the Stonebow Arches. During this tour we discovered that the council use a bell five minutes prior to their conferences in order to summon council members to the meeting. Upon this discovery our group discussed incorporating the bell into our piece. This stimulated us to delve even further into the history of this building and the arches in an attempt to find inspiration for our piece. Our search provided us with the evidence that the ‘eastern wing of the Stonebow was used as the city prison until 1586’ (Lincolnshire Echo, 2013). This initiated conversations in what the prison would have been like which developed into a conversation about envisioning that room becoming your temporary home. This challenged our ideals of place and non-place because we were able to argue that it was both. On the one hand, a prisoner stayed there for period of time which resulted in relations and developing an identity. However, inmates would be in a state of flux as it is a temporary place of living.

I decided to attempt to identify other instances where a place of living became temporary. I considered the lives of those that are homeless and recognised that this was a reflection of those in prison but with added aspects of discussion. For example, those in prison make their homes out of where they go to sleep which is every night in lives of those that are homeless. I concluded that this potentially means that any location is transformable into a place. Through discussion we acknowledged that we had seen homeless people sleep by the Stonebow arches at night and our group decided to advance this into the foundations of our piece. We determined that we would aim to create a home in the Stonebow arches and communicate with our audience as if we were in this ‘home’.

Influential Practitioners

In the beginning weeks of our study of site specific we were introduced to Adrian Howells who is a practitioner within this genre of performance art. Howells created a piece called Salon Adrienne in which he transformed into his female persona ‘Adrienne’ and provided the participants with haircuts and Indian head massages in exchange for conversation. The piece takes place in an actual salon and he interacts with pre-existing customers of the salon. Howell says that ‘the piece, Salon Adrienne, is an excuse for me to have a meaningful interaction and dialogue exchange with another person’ (homotopiafestivel and Howell, 2007). We were inspired by this concept he terms ‘confessional exchange’ (homtopiafestival and Howell, 2007) and felt we could incorporate this into our piece. We concluded that we would employ Adrian’s method of using haircuts as a sort of currency in exchange for conversation.

We discussed that this ‘currency’ should be something relatable to our concept of creating a living room within the arches but we were unsure as to what that ‘currency’ could be. We recognised that certain social conventions necessitate that the host provides beverages for guests so we decided to create a survey and ask members of the public to identify what drink they think of when they think of home and the predominant answer was tea. I processed this answer and begun to explore the pre-existing social conventions that accompany a cup of tea and I began to accumulate the conclusion that sharing a cup of tea with another person is a socially interactive event. Our group recognised that in many situations tea is utilised as an accompaniment to casual conversation and we were inspired to use this ‘exchange’ technique within our piece by offering cups of tea as a prompt to converse with our audience.

In addition, Howell recognises the necessity of ‘authentic experience’ (Heddon and Howell, 2011) within his site specific performances. He states that the salon ‘intended to reassure the audience-participant, engendering a sense of safety’ (Heddon and Howell, 2011) which we recognised as a vital aspect of his piece. Furthermore, if we were to achieve our aim of confessional exchange with our audience we needed to recreate a home that promoted a comfortable and safe environment. It was this that inspired us to extend our idea and create a fully operational living room within the Stonebow arches.

Through these developments of our piece we were struggling with the true aims of our piece and what we wanted to achieve through it. We ascertained that our piece was attempting to create a connection between the public and our site which mirrored Sophie Calle’s inspiration in Suite Venitienne (2015). After spending an extended amount of time travelling away from her home in Paris, Calle felt disconnected from the city. She proceeded to follow a man (known as Henri B.) to Venice when he moved and observed his life in an attempt to connect with the new city. Calle’s challenging endeavour to connect with a city made me consider the enterprises I have had to face in order to create a connection between myself and Lincoln. All of the members of our group have only lived in Lincoln for two years and we discussed whether we would consider Lincoln our ‘home’ and it was in this discussion that I realised that Lincoln is my home. But why? It was these factors that inspired us to construct our conversation with the audience around notions of ‘home’. Through these conversations we would be able to employ Calle’s method of understanding someone else’s connection to a city in order to develop our own. Furthermore, our piece became an opportunity to discuss the definitions and aspects of ‘home’ with a variation of people that are influenced by an array of circumstances.  We further specified that this discussion directly relates and furthers our inspiration from the Stonebow Arches’ history of being a prison. Additionally, our earlier considerations of the concepts of a ‘temporary home’ within a prison and defining place and non-place are directly relatable to the topic that is ‘home’.

Lastly, John Newling’s piece called Saturday Night Sunday Morning (1991) in which he placed lights in a market square to create a safe, communal area. This installation piece was activated by the audience which we established as a vital aspect of our piece. We incorporated this theory into our piece by providing lights and candles to create a safe environment for our audience participants. Furthermore, we dictated that the audience activates our living room by entering and interacting with us and the space.

Performance Evaluation

The final performance started with us bringing together all of our props into the site and transforming the Stonebow Arches into a ‘home’. This action transposed the real life situation of ‘moving in’ into a performative aspect of our piece. We began to set up the space as seen in fig. 2

Fig 2. Creating our home.

Furthermore, this aspect of our piece was our exploration of generating a ‘place’ out of a ‘non-place’. We recognised that the small details would create the big picture and bared this in mind when buying props: excessive was more beneficial than not enough. Whilst setting up I noticed that we would arrange and then rearrange in order to make the space our perfect representation of our home. I concluded that it was in these actions that we were implanting part of ourselves into the space which further enhanced the authenticity of the experience. Through analysis of our piece I have concluded that we successfully recreated Adrian’s theory of authentic experience to the best of our abilities. Fig. 3 demonstrates the final outcome of our piece in comparison to the other arches surrounding us.

Fig. 3 – Comparison of the arch that was next to us and ‘home’.

What’s more the reaction that we obtained from our audience members substantiates this claim. Audience members felt comfortable enough to share tea and biscuits with us whilst lounging on the sofa and rug as seen in fig. 4

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Fig. 4 – Discussing ‘home’ with the public over a cup of tea.

However, we anticipated that those actually within the site would not be the only participants to our piece. Prior to our performance we predicted that passers-by would contribute to our piece and we were right. During the creation of our living room we had many different public members that were prompted by the site’s transformation to ask us questions. This meant that many different conservations ensued which generated organic material that I had not previously considered. For example, a gentleman who later told us he was ‘houseless’, expressed his opinion on the word ‘homeless’. He explained that you can make anywhere your home, even going so far as to say ‘home is where the heart is’ and that the only thing he was lacking was a house. This caused me to re-evaluate my preconceived notions of home and found this became a very interesting topic with other audience participants. Therefore, due to our ongoing performance we had consequential participants which meant attempting to pinpoint the audience numbers is unachievable.

In reflection I would state that our creation of a living room was extremely effective. Furthermore, this success meant that the confessional exchanges were also efficacious. We received a substantially positive amount of contribution from audience members which developed our piece more than we could have hoped for. Due to the array of new participants there were varying levels of subject depth which meant every conversation was original and concepts or topics of conversation were not exhausted by the end of our piece.

However, the material we used to block off some of our living room was torn away by the wind. Upon evaluation it would be this aspect that I would change for our piece. During some interactions the material was blown away by the wind which meant that the area lost its enclosed atmosphere. It would have destroyed elements of authenticity within the performances because members of our group were required to disengage with participants to go and fix it.

In summary, this piece was effective in creating a place out of a non-place and we achieved what we aspired to do with the audience through conversations. Site Specific performance has required me to transform my pre-existing knowledge of performance. Through this experience I have learnt that any location is performable which has inspired me to reconstruct my perception of space. Furthermore, I have recognised as a deviser that theory presents us with opportunities for development within ourselves and within our art.

 

 

Word Count : 2489

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

Augé, M. (2009) Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of Supermodernity. 2nd edn. 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

Heddon, D. and Howell, A. (2011) ‘From Talking to Silence: A Confessoinal Journey’, PAJ – A Journal of Performance and Art, 33(1), pp. 1–12.

homotopiafestival and Howell, A. (2007) Salon Adrienne. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmUn2ZTzeY0 (Accessed: 7 May 2016).

Kaye, N. (2000) Site-specific art: Performance, place and documentation. New York: Routledge.

Lincolnshire Echo (2013) How Lincoln’s Stonebow played its part in both local and national history. Available at: http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Lincoln-s-Stonebow-played-local-national-history/story-17946800-detail/story.html (Accessed: 7 May 2016).

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

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. [performance] Nottingham: Market Square,

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

Posted on No Comments on FINAL BLOG SUBMISSION – Chris Champion

FINAL BLOG SUBMISSION – Chris Champion

Site Specific Blog

Christopher Champion (13391567)

Introduction to “Edward & Eleanor 1254”

Once upon a time King Edward I and his doting wife Eleanor, travelled to Lincoln long ago. The love they shared for one another was absolute. Eternal. Upon arrival in Lincoln they separated in order to enact their formal duties. Unfortunately, during this brief time apart Eleanor died. Edward, was so overcome by grief and remorse that he and his men erected a tall spire within Lincoln castle as a reminder of what he’d left behind, Eleanor’s Cross. Upon his solemn journey with the funeral procession, at every checkpoint, at every small village that they took rest, they then in turn built these spires again and again. This marked the way of their last journey Edward and Eleanor shared and a monument of remembrance of how beautiful it was in her company, and miserable it was without her. When the King arrive in Westminster the funeral was held. Songs were sung, tears were shed and all the people in the land, whispered of the lovers who went to Lincoln.

 

This was the story that made our site specific performance what it was. We, Mary Jane, Rayanne, Dequaine, Laura and I, researched and experimented with all sorts of different motions and idea’s before coming to this concept. We never abandoned our core objective throughout this process. The outcome of our performance/installation was to make the people aware within our site: The High Street, that they all have on thing that links them all, love. It was this that made us consider if the love people share as they walk side by side, could then be associated with they place they walk.

 

Our piece commenced with a procession up the high street dragging our interpretation of a modern Eleanor cross that had numerous names and dates of scratched into it taken from the people on the city centre over the previous weeks. We proceeded then to arrive at the central cross roads of the high street where we positioned ourselves in the physical form of a cross whist our monument was left central. In turn we took time to carve more names whilst others would tell the street, afoot small platform boxes, (like a town crier) all the different stories we had collected. Through this performance we have take the admittance of love from a stranger, brought it to life through enacting and proclaiming it then make the symbol of love; their story last forever by carving it into Eleanor’s cross. Whilst speaking the stories to the street we transitioned the way in which they were told to make each story have its own feeling, character and overall uniqueness. After 4 main transitions of speech and carving the piece was drawn to a close and we brought the installation back in a procession down the high street to were we’d started. We finished with answering any question any audience member had. In some cases, we’d have an audience member request their own name on the ‘cross’ which was received well and therefore even in the performance period we were still developing and creating this object, symbol if you will, of the love that lives in Lincoln.

 

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ANALYSIS OF PROCESS OF CREATING “EDWARD & ELEANOR 1254”

In the early weeks, we as a group came together through circumstance due to different idea’s and general uncertainty of what site is? However soon after collaborating and long discussion we came to a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve. Our understanding is that what makes The High Street a ‘place’ is the people that walk up and down it every single day. Going back to the discussion it was apparent early on that we wanted to do something about relationships. This was influenced by our tutor, Steve Fossey. He had shown us a past performance of his own work, where he had stapled hundreds of flowers to a fence. The overall purpose of Steve’s work was quite elusive but our take from it was the memory of hundreds of ‘loved ones’ on one singular fence to symbolise the amount of grief there is in the world. This inspired us to look at the high street’s inhabitants and how they behaved rather instead of the buildings and overall architecture of the street.

“Marc Augé’s book is a haunting analysis of modern life and in particular those homogenised “non-places” where we spend so much of our time: airports, railway stations, superstores, motorways and international hotel chains. Unlike conventional “anthropological places” (the symbolic site of an altar), these “spaces of circulation, consumption and communication” exist beyond history, relations and the game of identity.”

(PD SMITH, 2009) It was only in the fifth week of study we looked Marc Augé and his idea’s on what a ‘place’ and ‘non place’ was. Differentiating the two by suggesting that a place is a place of happening. Therefore, a non place was branded as a place of transition: a way to get somewhere else. If the High St. is considered into this equation, then surely being the shopping central of the city, the walkway its self is a place of transition from one shop to another, and labelled as a non place. Though this seemed evident when confronted with a busking choir whilst researching for our performance, we noticed that with a simple symbolic gesture of good will, shown through singing of a hymn, subsequently gathered a crowd circulating this troop of religious folk singers. It seemed obvious that though the street was a branded ‘non place’, the people of Lincoln are longing, subconsciously begging for it to have some sort of relevance or meaning. But yet after another day fully observing the passers by, the only thing that came to be noticed is that people tended to walk in couples, often hand in hand. After all, it is the most secure, safe area of Lincoln with over 87 CCTV camera’s covering our performance site alone.

Whilst the other researched into famous couples and Lincoln I then took it upon myself to delve a little deeper into the history of the high street. Being aware of a focus which was the idea of couples, relationships I decided to look at part town criers within the city itself. This idea cam to me because I thought if people got married way back when, would the town crier have declared it?  Although historical content was extremely limited in this area I did find out that the position of a Town Crier in Lincoln has been occupied for the last two centuries’, however on in 2011 was it declared a state occupancy and only then was the position paid and paid for by the local county council. Upon taking this back to the group we had collectively gathered very different segments of knowledge. We had looked further into “Partly cloudy, Chance of rain” and the concept of exchanging an item for a section of personal information. This was incorporated by Mary Jane so for in order to understand the relationships within Lincoln, we would have to go out research and ask the public and this allowed us to do that without getting to personal and with that extra little touch i.e. flowers we could get exactly what we wanted: love stories. We then came to a communal understanding that from the research we had committed to, our piece looked like it would consist of collecting stories in exchange for flowers, telling the stories like the ‘Town Crier’ whilst having some kind of grand installation to, more than any other reason at this point, draw the eye of passing audience members.

 

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With this clear concept in mind we ventured through the city in search of stories for our collection. After some but little success we stopped out Lakeland Pottery Barn whilst I went in to ask the staff about the building itself, for it is a magnificent building with columns and arches all through it. The store assistant made myself aware that this used to be the old train station before it had to be moved due to traffic congestion and building maintenance such as a replacement roof. The Lakelands shared the building with the local ARGOS so we ventured inside to see what it would have looked like. Whilst in ARGOS we came across a lovely elderly Couple who had been married for over fifty years. They approached us as we were admiring the photo’s and the made it apparent that they had been together when the old train station stood. We dug deeper to unearth that Colin, the gentlemen had caught the train every day from Newark to Lincoln, originally for his place of work, but then after, for his lovely wife Cathy. He said he hated that train and he was only contracted to take if for 3 of 20 years he took it, and that was due from work. As we spoke with the couple for their story was inspirational to say the least, they mentioned that their story resembles the story of the King Edward I and Queen Eleanor. Honestly, we had no clue of this story, nor did we know much on the the monarchs in Lincoln.  Lucky for us there was a sign next to the photos, to left of where we’d been looking already that told us just enough to have a clearer understanding of the story which turned out to have absolute relevance to what we were aiming to achieve.

I offered without hesitation to build, craft our own Eleanor cross with scrap wood sourced from Lincolns street. Weeks passed and unfortunately, the pallets I’d collected couldn’t be taken apart. We compromised by building a 90cm by 90cm box from fibre wood sourced from B&Q. Then found a pallet and screwed nails into it so the box could be easily transported. At this point, as a group, our piece was demonstration of love, through declarations, conversations and the carving of names to ensure the memory’s survival. We met with Conan, the module leader, and he advised us to paint the box so it looked appealing, Speech had to be clearly defined when it was a ‘Crier’ speaking and when its just ‘us’ telling a story. Therefor the box had to painted to look aesthetically pleasing. I purchased the woodstain and spent a weekend in the sun painting and carving into and on the sides of the box.

After the paint job and DIY we came together to discuss what our piece achieves because I wasn’t to clear on why we were doing what we were doing. We as a group wanted to experiment with relationships in Lincoln and see if those feeling could transcend into the space we perform. This can make the audience to share memories of when love existed in their lives or how important it was, what they carved on a tree when younger. “We often pressure the memory of an indefinable charm from this town we’ve merely brushed against. The memory indeed of our own indecision, our hesitant footsteps, our gaze which didn’t know what to turn towards and that  found l most anything affecting.”(Perec,G.1977, 64) The carving gave the entire piece that personal, real feeling. Much like when you find carvings in a tree, it triggers memories of your own that can relate, so to take away the base object: a tree and carve instead onto a box in the centre on the high street, allowed us to give the audience and people passing this same emotional memory which came from associating wit a box on Lincolns High Street. This became the obsession of our piece. Everywhere you look on the high street today, you can see that its new, modern and really quite devoid of character; “only infrequently are there trees in the streets. When ther are, they have railing surrounding them […] Thus there are street lights which go on automatically as soon as day light begins to decline.”(Perec,G,1977,47) Our overall intension came about to be that we wished to add a little character to the street itself whilst reminding all that love is always in the air.

Also following our final showing to Conan, we focused on the speech itself. We had many ‘everyday’ stories but as a ‘Town Crier’ the majority of these stories couldn’t be read properly and sound formal. Rayanne devised an idea where if the Crier gives the news, i.e.: Mary and Joseph, Wed 1987. Then follows with stepping of his plinth, he could tell the rest to any audience member listening. We had noticed that in the earlier weeks’ people responded to the shouting. At first people might’ve been intimidated however once past the initial shock the words spoken then has a much more profound meaning to any listener. This was inspired by Mike Pearsons “Site Specific Performance” and his idea’s of the different uses and styles about reading text. “The insertion of a classical or modern text in this ‘found space’ throws new light on it, gives it an unsuspected power and places the audience at an entirely different relationship to the fact, the place and the purpose of being there.” (Pearson,M,2010,7) Through our transitions in speech and the overall manner in which the stories we told, we believe that we achieved Mike Pearson’s theory throughout our performance.

 

 

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

Our performance itself went as well as it could have been. There were of course some uncontrollable eventualities that took place which disrupted the overall flow. Such as Dequaine didn’t know what to say when coming to carve, even after spending eleven weeks on this process, he still had no idea what we we doing, also the procession to and from the site was a failure due to the heaviness of the box, it was simply impossible to drag the extremely heavy box with the strength of one of my legs as I am not that strong. On the other hand, the audience was fantastic, even interrupted the performance to enquire on our presence. These things were prepared for and dealt with very professionally and therefore had little impact on the piece overall. Personally, I am not a practitioner, I am an actor. Site specific was the opposite to what I enjoy and love about Drama. I found the final product was what we had envisioned yet for me still lacked that strong performance element I am used to seeing on stage. This was our fault, we spent too much time on the installation rather than the performance. The carvings on the day were much more personal, audience members came close to see exactly what we were carving. This created a kind of intimate feeling we had not expected. Whilst people past us by during our show I heard many anonymous voices saying “It’s a love box”, so I have little to no doubt that we achieved what we wanted to through this performance and the installation. I however will take a few to many years before delving back into Site Specific Performance.

 

 

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Reference List:

 

P,D,SMITH. 2009 GUARDIAN REVIEW: Available at :

:http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/mar/28/non-places-marc-auge-review

 

M, PEARSON. 2010, 7 “Site specific Performance”, Macmillan Hampshire, London.

 

G, Perec. 1977, 47-64. “Species of space and other pieces”, Penquin publishers, London: routledge.

 

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