The best way to discover the possibilities of performance is by actively exploring all that a site has to offer. Taking a walk up and down the high street enlightened me to many to things that would most likely go unnoticed to passersby – the beautiful architecture of buildings, the signpost ‘Speakers Corner’, and mini barons displayed in several shops windows. Because I was making these discoveries through actively looking, it came to my attention how absent minded people can be when walking.
The next session sent us out into the city once more, this time with instructions written by other students. This notion of using instructions to navigate a city was inspired by Carl Lavery’s article Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Our instructions told us to go to a place that held an emotional connection to us. Discussing this we discovered that due to only living in Lincoln for a short time, there was no significant building of such value. Thinking of other possibilities we decided that the train station held an emotional connection to us all. We discussed the mixed emotions we had felt here due to events that had happened; including excitement of travelling home and sadness of leaving and saying goodbye. As we sat on the station and watched the area, we took in various sounds and sights and documented them. A notable thing we saw was two analog clocks which had both stopped and both said the wrong time. This prompted us to discuss the irony of how a place which is so centered on time has broken clocks. We also thought about how this site acts as what Marc Auge calls a ‘nonplace’ in his book Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. This is a place of transit and not seen to be social. But as we watched others catching and waiting for their trains, we discovered that there can be an element of social interaction tied to the train station as we witnessed a woman meet a man and leave together. We watched the couple closer and created a story for them: the man was walking slightly behind the woman, meaning she was mad at him, and as they walked we decided they were on the wrong station and had only just realised. I believe my personal experiences of being on wrong platforms and not knowing which train I should get had influenced this story.
Back in the studio, we discussed our experiences and I got the feeling that others found it exciting and freeing not to know their destination when following instructions. It could also be interesting if the journeys that people took were tracked on a map and visually seen. We also discussed different possible ways of performing on the High Street, and I found the idea of cultural changes when going down the street really interesting. I am going to think more about this idea and analyse what differences there are.
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