Author: Joseph Peter Turner

Monday 14th March

Today we were able to go and view other group’s work in progress. Getting a fresh pair of eyes on the piece meant that issues were raised that we hadn’t previously seen. It also meant that we could confidently explain and justify our piece using practitioners and methodologies.

 

After discussing with the group we know have a greater understanding of how Mark Auge’s concept of place and non place influences our piece. Whilst the high street as a whole has lots of history people don’t engage with it and as Sue Palmer says ‘it’s the people that normally inhabit that place’ having a relational connection with each other and the place which creates significance. When we were talking to Steve and the group our site was full of people sitting on the benches and socialising. This created a potential problem but we were able to show Steve how we would move around the space to accommodate people. In fact having people in the space creates a more naturalistic looking piece which helps us in the effect we are attempting to create.

 

Over the next three weeks we are going to finish creating the script, recording the voices and creating the sound file which gives us a four week rehearsal period to perfect the actual performance. Something we are now going to experiment with is having headphones in instead of/as well as the speakers to aid us in keeping in time with the track and each other.

Joe Turner

Monday 7^th March

 

After discussing progressions in our work with Steve, he sent us on our way to develop our pieces further giving us a set time later on in the day for a tutorial. Unfortunately I and Holly were unable to be in most of the lesson because of a teaching drama observation but this did not mean that the work did not continue. Before me and Holly left we went to a coffee shop and started writing a manuscript of the conversations we collected the previous week. These included sections where we would mime along (Menial conversations like ‘I’m not even joking that’s actually what happened) as well as sections where we intend to speak over the track to create a thicker textured sound (during the phone call conversations).

 

After I and Holly left Lucy and Emma began creating a example sound file to see whether the concept was feasible for performance. They used their own voices in order to save time which made sense considering it was not the final thing. The two of them then spoke to Steve in the space and asked him practical questions regarding things such as the speakers, the space, the audience etc. When Steve listened to the recording he was really positive and gave us the feedback that we need to listen to the inflection in the voices to inspire our movements rather than the other way around. He also mentioned a theory called the Cocktail Party Effect in which random words of the dialogue stood out above the general hubbub. After me and Holly returned we spoke as a group and he reiterated what he had previously said to the two girls.

 

Since then we have gone out into the community and began recording voices for our final piece, some of which we hope to have ready for Monday to show Steve, the group and potentially Conan. Attached is the example sound file we used to determine whether our idea would initially work.

Joe Turner

Steve sent us away early in our groups to discuss where we were in the devising process and what we thought was the next logical step. I was concerned with our piece and its attempts to engage with history because our location (the raised seated area outside the waterside shopping centre) doesn’t have a particular history. During Steve’s introduction to the seminar I began thinking about what that area was particularly used for. The answer to this I thought of was conversation/communication.

After discussing the theme of communication we created an idea which involved playing a recorded conversation and miming over the top of it. This brings up the question of authenticity and ownership and whether someone else’s words become mine if I speak them and do the words lose their meaning. We are going to attempt to introduce palimpsest using the following means:

1. Document people’s conversations (We began doing this in this week’s seminar). This methodology is similar to that used by George Pereck in his work ‘an attempt at exhausting a day in Paris’. 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. We are going to select a few of these and stitch them together to create a manuscript in the same way the Pereck did.

 

2. Record someone on site reading the manuscript. It is this recording that would be used in the final piece. Doing it this way creates a palimpsest both in the text (asking different people to speak) and in the location (many different people have spoken the same text in the same space).

 

 

As well as Pereck our piece relates with a number of practitioners. The idea of taking people’s personal stories and performing them links with Dee Headon’s autobiographical scriptography whereas Erving Goffman’s theory of ‘every day life being a spectacle correlates with the social and public aspect of our piece. The physicality aspect of the piece also relates back to a few weeks ago when we went out into the city with instructions (I am going to look at how we talk through our bodies in more detail later on).

 

Whilst we all agreed on the initial concept and location there are many elements which create a number of discussions. Different people had different ideas about  ways in which to perform the piece which we will experiment with over the next few weeks including costume or no costume, miming or speaking with the track and learning the text or having it in front of us.

 

Basically our piece is trying to recreate a moment in life on site. Our main theme is authenticity and exploring questions of whether someone elses words become mine if I speak them etc. Ultimately a moment in life cannot be recreated accurately no matter how hard you try.

 

Over the course of this week I am going to research Pierre Bourdieu and his piece delegate as well as Miwon Kwon and her ideas surrounding the community and performance.

Joe Turner

Monday 15^th February

During the seminar discussions were made on the topics of different practitioners. One of these practitioners who was of particular interest was Dee Headon whose autobiographical work links well with what we are attempting to use in our piece. By people documenting their personal stories on a common domain, a sense of community is created. The idea of cathartic release was introduced to me by a practitioner called Adrian Howells and his piece called Salon Adrienne. In the piece Adrian takes on the role of a hairdresser who asks the clients personal questions about their life. The clients left the experience saying that they felt clean and that they had been able to get rid of emotional baggage, a concept that really intrigues me.

For a few days now I have been concerned about the falseness of our concept, how it feels like we are marketing Lincoln rather than creating a piece of performance (something which Steve confirmed when discussing the idea with him). A huge part of this I feel is the way in which we approach people, asking them to write their feelings, making them feel uncomfortable. The idea of an installation could therefore be the solution to this problem.

I discussed with the group about the idea of potentially leaving the board in a location with people’s stories playing through speakers. We could potentially layer a sheet of acetate each hour to show the different interactions and emotional feelings in a place throughout the course of the day. A potential problem with this is that we have no way of controlling how many people contribute to the work. We could reach the end of the day with three words on the board. One way of combating this is placing the board in a ‘place’ along the high street where people sit and socialise rather than walk past without noticing their surroundings.

Joe Turner

Wednesday 8^th February – Proposal for performance

We plan for our performance to take the shape of a map which will be hand drawn onto a whiteboard and wheeled up and down the high street. On top of this map will be two layers of acetate each containing writing in different colours creating a literal palimpsest as well as a metaphorical one. The metaphorical palimpsest is the layering of people’s thoughts and emotions of Lincoln to portray the multi-dimensional community which Lincoln is made up of. The three layers of the map will be:

• A literal map of Lincoln, intended as a base for the other layers to go on top of but also clearly indicating that Lincoln is at the heart of this piece.

 

• Thoughts and feelings of the people of Lincoln from social media (representative of the younger generation of Lincoln). We intend to create this database of information by creating our own Facebook and twitter pages encouraging people to share their stories, experiences and memories of Lincoln. We are also going to frequently check snap chat and Yik Yak for people’s reactions and rants which we will record.

 

• On the day of the performance we are going to stop people in the street and ask them to write/draw key words or pictures of how they view Lincoln, perhaps asking a specific question to provoke ideas from the public.

 

We are currently playing with the idea of metting residents of Lincoln (residents home/schools if possible) and recording some of the stories which the people of Lincoln have. We would then play these stories whilst walking up and down the high street with our whiteboard creating a multi-sensory experience for the participants/observers.

Our work reacts to the statement made by Jean Harvie that ‘site specific performance can be especially powerful as a vehicle for remembering and forming a community. Our piece actively involves participation from the audience and evokes memories and emotions about the site (Lincoln). I look forward to putting this idea into practice over the next few weeks and seeing how the idea can evolve and grow into a successful piece of Site Specific performance.

Joe Turner