Author: Holly Margaret Lomas

This week’s session saw our group discuss influences for our performance. Our main influence is Marc Auge and his theory on places and non-places. As we discussed further, another possible influence could be Adrian Howells and his performance Salon Adrienne. We saw similarities between his work on confessional exchange with audiences and our developing idea of inviting members of the audience into our newly transformed place and talking to them. With this in mind, we can start to develop a structure for how we will approach interaction with audiences and what we want to get from them (and even what we want them to get from us).

During this session our group also conducted research into our idea; this included doing a survey and getting the public’s opinions (the results of which will assist how we form our final performance, we will ask more people each week), and conducting experiments regarding connections between the public and the archway. To start, we counted the number of people walking through the archway in the space of two minutes. The results we received from this was:

Between 11.56am and 11.58am on Monday 29^th February:
66 people walked through the archway heading down the high street
49 people walked through the archway heading up the high street
115 people in total walked through the archway

This information gave us an insight into the mass of people travelling through the archway on a standard weekday. With the numbers being very high for only a two minute period, it left us with no doubt that there will be people walking past our performance and therefore many potential audiences for our piece. We also conducted a sound test for two minutes, as we believed this recording would assist our understanding on how social or unsocial the space under the archways is. The results showed that any conversations were only spoken in transit and there was never anyone who stopped and used the space as a social place to talk. This also supported our theory that the archway is a non-place for the general public and not somewhere where social life is generated. I found the sounds of footsteps very interesting to hear as they echoed around the stone arch, filling the archway with an endless sound of footsteps mixed with distant chatter.

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

Later we organised a tour of the Guildhall, which is the building occupying the top of the Stonebow Arch, to learn more about the history of the site (which I voice recorded for reference). We discovered that the building is a council room where council members still meet. Inside there is a bell which is rung for five minutes before each meeting starts. We were curious about the use of the bell being used as a method of summoning and allowing conversation/discussion, we questioned whether this could be incorporated into our performance; this is something we are currently exploring.

Sophie Calle – Following public person to reconnect with Paris, seeing the city through that person.

Janet Cardiff – Overlaying someones connection with a place with her own narration.

Marcia Farqhar – Tours of cities (A Live Art Tour), in the moment performance, never the same twice, interaction and immersion.

Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain by Bob Whalley and Lee Miller – Replacing bottles of urine on motorway with items, renewed wedding vows in service station (relates to non-spaces).

Nights in this City by Forced Entertainment – “the worst” bus tour of Sheffield, explored histories in the urban space, political.

Saturday night and Sunday Morning by John Newling – Using lights and heaters to make an outside space feel safer and become more communal.

Marc Auge – Theorist, discusses places and non-places in his book Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. He says a non-place is a place of transit and not social, and a place is where organic social life is generated.

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris by George Parec – Wrote down everyday conversations to exhaust the place.

The Girl Chewing Gum by George Smith (1976) – performative acting, narrating over a video and taking on the role of director.

Site Specific Performance by Mike Pearson – (Bubbling Tongue)

Site Specific Art: Performance. Place and Documentation by Nick Kaye –  (mentioned in Mike Pearson book)

Art and Objecthood by Michael Fried (1968) – (mentioned in Nick Kaye book) minimalist sculpture, simple object that becomes theatrical through audience observing it and participating with it.

Richard Serra said “to move the work is to destroy the work”

One Place After Another by Miron Kwon – She looks at local identity and challenges/goes against peoples attempts at representing community.

Dee Heddon – she often recreates performances (recreated Bubbling Tongue), scriptotherapy: the act of writing down personal stories as a therapy, catharsis.

Cathy Turner – Palimpsest: the act of layering over already historic narratives with your own, presenting the new layer/s as well as its earlier self, showing how it has been altered.

Salon Adrienne by Adrian Howells – Gives salon treatments to public/audience, interested in the confessional exchange with audience member, his persona is female (making audience more willing to confess), the clensing of the hair mirrors the cleansing of the soul, staring in mirror.

A Machine to see with by Blast Theory – A series of phone calls which give instructions, leads the listener to believe they will rob a bank, described as like being the centre role in a film.

Theatre and the City by Jen Harvey.

Dorine Massey – Looks at site being globally interactive as well as tiny.

Looking further into Marc Auge’s notion of place and non-place, the idea of them overlapping provoked ideas of how non-places in the city can be transferred into places through performance. The group discussed the idea of whether the High Street in Lincoln is a non-place, but I realised that the street was too long to define in such simple terms. Because of this, I began thinking of how small specific areas of the High Street could be non-places.

After a group discussion, we separated into what will be our final performance groups and discussed any similar ideas we had. Once we had identified these similarities, we cleared our minds and all gave input to build possible performance ideas. One idea that intrigued us was using the archway on the High Street to analyse the difference between a non-place and a place. This space is also popular for homeless people to sleep, making us think of what a home means to different people – a homeless person could consider this space a home, and could we display this through performance through changing it from a non-place to a place.

The following week we travelled to the archway to fully explore what was there. Seeing the historic architecture we decided it would be beneficial to organise to take a tour of the inside of the building. This will happen next week and then we can explore any new ideas with the information we gather from the tour. Following the idea of what makes a home, we created a survey that we can ask members of the public in order to gain substantial research for our performance. New ideas were spouted after visiting the site: as we invite audience into the mini home that we create in this place, a picture will be taken of them and added to a wall. This collage will grow as more audience members are added, and the end result will form a family from members of the community, with Lincoln becoming the family’s home.

Questions to think of for our performance processes were brought up in session. Such questions were how much do you perform being the actor? How much of the performance is set up and planned precisely, and how much is left to chance? How much of the performance content will be provided by the audience? These questions will have to be carefully considered during the development process in order to have a sustainable and effective performance.

 

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.