Framing Statement
Site Specific performance is a genre of performance art which has been defined by many theorists: Nick Kaye explains in Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation that the relationship between the ‘event’ and the site should be focused on, writing that site specific art should envision “articulate exchanges between the work of art and the places in which its meanings are defined” (Kaye, 2000, 1). The performance There’s Non-Place Like Home (2016) – which will be the centre of my discussion – focuses on the social relationship between the performers, the audience and the location.
The Stonebow arches, a great landmark in the city of Lincoln, was the site of our performance. Initial interest stemmed from its appealing structure and historic value, but the intentions for performance within this space were much more methodical. Our primary influence came from Marc Auge’s theory of place and non-place, which we explored through practice. We also took inspiration from a number of other practitioners as we developed our piece, and following on I will include a variety of practitioners and the influence they had on our process.
There’s Non-Place Like Home was performed on the 5th May 2016 from 10.00am for six hours (including setting up the site). The wide time scale allowed for variety of interaction from the public to gather a range of conversations. The piece incorporated a conversation between audience and performer in a home-like environment which was created under a section of the Stonebow aches; offers of tea and biscuits were also used to relate to feeling at home. Moving on I will explain our performance process, including how we arrived at each practitioner, what influence they offered to our piece, and my transformation of knowledge about site specific art and how this was portrayed in our final performance.
Process of Performance
When studying Auge’s theory of place and non-place, I immediately noted that a large portion of the High Street (the main street running through Lincoln city centre) is a non-place. Auge explains the difference between place and non-place in Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity: “As anthropological places create the organically social, so non-places create solitary contractuality” (Auge, 1995, 94). In this sense, ‘place’ is somewhere in which social life can organically develop, whereas ‘non-place’ is merely an area of transit and social communication cannot thrive. We can see this theory in practice in Partly Cloudy Chance of Rain (2002) by Joanne ‘Bob’ Whalley and Lee Miller. The performance involves the couple renewing their wedding vows (a highly social interaction) at Roadchef Sandbach Services (a non-place) after drawing a connection to the M6, the road they travelled “as regularly as 5 times a week” (Whalley and Miller, 2005, 138) to see one another.
Primary Research
From our analysis of the High Street as a non-place, I noticed it is too vast to be confined to this one theory. For instance, the High Street, whilst filled with a constant flow of passing people, is occupied with many chairs, tables and benches. It can be argued that the presence of these allow people to break from their transit and encourages social interaction. Because of this, I broke down the High Street into sections of place and non-place. The Stonebow arches stood out as a definite non-place: a small passing area with no benches to stop and interact. My performance group conducted experiments to scrutinise whether the site was definitely a non-place; these experiments also regarded connections between the public and the archway. To start, we conducted a sound test for two minutes (see fig. 1), as we believed this recording would assist our understanding on how social or unsocial the site is. The results showed that any conversations were only spoken in transit and no one used the space primarily as a social place to talk. This supported our theory that the archway is a non-place for the general public and not somewhere where social life is naturally generated.
Fig. 1. A sound recording of Lincoln Stonebow arches.
I also gathered a video of the feet of passers-by (see fig. 2). This was my favourite form of media to collect as the video showed people not only walking far away from the camera but also walking very close to the camera, showing urgency and a feeling of negligence as the public did not take time to avoid or even notice the camera.
Fig. 2. A video of Lincoln Stonebow arches.
This sound and video research showed me the attitudes that many people have when passing: urgency, negligence and next to no interaction. We wondered whether our performance could change this.
History
Historical research into the site allowed us to discover that the Guildhall, an old council building situated above the archways, still holds council meetings from when it was built in 1237. Inside, The Mote Bell rings for five minutes before every meeting to indicate the gathering of the council; we liked the idea of using a bell as a method of summoning, and considered this for our performance. Further history research revealed that the site used to be a prison: The Lincolnshire Echo newspaper accounts that “the eastern wing of the Stonebow was used as the city prison until 1586 […] In the Stonebow there were four rooms where prisoners were kept” (Lincolnshire Echo, 2013). We found the prison aspect extremely interesting in terms of place and non-place; discussing that a prison is a temporary place and home for prisoners. We extended more on the notion of home and went on to discuss homelessness: Lincoln High Street is a dwelling place for homeless people, and the archways are a popular place for them to sleep. For them, this is their temporary ‘home’ for the night (in terms of place of residence – their bed for the night) and therefore a temporary place, meaning in history the archways have been in fluctuation between place and non-place. After reviewing this research, the idea of changing a current non-place such as the Stonebow arches into a place became appealing to us. We decided to do this through the creation of a home-like environment with social interaction between ourselves and the audience.
Practitioner Influences
The direction of our social interaction was inspired by Adrian Howells and his work on confessional exchange in Salon Adrienne (2005). Dressed as his persona ‘Adrienne’, Howells welcomed audience members into his makeshift ‘salon’ and encouraged the participants to “engage with the inevitability of aging” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 3). Participants were motivated to speak with the prompt of Howells acknowledging his personal confessions first. Relating to this notion of exchange, we were prepared to answer any questions that were asked in our performance, and we aimed to offer up stories of our lives so as to encourage participants to speak about theirs. In Salon Adrienne the domesticated space “intended to reassure the audience-participant, engendering a sense of safety, familiarity, and security” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 3). I believe that the domestic setting we created in our performance was significant to the feeling of ‘safety’, ‘familiarity’ and ‘security’ that Howells references above, and allowed for a relaxed flow of conversation. To contribute to this domesticated feeling, we conducted a survey which asked people what drink they associate most with home. The results were overwhelmingly in favour of ‘tea’ and so we took this information and incorporated the offer of tea and biscuits into our performance.
As the performance context started to form, our group began to consider what outcome the performance should have. Whilst studying Sophie Calle’s work, we saw a link between our performance and hers. In 1979 Calle began following people in Paris in order to connect to the city, as she no longer felt a connection to her former home after spending time away to travel, this manifested into her work Suite Venitienne (Calle, 2015). She describes her feelings in a conversation with Bice Curiger:
“I had come back to France after seven years of travelling, and when I arrived in Paris, I felt completely lost in my own town. I no longer wanted to do the things I used to do before, I no longer knew how to occupy myself each day, so I decided that I would follow people in the street”
(Searle, 1993, 29)
There are similarities between her motives for following people and our motives for exchanging dialogue. As students, we have only lived in Lincoln a short time and generally it becomes a struggle for students to call their university city ‘home’. Our performance therefore aimed to help us find a connection to Lincoln through conversations; as Tim Creswell explains, “most people are familiar with the attempt to make somewhere feel like home. Even if there are many instances where they do not succeed, the attempt is important” (Creswell, 2004, 93). We were not expecting to wholly succeed in this motive, but our attempt at this helped realise our association towards Lincoln as ‘home’.
Reviewing the art of GPS mapping and ‘psychogeography’ directed us to explore the connections between performers and participants through the form of ‘mental mapping’. ‘Psychogeography’ is analysed extensively by Christian Nold; he explains how GPS mapping works to
“record the geographical location of the wearer anywhere in the world and pinpoint where that person is when these ‘emotional’ changes occur […] The Bio Mapping tool is therefore a unique device linking together the personal and intimate with the outer space of satellites orbiting around the Earth”
(Nold, 2009, 3-4)
This type of performance art is also practised by the likes of Sophia New and Daniel Belasco Rogers (together known as ‘plan b’), who have created many GPS pieces such as Crossing Paths (2012) and have each documented their travels since 2007 and 2003 respectively. By studying this alongside the development of our piece, it enabled us to consider these modes of performance art differently. From this we produced the idea of ‘mental mapping’, where instead of viewing “a visual track on a map” (Nold, 2009, 4), it is a mental journey – discovering connections between our own stories and somebody else’s. Due to the nature of our performance, the possibility to make these connections with participants were available through Howell’s method of conversational exchange.
Experimentation of Content
As our piece continued developing in detail, worries began to surface; mainly surrounding the lack of control we had over the conversations as the content was exceedingly reliant on audience participation. This is exceptionally risky as audience members may not be willing to give interesting interaction which leaves high potential for ineffectiveness. Deirdre Heddon explains that in Salon Adrienne “there is also an element of improvisation since Adrian cannot script the conversation in advance. He remains attentive to the moment, responding to and feeding off what is being said by his co-creator” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 4). Whilst Howells is skilled in this method of performance, we were concerned that our inexperience would result in the conversation falling flat. These apprehensions caused us to reassess our performance content. We were suggested to look at On the Scent by Curious (2003). I was influenced by how the artists controlled the situation by doing most of the speaking, and audiences had to listen and watch. We began analysing the incentives for our performance, seeing how we could adjust it to be more in control like Curious. Immediately we identified the focus we have on binaries:
- place/non-place
- safe/unsafe
- comfortable/uncomfortable
- trapped/not trapped
All of these hold connections not only to the feelings of home, but also to the historical reference of the Stonebow arches and the prison that once occupied the building: fluctuation between a place and non-place for prisoners, and feelings of discomfort, being trapped and being unsafe. We began experiments to bring these binaries into our performance, creating a brief piece which also involved the deconstruction of domestic items, but as we performed in the site it was clear that this did not work within the space. Instead we discovered how comfortable the site felt when we set up with props, and how the setting was indeed strong enough to hold a stimulating conversation with participants. We received feedback to return to our original idea, as this new direction was quite irritating to the audience member, and it didn’t mirror the transition from non-place to place accurately.
From our examination of binaries – particularly safe/unsafe – we gained information on John Newling and his performance Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1991). His use of lights and heaters in the street created a space which felt safer and more communal than normal, and caused both the public and homeless to gather in the performance area. This encouraged us to expand the array of lights used within our set, as we wanted to relate to the feeling of safety and comfort just as in Newling’s piece. We also decided to completely simplify our performance so that its main focus was on the conversation. We left the physical use of the bell, and instead embodied its purpose of summoning through an invitation into the site.
Performance Evaluation
Our final performance began with us building our home, this action reflected us ‘moving in’ and ‘making a house a home’ – or in our case, ‘making a non-place a place’. An example can be seen from fig. 3.
Fig. 3. A video of the performers transforming the space.
We concentrated on small details when creating the home environment so that it would appear as authentic and as comfortable as possible; audience participation was essential for the performance to be successful, and so their comfort was key to us. Without them, our performance would merely be an installation art piece and the transition from non-place to place would only be partly successful. This feeling of comfort was successful when measured by the reactions of participants and passers-by.
Fig 4. A picture showing interaction between participants and performers in the space.
Fig. 5. A video showing final transformation of the space in detail.
The numerous reactions from passers-by showed that many people were surprised by what we created; you can from see fig. 4 a photo of the final set and interactions within the space, and a tour of the final product can be viewed from fig. 5 – this video shows the difference between a bare archway, and the archway that we used to create our piece.
Fig 6. A video of us interacting with participants.
The variety of conversations we received was certainly a strength of our performance, we successfully enticed people into our home with the interest it collected, and many people accepted our offer of tea and biscuits which can be seen in fig. 6, verifying that they felt comfortable and at home. One response in particular that I valued was a homeless man explaining to us that he didn’t like the term ‘homelessness’ as he believed that ‘home is where the heart is’. He explained that he preferred the term ‘houseless’ or ‘without accommodation’. Also when conversing with another audience participant, I managed to relate to her through a discussion of our hometowns – we drew similarities and discussed elements such as the train we get home and how long it takes to get to the closest city, evidence of this conversation can be seen in fig. 7. This form of mental mapping enabled me to connect to someone’s memories of home, and in response, they were able to connect to mine. When asked by another participant later on to say what home meant to me, I struggled to answer. After the extensive research we had conducted into place and home, and after discussions with participants – especially the homeless man, I began to wonder whether I have more than one home because of where my heart is and where my roots are (family, friends, Derbyshire and Lincoln are just some of the things I signify as ‘home’); this thought-provoking experience was therefore beneficial to both performer and audience as this performance not only permitted me to question others on home, but it also succeeded in me being questioned.
Fig. 7. A participant and I in conversation.
This process and final outcome introduced me to a new way of performing, transforming my knowledge of site specificity to understand how history and theory can develop a new type of interactive performance, which not only challenges the audiences thought process but also my own process as an artist. Our use of interrupting transit was a challenging move, yet it taught me that the best results come from bold performances and confident, sociable interaction.
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Works cited
Auge, M. (1995) Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Translated from French by John Howe. London: Verso Books.
Calle, S. (2015) Suite Venitienne. Los Angeles: Siglio Press.
Calvert, O., D’Arcy, H., Elmer, F., Lomas, H. and Soyza, R. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home. [performance art] Lincoln: High Street, 5 May.
Curious (2003) On The Scent. [performance art] Birmingham: FIERCE! Festival, 4 June.
Heddon, D. and Howells, A. (2011) From Talking to Silence: A Confessional Journey. PAJ – A Journal of Performance and Art, 33 (1) 1-12.
Howells, A. (2005) Salon Adrienne. [performance art] London: Battersea Arts Centre, 3 October.
Kaye, N (2000) Site Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London: Routledge.
Lincolnshire Echo (2013) How Lincoln’s Stonebow played its part in both local and national history…. 26 January. Available from http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Lincoln-s-Stonebow-played-local-national-history/story-17946800-detail/story.html [Accessed 14 March 2016].
Lomas, H. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home [photos and videos] Lincoln: Stonebow Arches, 5 May
Newling, J. (1991) Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Nottingham: Market Square, November.
Nold, C. (ed) (2009) Emotional Cartography: Technologies of the Self. Canada: Creative Commons.
Pavis, P. (1998) Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts and Analysis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Plan b. (2012) Crossing Paths. [performance art] Leuven: Stuck, 17 February.
Searle, A. (ed) (1993) Talking Art 1. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Whalley, J. and Miller, L. (2005) A Dwelling in the Screen, at Least for a Little Time. Performance Research – A Journal of Performing Arts, 10 (4) 138-147.