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Jake Seliger states, “non-places one cannot have any real recourse to common humanity: you can’t ask to borrow something, to be done a favour, or to expect to know the myriad of strangers you cross.” (Seliger, 2010)  a statement which we hope to challenge in our performance.  Principally our piece is based upon asking the audience for a  ‘favour’ and five minutes of their time.  In extension, we hope to parallel Seliger’s ideas of common humanity by placing a sitting room structure in the underpass of the Guildhall and asking passers by to ‘pop in’ for a cup of tea. Although simplistic offering tea is semiotic, representing the welcoming and acceptance of a new person in your home environment. We aim to make the process of offering, making and drinking tea a catalyst for an open confessional exchange. By utilising the underpass of the Guildhall to create a socially recognised environment, alongside promoting the exchange we are aiming to change people’s perception and feelings towards the underpass and create a positive memories towards the space. Therefore, taking a non-place and creating a place.

 

Our main challenge going forward is the theatricality of the performance. During our class discussion the point was raised over the costume and characterisation of performers as 1950’s tea ladies or housewives. However, a potential by-product of this decision would be to make the performance gender based; would the audience see the piece as a gender political statement of female repression, or could we be making a statement on the emancipation of women in modern society? Furthermore, the logistics and construction of the piece have caused concern as sourcing specific components have become challenging. As a group we have delegated responsibilities to insure the delivery of each aspect of the performance from the set to the running of appliances etc.

 

 

Today we were able to present to the class our performance idea and explain our intentions and process so far. We created a presentation that involved the videos and sounds that are in my previous blog posts, and we also created a miniature structure to view in detail what we intend the piece to look like.

In the presentation we discussed each of our main influences: Sophie Calle, Mark Auge and Adrian Howells. We also focused on explaining how we will use confessional exchange, how it surrounds place and non-place, and defining our historical reference.

We received the following feedback and had the following discussions:

John Newling can relate to our piece depending on the way we use lighting. He used lights in a site specific performance to create a safe place and which audiences/the public took comfort in. Because our intention is to use fairy lights and lamps to create a warm atmosphere, he can most certainly be an influence for us. We should also look into his intention for using lights and the full results of his piece.

We need to decide on what roles each person will be doing on the day. For example we can swap from being the hostess, to holding the signs, to making tea. We are going to meet in a group so that we can create distint roles. This will help our performance to run smoothly, and allow us not to crowd the single audience member when performing the confessional exchange.

We want to think about offering alternative refreshments for those who do not favour tea. This will also benefit us if we have a problem with the tea urn/getting constant hot water in order to make tea.

We want to think about what time we will be performing. If we perform early in the day will we get a different try  of audience to if we perform later in the day. We need to examine what time will be best to get a more willing audience with the spare time to talk to us.

We could consider creating characters and in particular experimenting with being stereotypical housewives. If we do this, it could very well change the aim of our piece – our current aim would be best represented if we were to act ourselves, as it surrounds us attempting to connect to the city through listening and responding to audience experiences and stories. Although acting as housewives may create a more detailed experience for our audience and could make it easier to draw audiences into our piece. We need to discuss whether doing this will be going against our aim and shifting the focus onto the audience experience throughout the performance. If this is the case, how can we as performers benefit in a way that is similar to our previous intention. As our aim changes, our practitioner/theorist influences will also alter and we need to keep this in consideration. An example of this change is using Adrian Howell’s not only with confessional exchange, but also the way he take on a persona of ‘Adrienne’. Is the housewives idea primarily to make our work aesthetically pleasing? Or could we create a more interesting performance that is more beneficial to both performers and audiences, and will we be able to connect to different practitioners to create an alternative clear aim in order to improve our piece.

Our use of tea – social structure, perhaps the roles can reverse and the audience member can make the cup of tea.

Look at Cloud cuckoo lander – hosting.

Do these things add to ‘nostalgia’?

Look at Bobby Baker and research him.

Today we had a group meeting in the library. Steve suggested last week that the sites we has chosen last week might not be totally suitable for our performance, because they didn’t have relevant history relating to our performance. Thus, we did some research on “Speakers corner” to find that there wasn’t much history on “Speakers corner” at all, and it had only been called Speakers corner for less than 10 years. Luckily we found information on “The Elanor cross” which completely related to our theme of love in Lincoln. We used this story, did some more in depth research and came up with some really interesting ideas to show Steve, and experiment with later on in the session. We’ve decided to use the Elinor cross as an inspiration for our piece, as we’ll be creating our own version of the cross out of pieces of wood. We have managed to gather a large amount of images and information on different couples (E.G where they met, amount of time they’ve been together and one particular memory that reminds them of Lincoln as a couple), then used this information to place on our replica of the Elinor Cross. We’ve also came up with the idea of using a town crier effect, where one of the group members (preferably someone with a loud voice) shouts the relationships information on the couples we’ve gathered. In the session, we set out into the town center to experiment with our ideas. We typed out the relationship information, for Chris to shout out in the middle of the high street.  Rayanne and Mary Jane bought some paper, and created a version of the Elinor Cross and stuck it on floor on the high street. We’ve decided that I will be situated on the high street, asking couples about there relationship (How long they’ve been together, where they met, memories fond to them in Lincoln), writing the information I’ve gathered, and handing it to Mary Jane and Rayanne for them to carve the names into the wooden Elinor cross.  I bought some plane rectangular cards,  for me to write the information down and hand to Mary Jane and Rayanne. The information I gather will also be used for Chris to use, shouting out the information in the street.

Below is an image of information on the Elinor cross, explaining the history and the love story between Edward I’s and Elinor .

 

This is the Elinor Cross now.                          This is what the Elinor cross looked

like when it was first made.

     

 

 

An image of the Elinor cross created out of paper.

 

 

Below is a image of the basic structure of how we’ll be set out in Lincolns city centre.

 

 

READINGS FROM WEEK 8 SESSION

• “Certain Fragments” Tim Etchelles
• The beginning for Live Art can be traced back as early as the 1950’s and had a complete rationale and group of Practitioners by 1970.
• Introducing this style of performance into this era could have been a difficult task for British society as the 1950’s was post WW2. The British public where constantly reminded by the skeletons of what was once their brilliant empire. Whether it be in London with the bomb broken buildings or in the fields that were scattered by military bases.
• This controlled style of society distinguished any kind of imagination the public. So creating a new style of anything would have meant a new style of change for everyone. Which was something that the British had been through enough of already.
• However, as Britain began to re-build its greatness and people started to develop their own opinions again Live Art began to attract attention because of its difference.
• A loosely founded group, Fluxus, were a global collection of practitioners but mostly based in New York City. The founding man of this group; George Maciunas. He describes his rationale for FLUXUS as; “A fusion of Spike Jones, Gag’s, Games, Vaudaville, Cage and Duchamp.”
• FLUXUS wanted to change the world not just the Art world – Destroy the boundaries between both Life and Art.
• ‘FLUXUS is anti-art’ – to underscore the revolutionary mode of thinking about the practise and process of thinking.
• This Art group wanted to mock ‘high art’ and they used influences from such as DADA for his use of humour to present their true intent on the piece.
• The playful manner of this groups pieces they were however serious about the true context for their group, about gaining the right balance that is deserved for the Arts.
• Their performance mainly relied on the audience’s individual interpretations to change and mould the outcome. Their performances were based on the process and development of creating the piece rather than the actually performance.
• John Cage was a heavy influence on the group due to his beliefs of the art world – Art should be work that doesn’t have a definite end. The development stages count not the finish product.
• The most important piece that the group did together was called “Total Art Matchbox” – This performance was a matchbox that contained matches which also had instructions on. These instructions read;
• “USE THESE MATCHES TO DESTROY ALL ART – MUSEUMS AST LIBRARY’S – READY-MADE-POP-ART-AND AS I BEN SIGNED EVERYTHING WORK OF ART- BURN-ANYTHING-KEEP-LAST MATCH FOR THIS MATCH.”
• FLUXUS – commonly created performances that created identical objects that they used in their performances to devalue the object.

 

 

• This reading was written with colloquial language.
• EXPLORATION:
• The writer went on a tour in a van – the van parked up on an evening – When he woke the next morning he realised he was in a seaside resort due to the waves he could hear.
• HARBBISSON – Spoke of the process of arriving somewhere at night and exploring in the day- This term is called VEILD ARRIVAL – ‘Acting out and allegory of knowledge’

 

The next example given was:

• Describes a city and every detail he saw he documented – “walking and talking was named a part of the process … crowds of cider boys gathering laughing … Gateways supermarket … In the streets we’d see the old guy directing traffic … Cardboard houses under the bridge … the old advertising slogans … all of these things made our performance.”
• A smart dressed male – busy city- he began running through the streets between the bustling people and stood himself flat on the side of a building as if to hold up the building – He then tilted his head backwards and looked up to the building as if to check for curvature of the building.
• People of the public commented and said that he looked to be keeping the city alive by checking the movements of each building – This man repeats this same route of the city checking every building he comes across – JEREMY WOOD / DANIELLE RODGERS – Every day at the same time.
• Burned out buildings that had the words “GET WELL SOON” wrote all over the – a telephone box that all fang at the same time of day for no one – ARE ALL OF THESE LINKED?
• He as a spectator is left to make his own opinions, speculations and connections to create an ending for the piece.

 

MAPPING

• Created am instillation gallery piece names “Ground Plans for Paradise”
• This piece was created using a model city that was completely deserted and made of 1’000 balsa wood blocks that were situated on top of a breves block plinth – Above these toweres are photos of sleeping faces take by HUGO GLENDINNING – Can be perceived many ways but most commonly are thought to be angles that’s are looking/dreaming of the streets bellow.
• The reading also mentioned that cities are made of places created from passion, fears and narrative echoes of the 21^st century. ( Dave’s Shirtless Chip shop, Love street, The Blood Club, Hope Street)
• GROUP DISCUSSION
• Discussed the to-do for the day, which didn’t partake as we had to peer view our entire group workings. This did help slightly to give us all insight into how others perceived Site specific workings.
• We did want to rehearse the giving and receiving of flowers between our group and the audience.
• However we did manage to get in some library research and planning of our performance before this happened.
• GROUP SESSION
• We spoke about Nick Kaye’s introduction to Site Specific.
• Michael Fried and his theory of how sculptures can become performances in their own way.
• We watched a video based on Fried and Greenburg’s ideals and arguments for Site specific.
• Both of these men agreed that Art of this style should be kept in the same space and that there was distinct difference between abstract art and Minimalism. Neither like Minimalistic art because of its simplicity.
• Greensburg’s theory was that art should be superior to normal life and when it was superior it then became good art.
• Embracing Object hood – By this they mean that objects are in the same time zone as us – that art can be seen every second.
• Donald Judd – a practitioner of minimalism – He didn’t like the time zone theory – He wanted real space because he believed that it was more realistic to look at and art shouldn’t be a lie. This style of art needed an audience to be completed.
• Abstract art on the other hand was more about the process of getting their rather than focussing on the end result.

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