Category: Uncategorized

The first week of Site Specific performance was a focus on ensuring all students had the background knowledge to begin forming groups and ideas for their performance. This included going through the module handbook to explain the format of this semester as well as how we will be examined. The next part of the session was aimed at explaining what Site Specific Performance is. A good summary of what was explained to us comes from Mike Pearson’s book Site Specific Performance, an essential text for this module:

“[Site specific performace] refers to a staging and performance conceived on the basis of a place in the real world…A large part of the work has to do with researching a place.” (Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.)

We were then introduced to a variety of Site Specific works, including some of Steven’s own work. These works sparked a variety of debates. Particular ones of note were caused by Sophie Calle’s work in which to re-establish a connection with France after being away she followed a person around without their knowledge, to the point of buying a plane ticket and following them out of the country. This raised the question, when does observation cross the line into stalking? We decided it depends on factors such as anonymity, proximity and that there is a difference between online and real life, with online observation being deemed more acceptable. After further research into Sophie Calle’s work I discovered her observation goes far into the region of invading people’s privacy. In her work, The Hotel, Room 47 she “was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. [She] was assigned twelve bedrooms on the fourth floor. In the course of [her] cleaning duties, [she] examined the personal belongings of the hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me”. (Calle, S. (1981) The Hotel, Room 47 [2 works on paper, photographs and ink] Paris: Tate Modern.) Her observing included reading letters and diaries of the guests, listening through the hotel doors at their conversations, even spraying herself with their perfumes and eating their left over food. The result of this debate and further research has resulted in my desire to avoid any possible violation of people’s privacy, so any information I obtain from audience members (if this is the direction in which my performance goes) will be completely with their consent.

After our introduction to Site-Specific Performance we went into the city of Lincoln, our site for this module and observed the city. We decided upon our boundaries, from the top of the high street near Kind bar, down to the Ritz bar and then began to look around us for inspiration and things that interested us. Attached is a photograph of a building, this painted wall is something myself and others have never noticed on our day to day commute through the city. This inspired me to consider showing parts of the city to my audience that are normally unseen by them. Whether this is literal like the photo attached, or more factual by telling the audience things about the city, past and present that they did not know is undecided.

Week Four – (15/2/16)

Before meeting with our performance groups, we were shown some videos from different theorists. One video we saw was called Salon Adrienne by Adrian Howells. An artist Dee Heddon often writes about referring to scriptotherapy works. It featured Adrian himself in an actual salon, washing and blow drying members of the public’s hair and giving them an Indian head massage. Whilst he was doing this, he was talking very openly with the person participating, confessing certain things in his life and inviting them to confess something to him too. He was using these techniques of relaxation and intimacy to have a deep conversation with him. We talked about how it is cathartic to talk about our problems and have a rant and Adrian was using it as a performance.

After we watched some videos, we got into our performance groups. Firstly, we filled in Hannah and Franki on our ideas and they were really into it. They also helped build on a few ideas we had discussed from the previous week. As our ‘end product’ we thought that we could get random members of the public into our ‘home’ we would set up in one of the archways and take a photo of them (with their consent). We would then make all the photos into a collage representing home, bringing strangers on the high street together all linked by the idea of the city of Lincoln as their home.

We were told to go out and explore the spaces on the high street we were interesting in performing in. Therefore, we went straight to the archway to look at our space now we had some ideas on how to use it.

Week 3 (8/2/16)

This week began with looking into different theorists and their works. We looked briefly at Mike Pearson’s introduction to Site Specific Performance and picked out some important theorists mentioned by Nick Kaye in the book. Such as:

• Miwon Kwon- contemporary, land and site specific artist. Ideas of community performances. Phenomenological.
• Dee Heddon- Autobiographical works, walking through inspirational landscapes
• Michael Fried- Art and Objecthood. Minimalistic sculpture
• Richard Serra- “To move the work is to destroy the work.”
• Cathy Turner- Palimpsest/overlaying
• Marc Auge- Place/non-place

We also watched a video of  Marcia Farquhar’s A Live Art Tour. She creates guided tours for the public and depends on audience participation and interaction for her work to be successful. It involves psychogeography, the idea of ‘drifting’ through and around urban environments. She also included interaction with the public’s senses, by serving them lemonade.

The video sparked a discussion to whether some of the events on her tour were planned ahead of time, or just there by chance. I liked this idea not knowing what aspects of the tour were, so people were more engaged with their surroundings.

We also watched John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum. I really enjoyed this video because it was so simple and took me a while to figure out what he had done to the video. The recording was of a corner of an ordinary street with public walking in and out of shot whilst John Smith voiced over what he wanted the people to do. Such as “I want the man to walk in from the right” … and then indeed a man would walk into shot from the right. It was a really effective piece of work and quite comical once you realised it had been pre-recorded.

Once we had swatted up on various theorists and their relevant works, we split off into our performance groups to discuss any possible ideas. Rolo, Holly and I each swapped ideas of what we wanted to include in the performance and tried to accommodate everyone’s interests. For example, I liked the idea of having an end product from the work we produced. Our first idea was about the social change from the top to the bottom of the high street, which we all found interesting from a previous class discussion on it. I felt we could incorporate the litter problem in Lincoln too, by picking up a piece of litter from the street, which we would replace with a symbol which we would make out of the litter found on the high street. Also by possibly comparing the type and amount of litter from the bottom to the top of the high street. However, this first idea was us just bouncing ideas off one another. Once we had exhausted this idea, we moved onto another completely new idea.

Our second idea which we all preferred was based on Marc Auge’s work on Places and Non-Places. Another discussion we all found interesting in class prior to this group meeting was the question of whether the high street is a place or a non-place. We thought exploring this idea could work. We immediately thought of the archway on the high street as a starting point, as it is the part of the high street everyone remembers. It also has a lot of history linked with it and is a place of transit to get to the top of the high street. However, we thought about how homeless people might not see it as a place of transit, they would see it as their home. So we wanted to explore this idea further and ask our other group members (Franki and Hannah) about this idea and to see if they could push it further.

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

• We discussed today the introduction to site specific performance written by Mike Pearson.
• This article spoke of how site specific style performance can also be presented as an Art form. (Which got me thinking again about my painting and creating idea.)
• This article also included Nick Kaye’s “Place of Documetation”
• Kaye’s article mentions MICHEAL FRIED.
• Michael Fried – 1968 Article – Art and Object Hood – Art critic/ Minimalistic Structure – How cities and buildings marry themselves to other places and buildings – ‘Following the book.
• Miwon Kwon – South Korean born – trained in architecture – MA in Photography – collections of work in the American Art Museum since 1990’s – Wrote articles on practitioners who work within her preferred styles of art, such as Richard Serra – Identity – Visual performance rather than body movement.
• Specifies in specific styles of art: Contemporary. Agricultural. Public Art. Urban Studies.
• Discussions on the differences between Live Art and Traditional Theatre
• LIVE THEATRE – More use of Audience Participation – No Boundaries/ Removal of the 4^th wall – Audience have more control over their individual experience, when they stop watching, how long they watch for, etc.
• TRADITIONAL THEATRE – Audience members have already consented to entering the theatre – Tacitly agreed to the expectation of the theatre and the stage – If it’s not enjoyable the audience member isn’t as free to walk out, at least until the interval – Not wanting to come across as being rude and becoming disrespectful of the social expectations as well as the theatres.
• EXPECTATIONS – Margret Thatcher’s Funeral – Expected behaviour/ respectful – Due to her previous contributes to the British populations, creating the divide of classes cause different distinctive emotions about Thatcher – Resulting in the expectation of emotion was divided by respectful and disrespectful.
• AUDIENCE TYPES – 1. REAL PEOPLE – People who were at the site of performance by chance – 2. INVITED AUDIENCE – People who have been invited to the site and performance – 3. TECHNOLOGICAL AUDIENCE – Audience members who have viewed the recorded evidence or live streams via technology: Blogs/ Vlogs etc.
• PLACES AND NON-PLACES – As a group we discussed what makes a place a place and vice versa and the boundaries that we thought were applied by MARK AUGE – We specifically discussed the high street due to that being our specific site – We came to conclusion that the view as a group that any non-place can be or become a place depending on each individual and their experiences. . EXAMPLE. – The Bollard – Who made that bollard, who designed the bollard, who put the bollard there?
• THERE IS A STORY FOR EVERYTHING, AND EVERYTHING HAS A PERPOSE
• DANIEL OLIVERS – performance based on audience participation using audience participation – WAVING STICKS – Where do the audience put themselves removing them completely from their comfort zones and allowing them to use their free imagination.
• ERVING GOFFMAN – Teams – Following a script for everyday life – not to upset any of the balances set in place – example of his theories – IF SOMEONE FALLS DON’T LAUGH JUST CONTINUNE WALKING. – Follows the convections of theatre, to follow the book.
• JOHN SMITH – 1976 – THE GIRL CHEWING GUM – People going about their everyday life whilst he voiced over them as if he was directing them – Stage directions – Following the script again – Making a performance from nothing.
• DEODRY HEDDON – Autobiographical – Based on personal or strangers anecdotes or experiences.
• MARCIA FARQUAR – Live Art Tour – 2012 – LONDON – MEMORIES – LAYERING – LEMONADE – INTENTIONAL AND NON-INTENTIONAL – DIFFERENT YEARS – Art Movement 1960’s – DOES NOT STICK TO A SCRIPT – Every performance in unique from the last despite the identical route.
• PRACTIONERS DISCUSSED IN THIS SESSION
• JEN HARVEY / DEODRY HEDDON / GAY MCAULEY / MISHA MYERS / HEIKE ROMS / CATHY TURNER / FIONA WILKIE / MIWON KWON / DANIEL OLIVER / ERVING GOFFMAN / JOHN SMITH.
• KEY WORDS FROM THIS SESSION
• SCIPTO THERAPY – Word association and anecdotes used to heal in a positive way.
• COLABERATIONS – An ensemble of people who create a piece of action.
• PARTICIPATION – Person who responds to a situation (Audience)
• SIMULATED – An action created using alternate material.
• SPECIFICITIE – Word used when speaking of a subject that relates to site specific.
• CRINGE – An emotion felt by someone when a situation becomes uncomfortable.
• CONTEXT – Allowing an audience or a person to broaden their minds on a specific topic.

• MY IDEAS AFTER THIS SESSION
• We were all divided off into groups based on how similar our individual ideas were.
• My final idea that I decided to stick by was the visual creation of something solid for performance.
• The group I am working with all enjoyed the idea of creating something physical as a result of our performance.
• With this in mind we were allowed to leave the classroom and brain storm our ideas and see what we could mesh together.
• As a group we mentioned also using word play within our work.
• My group is:
• MARY-JAME PHILLIPS
• DEQUAINE BROWNE
• LAURA WRIGHT
• CHRIS CHAMPION