Site and the City

Week Two- (1/2/16)

As a class we discussed the high street and the differences that we all feel emotionally from being at the top compared with at the bottom. It also clicked that my selected space could be the high street as an entirety, not just one particular spot. I really liked this idea and thought about Christian Nold’s work Emotional Cartography which we looked at in week 1, where he measured his heart rate walking around the city to see where he felt safe and comfortable compared with other places which made him feel uncomfortable. I thought about possibly using the audience in this way on the street, noting down how people felt in different areas.

After our class discussion, we were asked to create a set of instructions for another group in the class to follow, emulating Carl Lavery’s 25 Instructions for Performance in Cities. These instructions which he developed were intended to get to know your site better, for exploration.

My group and I decided to create instructions based on spontaneity and chance. We thought it would be more fun writing instructions that were open ended to see where they would end up, as we would not know ourselves. For example one of our questions was ‘Walk to any bridge in Lincoln.’ It ended up that the group walked to a bridge none of us had thought about and therefore their journey was completely different to what we imagined.

Our group were given these instructions:

By following these instructions word for word, we were able to interact with our site in a completely different way picking out certain sounds and visuals to describe locations. After we had completed our set instructions, we presented to the class how we got on.

This session helped my ideas for a performance progress further by exploring different performance spaces. Such as using the whole high street rather than one particular shop or building.

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

Over the course of the week, myself, Holly, Emma and Lucy began discussing ideas for the final performance and found that we all shared an interest in the history of both the buildings of Lincoln and people’s personal histories. The four of us also love the idea of one place meaning different things to different people and the idea that participants/observers of our work would view our site differently after experiencing it.  We have therefore decided to work together for the final project because we feel as though mutual interests are an important element for site specific performance to be successful.

Once the seminar was underway we looked into the introduction of Mike Pearson’s Site Specific Performance and all of the practitioners/theorists that are relevant including Michael Fried, Dee Headon and Cathy Turner. Out of these three practitioners Cathy Turner was the one that caught my interest, particularly the idea of Palimpsest (the layering of information to change people’s perspective). When we broke off into groups to discuss the performance further, the four of us quickly collaborated to create an idea that relates to most of the things discussed in previous posts including layering (palimpsest), emotional memory, collages, actively appealing to more than one sense and engaging with ‘history’.

I will be posting a blog entry shortly proposing an initial idea for the final Site performance.

Today’s session began with us having a recap on what we did last week, for the benefit of the people that wasn’t there. We discussed our experiences with the instructions challenge, explaining our journeys to the class. Next, we moved on to watching a video of an experiment by John Smith. In the video, he’s recording the general public walking past in the street (E.G Women, Men and children), whilst telling the what to do. For instance, if a women walked from the left side with an umbrella in her hand, he would say “Now, I want the women with the umbrella in her hand to walk on from the left”. He persisted to do this with everyone that walk past in the sight of the camera.

Next, we watched a video on Marcia Farquhar giving a tour of the history, Phyco-Geogrpahy, biography and autobiography in London.  She discussed her performance and how she is very much in the movement. She says that a performance she creates is never the same and she’s very much in the moment. We also looked into Mike Pearson article, as he discusses how Richard Sera thinks “to remove the work is to destroy the work”. Dr D. Headon followed Pearson’s work and she used scriptotherapy, where you write about experiences that have taken place in your own life (Mainly negative things). We also spoke about Mi Wong Quon, who wrote a book called One Place After Another, bringing things from visual art to performance.

Finally, we ended the session discussing everyone ideas for the performance and forming groups based on similar ideas. I joined a group, with the idea of creating a performance based on peoples emotional experiences in Lincoln. We sat in a group, brainstorming different ideas on how we could create a performance with our ideas. Hopefully by next week, we will have a solid idea on what we would like to do.

Week One- (25/1/16)

My first lesson of site specific really interested me, as it is an aspect of performance I have never encountered before. We looked at some examples of performances and works various artists had created for site specific performance. This included some of Steve’s own work. He showed us a couple of his art works such as an instillation of a neglected house boarded up with bouquets of flowers attached to it. This stood out to me because it created so many different meanings through one photograph. As flowers can either symbolise love or sadness and this really came across in the piece. He also showed us a picture of a satsuma on a pedestal. At first the class was slightly bemused to how this could be considered as ‘art’. However, he explained the story of how he came into possession of it and this changed people’s perceptions of it. Both these works had me thinking in a more aesthetically pleasing sense. To possibly find things on the Lincoln High Street and create a meaning behind it.

After we sat and discussed what possibilities there was with site specific work, we went out and explored our site. By properly appreciating my surroundings, I noticed some different architecture, hidden shops and road names I had never seen. This got me thinking about incorporating the action of looking up into my performance.