May 13, 2016Hannah Marie DArcy No Comments

There’s Non-place like home – final post – Hannah D’Arcy

There’s Non- place like home.

A photo of the small framing statement that we attached to the columns of Lincoln stone-bow arches. (D’Arcy, 2016)

Framing statement:

“If a place can be defined as relational, historical or concerned with identity, then a space which can-not be defined as relational, historical or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (Pearson, 2010). My group and I’s chosen site used to be a place of history, kings and queens have walked through the stone- bow arches of Lincoln. They were specifically placed in the middle of the high street by the Romans in the second century as a central meeting place.

one of the historic signs that are placed within Lincoln high street, explaining the importance and history of the stone bow arches. (D’Arcy,2016)

Lincoln’s stone bow arches now stand as a non- place. Mark Ague describes a non- place as a place of transit (Augé and Auge, 2009). Over time this is what the stone bow arches have become. With the influence of Mark Ague, my group and I decided we wanted to turn a non-place into a place for our final site specific performance. When looking for potential performance space we noticed that homeless people would gather and take shelter underneath the stone bow arches. For these people the arches are a place and provide them with a temporary home. Putting these two ideas together, myself and my group decided that we were going to change the arches into a place, and that place being a home. To do this we selected a specific arch, and thought about what it is to create a domestic home setting.

This is a photo of the arch we selected for our site specific performance (D’Arcy,2016).

we covered the openings too our chosen arch in black cloth to create a more enclosed space, we then brought in a sofa, which we felt was the key feature to any domestic living room. We placed rugs on the floor, and attached wallpaper on to the small beams that hold up the archways. Furthermore battery powered lights were used all around the space, to make the space feel safe and comfortable for the audience. Using props and attention to detail we transformed the stone bow arches into a domestic living room setting.

a video, showing the process of creating our home setting ( Lomas, 2016)

The intention of our performance was to make the audience think. To think about what it is to make a home, to think about what homeless people class as their home. To think about whether home is a concept or a place. When we invited audience into our piece, this is the type of conversation that we wanted to stem, and we succeeded within doing this.

Upon arrival, the audience were offered a cup of tea. This drink being the most popular when we asking the public prior to the performance ‘what drink makes you think of home?’ as well as this a complementary biscuit was given. Without acting our aim was to make the audience to feel that we were welcoming, and that they were comfortable within are company. The duration of the performance was a total of seven hours including set up time. Even though it was not planned, the audience participated within conversation from the moment we began to set up the space. Curiosity led many audience members over, and when describing our intentions many people were happy to have these conversations with us.

A photo of refreshments the audience were offered when taking part in our site specific piece (D’Arcy, 2016).

Analysis of process:

“place is space in which important words have been spoken which have established identity, defined vocation and envisioned destiny. Place is space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made and demands have been issued.” (Pearson, 2010).

We found our site before finding our story, myself and my group became interested with the stone bow arches from day one, allocated around Lincoln are sign post describing the history of the stone bow arches. When looking into the history of the arches we saw that placed underneath used to be prison cells. “The East Wing once contained the City prison and a kitchen, but in 1586 the City bought the house next door and used it as a prison for many years. It can be seen in nineteenth century paintings and prints by Augustus Pugin and others in the Guildhall and Central Library” (solutions, 2007). Furthermore, the arches were a popular place for gatherings because of their central location. However now are just a place of transit, we know this from observing the arches, myself and group sat in our space, watching and listening to the passers-by, noticing that no one stopped within the space, just walked straight through.

A video taken above the stone bow arches. a transit of people walking straight through (D’Arcy, 2016).

Looking further into the history of the Stone bow arches and discovering the prison that used to lie below, myself and my group contemplated on creating a site specific performance based on the prison. “site specific performance can be especially powerful as a vehicle for a remembering and forming a community for at least two reasons. First, its location can work as a potent mnemonic trigger, helping to evoke specific past times”( Pearson, 2010). We wanted to create a performance that would tell the history of the stone bow arches, using influences from mike Pearson’s book site- specific performance and the idea of triggering memories of the audience.

However, after a group discussion we came to a conclusion that the audience in the high street are probably not aware of the past prison, and this was an issue we needed to overcome due to wanting to get our audience involved within the performance.

Thinking of ways to connect to the audience, we looked into the work of Adrian Howell, and his idea of confessional exchange with audience members. “Adrian Howells has made a significant contribution to this confessional performance landscape, creating and touring performances in which he confides in strangers hoping, in turn, that they will share details with him” (Heddon and Howells, 2011). As a group we wanted to incorporate the work of Adrian within our piece, asking our audience questions in the hope of in depth answers. With Adrian’s video you can see that he puts on a persona and talks to his audience within a salon while massaging their head, he calls this process confessional exchange. Using the idea of confessional exchange, this changed our initial idea of using our site to represent a prison; instead we wanted to create a setting where we could get information from our audience using confessional exchange. Which led us to the idea of home, and creating a home in the high-street. Still using the idea of place and non place and the influence of Adrian Howell this developed our idea into inviting people into our makeshift home, offering them something in return of answering our questions.

Another site-specific performer that interested myself and my group is Sophie Calle, with one of her most popular pieces suite venitienne which initials her following around a random man, even to the point where he got the plane to Venice . “In Suite Venitienne, the artist exposes someone else, by tracking him through his journey in Venice. She documents all the man’s moves throughout his stay by photographing, mapping and writing all the precise details of his actions. In the end, we can say that she is the one who is more exposed in this work. She exposes herself through a weird habit which is following strangers throughout the city. The main interest in the book is not what Henri B. does during his stay in Venice but mostly why does Sophie Calle follows a stranger for days in a foreign country.” (champsaur, 2011).

Sophie Calle’s reasoning for doing this was to connect herself to the city that she was in. Incorporating Sophie into our work we decided to base our questions around the idea of home, asking the audience about Lincoln and if they consider it there home. Connecting ourselves to the city with the representation of Lincoln from audience members. We planned on taking photos of the audience that came into our domestic home setting, hanging these photos across the space, making them a part of our ‘Lincoln family’. This related closely to another practitioner we became interested in, Christian Nold and his performance piece of ‘Emotional cartography’. “In structured workshops, participants re-explore their local area with the use of a unique device invented by Christian Nold which records the wearer’s Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a simple indicator of emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location” (Nold,2009). However, instead of physically mapping the people of Lincoln, we are using a form of mental mapping, gathering the audiences emotional feelings towards Lincoln and home.

This idea changed when myself and my group came to realise that our piece would depend completely on audience members and them giving us detailed answers. To test out ideas we went into the high-street with a recording device and a set of questions that we had put together. These questions consisting of: do you think of Lincoln as your home? Where is your favorite place to be in Lincoln? And What makes you think of home? At first it was a challenge to get the attention of the public a lot of people purposefully ignored us, others said they had no time. This continued until we came up with alternative way to get the attention of the public, again using the idea of Adrian Howell and how he would wash and massage a persons head in the salon. We offered out biscuits in the street for the exchange of answering some questions and that was effective. However, as predicted it was difficult trying to get in depth answers from the public, even when asking them to expand. From this we gathered that by offering the audience something it made them more engaged with what we were trying to do. But due to the bland responses the audience gave we decided against this idea.

At this point my group and I went in the opposite direction. We were suggested to look at On the Scent by Curious (2003). This made us think about making our performance choreographed and scripted so the whole group had something to do throughout the entirety. Going back to the idea of the old prison, we decided to mix this with our new concept; the new idea was to make the audience feel trapped within our home, like prisoners are within a prison.

With inspiration from John Newling and his site specific performance using lights to make a place feel safe, we wanted to adapt this idea within our prison theme. Including binaries such as safe and unsafe, light and darkness, free and trapped, comfortable and uncomfortable. All of these relating back to a prison cell. With this idea we created a script, giving ourselves roles within the domestic living room setting. I assigned myself with the role of a cleaner, within this role i made the audience member feel uncomfortable by repeatedly asking them to stand up so that I could clean underneath them. Each member of the group had a specific set of questions to ask the audience member, my questions being, are you comfortable? And could you stand for me? Other members of my group worked around the other binaries by doing things such as getting close to the audience making them feel trapped and awkward and turning on and off the lights. According to john Newling lights represent safety. We showed this performance to Conan and Steve, however, the feedback we received from this was that we had over complicated things. Even though the ideas we had appeared effective on paper they didn’t work well when having an audience. we also got told that we were acting within our performance, which is something that Steve and Conan preferred we didn’t.

This took my group back to the drawing board, to set our heads on to one simple and solid idea. We all had a clear idea that we wanted to stick to our idea of home, working around the concept of place and non-place. We still wanted to invite the audience members in and talk to them but we decided on not relating the performance itself to the prison. We wanted our performance to be natural. we established that the process of making a home in the high street was a performance in itself, sticking with the influence of Adrian Howell we invited audience in to simply speak about the concept of home, and what a home is, offering our audience a cup of tea and a biscuit. This idea still related to our site, working with place and non place, using the idea that prison is a temporary home without specifically mentioning it and relating our performance to the numerous homeless people that take shelter within the stone bow arches.

Performance evaluation :

The performance began at 10 am where we began to build our home, passers-by made comments such as ‘are you guys moving in?’ and in a sense we were. We began to make the space that we had into a home. Concentrating closely on the small details such as candles and cushions to make sure that our space looked authentic and felt comfortable.

Our aim was to make our site look inviting and comfortable to draw in the audience. Drawing in the audience was important to us, without the audience we would not have fully achieved turning our non- place into a place. The overall set up of the domestic living room setting drew in lots of attention including a Lincoln photographer who’s name I didn’t catch, however he was very excited by what we were creating. Another man came in questioning what we were doing and after conversing with him it turned out he himself was one of the homeless men that took shelter underneath the stone bow arches. He told us that a home doesn’t have to be where your things are, or in a house at all. A phrase that attached with myself and the rest of my group was when he said “home is where the heart is” the conversation with this man helped us to talk to other audience members with this man in mind who doesn’t have a permanent ‘home’.

Audience members happily came in to our space after reading our small framing statement which we stuck to the sides of the columns. Even though it was an open space it was strange to see that all participating audience members asked permission before coming into the space, as if it was our actual home. When the audience came in we made them comfortable gave them a cup of hot tea and a biscuit. The conversations that came from our audience members was all incredibly different and interesting. Everyone had a different idea to what they thought was home.

During our process I began to question myself what I thought of the word home, and if it was actually just a concept. My personal opinion being that home is a place that I feel safe and comfortable.

The final outcome of the performance allowed me to indulge into a new way of performing, using my knowledge on the history of my site and theorist to create a performance/ installation which made the audience think about home in detail. Something that they most likely haven’t done before. As well as this I began to think about these concepts even as myself the artist who had come up with the idea. Opening my mind to other peoples opinions and thoughts. Overall we succeeded in changing a non – place into a place. I know this because one audience participant said ‘ ‘ i am always going to remember how lovely this looked when i walk past in future’.

videos by Holly Lomas (2016)

photos from Hannah D’Arcy and Ashley Walls.(2016)

citations

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.

D’Arcy. H. (2016) There’s non place like home: Stonebow Arches

Heddon, D. and Howells, A. (2011) From Talking to Silence: A Confessional Journey. PAJ – A Journal of Performance and Art, 33 (1) 1-12.

Heddon, D. and Howells, A. (2011) ‘From salon Adrienne to the garden of Adrian: A journey of revelation’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 33(331), pp. 1–12.

Howells, A. (2005) Salon Adrienne. [performance art] London: Battersea Arts Centre, 3 October

Lomas, H. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home.Lincoln: Stone Bow Arches.

Nold, C. (no date) Bio mapping / emotion mapping by Christian Nold. Available at: http://biomapping.net/ (Accessed: 13 May 2016).

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-specific performance. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Solutions, A. (2007) Lincoln Guildhall. Available at: http://www.lincolnwaites.org.uk/guildhall.shtml (Accessed: 11 May 2016).

Walls, A. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home. Lincoln: Stone Bow Arches

May 13, 2016Dequaine Browne No Comments

Site Specific Blog – Dequaine Browne

Framing Statement

We have created an installation piece (Not performative) based around the audiences romance life’s. We’ll be discussing with the audience about their relationships, and how certain areas in Lincoln may bring back certain memories relating to their relationship. We have concentrated on involving visual art such as, and originally thought of ideas such as a washing line with images of the couples hanging, posted notes describing how certain areas of Lincoln remind them of their partner, creating paintings to express how they feel about their partner and a placard advertising our aims towards the audience. Eventually we came up with the idea of creating a wooden box, influenced from the Elinor Cross. Our aim is to carve the couples initials we gathered onto the box, and shout out different locations and relationship information we have gathered over the performance process. The site we chose was in the middle of the high street, simply because it’s constantly busy and we wanted to interact with as many people as possible. We have many research influences that have inspired us to create this performance. Some of the main inspirations for our performance would be Duncan Speakman. His aim is to work out the narrative of an experience and the politics of public space. He also concentrated on sound and mobile technology, wrapping them all up in melancholy and romance. Duncan Speakmans work allows the city to be mobile (expressed) by those that walk, sit, and move around within the city. The text is made mobile (Read/Expressive) by the reader. The cloths that are worn within Speakmans performances are productive to the meaning of the performance. Another important influence for our performance would be from Bob Wolly and Lea Millers site specific piece Partly cloudy, chance of rain. This piece relates to our idea of having swapping roses for a love story, from a member of the public on the high street. We explored the city centre, paying particular detailed attention to our surroundings in Lincoln city centre, to give us a clear idea of what our performance will be based on. Throughout some of the weeks leading to week seven, we took art in practical activities to help is explore Lincoln city centre in more depth and give us a clear sense of some of the history of the building and certain areas. One example would be the list of instructions task, where each group followed a list of instructions to follow based in the city centre.

Analysis of process

In the first Site Specific session, we discussed different ideas for the performance relating to research we’d undertaken of Lincoln . Some people mentioned the history within Lincoln city, dating back to the Roman ages. Some drew an interest too ghost story’s and murder cases. We discussed how this research could be transformed into an appealing piece of site specific performance. One particular idea I remember is a tour of Lincoln, involving taking people on a journey across the city and discussing the history, facts and story’s that had gone on in certain areas of the city. We we’re placed into separate groups of three, given the task to write clear instructions for another group to follow and explore the city. These instructions we based on Carl Livery’s 25 instructions, aiming to make the reader get out and explore a site. Once we we’re given our tasks, we headed out into the city to follow our instructions. The first instruction was to walk all the way up to the top of the high street, then place our hand on the left side of the street following the wall for 10 minutes. Once we stopped, we had to draw the first thing in front of us. This happened to be a large pile of junk, consisting of a broken table, metal poles, rotten wood, metal containers and a large empty tin of vegetable oil. The final task was to walk back to the University, completely avoiding the high street. We found this literally impossible, as we had to pass through the high street at some point to access a different route. Once we arrived back at University, everybody discussed there experiences out in the City. Luckily, we came up with the idea to create a snap chat of our adventure recording it on our phones.

The next session consisted of us discussing our experiences with the instructions challenge, explaining our journeys to the class. We moved on to watching a video of an experiment by John Smith. He’s recording the general public walking past in the street (E.G Women, Men and children), whilst telling them 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” (University of Lincoln, 2011). He persisted to do this with everyone that walk past in the sight of the camera. We also 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 the performances she “creates is never the same” and she’s “very much in the moment” (University of Lincoln, 2016). We also looked into Mike Pearsons 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 wrote 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’s 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 down, and began brainstorming different ideas on how we could create a performance.

Steve’s session began with a 4-5 minute video explaining “What is live art” by Joshua Sofaer, with him standing on a busy street in London. He describes live art in the sense that the actor “chooses to make work directly in front of the audience” (University of Lincoln, 2011). An interesting point he makes is that when a site specific performance is taking place “the city itself becomes a gallery” (University of Lincoln, 2011). Towards the end of the video, there is a comic aspect where he turns around and there’s a large hole in his trousers showing his bum. After the video, Steve sent each group out to explore the city center, for performance ideas. This was really helpful as we came across some interesting areas for the performance. We considered setting the performance near a building close to speaker’s corner because, situated in a busy section of the high street, giving us to opportunity to appeal to a wide range of audience members. Also we had a look at the old train station, which now is a cooking utilities store called Lakeland. The station became particularly interesting when we met an Old couple, explaining the history behind the station. Considering our performance is based around relationships, we used this opportunity to ask about their relationship (E.G, how they met, how long there we’re together). It was really interesting, because the station was a significant factor to there relationship when they were younger, as the man travelled on the train everyday to visit her in Newark.

Image One: This is one location we considered using for our performance.We considered having a washing line hung from lamppost, to the other.

Image Two: Images of the old train station, situated inside the Lakeland store.

Image Three: Here is an image of the building we’re considering to use for our performance. We were thinking about placing the washing line idea, hanging images and information of the couples around the pillars.

Image One:

Image Two:

Image Three:

On week 7 we had a group meeting in the library. Steve suggested that the sites we had chosen might not be totally suitable for our performance, because they didn’t have relevant history relating to our performance. 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. 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 centre 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). I wrote the information I’d gathered, and handed it to Mary Jane and Rayanne for them to carve the names into the wooden Elinor cross. I also 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, and shout it out in the street.

Once all of the information was gathered, we began making the overall performance more stable. We made large cards with the relationship information of each couple inside, and added a red love heart on the front. For the wooden box, Rayanne managed to gather four wooden pieces to make the box, and we hammered them together. Conan and Steve suggested that we’d paint the box a darker colour, as it would look more effective when it came to carving names onto the box. We each used a small carving tool to write initials of couples, patterns and love hearts to represent the couples love. We used a wooden pallet and attached 4 large wheels on the bottom to role the box around to our destinations. Finally, we attached a metal hook and a long piece of rope to the pallet, so we could drag the box around, making it easier for us to travel with the box. Rayanne also managed to get her hands on four individual smaller boxes for us too stand on, whilst reading from the sheets of paper. These boxes were covered in white sticky paper, and placed in a safe location ready for the performance date.

Image One: Image of information on the Elinor cross, explaining the history and the love story between Edward I’s and Elinor .

Image Two: This is what the Elinor cross looked like when it was first made.

Image Three: This is the Elinor Cross now.

Image Four: Our image of the Elinor cross created out of paper.

Image Five: Image of the basic structure of how we’ll be set out in Lincolns city center.

Image One:

Image Three: Image Two:

Image Four:

Image Five:

When it came to showing an example of our performance to Steve and other class members, Me, Chris and Mary Jane stood on the high street shouting out the relationship information we had gathered. We also explained our ideas, and showed them an example of the Elinor Cross we would be creating. At the end we was given constructive feedback. There seemed to be mixed views on the shouting in the street, with some people saying “it was intimidating” (Fossey, 2016) and others saying “it was really appealing, and would make the general public intrigued” (Fossey, 2016). We couldn’t completely show our performance, since it’s mainly a non-per formative piece anyway. After this feedback, my group and I went away and discussed this feedback, reflecting on the things we could improve for next session. Unfortunately we also found out that a member of the group would be leaving University. This effected us all a little, as we had to restructure the performance. Luckily our piece isn’t massively performance based, so it didn’t effect the actual piece drastically.

Image One: The list of site specific work that has inspired our performance.

Performance Evaluation:

I thought the performance went very well. There we’re plenty of positive aspects, and all the hard work and preparation defiantly paid off. I thought we all spoke with good clarity, diction and the projection was perfect from everybody. I thought the synchronization of the transactions of us changing positions to carve names on to the wooden box went extremely well. There we’re elements that I thought we’re a little sloppy, such as us holding the cards up at the wrong time or some people being slow at moving to stand on to the box. I myself made one particular mistake, where I didn’t read the destinations before I approached the box to carve. I think this effected the performance negatively, as everyone else remembered to read there destinations, so it looked a little unprofessional from my prospective. However, I do think I dealt with the situation in a positive manner, as I didn’t let it effect the rest of my role throughout the performance. Overall, I’m very happy with the progress we’ve made from week one to the performance. We’ve had many ups and downs, with disagreements on ideas due to people having different suggestions. Even with a member leaving the group at short notice, we haven’t let it effect us. I think teamwork and hard work was a huge factor in this performance, and I well and truly believe every member in this performance worked really hard to deliver their role effectively. If I was to do the performance again, I would learn how to carve more accurately onto the wooden box. Obviously with it being my first time, I wasn’t sure how to approach the carving, so it took me a while to get the hang of things. However, I’ve well and truly loved site specific performance, and it’s defiantly an experience I would thrive to do again.

Reference List:

University of Lincoln (2011) Visiting lecturer: John Smith – The Girl Chewing Gum 1976 Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57hJn-nkKSA [accessed 1 February 2016].

University of Lincoln (2012) Visiting lecturer: Marcia Farwuhar – A live art tour Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Li90TEcsUw [accessed 6 February 2016].

University of Lincoln (2011) Visiting lecturer: What us Live Art? Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOUxv4Do01g [accessed 15 February 2016].

Fossey, S. (2016) Site Specific performance feedback on performance [seminar]. DRA2035M, University of Lincoln.

May 13, 2016Lucy Workman No Comments

Final Blog Post – High Bridge Histories

Who, What, Where, When and How?

High Bridge, which was built around 1160, and is situated in Lincoln’s high street ‘is the oldest bridge in the United Kingdom which still has buildings on it’ (Visit Lincoln, 2015). Our focus is on the social history of the bridge as it now holds a seating area and Stokes High Bridge Café on top of it, with the high street running between the two. Both of these places allow people to socialise and interact with each other. It is these interactions that are our focus. Taking inspiration from the methodologies Georges Perec used in creating his book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (Perec and Lowenthal, 2010), we have created a piece that reflects the recent histories of High Bridge, bringing them into the present, whilst also commenting on the histories being created whilst our piece takes place. As well as Perec, there are other theories and practitioners that have influenced our piece throughout the process; Marc Augé and his ideas concerning ‘place’ and ‘non-place’, John Smith and his piece The Girl Chewing Gum (ewwtubes, 2011) and ideas surrounding palimpsest in performance.

Our piece took place on Thursday 5^th May 2016 at 12pm at High Bridge. We are each holding a speaker that is connected to our mobile phones. Conversations and sound effects that we had heard in the space then recorded other people saying/doing play through the speakers. Each of us has started the 6 minute long track of recordings at different times, so each speaker is playing something different. Throughout the piece, whilst conversations can be heard playing from our speaker, we narrate the happenings of the present. For example, if a woman in a red coat walked past we would say ‘A woman in a red coat walks over high bridge’ or something similar. Whilst sound effects can be heard from our speaker, we carry out an assigned action for that particular sound effect. For example, during the footsteps sound effect, we mark the top and bottom of our foot on the ground in chalk as we walk around the space. This continues until we hear the line ‘Nice to meet you too’, at which point we leave the space with the track still playing. The piece lasts for just over 10 minutes. The invited audience stand in and around the space and see the piece as a whole, experiencing the histories being re-told in the space, understanding exactly what the piece is and what it is trying to achieve. The incidental audience, on the other hand, pass through the space getting a fleeting glimpse of the piece, making them question what it is and why we are doing it. If they happen across the piece during the phone ringing sound effect, they may be presented with a business card, which briefly explains the piece and directs them to this blog page, which will explain the piece to them in more detail.

The Process

Initial Ideas

A timeline running through the High Street, documenting significant historical moments of Lincoln’s history
Creating a time capsule by gathering everyday items from people in the High Street
A ‘Humans of New York’ inspired piece where we talk to people on the High Street and get them to tell us a story about themselves and perhaps use social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to help gather these stories
To create Lincoln out of the people of Lincoln – a piece that would involve people writing their stories on individual ‘jigsaw pieces’ that would slowly come together to create an image of Lincoln Cathedral

All these ideas came together to create a performance that would involve us wheeling a board with a map of Lincoln on it up and down the High Street, introducing layers on top of the map including opinions of Lincoln from social media, opinions of Lincoln from people we talk to on the day and playing recordings of people talking about Lincoln through speakers attached to the board. This layering was inspired by the idea of palimpsest, described in Nick Kaye’s introduction of Site Specific Art: performance, place and documentation as ‘a paper ‘which has been written upon twice, the original having been rubbed out’[…] or ‘prepared for writing on and wiping out again’ (Kaye, 2000, 11). We were interested in how layers can be used in a performance to create meaning and how being able to see remanence of what has been there before perfectly captures the fact that moments in life are fleeting but that does not mean they should be forgotten.

As the weeks went on, we became concerned that the piece was advertising Lincoln rather than it being a piece of Site Specific work. We discussed the idea of leaving the board fixed in a particular space (the seating area on High Bridge) and leaving the inhabitants of the space to write their thoughts and feelings about Lincoln on the board. The recorded stories would still be playing from speakers but we would no longer be inviting people to contribute, it would be an instillation piece. This brought up a lot of issues, such as people not getting involved and inappropriate comments being left on the board.

Changing Ideas

After some individual reflection on the piece we started to discuss what our site is for people and as a space as we believed the piece as it was did not speak much to the site itself. We came up with the theme of communication. The seating area offers a perfect opportunity to sit and talk with people either in person or on the phone. We did some research into Marc Augé, who is a French anthropologist who has conducted research in Africa, Europe and more recently on a global scale, writing the book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity in which he states that ‘If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.’ (Augé, 1995, 77-78). This made us think about whether High Bridge is a ‘place’ or a ‘non-place’, coming to the conclusion that the High Street is a ‘non-place’ as it is a place of transience, whereas Stokes Café and the seating area are ‘places’. As part of our piece we wanted to turn the High Street section of High Bridge into a ‘place’ by making our piece memorable, ensuring an identity is created for the site.

We talked about different ways we could incorporate communication into our piece and settled on the methodology adopted by Georges Perec, who was a French writer and filmmaker who worked with ‘experimental wordplay, lists and attempts at classification’ (Goodreads, 2016), in creating his book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. This book is a documentation of Perec’s time around St Sulprice church in Paris between Friday 18^th – Sunday 20^th October 1974. He wrote down things that he noticed whilst being in the space. Although Perec did not record conversations in this book, we all liked the idea of sitting in the space and taking notes of what conversations we could hear.

After talking to one of my other tutors about our idea, she gave me a book called One Million Tiny Plays About Britain by Craig Taylor (Taylor, 2009). This book is made up of short plays that have been created from overheard conversations. This book showed us that it was possible to create a performance out of overheard conversations.

Whilst deciding how to use the material we gathered in the space we discovered that the majority of it turned out to be just snippets of conversations that we caught as people walked by the space rather than full conversations like the ones in Taylor’s book. We discussed ideas of how we could perhaps perform these snippets of conversation if we created a script and asked people if we could record them saying the lines and played that soundtrack into the space. We came up with a few ideas;

We could mime the lines as they are played
We could speak over the top of the lines
We could pretend that nothing is playing and just be in the space having our own conversations

We decided to create an example sound file with us recording what we had gathered and try out each idea to see which one worked best.

Here is the example sound file that we created.

We decided it would be a good idea to note down anything else other than conversations that we heard whilst in the space i.e. pigeons or footsteps, as we were aware that the piece needed to be a minimum of twenty minutes long and we were worried that people would lose interest in the piece if it was just snippets of conversations all the way through.

We approached people in the High Street, Zing Café and Alive Church and asked if they would take part in our piece by agreeing to be recorded saying lines from our script. Once we had the majority of the script recorded I started editing them into a sound file.

We decided that we would use the other sounds that we heard in the space in-between sections of speech. So as well as the recordings of people’s voices, I recorded sounds of footsteps, children playing, laughing, birds, mobile phones ringing, babies crying, dogs barking and a building site to incorporate into the sound file.

We showed our tutor the sound file and he gave us some feedback on how we could perform over the top of it. He suggested that we needed to be doing something that was more visually interesting than just sitting and speaking over the lines.

We discussed the idea of using different actions to go with each sound effect.

Footsteps – mark footsteps on the floor with chalk then erase them later to further emphasise the idea of palimsest
Child noises – draw children’s pictures on the floor in chalk
Laughing – put on a clown mask or red nose/just staring straight ahead completely expressionless
Phone ringing – hand out post-it notes with the word TEXT written on it
Babies crying – suck on a dummy or baby’s bottle
Birds – throw bread crumbs on the floor
Building site – shovel gravel over the site

We also discussed the possibility of us each having a speaker and having the track playing from each speaker. This would have made our piece aurally as well as visually interesting, ensuring the audience’s attention remains solidly on the piece. However, it soon came to our attention that without a budget, we would not be able to afford four speakers so we settled on having one speaker set up under one of the benches.

A Slight Set-Back

In week 13, our module leader was able to come and see our work in progress and gave us some feedback on how the piece could be improved.

The way we performed over the top of the sound file was too ‘acted’ rather than performed.
Although he liked the idea of the sound being played into the space, he did not like the recordings as again he believed them to be too ‘acted’ in how they were delivered. He suggested that we re-record all the script and ensure that people that we ask say the lines as if they were just reading a bit of text.
He liked the visual art aspects of the piece with us marking the footsteps on the floor but he was disappointed that it only happened at the start of the piece and never returned.
As an audience member he did not really understand what the piece was trying to achieve. He explained that the audience need to have a vague understanding of what the piece is.
He suggested that we use multiple speakers and we each carry one and have the sound file playing out of each speaker. He explained that there was a budget for this so we would not have to pay for them ourselves.
Shortening the piece to around 10 minutes as although he was interested at the start of the piece he started to lose interest as the piece went on.

We came to the decision that instead of re-recording the whole script, we would go through the recordings we already had and select the ones that sounded the least acted. We would then put these chosen recordings into a new script, under the dates that they were collected to add some meaning to the piece for the audience, and if we needed any more once I had put them into a new sound file, we would go and record some more.

Building on our original idea of having multiple speakers in the space, we thought that we could each enter the space at a different times and each start playing the track at different points throughout the piece.

We also revisited the video of The Girl Chewing Gum by John Smith, who is a filmmaker whose films ‘create a world from the ‘simple’ experiences of living, breathing and being a filmmaker or artist in a particular place and time.‘ (Johnsmithfilms, 2016) to try and come up with a new way of us performing over the top of the sound file. We liked the way he narrates the everyday movements of the people in the video, so we decided that instead of narrating the actions after they had taken place, we would narrate them live throughout the piece.

(ewwtubes, 2011)

Once we got the other three speakers we got into the space and tried out our new ideas. We loved the reactions we were getting from the people around us and it made us feel like these changes really worked.

Here is a short video of us trying out some of our new ideas.

How Did It Go?

About ten members of our invited audience attended the performance and as the performance went on, quite a few incidental audience members stopped and observed what we were doing. They all seemed genuinely interested and were happy to take the business cards we handed out throughout. After talking to some of the invited audience after the piece had finished it was clear that we had achieved our goal in re-creating what we had heard, as many people commented on the fact they could only hear snippets of the soundtrack as we walked by them, which is exactly what we could hear when we were collecting the material.

We found that the audience who stopped and watched the piece as opposed to continuing to walk through the space added a spectacle to the piece that we were not necessarily aiming for. We assumed the incidental audience would just pass through the space, getting a glimpse of what we were doing and perhaps receiving a business card.

Overall the piece worked quite well. Although we as performers felt as though the piece was quite clumsy in its execution, it clearly captured the happenings of everyday life that Georges Perec and Craig Taylor capture in their books. However, if we were to do the piece again we would need to rethink how we performed over the top of the soundtrack because we all slipped into acting rather than performing as ourselves. One way we could do this is by making it an installation piece, perhaps in a studio space with just the sound track playing and maybe include some video footage that can be projected onto a screen.

Learning about Site Specific Performance has broadened my knowledge of performance and how it can be created. I have found it quite challenging as a lot of Site Specific work is left to chance and can depend of so many different variables where as I prefer a more traditional approach to performance where I can learn a script and perform it. I think this may have been part of the reason we reverted back to acting as it is what we feel most comfortable doing. I found learning about the practitioners and their methodologies the most interesting part of the process. I feel as though I can use these methods of performance making in future projects, particularly the methods used by Georges Perec as it was enjoyable to do and supplied us with a lot of material.

(Word Count: 2749)

Bibliography

Augé, M. (1995) Non-places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London: Verso.
ewwtubes (2011) John Smith – The girl chewing gum 1976. [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57hJn-nkKSA [Accessed 30 April 2016].
Goodreads (2016) Georges Perec. [online] San Francisco: Goodreads. Available from http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15923.Georges_Perec
Johnsmithfilms (2016) John Smith: about. [online] John Smith Films. Available from http://johnsmithfilms.com/about/
Kaye, N. (2000) Site specific art: performance, place and documentation. London: Routledge.
Perec, G. and Lowenthal, M. (2010) An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris. Cambridge, Mass: Wakefield Press.
Taylor, C. (2009) One million tiny plays about Britain. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Visit Lincoln (2015) High Bridge. [online] Lincoln: Visit Lincoln. Available from http://www.visitlincoln.com/things-to-do/high-bridge [Accessed 27 April 2016].

May 13, 2016Olivia Calvert No Comments

There’s Non-Place Like Home: Final Blog: Olivia Calvert

Our Underlying Principal

Our class’ chosen site was the Lincoln high street. Mike Pearson quotes Patrice Pavis describing how to choose a site. “A large part of the work has to do with researching a place, often an unusual one that is imbued with history or permeated with atmosphere: an airplane hangar, unused factory, city neighbourhood, house or apartment.” (Pavis, 7, 2010) Following Pavis’ guidance on researching into a site with historical context, we chose the Stone Bow archways in the town centre. (See Fig. 1) We chose this site because collectively, we were inspired by Marc Augé’s idea of places and non-places and believed the archways could be considered as both. Augé describes what he believes a place and a non-place to be: “If a place can be identified as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.” (Augé, 77, 1995) He also states “…places and non-places intertwine and tangle together… Thus we can contrast the realities of transit… with those of residence or dwelling…” (Augé, 107, 1995) After researching into Augé, we believed that the archways were to be considered a ‘non-place’, due to the amount of people using it, as he described, as a place of transit. Furthermore many people had little knowledge about its rich historical background. I believe it is a neglected space on the high street, when it can be so easily be identified as a ‘place’. Therefore this concept of a transforming a ‘non-place’ into a ‘place’ was the underlying principle of our final piece.

12666437_1146366382049496_1216746728_n Fig. 1 (Olivia Calvert, 2016) – The Archways

There’s Non-Place Like Home

Our final performance date was Thursday 5^th May 2016 and our space, as already stated, was under the Stone Bow Archways on Lincoln high street. Primarily, we wanted to explore Augé’s notion of places and non-places and to challenge our own and audiences’ perceptions of what having a ‘home’ meant. Also what it might mean to others, namely the homeless. As the archways are a form of shelter, we thought it would be the perfect place to set up a stereotypical home setting. The historical context of it previously featuring as a jail, only added to our conversation topic and we were able to explore possible binaries such as feeling safe/unsafe. The initial set up of the household took around 3 hours to design and that in itself turned into part of our performance as it attracted so much attention from the public. Even setting up, we were already getting responses from passers-by of their own thoughts about what makes a home for them. However, our main intention was to have an invited audience come into our space so we could talk to them about their lives and the concept of home. Meanwhile being in a make-shift house on the high street. We wanted to make them feel comfortable, as though they were actually at home, serving tea and biscuits as well. This was so we could exchange information in the most free and natural way possible.

Analysis of Process

Once we had been introduced to various theorists and their relevant works, we split off into our performance groups to discuss any possible ideas beginning to form. 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 produce, whether this was something we made collectively, or a product which the audience would make. Our first idea we ran with was about the social change from the top to the bottom of the high street. This was an idea we all found interesting from a previous class discussion around it. I felt we could incorporate relevant issues that go on in Lincoln, such as the litter problem, making the piece more current. Also we discussed about comparing the type and the amount of litter from the bottom to the top of the high street to see if there was any comparison. However, this was our first attempt of devising a piece. Once we had exhausted this idea, we moved onto another. We found this a useful way to develop our ideas because we were starting to explore issues which led us to homelessness.

Our second idea which we all preferred, was based on Marc Augé’s work on places and non-places. This idea came from another discussion we all found interesting in class prior to this group meeting, about whether the high street is a place or a non-place. We immediately thought of the archways on the high street as a starting location because it is a place of constant transit for the public to get from one side to the other. (See Fig 2) It is also the part of the high street everyone remembers, yet know little about. Continuing with this new idea and discussing issues prior such as littering, we thought about the homeless, another big problem in Lincoln. We also discussed how a homeless person could regard the arches as their home, therefore transforming it into a ‘place’. As homelessness is such a big issue in Lincoln, creating a piece which is not only relevant to the site but to the city itself, enables us to connect to the city ourselves. Sophie Calle is a performance artist whose work Suite Vénitienne (2015) had similar themes to our idea of connecting ourselves to the city. “Feeling dislocated from her native city, she began to walk the streets with her camera…”(Waldron, 2012) This piece of work involved her trying to connect to the city of Paris, through photography and following people. Taking inspiration from this piece of work we thought about connecting with people via a conversation, rather than through a camera.

Fig 2 Lincoln Archway Passers-by (Holly Lomas, 2016)

Week four was when we were introduced to Adrian Howells’ work, which had a great influence on our final piece. The video we saw of him was called Salon Adrienne. It featured Adrian as his persona ‘Adrienne’ 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 techniques of relaxation and intimacy to encourage deep conversations. Dee Heddon speaks about the type of work Adrian creates. “…Adrian Howells has made a significant contribution to his confessional performance landscape, creating and touring performances which he confides in strangers, hoping in turn, that they will share details with him.” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 1) This was where our idea of inviting the audience in for an exchangeable chat began. His work inspired us to interact with the audience in a similar way, by sharing our ideas about the concept of home and seeing if we can get a response from the audience. At this time, our main aim of the piece was to connect ourselves to the city, by bringing strangers on the high street together through conversations about what and where they consider home to be, and why.

By this point in the process, we were definite about using the archways as our site. Therefore, we desperately needed to research the area, its historical context and start asking the public what qualities they think makes up a home. This was important so we could start thinking about what props we needed to build the house. We split off into groups, Franki, Hannah and Rolo designed questions to ask the public to gather this research. An example question was: ‘what drink reminds you of home?’ We wanted to ask such question to gather responses from the public to help us shape our piece and to make it as homely as possible. The responses gathered helped us a lot because we found out that tea was in fact the most popular choice and as a result we decided to serve it in our performance. Whilst they were asking the public these types of questions, Holly and I analysed the site for a bit. We did a sound recording of the site for 2 minutes. (See Fig 3) We did not pick up any sounds out of the ordinary, only snippets of conversations and the sounds of footsteps which strengthened our claim that it was indeed a non-place. After we had gathered all the relevant material from this initial research group, we decided to find out about its historical background. We all knew the archways were very old and obviously served a purpose in their time, however we did not know much more information. Therefore, we explored this context further. Firstly we found a poster advertising free tours of the Guildhall (the building above the archways) and thought this would be very beneficial for us to go to. Before we went on the tour, we wanted to see if we could find any basic information so we could go already fuelled with some possible questions. This was when we discovered an information board not far from the site, explaining in detail the origin and purpose of the archways. (See Fig 4) We found out the Stone Bow Archways had been there since the Viking times, but needed repairing and were re-built in 1520. Also, that there was a bell which had been rung since the 1370’s to summon councillors to meetings. This specific fact was something that we were all intrigued by. One question which we wanted to ask the tour guide was whether the bell was still working and if we could somehow incorporate it into our piece by featuring it as a doorbell. Reading on, we also found out that the archways served as a prison for felons. Once we had read up on our historical context, it was time for the tour. Our tour guide was very knowledge about the Guildhall and the Stone Bow Archways. We were able to find out that the bell was in working order and is still regularly used. Therefore we had the opportunity to make use of it for our performance. He also took us round to where the prisoners would have been held. Overall, the tour was very insightful to our piece as we now saw our site in a new light, with possible new ideas to add to our piece involving the jail.

Fig 3. Archway Noise (Holly Lomas, 2016)

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Fig 4. Information Board (Olivia Calvert, 2016)

Nearing the end of the process, our main idea was to build a make-shift home on the high street, invite people in and discuss what the notion of ‘home’ meant to them through an exchangeable conversation. We would serve tea and biscuits to our audience, trying to make them feel as comfortable as possible, mirroring Adrian Howells’ techniques on relaxation to encourage natural conversation. However, we began to doubt our ideas and were not sure that we were engaging with the site’s history enough and that we were relying too much on audience participation. We were then encouraged by our tutor to incorporate ideas to do with the jail into our piece. To help us in the right direction Steve showed us a video called ‘On the Scent’ by a group called Curious. It was a piece very similar to ours, with the idea of inviting people into a home style setting and having them interact with the performer. Only the performer was making the audience members feel a bit awkward by invading their personal space and acting inappropriately. After watching this video we hesitantly decided to adjust our ideas to combine the idea of a jail into our house setting. From this we devised a 10 minute piece to show both Conan and Steve. Each of us had a different role in the performance and we played with the idea of repetition, mirroring the life of an inmate. Our role was to make the audience member feel awkward and uncomfortable, despite the homely surroundings to represent life in a prison. We also explored binaries and how a prison can be interpreted as a place/non-place, safe/unsafe and how the house like setting contrasts with a prison. However, before even being told, we knew this idea was very muddled and Conan advised us to go back to our original idea of interacting with our audience in a natural way and to be ourselves – which we were all glad about. Therefore we pressed on with buying relevant props to adorn our home. Our main focus was to make sure the set looked accurate and to make people feel comfortable. We each bought a variety of different props with us to decorate the site, including material to section off the arches. This was important as it enclosed the space we were working in, forgetting that we were indeed on the high street.

Evaluation

Our final performance named There’s Non-Place Like Home went better than I imagined it would. Throughout the process we were nervous about the audience’s reaction and whether we would gather any audience participation, but surprisingly the public were all for it. They were even starting conversations with us and giving their opinions about ‘home’ and homelessness. The tea and biscuits only enticed more people in. It turned out that building the set itself became a performance, which we were not expecting. Therefore, we had a great number of incidental audience members checking out what was going on. Because of this, I believe the biggest strength of our piece was the final product, the set. (See Fig 5, 6, and 7) I believe that our make shift home looked very realistic with the sofa and with appropriate decorations in the site. Using the material to segregate the space really made the set feel secluded from the high street. Although, if we had to do it again, I would be inclined to put the material up in a different way to how we did on the day. We had a lot of problems with it falling down and therefore it posed as a distraction from our intention of creating a homely atmosphere for our audience members. Also, another aspect I would change, would be taking advantage of the Guildhall bell. There was an opportunity to use it, incorporating more historical context into our piece which we did not do. Additionally, the assessed performance did not happen the way we intended it to. We all had specific questions ready to ask the audience about ‘home’ but instead, we talked about our devised piece of site specific theatre. It became much more relaxed and we were each able to talk about what home meant to us individually which I actually preferred.

Overall, this process has opened my eyes to a new type of performance. By being able to engage with a space other than a stage, has showed me how interactive a piece of theatre can be. Not only through the use of audience participation, but by the performer connecting to the site itself. Nick Kaye sums up that a piece of art, does not have to happen on stage. “…A work of art, too, will refer to its place and position.” (Kaye, 2000, 1)

Fig. 5 Final Set (Olivia Calvert, 2016)

Fig.6 Tour of Our Final Set (Holly Lomas, 2016)

13095876_1624070361250563_5351114909320486212_n

Fig.7 Interaction in our set (Ashley Walls, 2016)

Word Count: 2661

Bibliography

Augé, M. (1995) Non-places Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso.

Calvert, O. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home. [Fig. 1, 4, 5] Lincoln: Stone Bow Arches

Heddon, D. and Howells, A. (2011) From Talking to Silence: a Confessional Journey. A Journal of Performance and Art. 33, 1-12. Available from: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/54210/1/54210.pdf [Accessed 12/5/16]

Kaye, N. (2000) Site Specific Art. USA: Routledge.

Lomas, H. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home. [Fig.2,3,6] Lincoln: Stone Bow Arches.

Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Walls, A. (2016) There’s Non-Place Like Home. [Fig. 7] Lincoln: Stone Bow Arches.

Waldron, S. (2012) Sophie Calle – Suite Vénitienne and the Hotel. Point 101. Available From: http://blog.point101.com/blog/2012/10/29/sophie-calle-suite-vnitienne-and-the-hotel [Accessed 12/5/16]

May 12, 2016Holly Margaret Lomas No Comments

There’s Non-Place Like Home: Holly Lomas final blog submission

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.