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Site Specific Performance Final Blog Post

Framing Statement

High bridge, which was our location for our site specific performance, is the oldest bridge in the country. As the name of our piece High Bridge Histories suggests we were interested in focusing on the history of our site. It was not the literal history of the place that we were interested in but rather the relational history and social potential of the site because of the seating and café which are now present in the space. The aim of this assessment is to analyse the methodologies used throughout the process of creating our site specific performance. The main goal of the piece was to provide an audience with an aural history of high bridge and represent the transformation of the site from a non-place to a place through the performativity of everyday life conversations and interactions. Our main influence in doing this was Marc Augé and his notions surrounding places and non-places. Augé defines a place as ‘relational, historical and concerned with identity’ (Auge, 1995, 77). Using this concept and the methodologies of Georges Perec, we focused on the relational history of the high street and created a soundscape to create a piece which combined the interactions of the past with those of the performance day. Whilst Perec and Augé were the foundations of our piece we also took influence from other practitioners to establish and evolve our ideas into the final performance piece. These practitioners included: Cathy Turner’s ideas concerning palimpsest and layering, the concept of narration in John Smith’s video piece A girl chewing gum, Sue Palmer’s additions to the idea of space and non-space and Erving Goffman’s notions of performative everyday life. All of these will be analysed in more depth throughout this assessment.

After three months of research and development our performance took place at 12pm on Thursday 5th May 2016. The soundtrack was played through portable speakers that were connected to our phones/I pods. Having four speakers playing different parts of the soundtrack created the effect that the audience would only hear glimpses of the conversations attempting to emulate the real life atmosphere of the high street. Each person would enter roughly 90 seconds after the previous person, creating a staggered effect to the piece and making it visually interesting to watch as an audience member.  Conversations were played through these speakers into the space, along with the dates on which the conversations were originally documented in the space. These dates were written on the floor, merging the layers of past and present, before we began narrating what was happening around us. Certain sound effects had actions that accompanied them for example when laughter was heard through the speakers we would leave the space and then enter it again whilst keeping straight, neutral faces.

This continues in the same manner until the end of the track at which point the track loops and we exit the space. The reason the track loops was to show that life doesn’t stop, our everyday lives continue on repeat again and again, us walking through the space with the track repeatedly playing was supposed to be representative of this. Whilst it was important for the piece to relate to the site, it was also important to relate it to the audience. We did this via a business card which we handed to them with a brief description of the piece, a line from the soundtrack and a link to the blog in case the audience member wanted to research into our piece further. In this way we were able to provide an insight to the audience without spoon feeding them what exactly we were trying to achieve.

Figure 3 (Lucy Workman, 2016)
Figure 3, The business card which were handed to the passers by (Lucy Workman, 2016)

Analysis of Process

After being introduced to the field of Site Specific performance, I began to consider how I could incorporate Lincoln and its history into a performance which engages with both the audience and Site in a contemporary setting. Mike Pearson and his book Site Specific Performance (2010) quickly became the main point of reference when it came to researching site specific theories in relation to our piece. We were also introduced to Cathy Turner and her theory of layering and palimpsest and it influenced our piece greatly. The layers of binaries including past/present, sound/visual and verbal/physical were all cornerstones of our piece. One element of palimpsest is the addition or removal of layers whilst still being able to see the original layer. Cathy Turner in her article, Palimpsest or Potential Space? Finding a Vocabulary for Site-Specific Performance (2004) she states that ‘practitioners have similarly come to view space as a layered entity’ (Turner, 2004, 373) re-emphasising her views on space and how it is created of many layers which we as performers implanted in various ways.  We implemented this concept into our piece by writing the various dates (both past and present) on the floor in chalk, we then added a thin layer of breadcrumbs on top of the chalk dates, whilst leaving the initial layer visible. When the Pigeons inevitably came and ate the bread that was equivalent of erasing a layer making the previous layer completely visible again. We rehearsed different means of erasing the footsteps which we marked on the pavement including instantly erasing them and leaving them to the end to erase, playing with the idea of life lasting a fleeting moment and the idea of leaving literal remnants in the space.

Initially we were interested in looking at the architectural history of Lincoln due to the fact that when we were exploring the high street something that we noticed was the ornate architecture of the buildings which are now corporate shops such as Fat face and Jack Wills. After spending time contemplating the idea of architecture and its history, our interests developed to incorporate a specific site and the personal history people share with it. This notion of personal history remained with the piece throughout its conception and development although the medium changed. I initially had the idea of a collage consisting of pictures, objects, audio etc. which could map out a person’s personal history of a place thus making the spectator view said space in a way in which they haven’t before.

The introduction of practitioner Mark Augé and place and non-place changed our thinking towards site specific and our site in particular. His ideas state that a place is somewhere where social interactions take place, where people are human, whereas a non-place is a transient space, which is a ‘frequented place, an intersection of bodies’ (Auge, 1995, 79) where people only ever pass through on their way to somewhere significant. Throughout our devising process we viewed the high street as the transient non-place through which people pass to get to the various shops and the high bridge (the seated area in particular) as the ‘place’ where people go to socialise and interact with each other. As Walter Brueggemann states in Site Specific Performance, ‘place is a space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made and demands have been issued’ (Brueggemann, 1989, 26). In other words, the seated area has social potential which only becomes activated by the people who socialise within that space, a statement which is clarified by Sue Palmer who states that ‘it’s not just about a place, but the people who normally inhabit and use that place. For it wouldn’t exist without them’ (Pearson, 2010, 8). The transformation of High Bridge from a non-space to a space happens when we literally activate it by entering the space with our recorded conversations playing through the speakers.

Our initial main performance idea was in the shape of a map which was going to be hand drawn onto a whiteboard and wheeled up and down the high street. On top of this map there was going to be two layers of acetate each containing writing in different colours creating a literal palimpsest as well as a metaphorical one. The idea of palimpsest and layers was of constant interest and featured in all of our performance ideas.  The metaphorical palimpsest was the layering of people’s thoughts and emotions of Lincoln to portray the multi-dimensional community which Lincoln is made up of.

Our relationship to the audience in our piece is informed by practitioner Miwon Kwon who, in her book one place after another (2002), states that ‘an artist cannot accurately represent a community and, in attempting to do so, ultimately represents himself and his own work’ (Kwon, 2002). In our original idea this community engagement came from the audience writing their perception of Lincoln as a place to live. This concept stayed within our thinking and is prevalent in our final piece as it challenges the notion that an artist cannot represent a community due to the fact that, in our piece, it is the communities’ voice which provides one of the core elements for the performance.

After discussing the potential of the whiteboard idea as an installation idea with the acetate changing every hour showing the change of activity in the high street throughout the day.  I quickly became concerned about the shallowness of our piece. It looked more like a piece which was marketing Lincoln for a travel brochure and had lost any potential of the space transcending meaning for the audience. After much deliberation I came up with a new concept focusing on the primary purpose for high bridge which is conversation/communication. After discussing the theme of communication with the rest of the group, we created an idea which involved playing a recorded conversation and miming over the top of it. This brought up the question of authenticity and ownership and whether someone else’s words become mine if I speak them and whether the words lost their original meaning if repeated out of context. We attempted to introduce palimpsest by documenting people’s conversations using the methodology of Georges Perec in his work an attempt at exhausting a place in Paris (1982). We found that we only caught snippets of conversations which gave a brief glimpse into people’s lives ranging from the random and chatty to deep and meaningful conversations. The resulting manuscript was similar to the work Craig Taylor’s book One million tiny plays about Britain (2009) in which he uses everyday conversations stitched together to create scenarios to create funny and serious mini plays. The difference from our piece to Taylor’s work is that his conversations are put together to make cohesive stories whereas we want to maintain the element of hearing random lines of conversations as would be the case in the high street in real life.

Initially the piece was about recreating a moment in life in our site and questioned ownership and authenticity. Although the theme of ‘the moment’ was still present in the final performance it became more about the repetition and monotony of everyday life as shown through the dates, repeated soundtrack and the addition of us marking our footsteps. The concept behind these steps was that by marking our footsteps in the space we are making clear the footsteps that had been before whilst marking them in the present day, once again blurring the distinctions between the past and the present. We also experimented with different sound effects and different activities to go alongside those sound effects such as childish drawings on the pavement and putting dummies in our mouths.

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An example of the childish drawings, Figure 3 (Joe Turner, 2016)

 

To blur the lines between past and present further and also create a thicker textured sound we originally planned to speak the lines along with the soundtrack. This however looked scrappy when we experimented with it in the space so we therefore looked back on previous practitioners and came across John Smith and his work Girl Chewing gum (1976) who we became aware of early on in the devising process. Within his piece, Smith narrates a recorded piece of footage in an almost director like way as though conducting the world around him. In a similar fashion to Smith we overlaid the recorded conversations with us narrating the world around us, not just the people but the animals too. The difference between our piece and Smith’s is that his narration was retrospective on a recorded piece of footage whereas ours was live creating a live layer on top of the recorded one.

Performance Evaluation

On performance day, there was a stubborn busker in the space, meaning that we were unable to rehearse the piece in the space under performance conditions. Because of this there were a number of small things that went wrong which would normally have happened in a rehearsal period such as the chalk snapping and the phone falling out of my pocket. On reflection one thing we particularly struggled with was the notion of character and acting. In his book Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Goffman states that

‘When two teams present themselves to each other for purposes of interaction, the members of each team tend… to stay in character’ (Goffman, 1959, 166).

This was something that we were cautious of throughout the rehearsal process, this however became an issue because of what Goffman states above. When a captive audience of twenty plus people were placed in front of us, the natural ‘character’ that Goffman speaks of came to the surface.

Conceptually the piece was strong, with audience members saying that they heard snippets of the conversations, as was the intention, but the general aesthetic of the performance was not as striking as it could have been with better execution. Members of audience did however come up to us after the performance and say that they would never see the space in the same way again because of our performance which was one of the intentions of the performance (to make the audience view a space in a different light that before) and we successfully gave them the means to go away and look up the project if they wanted to in the form of a business card with the blog address on. If we were able to perform the piece again I would ensure that the piece was well rehearsed and slick to make for an aesthetically pleasing piece, I would also make it longer in order to make it clear to the audience what it was were attempting to portray as I felt like the moment the audience began to engage with the piece it was over.

Sight Specific Performance has broadened my preconceptions surrounding performance and has opened up numerous possibilities for performing in non-conventional venues in the future as I now feel as though I can tackle these venues, fully equipped with the knowledge and understanding necessary to create an engaging and intellectually stimulating piece.

Word Count – 2451

 

 

Bibliography

 

Auge, M. (1995) Non-Places introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. Verso: London.

 

Brueggemann, W. (1989) ‘The land’, in Lilburne, G. (ed.) A sense of Place: Christian Theology of the Land. Abingdon Press: Nashville

 

Ewwtubes (2012) John Smith – The Girl Chewing Gum 1976. Available from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=a+girl+chewing+gum [Accessed on 3 March 2016]

 

Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Penguin: London.

 

Kwon, M. (2002) One place after another, Site specifc art and locational identity. MIT Press: Massachusetts.

 

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

 

 

Taylor, C. (2009) One million tiny plays about Britain. A and C Black: London.

 

Turner, C. (2004) Palimpsest or Potential Space? Finding a Vocabulary for Site-Specific Performance. New Theatre Quarterly, 20(4, November) 373-390.

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Final Site-Specific Blog Post – ‘Edward and Eleanor 1254’

Framing Statement

Eleanor and Edward, 1254 is a piece celebrating the relationships of the people of Lincoln, it contains both installation and performance elements, and was performed on 5th May 2016. It is influenced by the story of Edward I, his wife Eleanor and the Eleanor Cross. Upon Eleanor’s death “Edward ordered for crosses bearing statues of the Queen to be erected at places where the [funeral] procession stopped overnight. (Eliot, 2008). This piece was influenced by multiple theorists such as Marc Augé’s Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. and pieces of site-specific performance for example Lee Miller and Joanne Whalley’s 2003 Site-Specific Performance Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain. These influences will be explored in the analysis of our process.

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(A drawing of the Lincoln Eleanor Cross. Available from: https://researchwelllincolnshire.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/the-eleanor-cross-at-lincoln/)

 

Framing Statement: The Performance

As a group we created a procession with an invited audience from the path before the railroad tracks up to Stonebow. This mirrored the last trip Eleanor and Edward took together from London to Lincoln, where she died. Here we placed a large wooden box; our version of the Eleanor Cross. On the box are carvings, these are the initials and dates of couples who’s stories we have gathered over our creative process. We then formed a cross with the large box in the middle using smaller boxes which we stood on:

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(A diagram I made presenting the location we stood at and the cross formation we were in.)

Once in position one member of the group walked to the large box in the centre. When they were there they called out the first 3 locations the Eleanor Cross was built at, then began carving more initials and dates from the stories we’ve gathered. The rest of the group began to tell the stories of the couple’s we’ve spoken to during this process. This was mainly in a town crier fashion, inspired by earlier research into Speakers Corner but if parts of the story don’t fit with this style, we would step off the boxes that we are standing on to tell them. This rule also applied to speaking to audience members. After around 3 minutes the carver stopped and went and stood on their box, another member of the group walked to the large box, called out the next 3 locations the Eleanor Cross is built in, and the process began all over again. Once each member of the group had been a carver we each took our smaller boxes, stood around the large box and one by one called out “Eleanor and Edward, 1254” before sitting and carving. Once the performance was over we walked back down the High Street to our original location in a procession with the large box. This mirrors the funeral procession for Eleanor. The performance itself takes around 20 minutes and for the hour before the performance we carved into the box at the starting location.

Our audience is invited to the procession at the beginning of our piece meaning they take an active role within it. This also means they help to bring the performance to life. This was primarily inspired by a video by Joshua Sofaer called What is Live Art?. In it Sofaer explains that Live Art “comes into being at the actual moment of encounter between the artist and spectator”. (Sofaer, J.  2011.) This is very much the case in our piece and prior to the audience joining as a procession we are not performing. After this we can only interact with our audience when we are not stood on the boxes being town criers. To come off the boxes means to come out of role, meaning we can tell more detailed love stories and talk to our audience.

 

Analysis of Process

 The first weeks of this process focussed on ensuring we had a good background knowledge of Site-Specific Performance and the theory behind it. This meant that groups and ideas could begin to form. A good summary of what was explained to us comes from Michael Pearson’s Site-Specific Performance:

“[Site specific performance] 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, 7)

At the beginning of this process I became interested in Mark Auge and his book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. In this book Auge deals with the idea of a location either being a place or non-place:

“If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as rational or historical or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (Auge, M. 2009, 27)

Taking this definition is it easy to define the High Street which is my site for this module, as a non-place. Although it can be argued that it does contain the above factors, the High Street is a place of transit. It is not usually a place for social interaction and the history behind it is left unknown to many who travel through it. After establishing this I decided I wanted to create a place within the High Street, and taking Auge’s idea that “the social begins with the individual” (Auge, M. 2009, 19) I wanted to do this through the people that transit through. This idea is supported by Tim Ingold who says that “a place owes its character to the experiences [of] those who spend time there”. (Ingold, T. 2000, 26)  Having solid theory behind my idea of using the people of Lincoln to create a place in my performance I decided that I wanted to focus on people’s relationships, which Pearson supports stating that “places are about relationships”. (Pearson, M. 2010, 14)

Once groups were formed in the first few weeks I explained my desire to do a piece based around relationships. The group agreed to make this the theme after some research within the city. Whilst looking for possible places in our site to inspire ideas we stopped outside Lakeland. Noticing that the building looked like it could’ve been a court, we went into the shop to investigate. We were informed that it was in fact the location of the old train station, and within Lakeland was an original timetable from it. (Pictured below) A member of staff within the shop explained that it continued on through to Argos and that they had some original photos in the store. We moved on to Argos to look at these photos, and whilst doing so an elderly couple approached us telling us that they remembered when the station was originally there. The gentleman explained that he took the train from Lincoln to Newark to see the woman who is now his wife. This story gave us confirmation that our theme of romance would create an interesting and captivating performance. It also confirmed that couples will be willing to tell us their stories, and that it won’t just be our peers that want to take part.

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(A picture I took of the old railroad timetable in Lakeland)

Now that the theme was established a recent debate that took place in class brought across the concern of invading our audience’s privacy. We were influenced by Sophie Calle’s work in which she follows people around Paris to reconnect with the city. We wanted to take this idea and use the people’s stories of romance to allow our audience to reconnect with Lincoln in a new way. Calle’s work however sparked a debate about where art and performance crosses the line into invasion of privacy. In her book Suite Vénitienne she describes following a man out of Paris:

“At the end of January 1980, on the streets of Paris, I followed a man whom I lost sight of a few minutes later in the crowd. That very evening, quite by chance, he was introduced to me at an opening. During the course of our conversation, he told me he was planning an imminent trip to Venice. I decided to follow him.” (Calle, S. 2015, 2)

This spurred further research into Calle’s work during which I discovered her observation goes far into the region of invading privacy. In her work, The Hotel, Room 47 she “was hired as a temporary chambermaid”. (Tate, 2005) 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. This research has resulted in our groups desire to avoid any possible violation of people’s privacy. We still want our audience to connect with Lincoln through people’s personal stories but any information obtained from audience members will be done with their consent for it to be used in performance.

The next task was to decide upon a location. We were immediately drawn to the building in the centre of Speakers Corner (see picture below) due to the ability to attach things to it, and the intricate designs connecting the poles. This was because our idea at the time was to decorate our site with the stories of the couples we’d spoken to, along with photos and flowers, whilst we pose as Town Criers which we felt appropriate because of the location, declaring the stories. To justify our decision I researched Speakers Corner and Town Criers. I discovered that Speakers Corner only came to be in 2010, and a Lincolnshire Echo article from 2011 explained that “since its launch Lincoln’s Speakers’ Corner has remained virtually silent”. (Lincolnshire Echo, 2011) Due to the lack of historical background, and lack of relation to our theme of romance we decided against using this location.

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(A picture I took of the building at Speakers Corner)

The research into Speakers Corner reiterated to our group the importance of the history of a place to Site-Specific Performance. Miwon Kwon supports this in her book One Place after Another, explaining that “site-specific art can lead to the unearthing of repressed histories”. (Kwon, M. 2004, 53) During my research into Speaker’s Corner I came across the story of Eleanor and Edward I, and realised I had seen this story before in Argos when our group was talking to Colin and Cathy (see picture below). The group agreed that to recreate our own Eleanor Cross to celebrate the couples in Lincoln today was the best way to uncover the history of our site and the history of the people that transit through it every day. However due to the fact the original has a religious symbol on it, we couldn’t do an exact replica, but we felt this fit with our intention of modernising this declaration of love for our current audience. As well as the cross itself we wanted to recreate other parts of this story, such as the last journeys taken by the couple, from London to Lincoln together, and Lincoln to London after Eleanor had passed away. This lead to the idea of mimicking the journey through a procession with our Cross from near the railroad tracks which is a direct link to London up to Stonebow as the street continues up to the Cathedral, where the original Eleanor Cross is, and then back down. In addition to this Stonebow allowed us to create a cross formation, adding another level of reference to our piece.

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(A picture I took of the display in Argos)

Throughout this process we had been obtaining couple’s stories via social media but wanted to obtain them from people personally. Taking inspiration from Lee Miller and Joanne Whalley’s 2003 piece Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain during which they exchanged bottles of urine they found on the road with personal items of their own we decided we would exchange love stories for flowers. They did this because “knowing that these were the product of people, [they] felt uncomfortable about simply taking them, and so it was decided that [they] would make an exchange”. (Whalley, J. and Miller, L. 2003) People on the High Street weren’t very responsive to this and didn’t want to interact with us. So instead we decided to allow our audience to approach us while we were carving the box, and we would carve the initials of them and their partner in exchange for their story.

In the final weeks we showed our work to Steve our Lecturer and Conan the Module Leader. The response we received was overall positive. They suggested that when telling our stories we be on some form of box, to add to the position of Town Crier and only talk on the boxes in a Town Crier fashion. This lead to us deciding to only talk to audience members and tell detailed love stories when off the boxes. They also suggested painting the cross so that the carving stands out more. The pictures below shows that this made a huge difference to the appearance of our piece. Other than these changes they were ultimately happy and our final piece was ready to be performed.

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 (Left: A picture Chris took of the wood before and after it was painted Right: A picture Rayanne took of the box carved into.)

Performance Evaluation

Our performance was as described in the ‘Framing Statement: Performance’ section of this blog. Before starting the performance we were carving at our start position and several people came and interacted with us, as we were not performing we were able to answer their questions in an informal manner. At 4pm we began our Procession and had an audience of around 3 walk with us up to Stonebow. Considering we had invited mostly our peers, a lot of whom were also doing their performances at the time, this number wasn’t unexpected. The amount of people who watched us at Stonebow was much larger, with people stopping in the street to watch our performance, as well as invited audience joining them throughout. In terms of interaction it was limited, not many people approached us. I believe this was because of the performance’s theatrical style, the audience felt like they shouldn’t intrude. This included a vehicle that was trying to go through the High Street, rather than interrupting us to move they allowed us to perform. We weren’t aware that this vehicle was waiting until an audience member told us afterwards. I believe this shines a positive light on our performance as audience members were willing to stop in transit to watch. Confirming that we had succeeded in creating a place through relationships in a non-place, a place of transit. Other than this the strongest moments of the piece were those in which we told more detailed stories, they appeared to flow better and engaged the audience more than simply calling out names and dates. Improvements in this piece certainly would have come from more rehearsal, visually it was captivating but the speech was sometimes sloppy meaning the town crier effect was lost. If I were to perform this piece again rehearsing the piece more would be essential. In terms of changing other aspects I would want more audience participation as the people of Lincoln are the driving force for this piece. I would want to ask audience members for their love stories during the performance, perhaps getting them to stand on the boxes and declare their love and the story behind it.

Site-Specific Performance was something I had never done before, nor had I ever performed in a non-traditional venue and so this was very much a learning experience. Through a variety of theorists and studying other performances I have learnt the importance of a performance location and the impact it can have on your piece. By looking into the history of Lincoln, as advised to do by Michael Pearson’s definition of Site-Specific we discovered a love story that completely changed our performance and our view of the city ultimately creating a piece wildly different to the one we began with. “Site-Specific performance engages with the site as symbol, site as story teller, site as structure” [Pearson, M. 2010, 7) and this could not be truer of my experience of site-specific. Making a non-traditional venue into a symbol of love, telling the stories of its people and creating our very own Eleanor Cross as a result.

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(Both photos are of our final performance taken by an audience member)

WORDS: 2729 (Including titles and captions)

References

Auge, M. (2009) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso.

Calle, S. (2015) Suite Venitienne. California: Siglio Press

Eliot, S. (2008) The Eleanor Crosses: A Love Story In Stone. [online] Available from: http://www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/history/eleanor.shtml [Accessed 27th April 2016].

Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment. London: Routledge.

Kwon, M. (2004) One Place after Another. London: The MIT Press.

Lincolnshire Echo (2011) Bid to Break Silence at Lincoln’s Speakers Corner. Lincolnshire Echo, 27 July. Available from http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Bid-break-silence-Lincoln-s-Speakers-Corner/story-13016847-detail/story.html [accessed 6 March 2016].

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

Sofaer, J. (2011) What is Live Art? [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOUxv4Do01g [Accessed 2nd March 2016].

Tate (2005) Sophie Calle: Room 47. Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/calle-the-hotel-room-47-p78300 [accessed 26 February 2016].

Walley, J. and Miller, L. (2003) Partly Cloudy, Chance of Rain: A Case Study. Available from http://repository.falmouth.ac.uk/99/1/RR_Partly%20Cloudy,%20Chance%20of%20Rain_190613_nid237.pdf [accessed 10 May 2016]

Posted on No Comments on Final Few Tweeks

Final Few Tweeks

We were unable to meet on the Monday due to it being really busy over the bank holiday weekend. We have spent the last two weeks refining and adjusting our piece after the feedback we received. Essentially our piece is the same as it was, the differences are that we have shorted the soundtrack to the least contrived ones. This track will be played out of four speakers at four different times creating an auditory layering in the piece. We are taking influences from The girl chewing gum by John Smith by commenting on the pedestrians as they walk past our piece creating a ‘live layer’ to our piece. The difference between our piece and Girl chewing gum is that our commentaries of people are spontaneous and live whereas Smith’s commentaries on his piece happened retrospectively (he watched the footage and then commented on what he saw meticulously knowing on what was coming).

The layering is one of the key elements to our piece in that as well as the layering of sound and live elements we also have the layering of dates. The dates which we collected the recordings on are incorporated into the soundtrack which we then right on the space, this, combined with writing the dates of the performance creates as additional layer.

Feeding the birds has been a part of the piece for a while but what Conan mentioned in his feedback is of a piece in Paris which he witnessed in which the artist filled a trench full of bird seed and the installation piece lasted 20 minutes as the birds flocked around to eat the food. We were inspired by this in that we are crumbling the breadcrumbs finely and sprinkling them over the dates creating yet another layer on top of the written words. This layer will quickly be removed by the birds reinforcing our links with Cathy Turner’s ideas of palimpsest and erasure (still being able to see the layer after it has been removed).

To aid us in remembering/clarifying the piece in our head we wrote out a table of what we were doing and when. This creating a sort of dialogue on the page which, after discussions with Steve, he thought could create an interesting element to the piece. We were cautious however that the piece would become stale and rehearsed so the addition of commenting on what we are doing is going to be spontaneous and completely up to the performer who is doing said action.

Joe Turner

Posted on No Comments on A royal place to meet – The stone bow arches/ Guildhall and its history.

A royal place to meet – The stone bow arches/ Guildhall and its history.

In the very center of Lincoln high street  stands the stone bow arches, every day the public pass through these arches, most of which are unaware of the local and national history..

“Kings and prisoners have walked this way. In 1541, Henry VIII and Catherine Howard passed through it on their way to the Bishops Palace, where Catherine allegedly committed one of the “indiscretions” that later led to her execution.

Richard II and his Queen passed under the Stonebow on a visit to Lincoln in 1387. He was rallying support in his struggle against the Lancastrian faction.

Richard’s sword was presented to the city and is now on display in the Guildhall treasury. It is part of what is believed to be one of the most important civic collections outside of London.

The Stonebow must have made an impression, as in 1390 it was Richard II who ordered the city to construct a new gate, as the medieval gate was in a dire state of repair. It took more than a hundred years to complete but the history of the Stonebow goes much further back than the Middle Ages.

The name Stonebow comes from “stennibogi”, a Norse word meaning stone arch. As far as we know there has been a building on the site of the Stonebow on Lincoln’s High Street since the Romans put a gate there in the 2nd century.

The original Roman structure consisted of the main gateway in the southern wall of the lower town, through which traffic from the south would enter the settlement. It was probably similar in style to the Newport Arch at the top of Bailgate.

After the Romans left Britain in the 5th century, the gatehouse continued to be used.

In 1237, probably due to its central location, it became the Lincoln Guildhall, a meeting place for the local governors of the city. Before that date there was another Guildhall in the city, although its whereabouts are unknown.

At this time the Stonebow was also used as a courtroom to hear disputes brought by local folk against their neighbours and to hear criminal cases when the king’s judges visited the city on assizes.

When Richard II decreed that a new gatehouse had to be built in 1390, public funds were raised but the monies were misused and it was not until 1520 that a new gate was finally built by William Spencer. He was a freemason of the city of Lincoln, and is responsible for the structure that we see today.

If you look at the south-facing front of the Stonebow you will see carvings of the Virgin Mary (patron saint of Lincoln and its cathedral) and the Angel Gabriel on either side of the main arch.

These are thought to be original. The carving of the arms of King James I, also on the south face, are believed to have been added in 1617 for his visit to the city. The clock set into the crenellated top of the south and north fronts of the building dates from 1888. This replaced an earlier clock which dated from 1835.

While the present structure is a gatehouse, there do not appear to have been any doors to impede access through its arches. There is, however, evidence to suggest that the central arch would have been barred to carriages and horses by a locked chain across its width, forcing all such vehicles and travellers to stop and state their business before being allowed to proceed into the city.

The eastern wing of the Stonebow was used as the city prison until 1586, when the facility was moved to an adjacent building.

In the Stonebow there were four rooms where prisoners were kept – two at ground level, for male and female debtors, and two dungeons below ground, for male and female felons.

As was customary at the time, debtors had to pay the gaoler for their keep. They did better than the felons in the dungeons below as they could access passers-by through two small unglazed ground floor windows which looked out upon the street. Through this, debtors could beg for money, food and drink and their family and friends would pass items through the bars to them. The prison was located in the Stonebow as it afforded close access to the courts being held in the Guildhall above.

It had a terrible reputation, even at a time when prisons generally were of a very poor standard.

It has been called by various authors of the time both “a loathsome place”, “a disgrace to humanity” and “the worst in the kingdom”.

One visitor described the prisoners as half-starved, half-suffocated and in a state of continual intoxication.

The prison next door to the Stonebow was finally closed in 1809, four years after a new prison had been opened in Lindum Road. In 1842 this building was demolished and the east wing we see today was built in its place, in a style sympathetic to the existing structure. There is a bell housed on the roof of the Stonebow called the Mote Bell which dates from 1371. This bell is used to call councillors to their meetings and is the oldest of its kind in the country. It still rings today

The Guildhall on the top floor of the building has been home to the city administration for many centuries. It comprises several rooms, the biggest of which is the council chamber.

This room has windows looking out to both the north and south and is covered by a marvellous oak beamed ceiling, the timber having come from Sherwood Forest, which in the Middle Ages was much larger and so would have been much closer to Lincoln than it is today.

In the centre of the room there is a large oak table around which are arranged 22 tilting seats. These are occupied by the city councillors when council meetings take place. The western end of the room contains a raised dais on which the Mayor sits when the council is in session.

It also contains further seating originally occupied by the city Aldermen but now used by the council’s committee chairpersons. In the council chamber is displayed the portraits of King George III, Queen Victoria, and Sir Francis Hill, who was mayor of the city from 1945 to 1946.

When the council is in session the mayor sits in his grand chair behind the mayor’s mace. This large and impressive piece of elaborate silver gilt dates to around 1660 and is carried before the mayor on all ceremonial occasions – it is present at all meetings at which the mayor is present.

Behind the chamber there is an inner chamber which was originally used as a meeting room for senior councillors and aldermen in advance of official sessions of council.

This room contains many interesting historical artefacts, including two metal Armada chests with highly intricate locking mechanisms.

These chests would have been used to store money and valuable documents, such as royal charters relating to the powers of the city council. The inner chamber again has an impressive oak timber ceiling that dates back to 1691.

In the eastern wing of the Guildhall is situated the Mayor’s Parlour, where she receives important guests and where she robes before attending official council meetings.” (Echo,2016)

 

Echo, L. (2013) How Lincoln’s Stonebow played its part in both local and national history.. Available at: http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Lincoln-s-Stonebow-played-local-national-history/story-17946800-detail/story.html (Accessed: 28 April 2016).