February 2016 – Page 2 – City and Site

February 16, 2016Shannen Leigh Johnson No Comments

Initial Ideas

The first week of site involved a lot of new information, from Ivring Goffman a sociologist who turns everyday events in to performance, to Christian Nold who maps the emotions and changes in the body as we navigate our way through a space. We discussed cartography in depth and the practitioners who deal with this sort of work. This led to watching a Youtube clip of Marcia Farquhar’s A Live Art Tour, something I found particularly interesting about this was the way she used chance operations in her performance. As she lead the public around the site, she had staged some of the events herself whilst others just happened to be there, this made it so you were unable to tell whether they were practised performance elements or not.

Towards the end of the session we walked the parameters of the city which we are able to perform in, we were told to walk around trying to notice places that could be interesting for a performance. I found myself struggling with this, as the City is something I see everyday, so it was difficult to then imagine it as a performance space. I found myself continuously asking would this idea be site specific, why is this site specific? At the end of the walk through the city, a skittle rolled down the hill and stopped in a hole in the concrete, as minute as it may seem, this was the moment I started to think as a site specific artist. Every small detail that happened in the City whether it be; falling leaves, people arguing, people sitting on a bench, I started to think what could I do with this. How could this be a performance?

During the Second week we continued to discuss and revise practitioners previously mentioned. We also discussed the idea of non places, this is ‘where we spend so much of our time: airports, railway stations, superstores, motorways and international hotel chains,’ (P.D Smith, 2009). However Marc Augé shows, ‘the anodyne and anonymous solitude of these non-places offers the transitory occupant the illusion of being part of some grand global scheme: a fugitive glimpse of a utopian city-world,’ (P.D Smith, 2009). This implies that these non-places, much of the time, of places we use to pass through to get to another destination, to get to where we want to be. Again this was another thing that I found myself interested in looking further into as a performance space. The fact that they are places for public to pass through means that will more than likely be busy places, therefore could create a good performance space as there would be more opportunities for audiences. Pearson states ‘If site-specific performance involves an activity, an audience and a place, then creative opportunities reside in the multiple creative articulations of us, them and there.’ (Pearson, 2010, 19) Therefore it is important to chose a place where you are likely to receive an audience especially if you are using audience participation.

The second time something sparked my imagination as a site-specific artist was after looking at Carl Lavery’s 25 instructions for performance in cities. These were a set of instructions devised to use as a stimulus for ways to think of the city as a performance space. My group devised our own instructions in an elevator, we spent about 25 minutes in the elevator, moving up and down between floors as different people stepped in and out of the elevator. This exercise left me intrigued with the way people interact with one an other in an elevator. Many people would step in the elevator and start a conversation with us from hearing what we were discussing, one woman shared that she had a Labrador. It was the conversations that took place that inspired me and began to give me initial performance ideas. I found myself interested in proximity, how close can you get to people before it becomes uncomfortable. Social, why is it that people start a conversation in a lift, but wouldn’t approach a 19 year old girl in a queue. Following this I began to think of words I was interested in too focus on as a performance, I came up with, darkness, silence, enclosed spaces, conversations, awkwardness, social, proximity, chance and coincidence. My task now is to begin to delve into practitioners that work with these themes for example, Robert Wilson and look for performances spaces that can enhance these ideas.

Works Cited

Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance. 25 (3) 229-238.

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

Smith, PD. (2009) Non Places. The Guardian, 28 March.

February 15, 2016Jason Lodge No Comments

Our visit to our site, week 3 site specific performance

Today was our third Site Specific Lesson, we as a class began by refreshing previous site practitioners that had been discussed in class, such as the Writes and Sites Company, Janet Carter and Marica Farqua. Both personally create inspiration to what I wish to achieve with my ideas of my site performance, mainly working on both parties’ ideas of creating tours, which can usually be understood to be miss guided. This idea of creating guided tours that detach from the normal idea of a usual guided tour is something that us as a group have been interested in from the beginning. As a group outside of lesson we have discussed these stimuli, which we have agreed as a group to research further into this idea of tours around Lincoln regarding the city Centre.

Secondly, we discussed tacit agreements which means roughly “unwritten rules which are followed by everyone.” Also the idea of non-places, these are made of places that people are to travel through such as airports, train stations or motorways. These places are the places that we use to travel to our desired location, we use these as a means to get there, they are used as part of the journey. Such relates to our groups chosen site within the city Centre.

After this reflection, we were asked to visit our sites in our group and study/play and see what could be created. Personally, we as a group felt this to be a challenge whilst we were walking and discussing our local on our way to it. However once we were there and engaged ourselves within the local we noticed many things. Firstly our local is the bridge over the canal in the centre of town, which can be described as a non-place, due to the bridge connects both halves of the high street meaning people must use it as a path way to reach there destination. Thus meaning this area is one of the busiest places on the high street. We as a group have always liked the ideas of making something that breaks the tacit agreements that we form to as 21^st century human begins. We noticed the bridge as seats that are raised higher than the pavement, which argues that this platform can look like a stage, which could argue to be an ideal performance space, or a intentional one.

We also as a group like the idea of forced entertainment, we can achieved on the high street by getting people’s attention, this shows people always noticed things that don’t belong or break the usually conventions of the norm. We began by just standing out of place and seeing who would notice or question what we as a group were doing. In the space of two minutes I had noticed myself that thirteen people had noticed us as a group just staring at one object, this lead to the experimentation of what we can to grab peoples attentions. I wrote on a sign for each of our group this lead to us all seeing if people would interacted with us. We wanted to see people’s reactions and see how people would want to engage with us. I simply used the idea of a previous site to see what would happen (this was the idea of free high fives, which has been used as a site performance In prior years, which we don’t want to copy. Nevertheless, we wanted to use this to see if people would react). it seemed that people happy to engage with me in a simple action while passing through, and it seemed that people also follow a crowd when more people broke tacit conventions, people would also join in, this makes us question people now think In that space that is the norm and its ok to do that. In addition, more people engaged with me when I was stationary as well as silent. Other members of the group with my group who had more interment signs such as “talk to me”, “free hugs” and “tell me what your favorite shop is?” These signs had less success then my single action. However, they did achieve people’s interest; each sign had individual success; however, it may have been the fact that these signs were more interment. However it still increased our confidence in using the public as a stimulus or our piece as well as forced entertainment. All that is needed now is to now take this research and start to mold it towards a set performance.

February 11, 2016Emily Claire Bickerdike No Comments

Out and About

As a group we took a trip to Speaker’s Corner to identify what physical elements of it could be used in performance, what new things we could notice, and whether anything gave us inspiration. Our initial response when moving into the space was to comment on just how large the space actually is; we said that it almost resembled a theatre in the round, with buildings looking down on the centre from all sides.

The second thing we noticed was how many banks were in the square and how many big companies such as McDonalds, LUSH, WHSmith, Thorntons, Pandora, etc. Contrasting to these big chains, there seemed to be very little in terms of more local/smaller businesses, the only places we predicted they could have been in the past were now empty units:

As an image, this is interesting. In an area so saturated by banks and big businesses (MONEY), having derelict units creates an interesting contrast. This caused us to question who the managers of these failed businesses were, and who the managers of the big corporate chains and banks are; the likelihood is that most of the successful managers are men as there is a great imbalance between men and women in managerial roles. How could we show this link between Capitalism and gender to our piece? Well, the answer we came up with was mapping – specifically, mapping where the women are, and mapping where the money is, to see the relationship.

February 10, 2016Emily Claire Bickerdike No Comments

Initial Performance Ideas

I made a rough start planning out an aesthetic for a performance based around political activism and performance art after researching Speaker’s Corner. I found out that there was once a Suffragette rally in that area which influenced the decision to name the square Speaker’s Corner, a place specially designed for people to go and exercise their freedom of speech. I researched the work of Debord and came across his piece Society of Spectacle, where my idea for the centre focus of my performance piece originates from.

Banner in French (red paint) – “Le patron a besoin de toi, tu n’as pas besoin de lui” = “The boss needs you, you do not need him”. Now has two meanings – Capitalism and Feminism. Inspired by Debord’s Society of Spectacle.
Girl #1 – Young girl dressed in modern dress, carrying modern teddy (recognisable character) and clear balloons with money in = dress covered in newspaper articles about female inequality, particularly unequal pay (e.g. day in November when technically don’t get paid). Dragging money balloons around the square – weighed down by money and Capitalism when should be free = childish innocence being destroyed, affects all women young and old, evokes Suffrage movement (rallies that happened then – if Capitalism and money weren’t there, that particular inequality wouldn’t exist. Even today she is still being oppressed – how far have we really come since these rallies? Only difference between then and now is that people are no longer in this spot protesting about it… but we are.
Girl #2 – Adult Suffragette wearing period clothing (as accurate to the time as possible), tied to numerous authentic Suffragette placards with green and purple ribbon (Suffragette colours) = heritage of protest, being tied to something not moving/tied to the fight and tied together (comradeship)/tied as in restrained – so many ribbons that woman is tangled in them – restrained as in exercising restraint as a woman “should”.
Girl #3 – Woman in own clothes stood with megaphone/microphone reading the same articles related to women and money that are on the girl’s dress. WE are protesting NOW – use the space for what it’s made for, continue the fight.

Additional ideas: Durational? Placards appear like a forest spanning a great deal of the square – resonates = ghosts of the women that once stood there. Young girl weaving inbetween the placards – lost, confused, everything against her.

End: young girl becomes exhausted from struggle and pops balloons, counts out money in desperation (needs food/water). Suffragette escapes from ribbons. Megaphone girl finishes articles.

Particularly prevalent in Speaker’s Corner – filled with BANKS and SHOPS = Capitalism/consumerism/money. Place of protest that lacks use – make use of it, it was made to make people remember their freedom of speech. A place where women campaigned for their rights, and still women are not equal, therefore we will do what they did.

February 8, 2016Jack Briggs No Comments

Perceptions

During the course of our second seminar I observed how the general public responded to our interpretation of Carl Lavery’s 25 instructions for performance in cities. He designed these “instructions” in the hopes of getting students to devise, using his instructions as; “a stimulus, not a strait-jacket” (Lavery, 2005, 230). In extension of their purpose, I found the instructions to be an activity open to analysis of audience/performer relationships.

The parameters of our site (the High Street), has become a familiar location that I traverse routinely with several singular purposes; to shop, to get somewhere, and to meet people. Under Lavery’s instructions, however, I was suddenly walking backwards, following animals, and watching as my classmates asked people for directions to a fake location. The absurdity of these actions didn’t strike me because I was engaged in my role as a drama student. But upon witnessing the responses of the general public, I observed myself and my classmates as they did. They had no idea we were drama students, which made for a different perception as to what was going on.

Upon reflection of my observations, I noticed that there is a tacit agreement that comes with the High Street, where people don’t notice the people around them because they are performing the same actions as everyone else: shopping, travelling, or meeting people. Throw a performance into that mix, and we get a spectator/performer relationship that Pearson and Shanks in Theatre Archaeology describe as;

“the performance event exists as a locus of experiences – spatial, physical, and emotional – preserved in the bodies and memories of the varying orders of participants” (2001, 54)

This is further elaborated as a separate experience for both parties. So going back to the notion of a tacit agreement taking place on the High Street, we find that there are several things we did that blended with the typical experience of the High Street (asking for directions to a fake location), and some that did not. Shouting at buildings, asking to buy furniture from café’s, chasing pigeons: actions that don’t occur naturally, which the public became witnesses to. We broke the tacit agreement, and suddenly people were aware of us, and analysing us.

The question I now have is what did they think was going on? What were they seeing in comparison to what I was seeing?

Work Citations:

Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance. 25 (3) 229-238.

Pearson, M., Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre Archaeology. London: Routledge.