Month: March 2016

Over the past few weeks / months we have been thinking, experimenting and devising work. Initially we wanted to create a strucutural representation of the obelisk located in St Marks Square, but we realise that we could go further both themeatically, metaphorically and artistically.

Our aim for our site specific work is to bring in the community. The High Street as said previously, is a communal non-place. It is a transitional place. People move in and out and walk and don’t stop for anything other than to look inside a shop window or briefly speak to someone that they recognise on the street. The obelisk can be argued to be a centrepiece to the halting of the transitional atmosphere as it’s purpose was a fountain. People would drink from this place, it was a source of life. It was a source of nourishment. Now it is a memorial. A homage to those that have done extraodinary talents to lincoln. It has been stripped of it’s purpose which was to serve as a fountain but also a homage to St Thomas Beckett chapel that was demolished in the late 1700s.

Attracting an audience is often a tricky tact to do in a performance and in traditional theatre. Over the past weeks we have been experimenting with different questions and approaches to people on the high street and noted down best practice. We wanted to engage with the people on the high street, connect with them. See who would react to what specfic question and which methods / texts were being ignored. It became clear very early on that the broader, more complex questions got more responses such as: “If aliens were to attack the high street, where would they land” proved to be a favourite amongst people. We got distasteful reactions, responses were always interesting, funny looks, actual places such as the cathedral, tesco car park and “that house” were also given and all managed to contribute towards this initial experiment.

What we were creating through our experiments were episodic forms of Street Theatre rather than a piece of work that reflected Site-Specificity.

 “Theatre should be product of the community” (Bim Mason, 133, 1992)

Our performance needed and is now currently underpinned by the historical significance of our specific site, as well as upheld via our practitional influences which as previously mentioned are Forced Entertainment, Michael Fried and John Newling. We are not dealing with performance of acting as such. We do not play characters, nor do we intend to. To play a character in our piece is would detract from the entire intention of our site-specific performance. It wouldn’t be organic and nor would it entice the audience i.e the community walking by, stopping, talking, writing labels on the bottles or our invited audience of our peers.

To frame our work as a whole I would argue that this is a type of exhibition. An organically built exhibition built through us as the performers and the audience that wander through the labelled bottles and infact the witnesses. The witnesses in context to this perfromance are those members of the public that contribute their suggestions to our final and only question:

    In one word, what do you value most in life?

They witness their bottle being taken from them and / or placed down by themselves. The bottle is either placed in conjuction to the formation of the bottles placed by us – the performers, or it is infact placed totally different, distrupting the formation altogether but in doing so, making it a more organic piece. Something that is not orchestrated by us, but orchestrated by the audience.

It can be argued that when we are performing in this kind of site specific work we are not really performing. There is the assumption that we are as we are engaging with people as if they are an audience, we have our ‘stage’ we have our ‘props’ our ‘set’ and our ‘costume’ but we are not generating a theatrical performance and nor is our intention. We are simply bridging the gap between the audience and the art.

An Audience member > (Contributes a suggestion) > The suggestion is taken by the performer and is written on the bottle > (On the bottle is a white label, and in black permanent marker the suggestion is easy to read) > The performer places the bottle down in formation and the engagement with that particular member ends.

That is until they ask us (which is typical of people who are intrigued of lots of waterbottles being placed down on the street) in which case we pull our a piece of paper which contains a eulogy. The obelisk is representative of a memorial, of memory. So in this regard we are treating our particular site with the memory of the obelisk that once stood. There is the argument made by Michael Fried that if you move a work of art, that work is destroyed. Although the obelisk served a social purpose it did serve as a, archaelogical piece of artwork. Now because it has been moved, it’s purpose has moved with it. It no longer serves a communal nor social function. It is just something to be admired, something to look at, and something to be interpreted. Which is what our piece of work is incorporating throughout the duration of the performance.

Last week our group content with our idea though it was crucial for to experiment with our latest plan. instead of returning to the concept of gathering thoughts of the public. But instead use water bottles to make our structure which is our major plan, to show the history or more clearly a anniversary of the obelisk and its life and use on the Lincoln high street. through this we wish to present this structure through water bottles, however this task appeared harder then our group originally though building this structure seemed impossible do to the surrounding conditions of the high street for example the uneven surface of the high bridge as well as peoples interaction with our work (mostly negative) as people took bottles without asking jeopardising our testing. also the whole principle is challenged due to the actually ability to stack the bottles. the shape of the bottles makes it difficult to stack the bottles in our desired shape as well as the sheer amount of bottles that would be required unpractical , thus questioning our ability to make our reinterpretation of the obelisk. however after our mid session meeting with Steve, helped us find a way around these problems, instead of making a statue of the obelisk which seems to be unpractical what if we made a grave out of the water bottles presenting a memorial instead of a statue however until further research we can not see how this can be approached this will be next weeks mission.

For the past few weeks our group has gone into the High Street and we have been performing “social experiments” for lack of a better term. The aim of these “experiments” have primarily been to gauge audience response around the spot we will be performing in come the final performance.

To add context to what we have been doing, we have done research into a spot on the High Street; a bridge with a raised platform, across from Stokes, known as the High Bridge. From research it was discovered that an obelisk currently residing in St. Marks at the end of the High Street used to be on the High Bridge. It was demolished in 1939, and rebuilt in 1996 in its new location. Our intention is to make a model of this obelisk in the spot where it originally was positioned.

“So consider an archaeological artefact. Do not begin with the question ‘What is it?’ Instead ask ‘What does it do?'” (Pearson & Shanks, 2001, 53)

Our “artefact”, the obelisk, was formerly used as a public water conduit. Our intention is to create a model of this obelisk out of water bottles in its original location (the High Bridge), before dismantling the model and providing the bottles to the public. Part of our aim is to bring the audience into the performance by having them stick labels on the bottles using a variety of questions centred on the High Street. As mentioned, at the end we will hand this bottles out; thus recreating the obelisks original purpose. This has somewhat been inspired by the Tilted Arc sculpture designed by Richard Serra and the controversy of it’s moving.

In preparation for this we have been experimenting with questions with themes from Forced Entertainment. Such questions have included, “What is the best place on the High Street?”, “Tell me a story about the High Street”, and “If Aliens were to visit Lincoln, where would they land?”. The intention behind these questions was to see what kind of response we would get.

Works Cited:

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