You Look Lovely Today
“The theatrical event always happens within a space, but only sometimes is space itself an event.”
– Arthur Sainer, the Radical Theatre Notebook (1975) (Wohl, 2014)
FRAMING STATEMENT
We chose our site – The Glory Hole – as historically it was used as a boat marketplace that sold goods such as fruit, meat and wool. Through time the market became less popular, until it ended up closing down for good. The Glory Hole then served no further purpose, except for being a pass-through for members of the public to get onto the High Street. The overriding intention for our performance was to transform a non-place back into a destination, as it has been in the past. We originally intended to host a celebration with elements of the boat market, for which invitations would be distributed across the city. We hoped that anyone that attended this celebration would then remember it every time they passed through the site in the future, giving The Glory Hole a personal historical context and making it a place again.
In order to provide our audience with a ‘tour’ like experience of our event/celebration/performance, and so that they experience the full effect of a busy, bustling market, we looked to Marcia Farquhar and her performances such as ‘A Live Art Tour’ to provide us with different ways of achieving this. We also looked to Marc Augé and his idea of ‘place vs non-place’, in our attempt to make a non-place into a place again. We researched into the idea of palimpsest, which is defined as:
‘Something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form’ (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016)
This was evident in our site and in our performance, because although our performance was not immediately the re-enactment of a marketplace, it still bore a trace of the different elements of a market. An example of this would be the dragging of our ‘goods’ through the water, making reference to the boats that pass through the site.
Our ideas altered over time and through different experiments we were able to see what worked and what didn’t. For our final piece we decided that our original idea of having elements of the boat market was keeping our performance in the past, and we wanted to bring it ‘forward’ to life, instead of going backwards. We maintained that we wanted our performance to be a celebration, but instead we decided to celebrate the people that passed through the site, and celebrate the site itself, by giving out ‘compliments’ written on card. These cards were triangular, so that once we had given them to the ‘audience’, we gave them the choice of whether they would like to take it away or hang it up as bunting across the canal. We had no set audience, we simply targeted passers-by, as we wanted the piece to be spontaneous and this meant that the members of the public could not predict that they would be targeted, making the compliments more pleasantly received. We also took inspiration for this idea from Mike Pearson, who states that ‘audience need not to be categorized, or even consider themselves as ‘audience’’ (Pearson, 2010, 175). The piece lasted thirty minutes, and we accumulated over twenty-five compliments hanging on our bunting.
THE FOUNDATIONS
Before addressing our performance and starting our rehearsal process, it was important to have an understanding of the history and influences on site specific art. One of the may influences that shaped the beginnings of site specific art include Fluxus, which was considered as a shared attitude amongst artists rather than a movement. Fluxus is described as creating minimal performances, sometimes presented in events, much like our performance. The image below shows the Fluxus manifesto, which claims that their intention is to ‘purge the world of dead art, imitation, artificial art…’ (George Maciunas, 1963), proving that the artists that shared the Fluxus attitude sought to change the world of art and the history of the world. Site specific artists took influence from this attitude, which is reflected in their use of non-traditional performance spaces.
The Situationist International movement that began in the late 1950’s also had great influence on site specific art, and on our performance. The Situationist movement explored the idea of ‘psychogeography’ – emotions and behaviours caused by the surrounding geographical environment – and to do so they would move through, and work in cityscapes. We used this idea of ‘psychogeography’ during our initial ideas process, for which we moved through the city noting down any particular emotions that we felt towards different sites. I felt an intense negative feeling when in the Glory Hole, a feeling that was shared amongst the group, and this became one of the inspirations for bringing positivity back into the site.
BRINGING IT FORWARD TO LIFE
After conducting research into our chosen site, we discovered that it used to be a marketplace in which boats would pass through and buy goods such as wool, fruit and meat. We were engaged by the stark contrast of how busy the Glory Hole would have been then, compared to how abandoned and depressing it is now – locals even refer to it as ‘the Murder Hole’ – and there have been many sexual assaults in this site. We became fixated on the idea of reversing the negative connotations that surrounded the Glory Hole and, essentially, bringing it ‘back’ to life.
The Glory Hole used to be a place, a destination, and it is now essentially a non-place/non-destination, it’s just a pass-through, and so we looked to Marc Augé for inspiration. Augé states that ‘a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place’ (Augé, 1995, 78), and despite the Glory Hole’s historical past as a marketplace, it is no longer common knowledge in this century; therefore we identified our site as a non-place. Like research-artists Wrights and Sites, we too had an interest in ‘sites that would not usually be engaged with in terms of public art’ (Situations, 2013). We became interested in the idea of making the Glory Hole a destination again, and decided that we could achieve this by making an event or celebration for audience members and passers-by to attend.
We also became very interested in the idea of social transactions and exchanges, as this is a common theme in relation to markets and stalls. When discussing Cityscapes in his book Site-Specific Performance, Mike Pearson asks the question ‘can we try to sell food in a way that is other than simply holding it in the hand?’ (Pearson, 2010, 98). To answer this, we began to experiment with attaching wool from one side of the canal to the other, to create a way of exchanging goods through the use of a ‘pulley’ system. This also created a bond between the two sides of the canal, rather than a separation. Visually, when thinking of the marketplace, we gravitated towards oranges as being one of the most popular items that were sold. We experimented with dragging the oranges through the water with a piece of wool, to represent how the goods were transported through the water, and to highlight how vital the water was to the market. We then pulled the oranges out of the canal, peeled them, and squeezed the juice out of them. We felt as though this showed the journey of the goods, and how important our site was for achieving the end result – the orange juice.
As the idea of a celebration or party began to arise, we started to split our performance into different sections, much like party activities. We carefully planned four different sections to our ‘bustling market’/celebration.
These included:
- A transaction, using a line of wool, between performer and audience member. Items included fruit and pieces of meat. (See photograph below)
- The retrieving of a sack of oranges from the Brayford by dragging them through the water in a net, and the peeling and juicing of these oranges. The juice would then be ‘sold’ on our own market stall.
- Four hired performers stood on a platform holding cardboard signs stating things such as ‘will work for food’ and ‘can cook’. This makes reference to the people that would stand at the Glory Hole market and wait to be employed by passers-by on boats. (See photograph below)
- The picking up and placing of wooden slats (to represent when slats were placed over the canal as a form of protest, so that a party could take place over it) and then proceeding to dance on these slats. A celebration.
THE UNREPEATABLE MOMENT
We intended for our participants to have a tour like experience of our performance. Each of the segments (above) would be performed at the same time, so the audience could move around as they wish and examine each piece individually, or as ‘a constellation of nodes that people can join up for themselves’ (Situations, 2013). We found inspiration from Marcia Farquhar and her Live Art Tour or ‘Onwards’ Tour (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Li90TEcsUw). Certain aspects of this performance were the main influences for our celebration/event; for example, how the participants were unable to tell which elements of the performance were staged, and which were just chance. Farquhar’s work is described as ‘precariously balanced between the prescribed and the unpredictable…socially open, broadly embracing of circumstance, and resolutely focused in the live and unrepeatable moment’ (The Collection, 2013), which is exactly what we strived to achieve from our performance. This provides reasoning for our decisions to not have a set audience and to leave things unpredictable and ‘socially open’.
From this, we looked to Wrights and Sites, a group of artists that have a ‘particular interest in site, landscape and journey’ (Situations, 2013), and a fascination with architecture. The architecture of our site – a large Tudor building as our backdrop which enabled us to string our wool from one side of the canal to the other – was one of the main features of our performance. Cathy Turner, a member of Wrights and Sites, is also known for her interest in the idea of ‘palimpsest’. This idea was prominent in our performance, as layers of the old marketplace shine through.
BOTTLES AS BOATS
After experimenting with these ideas in the site, we came to realise that we were trying too hard to re-enact the marketplace instead of creating something modern that would simply bear a trace of the past. We decided that the exchange of fruit and meat was not modern enough, and that we wanted to exchange something more relatable to a 21st century audience. We experimented with the idea of exchanging compliments – something that would both brighten up the site itself, and brighten the day of those who passed through. We would not ask for anything in return for these compliments, other than the participant’s time. We chose to keep the lines of wool across the canal, but expand the quantity and create a ‘spider’s web’ of wool, representing the transactions that have been made between the two banks throughout time.
I felt as though we should keep the movement of ‘dragging’ something through the water, and it shed light onto how important the water is for transporting goods. Our ‘goods’, in this case the ‘compliments’, were now being dragged through the water in clear glass bottles – the bottles acting as boats. They were then pulled up through the water with wool, taken out of the bottles and handed to an unsuspecting passer-by. The participant then had a choice as to whether they would like to take the compliment with them, or string it up on one of the lines of wool crossing the canal, creating a ‘compliment bunting’. We settled on this final idea as we felt as though it still resembled elements of the marketplace in a less obvious way, and the social transactions that we had between participants were bringing the Glory Hole forward to life.
YOU LOOK LOVELY TODAY:
A Performance Analysis
Our final performance began at 11:30am on Friday 6th May, and lasted approximately thirty minutes. We received excellent feedback from our ‘audience’, who were unsuspecting passers-by, however some decided to stay and watch after we had interacted with them. During the performance I was able to talk to the audience members and explain the reasoning for our performance, and I received some brilliant responses, such as ‘what a lovely idea’, and ‘this place has always looked miserable until now’. Many participants also thanked me for, 1) Giving them a compliment and ‘making their day’, and 2) Making the Glory Hole look so colourful and positive. Every single participant decided that they wanted to string their ‘compliments’ up on the bunting, as it was bright and colourful and made the site seem more cheerful. Some wanted to tie their compliments up themselves, whereas others wanted to stand back and watch us do it, and admire the outcome. Audience participation was vital for our performance, as ‘physical involvement is considered an essential precursor to social change’ (Bishop, 2006, 11), and as we desired to make a change to the way the public viewed the site, I felt that this participation helped immensely. I felt that the use of the glass bottles to transport the compliments through the water worked extremely well, as it was both poetic and interesting to watch, drawing in more of an audience. If I were to improve the performance, I would try not to over-think the process, as I believe that our ideas became too complicated and we struggled to simplify them. I believe that our engagement with site specific theory and practice, particularly Marcia Farquhar and her ‘Live Art’/‘Onwards’ Tour, advanced our understanding of working in the Cityscape by helping us to experiment with audience participation and ‘event’ like performances.
Documentation of the performance can be found on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rplo0k-oJOs
WORKS CITED:
Augé, M. (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity. London: Verso.
Bishop, C. (2006) Participation. London: The MIT Press.
Oxford University Press (2016) Oxford Dictionaries. [online] London: Oxford University Press. Available from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/palimpsest [Accessed on 12/05/16].
Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Situations (2013) Interview: Artists Wrights & Sites – Wonders of Weston (filmed 2010). [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_tjNWxQvgw [Accessed on 12/05/16].
The Collection (2016) Talk from Marcia Farquhar [online] Lincoln. Available from http://www.thecollectionmuseum.com/?/exhibitions-and-events/view/talk-from-marcia-farquhar [Accessed on 12/05/16].
Wohl, D. (2014) Site Specific Theatre. Southern Theatre. 28-35. Available from, file:///C:/Users/Alex1/Downloads/fulltext_stamped.pdf [Accessed on 11/05/2016].
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