Site-specific performance can simply mean, “in one way or another articulate exchange between the work of art and the places in which its meanings are defined”(Kaye 1: 2000).
Framing Statement:
During our first week, we found out that the city was where we would be performing out site-specific performance. One of the first main influences we focused on is Forced Entertainment who is a group of actors and actresses specialising within this performance genre. Forced Entertainment looks at how the audience is not just spectators but witnesses within their work. As Tim Etchells states: “the struggle to produce witnesses rather than spectators is present everywhere in the contemporary performance scene” (Etchells 18:1999). I knew we would be using is narrative in our performance, however, little did I know how many audience members became witnesses instead of Spector’s due to the visual and final performance I will talk through later on in this blog. Furthermore, audience interaction was a big factor at the start of devising piece of site performance.
The main idea we had was a recorded tour after looking at, ‘City Scale’ by Ken Dewey et al. We all agreed that the tour would be like a dream state where “events were purposely ambiguous so that audience members would not have the certainty of knowing whether a given incident had been planned or was happening anyway” (Dewey et al: 173…) Making audience believe in what we’re saying although we were playing with the truth which, Forced Entertainment do in ‘Nights in the city’.
See the diagram below about where we would take the audience, and the reason why there are ‘five’ points as that is where we would come out as characters. For example Point one: I would be the main tour guide however Jace would come out and tell the story or act out what happened, going back to is this real or not.
Going back to ‘Nights in the city’ by Forced Entertainment they come up with asking the public questions, “If you have to kill someone and dump the body where would you take it” (Kaye 17: 2000), Making our piece related to the site by using is technique when asking questions to the public. By asking these questions to the public we change the ‘tacit’ agreement about the High Street, changing the flow of things with different contexts. Nevertheless, the agreement we have will change back once we’ve gone, like nothing as changed, because the people who go into town have their own way around and agreement of where to go and what to do. By changing this we upset this but challenge the public by these question and change of tacit agreements.
Analysis of Process:
As time went on we found out that this tour-guided performance wasn’t for us and decide as a group to re-look and simplified our piece we were devising. After some research into the history of Lincoln, we found out about the obelisk on the high bridge. Our site performance slowly, “engages with the site as a symbol, site as story-teller, site as structure” (Pearson 8:2010). As the Obelisk stood tall this is something we wanted to recreate, by researching more into the history we found out about the use of the obelisk that being a ‘water fountain’ which, later would become our main influence.
Going back the questions to ask the public, we did some exercise to find different ways of devising and creating a piece of site performance and the exercises we looked at was’25 instructions for performance in cites’ by Carl Lavery. Combine everyday city life within a performance, Carl’s intention: “behind this article is to struggle towards a subject-specific model for teaching performance studies that blend theory with practice”(Lavery 229: 2005). At first agreeing with Carl about how hard it is to come up with work and how we steal others work. Nevertheless, Carl comes up with these 25 questions so you can create fresh new work with “performance in the city…”(Lavery 231: 2005). After reading these 25 instructions, our group was asked to pick five and one of the instructions we pick however changed was, “19. Take a video camera into the city and follow a dog or cat for as long as you can. Make a film out of this”(Lavery 236: 2005) see the clip below about how we did this exercise.
The reason we did this was for us to come up with different fresh ideas than others because members of our class had the same site as us and by using Lavery’s exercises we was able to do that.
Finding out more about our site the ‘High Bridge’ where as I said before the Obelisk stood I believe it to be a ‘nonplace’. Best way to easily describe a ‘Nonplace’ is by Auge that states:
“Place and non-place are rather like opposed polarities, the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten. But non-place are the real measure of our time” (Auge 79: 1995).
Making the high bridge being able to be rewritten about and performed on but, will always be there after. We wanted to rewrite over the site so the ‘city’ becomes, ‘palimpsest’ because by “acting out a writing over of sites already written upon”(Pearson 11: 2010). Furthermore, making our site-specific more defined by the process of erasing. Ways we did this erasing and destruction of tacit agreements, we went back to questions which got the public eye.
Few responses;
– Cathedral
– Big Tesco car pack
– That shop
– Women though that Kieran in the picture above, looked like he was in a cult.
Reason why we done this were to find a question which made the public think outside the box and not to feed them too much informing, as well at the same time we looked at re-building the obelisk out of water. I have previously spoken before about how the Obelisk was used as a water fountain to the people of Lincoln. Obelisk was built in 1762/3 in Hull then restored in 1863 and move to Lincoln High-Bridge. Where it stood for years until 1939 the obelisk was dismantled because people thought that the bridge would collapse due, to the Obelisk being too heavy and put into storage from then onwards. However, in 1996 the obelisk was reconstructed at ‘St Marks Square’ in Lincoln, so our performance would celebrate its 20th anniversary of the obelisk being rebuilt. To represent the obelisk we were to build this statue with water bottles just as it stood in 1863.
After experimenting with the water bottles we came up with a grid formation seen in these pictures below…
We found out through development and rehearsal within our site, that we could use the water bottles more within our piece. Linking this to the question we found that sticky labels on the bottles then write the answer from the question, that we were asking the public. Our piece slowly became more of a visual performance as well object and art in a way, however, relied on audience participation a bit too much. Nevertheless, we continued done this route with water bottles but again changed it to more of a sculpture. Having the water bottles spread over the site, as well using white board signs to get the publics’ eye. Furthermore, we linked our question to water as it was like a cycle ‘In one word what do you value in life?’ making our question about life as you need water to survive, as well recreating what the obelisk used to do. Our performance was in three stages:
1- Water bottles and labels – putting answers from the questions you see above on the labels and placed in a specific way. Also, making the public write themselves on these water bottles as well placing them.
2- Observing the water bottle sculpture making it more of an installation on the High Bridge.
3- ‘Free water’, giving out the water at the end because going back to the obelisk that’s what it did also, we wanted to bring the community together by doing this.
Here is some response from doing our performance a few times:
– Family
– Friends
– Sex
– Money
– Education
– Myself
– Life
– My Wife
Putting these answers on the water bottles gave the bottles identity so when we gave them out people who took the water would think of their family if they pick up a water bottle with family on. However,
Our site- performance becoming more object/art heavy and Miwon Kwon states: “If you have to change a sculpture for a site there is something wrong with the sculpture”(Kwon 11: 2004). By changing the water bottles’ from together to a foot apart which you can see from the pictures above, making it better for the site and visual for the public. We found that the public didn’t understand fully where we were doing, and when they came to ask us we hardly had a script so the conversation would go off topic and break the performance. Due, to our piece being to an audience based we had to simplified it more and not look at it was a performance but as well more with our main influence, ‘water’ so we went and done this exercise of writing/playing with 100 things to do with water.
We found that our, “site-specific work in its earliest formation then, focused on establishing an inextricable, indivisible relationship between the work and it’s site and demanded the physical presence of the viewer for the work’s completion” (Kwon 12: 2004). Furthermore, our piece wasn’t visual enough for the audience and even came into a danger of blocking the High Street. After playing with water we came up with the idea of purifying the water from the Brayford. We came up with a 6 station cycle, where we all moved from every 20 minutes as our then agreed with making it 6 hours long as we didn’t want to rush our new performance.
Diagram below you see is our final work of site-specific performance; we also wore white plastic type suits, reason behind this was to say we were an ensemble/unity of water purification
We had a script, which was used, as I would say ‘guidelines’ however, making sure you always bring the conversation back to the water. Script;
‘Hi, my name is Tom. We are bucketing water out of the Brayford; bring to the big container you see there. Moving into those three containers at the back on the High Bridge as a process of water flowing. Then filtering the water three times with the middle container being the one where we added the purification tablets. After all, that we pour the clean water into a spray bottle and spray/clean the water back into the Brayford. (Wait for response…) So tell me Sir/Madam do you have any experiences’ with water?’
Figure 14: Credited Ben
Performance Evaluation
After a successful 6 -hour performance with water, I find myself already finding ways of self/group improvement already.
Pros;
|
– Good level of audience reaction/engagement
|
| -Visual and audible noise of the water hitting the Brayford (Creating a rainbow) |
| – Good group dynamic |
| – Good level of Energy |
Cons;
|
-More Filter Jugs – Negative audience reaction e.g.; shouting and spitting |
|
– More scripted material -Better grounded rules (Breaks) |
| – Environment |
| – Public intentionally endangering. |
Pros and Cons list is a good way to relate to what went well and how we could have improved. Our piece about water was so visual that the audience did what we wanted that was so they come ‘spectators’ and apart from the performance by engaging with the piece by as simple watching together. Doing as we had planned to bring the people of Lincoln together as a community like it once was years old that valued water.
However, we did have things wrong as you can see in the con section you see above. We had a lady argue: “What you’re doing is killing life” another lady spilt at us, but you can’t please everyone in life, which is ironic.
If I were to do this piece again I would make it longer, add more breaks, even look into filming from a different viewpoint then streaming the recorded video back onto the Brayford itself or building. I would look at the noise only and do a piece with a blindfolded audience who just hear the noise of water and see how that affects the site as well, the audience untaken in this performance.
In summary, then I have enjoyed my time doing this site-specific performance and gained new knowledge as well, respect for those who specialise within is performance genre. One day soon I will hopefully be doing another site-specific performance plus even might go into this area after University.
Biography
Books;
Auge, M (1995) Non-Places:Indroduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity: London, New York.
Etchelles, T (1999) Certain Fragments. London: Routlegde
Kaye, N (2000) Site-Specific Art. London: Routledge.
Kwon, M (2002) One Place After Another. Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.
Pearson, M (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan.
PDF/Websites/Videos;
Dewey, K, Martin, A and Sender, R. City Scale. Available from https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-1155877-dt-content-rid-2084524_2/courses/DRA2035M-1516/DRA2035M-1516_ImportedContent_20150807123831/city%20scale%20score.pdf
Lavery, C (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 Instructions for Performance in cites. Intellect Ltd. Available from https://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-1155877-dt-content-rid-2084523_2/courses/DRA2035M-1516/DRA2035M-1516_ImportedContent_20150807123831/Carl%20Lavery%20article%20%281%29.pdf [Accessed on 12th May 2016)
[accessed on 12th May 2016]
Peck, B. (2016) H2O. [online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ejgHF15Mpl8. [Accessed 12 May 2016]
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