Posted on No Comments on Chloe Frampton, Final Submission: Potted Protest.

Chloe Frampton, Final Submission: Potted Protest.

Framing Statement.

The main interest of our group was to create site specific performance art that was both political and historically relevant to our chosen space. Potted Protest took place in Cornhill, a public square space on Lincoln High Street, named in 2011 as Speaker’s Corner. It lasted over two hours, involving one-to-one interactions and also a visual representation of protest.

The start of our process as a group involved engaging with the environment of the city. With any environment there is sort of a context, whether it be historically or socially and in a sense it is the building blocks of a site. People without even necessarily knowing it have a tacit agreement within these sites, whereby they understand the rules of the space they are in. Things become more interesting when this agreement is disrupted and without even realising it a performance is made.

The environment of Speakers Corner for us seemed like an empty space that needed to be acknowledged in relation to its historical context. Its metaphorical meaning of freedom of speech and historical link to the Suffragette Rally in 1908 seemed to be overshadowed by the busyness of everyday life. The tacit agreement that had been created, for us needed to be disrupted in a way that used the site for its specific purpose of protest.

Figure 1:Suffragette Rally (speakerscornertrust.org, 2016)
Figure 1:Suffragette Rally (speakerscornertrust.org, 2016)

The aim for us was to reference a binary of this landmark space, into a place where people use it to express their voice.  The combination of both Capitalism and feminism within the space made our research difficult to pin point theories and practitioners. That was until we were introduced to the creative, everyday workings of Situationists. These were people who suggested that revolution needs to be alive and real in response to capitalism and oppression’s in a way that ignore everyday life.

We wanted to create a protest of thought, not necessarily our thoughts, but our audiences. The situations that people create make them look at the space in a new way, ignoring the consumer culture of the everyday. This led our piece to be influenced from theories of live art and people like Adrian Howells and Deride Heddon, who take more of  a back seat allowing their audiences to frame the work

 

‘Silence rings out loudly, offering another place to “be” or to become: to reflect, to imagine, to project, to re-connect- with self and others and other selves- through the unique relationship of a quiet, considered, one-to-one encounter.’ (Howells, 2011, 1)

 

These notions of silence, participation and one-to-one encounters framed our piece. Our silence demonstrates that it is not us that creates the art, it is the participants. We are merely layering history from the ghosts of the Suffragettes protest, going right back to when the site was a field. The one-to-one encounter involves a transaction where we thorough instructions ask the audience-participant to answer the question:

Figure 2: The Question. Credit: Emily Bickerdike (2016)
Figure 2: The Question. Credit: Emily Bickerdike (2016)

 

Through growth we nurture their voice in either form of placards in plant pots that fill the space or the destroying of post-it notes into soil for the plants.

Analysis process.

History in the making.

We started the development of our piece by looking at the site and what drew us to the space of Speakers Corner. When going into the space we noticed the amount of big branded businesses and banks that surrounded the area, with the odd empty shop that seemed so little in comparison and yet jumped out at us. This notion of Capitalism surround the space, bringing us to question whether much had changed in terms of equality since the Suffragette rally. This historical event became a recurring stimulus for our performance, considering the idea of maybe recreating what had once been.  This would display it as a platform that gives people the power to voice their opinions . However I believed that perhaps it shouldn’t be us protesting, the audience themselves should  be encouraged to, as it is them who need to be aware of the spaces purpose.

Figure 3: The empty square. Credit: Emily Bikerdike (2016)
Figure 3: The empty square. Credit: Emily Bikerdike (2016)

In keeping with the Suffragettes we thought of maybe using one of the empty shops to invite women in and offer them something in exchange for a free conversation about contemporary issues of women today .Then we would demonstrate these voices in the empty square. The relevance of this was the fact that the space itself still seemed to be quite male dominated,  especially finding out that there was a lack of female managers.

 Artwork.

Through research we came across the notion of live art and how it focuses on the here and now.  It offers ‘a means to critique cultural norms, fixed perceptions and sediment values’ (Heddon and Klein, 2012, 176 ) which lead us to think of what sort of question we wanted to ask. The continuous presence of banks and businesses in the space brought us to this idea of power and exploring what power people feel they have as a person today. As our common aim was to provide opportunities for opinions to be heard and to inspire others to do so now and in the future, we felt in the end we shouldn’t have any particular type of gender answering the question.

When it came to displaying these thoughts we wanted to fill the empty outside square in some way that would demonstrate freedom of speech. We came up with the idea of the audience-participant writing the answer on a small post-it which we would then take and enlarge on placards. This would create a sort of live installation of thought where the audience act as the artist and performer, creating the piece themselves.  This type of work engaged with Happenings were the viewer becomes more than an observer, they actively participate.

Our silence for us would play a key factor in the piece as it creates a sort of contrast with the suffragettes. The placards that we plan to place around the square are recognised from the time of the suffragettes to now as a symbol for protest. These are the focal points of the piece, as they say the political message louder than we can.

The artist Suzanne Lacy claims that ‘what exists in the space between the words public and art is an unknown relationship between artist and audience, a relationship that may itself be artwork.” (Kwon, 2004, 105) The space of Speaker’s corner is a place for the community of Lincoln to be vocal, we as performers are aware of this and feel it is necessary for us to acknowledge the spaces purpose for the people. This is the relationship we  want to achieve, where we provide the knowledge and our audience create the ‘artwork’.  Similar to Lacy’s work Auto on the Edge of Time creating a series of installations that project the communities thoughts, developing their own political art.

(suzannelacy.com,1993)
Figure 4: Auto on the Edge of Time. (suzannelacy.com, 1993)

Experimenting.

We began to look at the more silent methods of protest in terms of the Suffragettes hunger strikes.  This led us to look at food, especially in relation to the businesses around the space and there use of bright neon lights to lure people in . We decided to experiment, we bought some cakes and masking tape and then proceeded to force feed each other, similar to the outcome of the suffragettes hunger strikes. This we felt may also link to society forcing views on people, representing the force feeding of money and consumerist culture.

We also went into town with a sign that had the question we plan to ask ‘What power do you feel you have in today’s society?’ This we found was not enough to engage participants due to the fact we only had one sign. Going back to our idea of food we thought perhaps it would be better to offer the public cake in return for their thoughts, instead of force feeding each other. This would create a more specific aspect to the site and its key relationship of being a place for political activism. It also brings the focus back to them as artists and forming a new connection with ‘place and the purpose for being there’ (Pearson, 2010, 7).

Figure 5: Emily Bickerdike holding the sign. Credit: Emily Vickers (2016)
Figure 5: Emily Bickerdike holding the sign. Credit: Emily Vickers (2016)

The Question.

In wanting to explore how our piece could be ‘context-specific, debate-specific, community specific’ (Kwon, 2004, 2) we went into Speaker’s Corner again and made multiple signs to bring people over to talk about the question. Through discussion we found that we did have more people come up to us this time because there was an offer of free cake. The question itself confused people as to what power we were referring to due to it not containing the word ‘society’ to start with. This reveled to us the importance of making it easy for people to recognise what we are asking and how vital the word ‘society’ in the question is.

Figure 6: The three of us in the space. Credit: Emily Vickers (2016)
Figure 6: The three of us in the space. Credit: Emily Vickers (2016)

We brought the experience back to class talking though our performance and ideas, focusing particularly on the concept of transactions. Through the feedback we found that to keep the piece relevant to the space we needed to offer the audience-participant something more physical. This would leave a constant reminder in their head of the space and it being a place of ‘free power’ for the whole community.

 Transaction and One-to-one.

We were conscious of the ATM machines in the area that ‘now perform tasks that once represented so many opportunities for exchanges’ (Bishop, 2006, 162 ).  Machines take your card and in return give you money, but this transaction is not offering you any one-to-one interaction.  The artist Adrian Howells creates intimate performances that actively invite the audience’s physical and emotional participation. One-to-one encounters became key to our performance as we wanted the space to be a shared act, with us almost taking the cue from the audience. In doing so Emily Bickerdike would sit in the middle of the space, make eye contact with the person and hand them the first paper of instructions, allowing the participant to read it; then hand them another piece of paper with the question on as well as a post-it note, maintaining eye contact, they write down their answer. Their answer could either be destroyed or displayed, what we would give them in return is a link to a blog containing information about the piece and Speaker’s corner.

 www.speakerscorner.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/about-speakers-corner

Figure 7: The Blog. Credit: Emily Bickerdike (2016)
Figure 7: The Blog. Credit: Emily Bickerdike (2016)

Growth in Appearance.

Identifying our individual roles within the piece and what they meant was our next challenge. We realized that there was an over-complication in our thinking and it needed to focus more on growth through thoughts and in voice. Research into the piece The Garden of Adrian showed how nature creates ‘a sense of time slowing down, an escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life’ (Heddon, 2011, 10). This began us thinking of what sort of natural environment we three could make in this busy space of the city.  We came up with the idea of placing the placards into pots which I would water and nurture the thoughts it contained. This would form a tree like image, which I looked in to further, finding that the expansion of trees can be seen through roots.  I suggested the role of nurturing could also be shown by drawing roots on the floor, which would fill the space, creating a sort of intertwining map of thought and growth. The roots therefore represent an embedding of that person’s voice that slowly expands in the site.

Figure 8: The Roots from page to space. (Frampton, 2016)
Figure 8: The Roots from page to space. (Frampton, 2016)

The destroying of the answers was our next task, suggesting that perhaps it could be done with a shredder. To further develop this image we decided on a hand-shredder as the destroying can be seen to be done by the person physically.  Emily Vickers individual role would then be to take the shredding and turn that paper into compost of the ‘plants’ mixing it with her own hands. This emphasises the idea of a natural cycle with any thought being able to fuel protest and change.

Figure 9: Mixing of shredding into soil. Credit Emily Vickers (2016)
Figure 9: Mixing of shredding into soil. Credit Emily Vickers (2016)

Observation.

To experiment with this plant notion we decided to go into the space with a pot, soil, broomstick and tape to make a placard sign out of cardboard. This time we decided to not stand with the sign, but simply see how the public would react and interact with the question. Through observation we saw that most people who were not in groups tended to just examine the sign. In contrast the groups of people, noticed the sign and disgusted the question. Both of these results were beneficial to the piece, as those who didn’t speak represented the shredded thoughts and those that did, the placards.

Figure 10: Public's reaction to the signs. (Frampton, 2016)
Figure 10: Public’s reaction to the signs. (Frampton, 2016)

Performance Evaluation

The outcome of our performance in Speakers Corner was displayed with multiple meanings drawn from placards, roots, watering, gagging and shredding. The combination of all these things helped to show the growth of thought through the voices of our audience.

Nature and Nurture.

Our plan to create a live installation of thought in the space worked in the creation of the plant pots on the day. Through trial and error beforehand we were able to recognize that the structure of the plant pots needed to be weighed down by sand so they stand up. In wanting to maintain the idea of growth we still mixed it with soil throughout to create the tree like idea. This allowed things to run more smoothly as they stayed up and didn’t distract people from the thoughts they contained.

The nurturing of the plant pots was strong in the elements of watering and the expansion of roots. I was able to show the growth of thought by the intriguing image that was created with the roots filling the whole space. This enabled us to show connection of thought through the overlapping and development of voice.

(Fallon, 2016)
Figure 11: Me drawing roots. Credit Rebecca Fallon (2016)

Further strength came from the constant mixing of the shredded answers with the turning of soil into compost every ten minutes. In allowing the audience to shred their own answers it provided full confidence that the answer they had given would be destroyed. This in return made us more background and the audience-participant center to the piece. The nurturing of their voice was then down to us, which was created with mixing the shredded paper into the bigger placards.

(Fallon, 2016)
Figure 12: The Mixing of soil into plant pots. Credit: Rebecca Fallon (2016)

The Power.

The gagging of our mouths in the piece helped add a silence aspect to us, and focus the power on the audience-participants. We had a variety of audience-participants, which helped demonstrate the spaces intention of anyone being able to have freedom of speech. The instructions and eye contact that was given to the audience-participant  was successful in creating a space full of empowered voices.

(Bickerdike, 2016)
Figure 13: The instructions. Credit Emily Bickerdike (2016)

Reflection.

Hearing the outside discussions from those people who just watched the piece indicated to us that our piece was thought provoking  and yet allowed people to engage with the space in many different ways.

When looking back at our work  there are areas that could be improved if we were to do it again. The use of inviting signs would be made more obvious by Emily Bikerdike holding it up to the audience-participants to take a seat when the chair had a long period of emptiness.In relation to the observing audience we would add more placards to the space and perhaps place them in different directions so everyone can engage with the space, as not  all did.

‘ The most complete change an individual can effect in his environment, short of destroying it, is to change his attitude to it.’ (Heddon and Klein, 2012, 182)

I learn’t when creating performance in a non-traditional environment you need to  recognize it in ways you usually wouldn’t.  The attitude of a site can be enhanced by digging into its history and effecting it. The changing of an audience’s attitude can be done by acknowledging the specific purpose of the site. This form of theater showed me that any place can become a performance space once you engage with its surroundings and context, in our case the power of voice.

Word count: 2,694

Work Cited:

  •  Bishop, C. (2006) Participation. London: The MIT Press.
  • Heddon, D. and Klein, J.(2012) Histories and Practices of Live Art. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Heddon, D. and Howells, A. (2011) From talking to silence: a confessional journey. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 33 (1) 1-12.
  • Kwon, M. (2004) One place after another: site-specific art and locational identity. Cambridge, Mass, London: MIT
  • Lacy, S. (2015) Suzanne Lacy. [online] Available from: http://www.suzannelacy.com/early-works/#/auto-on-the-edge-of-time/ [Accessed 10 May 2016].
  • Pearson, M. (2010) Site Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan
  •  Speaker’s Corner Trust (undated) Roadtesting the Speaker’s Corner Site at Lincoln’s Cornhill [online] Available from http://www.speakerscornertrust.org/library/videos/roadtesting-the-speakers-corner-site-at-lincolns-cornhill/[Accessed 11 May 2016].
  •  Tahssein, S. (2016) Potted Protest [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_-78WHuvBs [Accessed 12 May 2016]
  • Vickers, E (2016) Force Feeding: Suffragettes [Online] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdrH87YaXoQ [Accessed 12 May 2016]
Posted on No Comments on You Look Lovely Today: Tabitha Foster Final Blog Submission

You Look Lovely Today: Tabitha Foster Final Blog Submission

Framing Statement

You Look Lovely Today was a site-specific performance performed at the Glory Hole on the 6th May 2016, lasting approximately thirty minutes. As a group we agreed our site needed a strong historical context. After researching locations across the City, we decided on The Glory Hole as it was imbued with history- previously used as a bustling marketplace that sold goods such as meat, fruit and wool. As the site is considered particularly negative nowadays, the stark contrast between now and then inspired us to bring the site back to life. Our intention was to transform our site from a ‘non-place’ (Auge, 1995), a mere passageway, a route from one place to another, into a destination, a place where people arrive and spend time noticing and admiring the architecture and celebratory atmosphere around them.

Our main research influence came from Marcia Farquhar, in particular her celebratory touring piece called ‘The Onward Tour’. From her work we were inspired to celebrate our site and give our audience the opportunity to move through and around our location, absorbing the history and taking part in the celebration that is unfolding around them. However, after performing the elements of a marketplace, it became clear that we were too fixated with the past. We needed to bring the performance ‘forward’ to life, with a fresh identity that responded to society now.

We modified the multiple performance components and focused on one element of the whole process. This element took the form of wool. Incorporating wool in our performance was something we agreed on early in the process, as it had strong historical references, as well as offering numerous opportunities for performance in terms of construction and transporting. The new addition was to give out compliments. We used wool to transport paper compliments in a bottle through the river, and tied them onto our ‘bunting of compliments’ also made of wool. Furthermore, we created a web spanning the width of the river, connecting each end to a metal railing. Therefore, our idea adapted from celebrating the history of our site, to celebrating the site itself and the people that inhabit the site in the present, “it’s not just about place, but the people who normally inhabit and use that place. For it wouldn’t exist without them” (Pearson, 2010, 8).

 

An Analysis of Process

As a group, we wanted to revive a place in Lincoln High Street that attracts little attention and appreciation. The area behind Stokes Café- a Tudor style café that preserved it’s original architecture- is a place called the High Bridge, or more colloquially, the Glory Hole. It is predominantly used as a passageway or shortcut for people in the town to walk towards the University or the waterfront. In conjunction with its odd name, there have been previous unpleasant incidences at the Glory Hole, which inevitably creates a negative atmosphere towards the area. This is exactly one of the reasons why we chose it as our site, in order to re-vive and restore positivity to a place with such negative associations. As a site specific performance can be perceived as a reaction to the histories and properties of a certain location, we agreed it would be beneficial to record our initial reactions to the properties of our chosen site. Though there are two entrances into the Glory Hole, the entrance coming from the University as opposed to the town allows you to get a clear view of the bridge with the café on top, the water flowing underneath and the two alleyways either side. As we arrived from this entrance, we immediately thought of confinement, suppression, close proximity and darkness. Our first impressions were undoubtedly dark and negative, as the site radiated a sense of imprisonment due to its narrow features.

The Glory Hole (Revill, 2016).
The Glory Hole (Revill, 2016).

However, after researching the history of the site, we discovered what used to be was in stark contrast to what is there now. The bridge is one of the oldest in England to still have houses built upon it, dating back to 1160 AD. The name was coined by generations of fishermen and boaters who used the River Witham to sail from the Brayfood Pool to Boston and the sea. During this time, the fish was caught locally in the Witham itself, and sold on the bridge along with fresh fruit- particularly oranges- and vegetables. Vessels loaded with wool passed under the bridge, while above stood porters waiting to be hired. Around the 1790s, there was a fierce debate between the citizens of the town to whether the river should be made narrower and deeper so it could be used all year around. Before the construction took place, wooden planks were laid across the water and a celebration dance was held under the bridge. Furthermore, “farmers from the surrounding district brought meat, either by boat or wagon, to be bartered at this busy spot.” (Stokes, 2014). As this once busy, bustling marketplace was so prominent in the area, Stokes Café have written a history account on the location, revealing that “the bridge must often have assumed the appearance of an open-air market, swarming with life and activity” (Stokes, 2014).

As the act of trading goods was so fundamental to the history of the site, we connected to the idea of exchange, as we believed the insertion of historical themes would throw new light on our site while giving it “unsuspected power” (Pearson, 2010, 1). After agreeing that our performance would be heavily influenced by historical factors, we undertook research on how the forgotten histories of a site can inform processes and practices. One article that provided inspiration was An Introduction to Site Specific Performance, where Jen Harvie proposes, “site specific performance can be especially powerful as a vehicle for remembering and forming a community […] its location can work as a potent mnemonic trigger” (Pearson, 2010, 9). By allowing the “past to surge into the present” (Pearson, 2010, 9), our intention was to change the way people perceive the Glory Hole, from a place of pessimism to a place of celebration and exchange.

After collecting and documenting information about the history of our site, we began acquiring inspiration from site-specific practitioners and methodologies. As we were interested in reinventing places, Anthropologist Marc Auge proved to be very helpful with his theory of ‘places and non-places’. In his essay titled An Introduction to Anthropology and Supermodality, Auge proposes, “if a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place” (Auge, 1995). This new found information sparked discussion in the group as to whether the Glory Hole is a place or a ‘non-place’. We knew that the site had historical context, with relational aspects and a unique identity, but did our audience know that? Therefore, we concluded that although it may be termed a ‘place’ according to Auge, we wanted to make our audience aware of the Glory Hole’s potential to become a place, a destination and a terminus; qualities of places that are so frequently ignored in everyday life.

In order to do this, we needed to form the foundations of our performance structure. A practitioner that heavily influenced our structure was Marcia Farquhar, who’s work focuses on history, psycho-geographies, memories and objects. One piece in particular, named The Onward Tour (http://www.marciafarquhar.com/the-onward-tour/), successfully incorporated location with the layering of histories and socio-geographies. Farquhar conducted a tour around London, referencing the festival of Britain that happened sixty years prior during the Cold War. During the tour Farquhar comments on how she feels the ghosts of that day when the crowds gather again at the same place. We believed this tied in effectively our idea of reviving our site and responding to the contextual histories re-enacting and celebrating them. Farquhar recognises that during tours, people can have a boredom threshold; so she addresses this by orchestrating planned interventions for the tour, like actors kissing and volunteers handing out lemonade. As a group we drew inspiration from these multiple installations people see on a tour, and gained a collective interest in the curiosity of whether the events are staged or not.

We began to put theory into practice and started experimenting with re-creating a marketplace, using elements of the historical context such as the exchange of goods, the celebratory dancing, the recruitment of porters and the transportation of fruit. This took the form of dragging oranges along the Brayford River, pulling them out and squeezing them into juice.

(Foster, 2016)
Transporting the oranges (Foster, 2016)
(Foster, 2016)
Squeezing the juice (Foster, 2016)

 

Shannen accompanied this action by declaring that it was ‘Brayford fresh!’ which acted as a representation of the fruit being transported along the river on boats and bartered to the customers at the end of its journey. To symbolise the market exchange, we tied wool to either side of the bridge, and constructed a pull system that enabled bags of fruit to be transported from either side of the river. On one side, I would ask the customers whether they would like a piece of fruit, to which Dan would send over the item while repeating the order of goods she is transporting.

 

Fruit Exchange (Foster, 2016)

 

We could not cover the river with wooden slats and dance on them due to the frequency of the boats passing through, however we experimented with dancing on a movable surface, such as cardboard or a crate, and encouraged passers by to dance with us. We did not want to replicate the market place entirely; we wanted to create symbolic representations of what used to be. We yet again took inspiration from Auge in terms of a re-writing and re-inventing a site; our symbolic representations will act as “palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten” (Auge, 1995). Cathy Turner, a member of Wrights and Sites, is also known for her interest in ‘palimpsest’, whereby something is “altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). This idea was prominent in our piece as we allowed the layers of the old marketplace to shine through. As we believe the Glory Hole is a liminal space because it is betwixt and between/here and there, this notion of re-writing was intended to renovate the site and give it a new identity.

Rather than guide the audience, we wanted the audience to chose their path, giving them the freedom to explore the elements they connect to, much like a “constellation of nodes that people can join up for themselves” (Situations, 2013). We believed this would also represent the spontaneity of the marketplace when it was its most popular. People will inevitably have a path in mind, with tacit agreements on how to act during their journey, however we wanted to obstruct these tacit agreements and understood routines with unplanned events and distractions that they wouldn’t normally expect on their journey. Nigel Thrift’s non-representational theory deals with the “geography of what happens” (Pearson, 2010, 14) which concerns movement and understood routines of everyday life. Thrift mentions the “sophisticated social improvisation in a thinned out world” (Pearson, 2010, 14), which relates to the planned spontaneity that we perform when we encounter unplanned interactions. As humans we have already learned the rules and regulations of conversation, therefore we use these agreements to respond and deal with spontaneous interactions. These tacit agreements will therefore be broken as we interfere with their routine. As our audience is an integral part of our piece, they will be contributing to the hustle and bustle of a market place by moving through the space.

Once we had established our performance elements, we presented our work to gain feedback and improvements and develop our work to the highest standard. We performed for around 40 minutes, repeating each process and swapping roles after 5 minutes of each section to maintain a lively and bustling atmosphere. Following the feedback, it became apparent that the performance as a whole was substantially detached. We incorporated medieval music that played throughout the process, which further distracted from the events happening within the site. Each instillation of movement proved to be too separated from each other, distancing the audience rather than encouraging them to participate. As the original marketplace integrated the people of the town, it seemed contradictory to exclude the community.

However, one element that emitted poetic attributes and proved to be the most aesthetically pleasing was the wool-tie exchange. We responded to our feedback by shifting our focus solely on the wool and the notion of exchange. This was essentially the core component in the marketplace as a whole, therefore it seemed wiser to develop and expand on this concept. We undertook research in exchange and transactions to enhance our process and inform our performance. I was particularly interested in the face-to-face transactions that we were intending to acquire from people. I undertook research into conversational and transactional performance, and discovered the article From Talking to Silence by Deirdre Heddon and Adrian Howells. Throughout his work, “Howells structures his performances around dual notions of “transaction” and “transformation,” with exchange anchored in the dialogic: the oral/aural, the spoken and heard” (Heddon and Howells, 2011, 1). As our intention was to revive the history of the marketplace focusing on the element of exchange, we failed to recognise the exchange of language. Communication was the heart and soul of the market place; it determined people’s purchases and gave them the ability to show appreciation for their goods. Taking inspiration from Adrian Howells, we wanted to maximize the opportunities for our audience to have one-to-one encounters with real people, in an age where increasing mass-mediation equals increasing online interaction.

 

An Exchange (Tabitha Foster, 2016)
An Exchange (Revill, 2016)

To encourage our audience members to engage in conversation, we decided that complimenting them would act as a friendly icebreaker and give them a subtle confidence boost. Instead of oranges, the compliments will be secured in a glass bottle and dragged through the Brayford water, symbolising the boats that used to pass through. To enhance the celebratory atmosphere, we decided to create a bunting using the paper compliments by tying another string of wool on either side of the bridge, and attaching them one by one. The compliments will be pre-written, and handed out to the public, giving them the option of keeping their compliment or adding it to the celebratory bunting.

 

Bottles as Boats (Foster, 2016).
Bottled Compliments (Revill, 2016).
Compliment Bunting (Revill, 2016).
13152690_987735857988187_924190151_n
The Exchange (Foster, 2016)

Performance Evaluation

Our final performance had inevitably developed and adapted from our original idea, however the final product was more concise and dealt symbolically with the process of exchange rather than simply re-enacting history. Our initial idea meant that we had to gather an audience to create a destination, yet our adapted idea targeted passers-by, which heightened the spontaneity of the piece and referenced the spontaneity of the original marketplace. The spontaneity also related to the frequent passing of canal boats. Each time a boat passed, we lifted up the wool ties and unknowingly created an elaborate archway that initially caused confusion to the boaters, but also sparked appreciation and admiration.

 

13183193_10208906375112741_635809520_n
A Woollen Archway (Walls, 2016)

The unsuspected ‘audience’ was very intrigued by our performance, and my role of transporting the bottles along the water allowed me to explain the reasoning for our performance and provide some history whilst walking. We received many encouraging comments in response to our free compliments; one woman revealed that her compliment ‘brightened up her day’, and that ‘more people should give and receive compliments’. Furthermore, a passerby that was particularly interested in our piece stated that it was ‘a lovely way to inject happiness into a place with such negativity attached to it’. As audience participation was integral to our performance, we gave them the option to tie their complement themselves, or if they wanted to stand and admire it. Marc Auge believes “if a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity” (Auge, 1995) then it can be considered a place. The audience participation, combined with spoken histories and a celebratory renovation to the site confirmed that we had transformed the supposed ‘non-place’ back (or ’forward’) to a place.

 

A Woollen Exchange (Walls, 2016)

 

(Word Count: 2,673)

Video documentation of the performance can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rplo0k-oJOs

 

Works Cited

 

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

 

Farquhar, M. (2011) The Onward Tour [online] London. Available from http://www.marciafarquhar.com/the-onward-tour/ [Accessed on 10 May 2016].

 

Heddon, D. and Howells, A. (2011) FROM TALKING TO SILENCE: A Confessional Journey. PAJ: A journal of Performance Art, 33 (1), 1-12.

 

Oxford University Press (2016) Oxford Dictionaries. [online] London: Oxford University Press. Available from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/palimpsest [Accessed on 10 May 2016].

 

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 10 May 2016].

 

Stokes of Lincoln (2014) History of the High Bridge. [Website] Lincoln. Available from http://stokes-coffee.co.uk/history-high-bridge/ [Accessed on 10 May 2016].

Posted on No Comments on H20: Final Blog Submission. Thomas May

H20: Final Blog Submission. Thomas May

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).

Figure 1: credited clit art
Figure 1: credited clit art

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.

Diagram of our guided tour.
Diagram of our guided tour.

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.

Figure 2
Figure 2

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.

Figure 2: If aliens were to land on the high street where would they land?”.
Figure 2: If aliens were to land on the high street where would they land?”.

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…

Figure 3: Planning the rebuild out of water
Figure 3: Planning the rebuild out of water

 

Figure 4: Putting water into practice
Figure 4: Putting water into practice

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.

Figure 5: structure of the water bottles
Figure 5: structure of the water bottles
Figure 6: Jack with our main question about water/life.
Figure 6: Jack with our main question about water/life.
Figure 7: Two sign’s to engage with the audience attention plus water sculpture.
Figure 7: Two sign’s to engage with the audience attention plus water sculpture.
Figure 8: end stage of our performance, giving the water out to the public.
Figure 8: end stage of our performance, giving the water out to the public.

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

Water Cycle
Water Cycle
Figure 9: Station 1, Jace pouring water into the main container: credited Ashley Walls.
Figure 9: Station 1, Jace pouring water into the main container: credited Ashley Walls.
Figure 10: Station 2, me watching this process and timekeeping: credited Ashley Walls.
Figure 10: Station 2, me watching this process and timekeeping: credited Ashley Walls.
Figure 11: Station 3, Kieran judging the water between to the two containers. Credited Ashley Walls.
Figure 11: Station 3, Kieran judging the water between to the two containers. Credited Ashley Walls.
Figure 12: Station 4, Jace filtering through the water as a three-stage process with filter jugs and purification tablets. Credited Ashley Walls
Figure 12: Station 4, Jace filtering through the water as a three-stage process with filter jugs and purification tablets. Credited Ashley Walls
Figure 13: Station 5, me spraying the purified water back into the Brayford as a water cycle and process of life.
Figure 13: Station 5, me spraying the purified water back into the Brayford as a water cycle and process of life. Credited Ashely Walls.

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]

Posted on No Comments on These Bloody Train Lines – Francesca Bolingbroke – Final Blog Submission

These Bloody Train Lines – Francesca Bolingbroke – Final Blog Submission

Framing Statement:

Our performance was based on the history of train stations in Lincoln, specifically the disused St Marks station and the current Lincoln Central. The historical element was initially so that we would have something else to bulk out our performance time, but it turned out that this addition was the real making of our piece. The performance was a variation of a guided tour, similar to Marcia Farquhar. But it wasn’t a ‘good’ guided tour – we kept it rough at the edges and fairly informal. This was to try and keep whatever audience we had at ease, and give them a laugh when we stumbled over our facts. Although, in turn this could have made the audience more awkward about the tour, making them question why they were doing this. Either one is a reaction and the reaction is what we wanted. The piece took around 15-20 minutes in total. Our audience was the select few we had invited to see the tour, plus any public that wanted to join or listened to the song as we played it, the public were a vital piece in our performance as they were the ones who would tell us whether or not we had succeeded in making them smile as they waited at the most miserable place in Lincoln.

Our performance depended on the train barriers being down, because otherwise the whole meaning of the piece would have been changed, so our timing had to coincide with the barriers. We were limited as either side of our allotted time was a huge gap of time where no trains passed through. 1.30 was our ideal time. Our performance consisted of starting at St Marks square next to PureGym. This is significant because the building next to PureGym is a replica of the old signal box that was there, and the original sign from St Marks station is placed on this building. (See Fig. 1) Then as we walked down past the building that now holds shops such as Mothercare, Sports Direct, Lakeland and more, I talked about the history of the building and how it is still the original station building, how it has won the Ian Allan preservation award and how the building was designed by I.A. Davies for Midland Railway Company in 1846, plus some other facts here and there. We took a minor detour into Lakeland through the old entrance to the station to view the scaled down tribute of the station. (See Fig. 2) This consists of an old timetable pole with copies of the real timetables on, plus a brief explanation of St Marks station. I noted that you can see on the floor where the platform may have ended and the tracks may have run. We then walked into Argos to view the photos that are on display in the entrance. (See Fig 3.) We tried to get in touch with the photographer Michael Hollist, however we had no success. After Argos, we looked out across the road and took note of the old signal house accommodation, which is now ‘Mr Chippy’ – Chris then suggested we go across to see the commemorative plaque that is placed on the wall. (See Fig 4.) After this we walked down the high street to the current train barriers, commenting on the building of St Marks shopping centre and other odd facts about the disused train station. Once we got to the barriers, luckily they were down, Kai and our guest Jordan were able to start playing the song they’d written for the piece. This got a brilliantly emotive response from the audience, with someone even throwing us money and applauding us! This was an amazing achievement for us, as all we’ve wanted to do the entire time was make people happy, and this proves we did.

The replica signal box with the original sign mounted on.
Fig 1. (Bolingbroke, 2016) The replica signal box with the original sign mounted on.
Chris sitting by the Lakeland Tribute.
Fig 2. (Bolingbroke, 2016) Chris sitting by the Lakeland Tribute.
Chris and I showing one of the Argos display photos.
Fig 3. (Bolingbroke, 2016) Chris and I showing one of the Argos display photos.
Mr Chippy with the commemorative plaque on the wall.
Fig 4. (Bolingbroke, 2016) Mr Chippy with the commemorative plaque on the wall.

Analysis of Process:

Site specific performance as an art is a complex one to define, with everyone’s interpretation being different depending on how they were introduced to the subject and how they feel about it. I think the person who came closest to successfully defining it in a short, simple way was Nick Kaye: “…articulate exchanges between the work of art and the places in which its meanings were defined…” (Kaye, 2000, 1). I partially agree with this, because our performance was a work of art, and it was in a place where some NEW and additional meanings were defined, however the real meaning of our performance was established before we even had a performance: to make people happy, or to care for people.

Our site was a very open space, being the high street. There were many options we could have taken during our initial exploration of potential ideas, however we decided that the most miserable place on the high street was the train lines, as you get stuck for up to 10 minutes sometimes, waiting for multiple 20 plus carriage freight trains to pass by. This is extremely infuriating especially when you have a class to get to, or a bus to catch. It’s also infuriating anyway because you feel like you could be doing something more productive than just standing waiting for a stupidly long period of time for a single carriage train to pass by. In reality the average wait was only 2 minutes and 30 seconds, but it feels like much longer. As our aim of the piece was to make people happy and care for others we wanted to make the most miserable place a little bit less miserable. We wanted to use the audience to help build our performance, like Marcia Farqhuar and John Smith, so we decided to go and find out what would make people happy.

The first thing we did for our performance was go out and get some research from the general public. We went to the train lines, waited for them to go down and then asked the people standing there the question “If there were anything we could do now to make you happy, what would it be?”, we got a lot of mixed responses, ranging from “£100,000 please” to “Sort her Dad out because he’s a pr*ck”. Some were very predictable and others were very personal. This range of responses was amazing to me, because some of these people were telling us very personal things. This interested me as it made me think of Adrian Howells’ interview with Dominic Johnson. Howells said: “As it turned out, people were champing at the bit to tell me dark and dirty secrets, and it was very clear that I was perceived as some sort of agony aunt figure.” (Johnson, 2012, 178). We were becoming a fleeting agony aunt to some of these people, and this made me feel that our performance aim was already a success before we had even formulated a piece.

Our initial performance idea was completely different from the final outcome. The first idea we had was inspired by Forced Entertainment, in that we’d stand and read out responses from our research we had collected earlier, and though this was simple, we agreed it would be effective. However, we later decided we wanted to do something more, something a little more engaging. Also we then found out that St Marks had previously been a train station, and this sparked my interest, and Chris and Kai liked the idea of doing a guided tour, like Marcia Farqhuar. We had been shown her Onwards Tour while we were in seminar, and the informality was something I hadn’t seen before. This was interesting to me because it was something new, something that would make me feel like I wasn’t acting, and we didn’t want to act in this piece. We were already being taken out of our comfort zones so why not go the whole way and stop acting? Just be our normal selves? This was easy for me, as my interest in trains helped me with the research and delivery as I was commenting on the facts with my personal opinions, which made me feel I engaged more within the piece.

It took us a long time to decide on how we were doing the tour, and what would happen during it. There were many variables including used Forced Entertainment’s idea of relaying fact over fiction, so I would talk about the facts and then Chris would comment with the occasional piece of fiction, and the closer we got to the end of the tour the more ridiculous the fiction would become. This idea came about because on the side of the old station building there is a huge hole, that has been filled in with a red brick, instead of the yellow brick the rest of the building is made from. (See Fig. 5) We were unable to find the real cause of this, so my interpretation would be an educated guess based on the condition of the surrounding brick, and Chris was wondering whether someone could have crashed through the wall in a car. This seemed very silly, but it added another element to our performance that would make people smile because it was obvious he was talking rubbish. We later decided that this was taking the humour a little bit too far, however it is definitely a technique that we liked, it just didn’t fit in with our performance.

The red patch of brick in the yellow building.
Fig 5. (Bolingbroke, 2016) The red patch of brick in the yellow building.

Another idea we had was that since our tour is based on the history of the train stations and we are taking a journey from the old station to the new, we toyed with the idea of treating the tour as if it were a train journey, so having the introductory piece, then conducting the walk between the stations in silence with only the odd comment here and there, as if it were a train journey. However, through practical experiment decided we didn’t like the silence. It felt too awkward as we are supposed to be doing a piece that makes people happy. However, to keep the train element in we decided on having a few announcements, for example a “Hello and welcome to the tour, thank you very much for choosing us” or if there was a delay then use announcements to indicate this. We decided that this was significant enough for us to show our meaning.

The idea of having the song involved in the piece was a very last minute idea. Our original plan was to have a gift stall where people could pick one thing that would make their day better, this also added a transaction element to our performance. However, this turned out to be far too much worry and far too complicated for our fairly simple piece. We decided to use the research I previously mentioned as the song lyrics, so that we could still use original ideas. Firstly, we put them to the tune of Don’t Look Back In Anger by Oasis, however, we wanted this song to be completely brand new and so the people who heard it would not have any confusing memories of Oasis mixed together with our song. To solve this problem, we asked around for a guitarist who could help us rewrite the song and found someone called Jordan. He and Kai rewrote the song, but kept very similar lyrics in, and this song went down amazingly with the general public, many people bobbed their heads along, a lovely lady came and gave Kai and Jordan a sweet each and someone even threw us money. We handed out the lyrics on a piece of paper to people who wanted them as something they could take away, so there was still a physical transaction we could do. The song was the real transaction but we wanted to give our audience something physical to take away and remember how the most miserable place in Lincoln was made a little bit less miserable that time.

Here is a link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwP0SJsTfeg&feature=youtu.be [accessed 12th May 2016]

Performance Evaluation:

Our final, assessed performance was definitely the best one we done, which obviously really comforted us. However, a definite weakness for us was invited audience numbers, all through the rehearsals too. The most we had was two people. However, once we got to the train lines and started singing then the public gave us a lot more of a reaction, all positive. Some applauded, as I said earlier we had money thrown at us and some even stayed to hear the end of the song after the train lines had gone up again. So although we started with a small audience, we ended with a bigger one than we could have hoped.

During rehearsals, we had been performing on only one side of the train lines, next to the church. However, on performance day, when we arrived at the train lines we were the other side and couldn’t get past, so Kai and Jordan decided to perform it then and there. This worked extremely well because the cavity we stood in made the song echo out further across to the other side of the lines. I wish we had thought of this earlier but at the same time I am pleased as our reactions were all genuine rather than acted.

We could have improved the final performance by having a bigger audience to start off with, but as I said earlier, I think the final one was the best one we had done to date. So there was not a lot to improve. We wanted it to feel natural and we were told by our tutor to keep it a bit rubbish, so we didn’t rehearse much of what we were going to say, just roughly what we would talk about at which point. I feel this was successfully reflected in how much I stumbled over my words.

Learning site specific performance has been challenging for me, as I very much like structure and certainty in what I do, however site specific performance has very few barriers, thanks to the fact that it is not in a restricted space. This I believe is one of the strongest things that site specific has in its favour, because of the freedom of the project. But on the other hand this can also be a huge weakness for site specific. The complete freedom of location made it so much harder to come to a certain decision regarding our performance ideas, as we had so many different options. However, I feel that it has helped my confidence and made me feel like it is ok to take risks and leave your comfort zone every so often. One artist I feel I engaged with hugely is the late Adrian Howells, because of his interview with Dominic Johnson. I felt like I was reading about my own feelings, as Howells had managed to put into words how I felt before and after a performance: “The work was self-lacerating, and I was ripping myself apart in the spoken parts, and in the visceral nature of Nigel’s choreography, and I would have to go back to a hotel room and carefully stitch myself back up for the next day and the next performance.” (Johnson, 2012, 177). Aside from the fact I don’t go back to a hotel, but the whole ‘ripping myself apart’ section is exactly how I felt doing this performance as it pushed every boundary and instinct I have when it comes to drama.

I enjoyed doing this performance, but site specific is not something I will be revisiting any time soon, it’s too much freedom for my liking!

 

Francesca Bolingbroke

2573 words

 

Bibliography:

Johnson, D. (2012) ‘The kindness of strangers: An interview with Adrian Howells’, Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance, 3(2), 173–190.

Kaye, N. (2000) Site-specific art: Performance, place and documentation. New York: Routledge.

Photographs courtesy of Francesca Bolingbroke, taken between April-May 2016.

Posted on No Comments on You Look Lovely Today: Alex Revill Final Submission

You Look Lovely Today: Alex Revill Final Submission

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.

Wikipedia
Fluxus Manifesto, 1963, by George Maciunas (Wikipedia)

 

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.

An Exchange (Alex Revill, 2016)
An Exchange (Alex Revill, 2016)

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.

Squeezing the Juice (Alex Revill, 2016)
Squeezing the Juice (Alex Revill, 2016)
Peeling the Oranges (Alex Revill, 2016).
Peeling the Oranges (Alex Revill, 2016).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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)
A Transaction by Using Wool (Alex Revill, 2016)
A Transaction by Using Wool (Alex Revill, 2016)
  • 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)
"Hire me" (Alex Revill, 2016).
“Hire me” (Alex Revill, 2016).

 

  • 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.

The Glory Hole (Alex Revill, 2016).
The Glory Hole (Alex Revill, 2016).

 

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.

Brightening Up the Glory Hole (Ashley Walls, 2016)
Brightening Up the Glory Hole (Ashley Walls, 2016)

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.

Bottles as Boats (Alex Revill, 2016).
Bottles as Boats (Alex Revill, 2016).
Bottles as Boats (Alex Revill, 2016).
Bottles as Boats (Alex Revill, 2016).

 

 

 

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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.

 

Compliment Bunting (Alex Revill, 2016).
Compliment Bunting (Alex Revill, 2016).

 

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].