Instructions for Performance

In the second session of Site Specific Performance, we began to think about what could classify as performance.  We looked at the work of Marcia Farquhar, a site specific practitioner who in her Live Art Tour explores and engages with the history of the festival of Britain.  Her work attempts to represent history through a tour which features both planned instances of performance and what we can refer to as being accidents. For instance, it is unclear whether the busker playing Starman was a part of the performance but it is an element which arguably enhances the atmosphere. Nick Kaye for instance in site-specific art performance, place and documentation suggests that “the urban landscape offers a profusion and complexity of signs and spaces where the condition of recepton… might be countered by an excess of information” (Kaye, 2000, 33). Kaye argues that a city or a more urban space contains a lot more information and traffic compared to that of a gallery; which we might asscociate with emptiness. This information and “profusion” of signs and spaces blurs into site specific performance and would certainly do so  for when we perform on the Lincoln high street.

In further exploring how performance could be made in the city we as a class took influence from Carl Lavery’s 25 instructions for performance in cities. Lavery in the article lists multiple ways in which performance can be created. Experiments such as to  “take a video camera into the city and follow a dog or a cat for as long as you can. Make a film out of this” (Lavery, 2005, 236), was something that led us as a group to develop an instruction which was to follow an animal wherever it went and upon seeing another animal, follow that. We found that the more simple the instruction was the more easier it was to perform. To walk into a shop for instance, and ask for something that they wouldn’t normally sell was interesting as arguably it subverted the norm. In today’s society we associate particular brands with selling specific styles of merchandise, and by going into paperchase and asking for a hot-cross bun rightfully caused a reaction of confusion from the woman at the till. Similarly, asking for directions to a place that wasn’t real was bother interesting and entertaining. We went into both Office and Game and asked where the places Lindon and the Shady Hut were and the cashiers although not knowing what we were talking about still went to ask their supervisor officials to see if they knew.

Citations:

Kaye, N. (2000) site-specific art performance,place and documentation. Oxon: Routledge.

Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance. 35/3/229-238.

REcreativeUK. (2012) Marcia Farquhar – A live art tour [online video] Availiable from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Li90TEcsUw [Accessed 7 February 2016].