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 Incorporating wool in our performance was something we agreed on early in the process, as it had strong historical references, as well as offering numerous opportunities for performance in terms of construction and transporting.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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].