Last week our group content with our idea though it was crucial for to experiment with our latest plan. instead of returning to the concept of gathering thoughts of the public. But instead use water bottles to make our structure which is our major plan, to show the history or more clearly a anniversary of the obelisk and its life and use on the Lincoln high street. through this we wish to present this structure through water bottles, however this task appeared harder then our group originally though building this structure seemed impossible do to the surrounding conditions of the high street for example the uneven surface of the high bridge as well as peoples interaction with our work (mostly negative) as people took bottles without asking jeopardising our testing. also the whole principle is challenged due to the actually ability to stack the bottles. the shape of the bottles makes it difficult to stack the bottles in our desired shape as well as the sheer amount of bottles that would be required unpractical , thus questioning our ability to make our reinterpretation of the obelisk. however after our mid session meeting with Steve, helped us find a way around these problems, instead of making a statue of the obelisk which seems to be unpractical what if we made a grave out of the water bottles presenting a memorial instead of a statue however until further research we can not see how this can be approached this will be next weeks mission.
Experiments And Beginnings
For the past few weeks our group has gone into the High Street and we have been performing “social experiments” for lack of a better term. The aim of these “experiments” have primarily been to gauge audience response around the spot we will be performing in come the final performance.
To add context to what we have been doing, we have done research into a spot on the High Street; a bridge with a raised platform, across from Stokes, known as the High Bridge. From research it was discovered that an obelisk currently residing in St. Marks at the end of the High Street used to be on the High Bridge. It was demolished in 1939, and rebuilt in 1996 in its new location. Our intention is to make a model of this obelisk in the spot where it originally was positioned.
“So consider an archaeological artefact. Do not begin with the question ‘What is it?’ Instead ask ‘What does it do?'” (Pearson & Shanks, 2001, 53)
Our “artefact”, the obelisk, was formerly used as a public water conduit. Our intention is to create a model of this obelisk out of water bottles in its original location (the High Bridge), before dismantling the model and providing the bottles to the public. Part of our aim is to bring the audience into the performance by having them stick labels on the bottles using a variety of questions centred on the High Street. As mentioned, at the end we will hand this bottles out; thus recreating the obelisks original purpose. This has somewhat been inspired by the Tilted Arc sculpture designed by Richard Serra and the controversy of it’s moving.
In preparation for this we have been experimenting with questions with themes from Forced Entertainment. Such questions have included, “What is the best place on the High Street?”, “Tell me a story about the High Street”, and “If Aliens were to visit Lincoln, where would they land?”. The intention behind these questions was to see what kind of response we would get.
Works Cited:
Pearson, M., Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre Archaeology. London: Routledge.
A Change of Heart
Part of our investigatory work around developing our performance involved us returning to Speaker’s Corner and experimenting in the space. We did things such as eves-drop in the square and inside the shops, walk around the square picking out small details, and talk to each other from across the space; afterwards we sat on a bench and brainstormed ideas. We agreed that we still wanted to use the idea of transactions, given that the space we are in is so focused on money and exchange, yet we also agreed that rather than pinpointing our performance with the specific event of the Suffragette rally that happened there, we would look at how that event inspired the creation of Speaker’s Corner, and the intended purpose of it today.
Still taking elements of our inspiration from the Suffragettes, we decided that placards would remain a large part of our piece, but rather than intending them to emulate the Suffragette protests, we looked at the wider, more contemporary meaning. Placards have become the recognised symbol for protest as they say the message louder than the voice ever could, contrasting with the identities of the protests and women who once occupied that space, which are now silent. This kind of ‘loud silence’ was very appealing to us and informed our creative decision to involve the audience in the performance.
Our idea is to invite the audience to write their answer to a question on a small piece of paper, the question being:
“What power do you feel as a person in the world today?”
We will then give them the option to transfer these (anonymous) quotes to a placard which will be placed around the square, or to post it through the letterbox of an empty shop unit – the anonymous space. Every person who answers our question will be given a free piece of food, perhaps cake, which will make them feel rewarded for helping other people, and feel good for expressing themselves where they otherwise wouldn’t. Throughout the afternoon as these answers are being collated, the piece becomes a live installation of thought, with the audience acting as artist and performer, whilst we remain silent, letting them create the piece. To visually demonstrate our silence, our aim is to wear pieces of material/tape covering our mouths; this symbolises that it is not our voices we are demonstrating in the piece, but the voices of the public, allowing them to use the space for its true purpose, exercising FREEDOM OF SPEECH (something not a lot of people know).
The purpose of this is to show the public that they have freedom of speech and whats more, a place designed to demonstrate it in. Through our performance we aim to allow people to use the space for its purpose, allowing them to turn their opinions into a voice where otherwise they’d remain silent – they do have power, so use it.
We researched the work of Suzanne Lacy, a feminist performance artist who’s work mainly revolves around women’s rights – in particular, destroying rape culture. Lacy’s Auto on the Edge of Time (1993-1994) was:
“A series of installations and projects that explored the effects of domestic violence as experienced by women, children and families throughout the United States. The centerpiece [sic] of the project was a collection of wrecked cars transformed by Lacy and her collaborators into sculptural testimonials on themes of escape, abuse, control, support, healing, memorializing and more.”
(Lacy, 2015)
Lacy’s use of testimonials added an element of catharsis to her work, giving an emotional outlet and escape to victims, whilst also displaying a powerful message to others. This is similar to the aim of our work; to provide opportunities for people to let their opinions be heard and to inspire them, and others, to do this more in the future.
Works Cited:
Lacy, S. (2015) Suzanne Lacy. [online] Available from: http://www.suzannelacy.com/early-works/#/auto-on-the-edge-of-time/ [Accessed 4 March 2016].
History and ‘Writing over the city’
From our prior experiments over the last few weeks, myself and my group decided that the place in which we would create and perform our piece of site specific work would be the High Bridge section of the high street. We studied the context and the history of our site by researching the history of it. From sheer observation it can be argued that the High Street itself can be described as being a non-place. It is transitory, and it’s use is for easier access to specific destinations i.e: Home or shops for either work or shopping.
From researching the history of the High Bridge it became clear to us that the site is more signifcant then we thought before. There was once a chapel situated on the bridge, built and dedicated to St Thomas Beckett. It was taken down during the period of the reformation. What was also interesting is that a stature or ‘obelisk’ as it is generally referred to was built in place of the chapel when it was taken down in 1762/3. The obelisk was present on the bridge and later moved due to fears of it’s weight on the bridge.
Here is a picture of the obelisk now in St Marks Shopping Centre. It was removed from the High Bridge in 1939 and rebuilt here in 1996. This is significant to us as the High Bridge represents re-construction and travel. The bridge itself was refurbished with stone instead of wood for extra stability, and as stated there is a pattern of refurbishment: A chapel was built in dedication and taken down. An obelisk was built in place of that chapel and subsequently taken down and moved and now on the high bridge there is nothing there apart from an old Tudor coffee shop and a transitory place for people to walk up and down almost ‘zombie-like’ as described by a man that we interviewed on the High Street as part of one of our experiments. We will be using the obelisk and the history behind it for our work. Nick Kaye describes site-specific work as articulative and it “define[‘s] itself through properties, qualities or meaning produced in specific relationships between an ‘object’ or ‘event’ and a position ir occupies” (Kaye, 2000, 1). From this it can be said that our “object” is the obelisk itself and we are exploring what it means. The obelisk was used as a well to supply water to the population of lincoln and this year it is the 20th anniversary of when it was rebuilt, and naturally this renders the object and the site with a level of historical significance.
We moved ahead from our prior experiments to exploring the high street’s mode of response through signs to specfically being based on the High Bridge. We wanted to portray this idea of community. Community has a broad context but the meaning which underpins our understanding of the word, in context to our performance is this from the Oxford English Dictionary:
“The condition of sharing or having certain attitudes and interests in common.”
The people along the high street do not represent a community. There is hardly any communication, no interaction just movement. It follows it’s own tacit agreements in the sense that you keep on moving. For instance, if you’re talking you move and walk and you never really stop and take notice of anything for too long. This provided the basis for our experiments in asking direct questions through the use of signs. We took inspiration from Forced Entertainment’s Nights In This City whom of which we have already decided to use as one of our influences for our work. In Nights In This City they gave guided tours with fictionalised questions and statements along Sheffield and Rotterdam respectively. that posed “questions which implied generic narratives or events linked to dramatic themes: ‘If you had killed someone and had to dump the body where would you take it?'” (Kaye, 2000, 9). They began to write over the city, to give it a more interesting context. Tim Etchells in Certain Fragmennts Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment suggests that the city “is both a map of space and a map of states of mind” (Etchells, 1999, 77). We wanted to see the reactions to these states of mind, and to a degree begin to map out the space of the high street and what the high street means through the community.
Firstly, I held up a sign saying “What would the high street be like in the future?” We got responses such as tired, knackered and the idea that the history and the ‘vibe’ of lincoln has began to dissipate and arguably has already dissipated. One man suggested that that the historical is merging with the corporate. That the buildings are becoming chain businesses and independence in business within Lincoln is faltering. This of course coincides with reconstruction as once something is out of use it is moved or made into something new. From reflection we did not get much attention from a simple and arguably mundane question. So we decided to ask something out of the ordinary:
“If Aliens came to Lincoln where would they land?”
This question met with a lot of varied response, whilst I was stood central to the oncoming traffic of people, Jack had began to make observations of what people’s reactions to me were and what they were saying.
( Photo credit: Jason Lodge)
In the image, my ‘costume’ arguably gives off a certain vibe, this was intentional. The responses to the question were varied. More often than not people saw me as being weird, one woman thought I was part of a cult. Someone took a selfie, when I held the sign high above my head just to experiment with the proxemics of where the sign was I got more response and more people stared. What was interesting was that as soon as the sign went down for when I spoke to people, the crowd just walked on by oblivious to the event. From this experiment alone we were able to draft up the most interesting responses from people along the street.
Possible locations for aliens to land:
– “High Street”
– “tell them to fuck off”
– “that house”
– “Dover”
– “top of the hill”
– “brayford”
– “castle” x2
– “cathedral” x3
– “big tesco car park”
– “Pavs”
– “horse field”
– “somewhere around here”
– “avoid Lincoln”
Although this was an experiment it can be said that a basis of community was being created here, people were stopping contributing to the event that we had created. This was not just a verbal communication between people but a contribution of people actually taking time out of their transitory state of mind to notice the sign and the event.
Reference List:
Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragmennts Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment. Abingdon: Routledge.
Kaye, N. (2000) site-specific art performance,place and documentation. Oxon: Routledge.
Whats new in our site life
The last week we as a group finalised our site location. The location of the high bridge, which is located on the centre of a high street, which could be referred to as a non-place. After dwelling into the history of the site, we learnt a lot about the site, such as the bridge once held a church, which was built in honour of Tomas Beckett. So this site has holy history, after the church as removed a statue placed, called the Obelisk. This statue was removed off the high bridge during the 1930’s due to fears that the high bridge structure could not maintain the weight of the Obelisk; in 1996 the structure was rebuilt lower down the high street.
Having this history on our site, has opened a lot of options for our group piece, the idea of a piece around the Obelisk. The history of the structure once was a source of water for the locals of Lincoln. As it has been 20 years since the rebuilding of the Obelisk, and due to it begin a source of water, our groups plan is to rebuild the structure to as closely as possible to the actually size, width and depth but out of water bottles. We would also right people’s answers on the water bottles of random questions that could be stuck to each of the water bottles. This could nicely immerse the audience in the performance, as well as bringing in forced entertainment elements, as we will be gathering these weird and wild answers from the public. In addition, we want people to be involved in the overall performance, by asking them to help us to build the structure or knock it down or anything in between. Now we need to move further with our answers from the public and now we need to look into practitioners that can aid our performance.