As a group we took a trip to Speaker’s Corner to identify what physical elements of it could be used in performance, what new things we could notice, and whether anything gave us inspiration. Our initial response when moving into the space was to comment on just how large the space actually is; we said that it almost resembled a theatre in the round, with buildings looking down on the centre from all sides.
(Bickerdike, 2016).
The second thing we noticed was how many banks were in the square and how many big companies such as McDonalds, LUSH, WHSmith, Thorntons, Pandora, etc. Contrasting to these big chains, there seemed to be very little in terms of more local/smaller businesses, the only places we predicted they could have been in the past were now empty units:
(Bickerdike, 2016).
As an image, this is interesting. In an area so saturated by banks and big businesses (MONEY), having derelict units creates an interesting contrast. This caused us to question who the managers of these failed businesses were, and who the managers of the big corporate chains and banks are; the likelihood is that most of the successful managers are men as there is a great imbalance between men and women in managerial roles. How could we show this link between Capitalism and gender to our piece? Well, the answer we came up with was mapping – specifically, mapping where the women are, and mapping where the money is, to see the relationship.
I made a rough start planning out an aesthetic for a performance based around political activism and performance art after researching Speaker’s Corner. I found out that there was once a Suffragette rally in that area which influenced the decision to name the square Speaker’s Corner, a place specially designed for people to go and exercise their freedom of speech. I researched the work of Debord and came across his piece Society of Spectacle, where my idea for the centre focus of my performance piece originates from.
Banner in French (red paint) – “Le patron a besoin de toi, tu n’as pas besoin de lui” = “The boss needs you, you do not need him”. Now has two meanings – Capitalism and Feminism. Inspired by Debord’s Society of Spectacle.
Girl #1 – Young girl dressed in modern dress, carrying modern teddy (recognisable character) and clear balloons with money in = dress covered in newspaper articles about female inequality, particularly unequal pay (e.g. day in November when technically don’t get paid). Dragging money balloons around the square – weighed down by money and Capitalism when should be free = childish innocence being destroyed, affects all women young and old, evokes Suffrage movement (rallies that happened then – if Capitalism and money weren’t there, that particular inequality wouldn’t exist. Even today she is still being oppressed – how far have we really come since these rallies? Only difference between then and now is that people are no longer in this spot protesting about it… but we are.
Girl #2 – Adult Suffragette wearing period clothing (as accurate to the time as possible), tied to numerous authentic Suffragette placards with green and purple ribbon (Suffragette colours) = heritage of protest, being tied to something not moving/tied to the fight and tied together (comradeship)/tied as in restrained – so many ribbons that woman is tangled in them – restrained as in exercising restraint as a woman “should”.
Girl #3 – Woman in own clothes stood with megaphone/microphone reading the same articles related to women and money that are on the girl’s dress. WE are protesting NOW – use the space for what it’s made for, continue the fight.
Additional ideas: Durational? Placards appear like a forest spanning a great deal of the square – resonates = ghosts of the women that once stood there. Young girl weaving inbetween the placards – lost, confused, everything against her.
End: young girl becomes exhausted from struggle and pops balloons, counts out money in desperation (needs food/water). Suffragette escapes from ribbons. Megaphone girl finishes articles.
Particularly prevalent in Speaker’s Corner – filled with BANKS and SHOPS = Capitalism/consumerism/money. Place of protest that lacks use – make use of it, it was made to make people remember their freedom of speech. A place where women campaigned for their rights, and still women are not equal, therefore we will do what they did.
As part of our second seminar we looked at Carl Lavery’s 25 Instructions for Performance in Cities. Within this, we were given examples of “exercises or improvisations” (Lavery, 2005) to conduct within a city location to evoke material for creating work. These included:
“Deliberately get lost in the city.
Ask a friend to guide you through the city via instructions given on a mobile phone.
Negotiate the city by bus, car, bike, and on foot and document your impressions.
Collect lost or abandoned objects in the city streets and try to imagine narratives about them.”
(Lavery, 2005)
From this stimuli we were asked to adapt these or create our own to form set of instructions that we then swapped among the groups and were challenged to follow out on the high street. We created our own instructions such as “follow an animal for 5 minutes, note where it goes and how it moves”, and were given instructions like “go into a shop and ask for something they clearly don’t sell, gauge their reactions”. Primarily, this was the instruction we followed, but we also altered it slightly by going into a shop and asking for directions to a place that doesn’t exist – we found that most people tried to help us by guessing what this place was; a pub, a restaurant, a clothes shop? We created an imaginary place and through misdirection, made people question what they knew to be a fact, that this place didn’t exist.
Works Cited
Lavery, C. (2005) Teaching Performance Studies: 25 Instructions for Performance in Cities. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 25 (3) 229-236.
“Cornhill in Lincoln’s city centre, the scene of huge Suffragette rallies a hundred years ago. The Speakers’ Corner Committee subsequently decided to create its Speakers’ Corner on the High Street part of Cornhill.”
(Speakers’ Corner Trust, undated)
Speaker’s Corner is a corner of the high street which has been developed into an area that people can go to demonstrate, protest, and exercise freedom of speech. The Speaker’s Corner is “a joint project between the University of Lincoln’s Take Part programme and the Speaker’s Corner Trust” (BBC, 2010), sited “close to where a suffragette demonstration took place nearly a century ago” (BBC, 2010). Speaker’s Corner was opened by former Labour politician Tony Benn, followed by students from the university “who were among the first people to debate at the site” (BBC, 2010).
“This will remind people that we have the right to speak.”
(This is Lincolnshire, 2010)
This has sparked ideas such as recreating a Suffragette rally, but perhaps rather than using signs such as ‘votes for women’, focusing on more contemporary issues that still oppress women today. Setting this contemporary demonstration in a place with such rich history of similar themes will echo the ghosts of those women there before us.
On a similar note, rather than holding a physical protest in the style of Suffragette rallies, a more peaceful, if not slightly haunting method of demonstrating would be to use silence – the exact opposite of the loud, sometimes violent protests of times gone by. Not only would this be safer in terms of our safety and also the publics, but it would also serve as a comment that women are still very much silenced in many aspects of society; a Suffragette rally without the chaos would be unnerving. A more metaphorical approach through different aspects of performance (i.e. the body, visual work such as video, etc) would serve us well.
Artists/work that have inspired me:
“Pioneer of multimedia environments Aldo Tambellini put on collaborative performances such as 1965’s BLACK ZERO,which incorporated live performance, poetry and projection and had strong revolutionary and social change messages, commenting on the racial situation in America. BLACK ZERO is the cry from the oppressed creative man. There is an injustice done to man which is not forgivable.”
(Beaven, 2012)
“Other artists associated with Fluxus (as Ono was) often took their actions into the street, aiming to break down the barriers between art and life, and bring the revolution to the everyday. In Prague, Milan Knížák and others in the AKTUAL group were often stopped by the police as they built environments or performed personal and participative acts in the streets of Prague, such as his Demonstration for One 1964. “
(Beaven, 2012)
“French students were exposed to and took on anti-establishment Situationist ideas such as Guy Debord’s 1967 Society of the Spectacle, which argued (the Marxist idea) that consumer society had reduced everything from direct experiences to mere appearances, and that the avant-garde and mainstream life should be brought together. Students in Paris went on strike, leading to confrontations with the French police and street battles in the Latin Quarter, and then a general strike across universities and industry. Painted graffiti appeared around Paris, with slogans such as‘Le patron a besoin de toi, tu n’as pas besoin de lui’ (The boss needs you, you don’t need him) ‘Je suis marxiste tendance Groucho’ (I am a Marxist, of the Groucho tendency) and famously, ‘Sous les paves, la plage!’ (Under the pavement, the beach!) came from Situationist ideas of play and freedom.”
(Beaven, 2012)
THIS GAVE ME AN IDEA FOR AN AESTHETIC OF A PERFORMANCE:
Bickerdike, 2016
I created this rough sketch to demonstrate my aesthetic ideas inspired by Debord’s Society of Spectacle. The text on the banner would be painted on in red (connotations: blood, danger, lust, Communist red) and the balloons would be coated in newspaper clippings (adverts/tabloid headlines to symbolise consumption and the public desires under Capitalism) – the balloons themselves, the dress and the stuffed teddy bear present the main figure in the picture to be childlike, young and innocent (a description of humanity under the Capitalist structure/the harmful effects of consumerism on the youth – children evoke emotions amongst the public – ‘what if it happened to my child?’ – presents Capitalism to be HARMFUL.
Could possibly work in the Cornhill –
“Female artists also focused on their lived experience, making public those parts of a woman’s life that had been seen as taking place behind closed doors. Judy Chicago taught on the germinal feminist programme at the California Institute of the Arts, along with painter Miriam Schapiro. Rejecting both her maiden name and that she had taken on her marriage, she changed her name to Judy Chicago in 1971, signalling her move into a feminist art practice, and a rejection of male domination. The influential installation Womanhouse1972 took place throughout a house in Los Angeles, and showed the work of 26 students as well as Chicago and Shapiro, including Chicago’s Menstruation Bathroom(a bathroom with a bin overflowing with bloody tampons) and a series of performances exploring the lives, activities and roles of women. Chicago’s most well-known work, The Dinner Party 1974–9 came from previous works such as herGreat Ladies series and her realisation of the erasure of female achievements throughout history. The Dinner Partyis a triangular open table set with thirty-nine places, each commemorating an important female historical figure or goddess, resting on a tiled floor inscribed with the names of 999 other important women. The Dinner Party was exhibited in 16 venues in 6 countries on 3 continents to a viewing audience of over one million people, amking it an important touchpoint in the history of feminist art.”
(Beavan, 2012)
Works Cited
Beaven, K (2010) Performance Art 101: The Angry Space, politics and activism. [online] Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/performance-art-101-angry-space-politics-and-activism [Accessed 5 February 2016].
BBC (2010) Tony Benn has officially opened Speakers’ Corner [online] Available from http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/lincolnshire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8872000/8872171.stm [Accessed 5 February 2016].
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 4 February 2016].
This is Lincolnshire (2010) Speakers Corner given official new home in Lincoln’s High Street [online] Available from http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/Freedom-speech-new-home-Lincoln-High-Street/story-11200935-detail/story.html [Accessed 5 February 2016].
Implied or inferred without direct expression; understood.
(Collins Dictionary, 2016)
If a lecture were to take place in a lecture theatre, there would be a context that all participants would know to adhere to. For example, the students would sit on the chairs and take notes or listen, and the lecturer would stand at the front and deliver knowledge in a presentation-type-form. These are the tacit agreements of the site or location. If this lecture was moved into the street, the context would be altered.
It is when people upset the tacit agreements of a site that things become more interesting.
In order to punctuate the flow of a performance in a particular site, the tacit agreements of that site need to be disrupted.
This is the main point I took away from the first half of the first seminar; that when performing in a particular site, you must ensure that you are aware of the context behind it, and make an informed decision as to follow this context, or to reject it. Context is – broadly speaking – the building blocks of a piece of site specific performance, whether that be social context, historical context, or perhaps the geographical context: what are the parameters of the site? What determines this site to be public or private, and how can this be changed?
In the second half of the seminar, we looked deeper into performance art works involving a site such as ours, a city itself or building within a city centre. This is when I was first introduced to the idea of mapping as an art form. We’re all aware of how technology today allows us to track our movements, location, and even heart rate, all from a small device in each and every one of our pockets. I never before considered the possibility that the data this collates could possibly be turned into art. Initially we looked at an artist called Daniel Belasco Rogers, a ‘walking artist’. Rogers reveals how technology represents your presence… or your absence using GPS mapping – by virtue of you being absent, you are also present, an idea that particularly pulled on my creative strings.
(Rogers, 2003-2011, cited in Plan B Performance.net, undated)
This piece is aesthetically interesting to me; like a painting, the GPS map acts as a canvas, whereas the route the artist takes acts as brush strokes. This image is what grabbed the idea of ‘mapping’ as a possible concept for my performance – it is a person telling a story by not being there. An audience can interpret this piece in many different ways and create a narrative about each movement on the map as we can see which areas the artist frequently (bold) and rarely (thin) visited over an 8 year period.
Another artist that took the idea of ‘mapping’ and turned it into art is Christian Nold. Nold shows changes in the emotions and body as he negotiated a city, revealing his emotional response. This inspired me to use a similar method in tracing my emotional response to a route which I take regularly through the city, using a (very) long roll paper to line the walls along buildings I travel past, and document my heart rate pattern along it up to my destination. If I were to use this idea in performance, I could experiment with the idea of presence versus absence: being physically absent whilst being emotionally/artistically present through my heart beat. On the other hand, if I were to be physically present, the audience would be able to watch me trace my heart beat around the city, whereas without me present and the route already complete, the audience is free to create their own narrative behind it – which end is the start and which end is the end? Something to think about.
(Nold, 2005, cited in Nold, 2009, 13)
Another idea this emotional mapping – or as Nold calls it “emotional cartography” (Nold, 2009) – gave me was a much more personal one. Synaesthesia is a is a neurological phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second cognitive pathway. Synaesthesia is something that I experience personally, in the way that I associate certain letters and numbers with specific colours. For example: A = red, 8 = yellow, F = orange, 7 = brown. My idea was that I could map a certain route through the city I often take (for example, to my favourite coffee shop) using colour – each building would ‘be’ a colour that I associated with it, and to find that I would delve into the history of the buildings along my route. For example, the date of the building may determine its colour or perhaps its number aligning with its address.
Ideas to think about for next time:
Mapping through colour – numbers determining a sensory pathway for an audience = personal. Artist absent or present?
Idea of presence versus absence/absence = presence.
Works Cited
Collins Dictionary (2016) Definition of “tacit”. [online] Available from http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/tacit [Accessed 31 January 2016].
Rogers, B. D. (2003-2011) Nine Year Drawing Berlin 2003-2011. [online] Berlin, Germany: Daniel Belasco Rogers. Available from http://www.planbperformance.net/index.php?id=danmapping [Accessed 31 January 2016]
