Throughout the past two weeks, the build up to the final performance has been very hectic and incredibly stressful. We have been trying, experimenting, developing, failing and creating.
The first hurdle we had to combat when experimenting was the sheer amount of props/set/objects we have in our piece, and how to source and build them. A big problem we keep returning to is the structure of the placards – the change in weather means they keep blowing over. We have experimented with building the placards from different materials, initially using broom handles as the main ‘stem’ and planting them into a compost-filled plant pot. After this was unsuccessful, we moved on to using bamboo sticks in compost, but again, whilst these were slightly more stable than the broom handles, once the wind picked up they eventually fell over. Instead, for our next experiment we aim to use bamboo sticks in a plant pot filled with sand, weighing the structure down more.
We also found that the cardboard part of the placards blows about in the wind, yet we are unsure if this is a hindrance or a nice aesthetic choice if kept; it gives the placards more of the natural theme we are trying to infer, as though they are plants blowing in the wind. It creates more of a visual spectacle for passers by to view, and even acts as a distraction in their line of sight, inviting them to have a closer look.
We had lots of difficulty sourcing tables and chairs for our experiments, and had to conduct them without. By doing this, we realised how integral they are to our piece, as without them we cannot have an intimate connection with our audience-participants, nor can we make them feel comfortable and at ease. Without this sense of ease, we are less likely to get audience-participants that open up and write down the more personal answers we are hoping for. As a result of this, we haven’t yet been able to have any interaction with audience-participants. Instead, we have been conducting the piece without the audience element, creating the placards from answers we have previously received in earlier experiments. We hopefully be running the piece as it should be, with audience-participants, in a couple of days.
Over the past few weeks, we have done closer experiments with individual elements of the piece. An example of this is the shredding element. To recap: our idea is to shred the answers that people wish to destroy, and to turn these shreddings into compost by mixing it in with soil. A development we made through trying and testing was to allow the audience-participants to shred their own answers; this is to provide absolute confidence that their answers are destroyed as they are doing it themselves, as well as ensuring our role is more background, and the audience-participant is placed at the centre of the piece.
We also looked at ways to draw the roots from the plant pots – we used chalk to slowly and methodically make the roots ‘grow’ from the pots as the piece progressed, embedding the placards into the space. Once we had taken the placards and pots away, we noticed how the roots remained, and appeared almost alien to the space. The idea of the roots remaining with no context for passers-by is intriguing as it will make them question why and how they got there, allowing them to engage with and notice the space in a way that perhaps they never had before. Furthermore, the idea that the roots remain links in with our aim of planting something in the audience-participants’ (and even passers by) heads that will grow and develop into action. The roots in the space link up with the roots in the minds of those involved – they will always be connected to Speakers’ Corner in a way they never had been before.
Additionally, we created a blog page giving information about Speakers’ Corner and the aims of our performance. This will be given in the exchange between audience-participant and artist in the form of a hand-written note. The audience-participant, it is hoped, will then follow that link after they have left the site, taking the performance with them into their every day lives in a more physical sense – it doesn’t simply leave them once they leave the space; another way we are rooting thought and action into their minds. To end our piece, we want to take photographs of each placard/post-it note and document them on that same blog site – this gives them a permanent place in the world, long after we have dismantled the placards, and even after the cardboard has been recycled into something new. We are doing this because we believe the thoughts people will be expressing are so important, and must remain alive by any means. As we cannot leave the placards in the space, we will ‘install’ them online in a more permanent way.
In his book, Site-Specific Performance, Mike Pearson asks the question: “How can site-specific performance play a role in an active engagement with place, helping make sense of the multiplicity of meanings that resonate from landscapes and memories?” (Pearson, 2010, 56). “Active engagement with place” (Pearson, 2010, 56) is what we want our audience-participants to achieve; discovering the intended purpose and history of the site, and being inspired to act upon this in the space. The “multiplicity of meanings” that resonate from our site are what we hope to metaphorically show in our piece through the placards, roots, watering, gagging and shredding. All of these elements emulate the ghosts of the Suffragette rally gone before, the emptiness and natural beginnings of the site as a field, and we hope that enough of these will shine through to an audience. This idea of layering histories comes from Cathy Turner’s notion of palimpsest, where “no space is truly empty, as left at site will be traces of what has happened there before” (Gleave, 2011), an idea that has shaped our piece from beginning to end, and will continue to inspire us as we develop further in the final stages.
Works Cited
Gleave, J. (2011) The Reciprocal Process of the Site and the Subject in Devising Sitespecific Performance. MPhil(B). Univeristy of Birmingham.
Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
