February 2013 – Safe Bet

“Please Tell Me There Is No More Manure!”

Charlie Jane Doherty / February 27, 2013May 13, 2013 / The Odds Are Stacked

Today for the second part of our lecture we were told to explore the grandstand in our groups, and while we were there we had to create a minute performance to share with the rest of the class for next week. Instead of going to the Grandstand my group and I decided to go to the West Common; which is the field across the road from the Grandstand where the horses would have actually raced 240 years ago. One of the major factors why we wanted to go over to the West Common is because the field is inhabited with horses; we wanted to experience the stench of the horse and observe the horse itself. The motivation behind this was the fact as a group we wanted to incorporate something to do with the senses and horses. One of the main reasons why I personally wanted to go to the West Common today was to examine the Grandstand from the other side of the road; I had a desire to observe the Grandstand from the perception of what it was like from a horses’ point of view.

However when we got to the West Common we did not think about the terrain of the field, once standing in the muddy space that’s when we realised it had been obviously raining sometime previously . Anyway despite the weather and the landscape we hiked through the field with the mud squelching underneath our feet. Sometimes we slipped, slid and got even got stuck on the terrain.

We attempted to get about as close as we could to the barriers but we had to stop as the ground was too wet; some of the group members had already ruined their shoes by stepping on a piece of terrain and getting their foot soaked with the slushy mud as it was unsafe to stand on that part of the grass.

The Grandstand taken from the West Common — Viewing The Grandstand from the West Common
27.Feb.2013

When we started heading back to the way we came we had to change our route as a horse had seen us and started to move towards us. This was a terrifying experience, we decided to split the group and to leave the West Common as soon as we could, to attempt to move quickly away from the horse we climbed a fence, when I was trying to get off the fence I panicked as the horse was getting closer to us in result of this I ended up stepping on a really slushy piece of terrain in which my foot got completely submerged in a puddle of mud; this went right through my shoe into my sock.

Luckily we all managed to survive this experience, well just! Once I had got to a safe part of land away from the horse I turned my back to see where the other members of my group were. Directly behind Eloise and Emma the horse had started to pick up speed, before they knew it the horse was in front of them. The horse started walking back to where the other horses were, stopped looked at the girls with a miserable look in its eye and then started to head back from the direction we had just come from.

With this emotional experience, we wanted to create a performance demonstrating the sheer panic that we felt as a collective. For next week’s performance we want to reveal to the rest of the class our journey exploring the West Common. We are thinking about getting the audience to line up in the dark, and as a group we are going to come up behind them and vocalise a horse sound in their ears; this is to share to the rest of the class the ambiance of the horse coming towards us to enhance this atmosphere we are thinking of getting some coconut shells and creating the sound of a horse trotting.

Mike Pearson states that ‘Performance can be employed as an effective research procedure in interdisciplinary approaches to landscape’ ((Pearson 2011, Why Performance)) I believe that this really relates to our West Common journey piece that we are going to reveal to the rest of the class next week. After experiencing the West Common terrain I have changed my mind on the idea of having horse manure in the room to create the stench of a horse as I have think I have seen enough manure to last me a life-time.

No vans were harmed in the journey towards the Grandstand!

I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning With …

Charlie Jane Doherty / February 27, 2013May 13, 2013 / The Odds Are Stacked

Last week as a class we went to the Lincolnshire Archives to research a bit more about the historical background of the Grandstand. Whilst there Eloise, Emma, Kash, Rachel and myself came across a document which was designed in 1939; it was a drawing of a plan to turn the grandstand into a mortuary if Lincoln was badly bombed during the Second World War. It was there, at that moment in the archives where we realised that we all had an interest in this plan, so as a collective we decided to carry on this module as a group.

This is the 1939 plan of the Mortuary that we discovered as a group in the Lincolnshire Archives.

During last week’s afternoon lecture, in groups we had to create a sneak peek performance of what we were thinking at the time to do for our final piece. After talking to my group about ideas we decided that we wanted to incorporate something about horses within our final piece.

One of my ideas that I had was to have the audience wearing headphones and have a soundscape of horses, trotting, galloping or neighing playing on a loop through them. I wanted to incorporate something to do with the five senses within our piece. Another idea I had thought of was to put some horse manure in the room so that when the audience walked in they could smell it and relate the stench to the horse as we physically could not get a horse for our performance.

Individually before the group task of creating a 5 minute performance we had to answer the Mike Pearson questions about exercises in place after visiting a location. The task that I found the most difficult was the ‘ Write a postcard, describing the place with five words beginning with the same letter’ ((Pearson, Mike (2011) Exercises In Place))

The letter I picked for this exercise was the letter “L”, I selected this letter because when I first saw the grandstand I thought that the site looked “Lonely”. The Grandstand is an isolated building which is placed on the outskirts of Lincoln. I feel that people drive past the grandstand everyday but do not really notice it because it is unused. The only time when the Grandstand gets company is when someone is hiring the hall out for a children’s nursery or someone’s birthday; it is now known as a community centre not a racecourse.

The second word I had written down was “Lost”, I believe that the Grandstand is excluded from civilisation. When you stand on the steps of the Grandstand and face the west common you can see the top of the Lincoln Cathedral on the right-hand side above the trees. I feel that the Grandstand is quite a distance from the cathedral, because it is located away from the middle of the city and I believe that is where most of Lincoln’s citizens is.

The final word I had written down was “Large”, to me I felt that the Grandstand was quite big, I did not expect it to be that huge, I believe that when you view it from the golf course it looks like an old fashioned school.

I generally could not think of any other words that began with the letter L so I moved on to the next task. After I had finished the whole exercise, my group and I got together and discussed our answers to the questions. We decided to use the letter exercise to incorporate into our piece; we did this because both Eloise and I picked the letter “L” and for some strange reason we both had written down the exact same words.

When it came to show our performance myself, Eloise, Emma, Kash and Rachel all stood in a line in front of the class with post it notes on our faces covering our mouths. Written on the post it notes we had a selection of words that we felt as a group associated with the grandstand. For example we had words like “Derelict” “Damaged” Abandoned” and “Lost”. To portray the contrast we had an old sepia photo of the Grandstand demonstrating a busy day at the Lincoln Handicap which projected on the white board. To heighten the difference even further we had a sound effect of a busy crowd playing in the background. For the piece, we stood in front of the projection with neutral faces , one by one we slowly peeled a post it note of our face and then dropped it gently to the ground letting the post it note fall wherever it wanted to.

After performing the piece we received some feedback, what really intrigued my group was when someone in the class mentioned that the post it notes reminded them of betting slips especially when we let them fall on the floor as to them it looked like lost betting slips after a horse race.

This is the photo we had projected during our post it note performance. — This is the photo we used during our post it note piece. This is the Grandstand in May 1957.

Patchwork

Jamee-Lee Fleming / February 27, 2013May 11, 2013 / Uncategorized

At the Lincolnshire Archives, we found information about the women during the war and how they worked in the factories making linen for the aeroplane wings. This was because it was a light material and able to stretch to around the wings perfectly in order for the planes to fly. As a group we wanted to re-create the linen wings by using sewing machines and materials. At first we wanted to make an aeroplane out of material then add the wings on to it as it covered our performance space but unfortunately this was impossible because of the time scale we had. But, we collected unwanted clothing and bits of material and started making our wings.

As we working making them, we noticed that the material looks like fields of patchwork and linking this back in with the aeroplanes it is like a bird’s eye view on when the pilots looked down as they were flying over Lincoln.

(http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=patchwork+fields&tbm=isch&tbs=simg:CAQSWglcWY_1O0jQdexpGCxCwjKcIGjQKMggBEgynBKQEkwSQBI4EjQQaIPaMAzZ4sXmIgoTZmr56yaCJiEV_1a8xriNhGWWmalnB1DAsQjq7-CBoADCEUPYpluT10OQ&sa=X&ei=uS6OUdTkBoOXPcnzgeAP&ved=0CCYQwg4&biw=1366&bih=624#imgrc=XFmPztI0HXsd2M%3A%3BFD2KZbk9dDlSXM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fvrap.co.uk%252F760_wm.php%253Fsrc%253Dimg%252F760_4391.jpg%2526p%253D86%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.vrap.co.uk%252Fphotographs%252Faerial%252Fuk%252F86%3B760%3B507)

Searching for Beauty and Art in Lincoln

Chloe Pitts / February 25, 2013May 10, 2013 / War and Loss

Marc Augé defines the concept of a place in a setting of the supermodernity. The latter of the reading proposes a definition of place as the contrast of space, he describes space as a “frequented place” ((Marc Augé (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe, London: Versop. p.79)). Consequently, place can be seen as an empty geographical landmark which is yet to be filled with life ((Marc Augé (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe, London: Versop. 81)). In essence he is talking about transitional places, for example airports, motorways etc, the places that are part of the architecture of modern life and capitalism. Fundamentally they seem without identity and purpose built to cause a friction-less society, a society that no longer creates a united identity. Another aspect of non-places is a sense of sleep walking or amnesia, journeying through everyday life with a resistance to remembering the mundane journeys that occur every day.

Marc Augé also highlights that we spend much of our time in ‘non places’, to me it highlights an illusion of being part of a much grander scheme, than the current lives we may be leading. ‘These days, surely, it was in these crowded places where thousands of individual itinerary converged for a moment, unaware of one another, that there, survived something of the uncertain charms of the wastelands’ ((Marc Augé (1995) Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, trans. John Howe, London: Verso, p. 81 )) This can be considered to be an analysis of modern life, highlighting a glimpse at a Utopian city, a city where people remember the mundane and turn it into something that confronts the expectation of what reality is. This theory links to that of Lyotard and his explanation of the postmodern in relation to Avant Garde theatre, this theatre was set out to change the rules of art by testing the limits of representation and style. In conclusion much like site specific work it confronts the public’s expectations about what art should be.

Taking these notions on board, for the task of placing cards around Lincoln, I chose places that people pass on their mundane journeys. I wanted to make people remember their routes because of where I had placed my cards. In essence I wanted to make places more interesting and turn places into areas where you can form an identity.

The first place I chose to place my card was outside ‘The Shakespeare pub’. I decided to place it here in order to cause a reaction from the regular ‘punters’. I wanted to evoke a sense of awareness to the beauty of the building without focussing solely on the alcohol within the space.

After reading the second card I decided to concentrate on the beauty of the words, I wanted the words to stand out on a piece of artwork. Following the ideologies of Lyotard, I found beauty in the mundane, placing my card on a billboard. I felt that this highlighted the words and reflected the beauty.

The third card reading ‘All these people are anonymous extras. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for them’ was my favourite. After reading this card, it made me think of many places I could put it, the first being a Pedestrian sign post, implying the very literal. However, the place I decided to leave my card was on a memorial statue, there are many reasoning’s behind this, the first being after passing it every day the card made me pay attention to the beauty and care put into the statue. The second being that it is an unexpected shock for passers-by to witness beauty that has been ‘vandalised’ with words of beauty.

After completing this task, i feel that this is something i want to take on board when creating my site specific piece, one of the beauriful places within Lincoln is the Grandstand

After reading Mike Pearson’s ‘Why Performance’ and visiting the Grandstand on a drift, I decided to research further into how a ‘performance can illuminate the historically and culturally diverse ways in which a particular landscape has been made, used, reused and interpreted; and help make sense of the multiplicity of meanings that resonate from it’ ((Pearson, M (2011) Why Performance)) Bearing this quote in mind, I decided to research further into the Grandstand as it occurred to me that after living in Lincoln for nearly two years and passing the grandstand when travelling in and out of Lincoln I had no idea of its uses, past or present. As expected Lincoln racecourse is a former horse racing venue, had my detective hat on to work that one out! It was the original location of the Lincoln handicap which I found out to be a flat handicap horse race opened to thoroughbred horses aged four years or older. The racecourse was established by the Lincoln Corporation on West Common in 1773.

The Grandstand is now a grade II listed building, during the time when the Grandstand was used as a race course the A57 still passed between the course and the grandstand, this led to the road being closed during race meetings, allowing the BBC cameras to follow the racers. This idea of closing the road to allow the race meets to happen linked with the Reading Weeks reading and in particular Making Journeys in Live Art. The Study Room guide is concerned with the value of journeys as an emerging form in Live Art, this theory made me question the idea of attempting to create a site specific performance around the historical elements of the grandstand. With a strong focus in particular on the destruction and yet beauty that could be created by closing down the A57 and trying to recapture the historical values that Lincoln had to offer. How would the local Lincoln population react? Would it create Nostalgia in the older generation? Or is this an idea that needs leaving to the professionals? Either way as stated by Mike Pearson ‘Public performances can enhance public appreciation and understanding of places and describe the process of landscape formation’ ((Pearson, M (2011) Why Performance)) This is something that I very much hope is the case with the majestic grandstand that should be a part of Lincoln’s future as well as Lincoln’s past.

Because of this I want to create a piece which confronts the audiences expectations of art and engages a topic which isn’t considered a focal point in today’s society. I want to illuminate the beauty within the site whilst referring to the ugliness of the past, creating a juxtaposition for the audience to contend with. However throughout the performance i want to create a united identity, bringing audience member and performer into one space creating an installation piece.

Site and Sense Part 1

Phoebe Wall-Palmer / February 24, 2013May 12, 2013 / Personal Posts, Women of War

Experimenting with the senses is something that is hugely inciting for any performer or director. Theatre tends to be a visual medium, whether it’s a physical piece with elements of dance and using the body to create art, or the West End where it’s often the spectacle of the grand stage that attracts audiences. This is also combined with the aural sense, from the music in a piece, to a single voice from centre stage entering into a monologue.

In class we formed a small group and took an element, or theme from the Grandstand as inspiration for a short performance. We created a piece that insisted on one of these major senses being removed or reduced and fused this with the theme of war. Making the room dark, with very limited visibility, we played audio of a sewing machine, Vera Lynn and Judy Garland singing war-time songs and a very faint sound of bombing. Simultaneously, we sprayed perfume on ‘love notes’ and kissed them with red lipstick on, before putting them in front of one of the audience members. We wanted to experiment with how the other senses would be heightened or warped because sight was limited.

The feedback from the audience suggested that the audio of the sewing machine sounded heavy and mechanical and when juxtaposed with the uplifting war-time song and the smell of vanilla from the perfume it created a stirring and effective contrast. When the lights were turned back on, the audience then saw the generically feminine kiss, in red lipstick. It meant there was a focus on the women in war. We discussed how the war, in many respects, gave women a sense of importance as they contributed to help there country, in the same light as the men fighting on the front line.

Rotozaza’s Etiquette is an example of using the aural sense to create a piece that challenges the participants/audience to trust in an unfamiliar voice, and transfer the voice into actions: ‘Etiquette exposes human communication at both its rawest and most delicate and explores the difficulty of turning our thoughts into words we can trust.’ ((Rotozaza (2007) Etiquette/Rotozaza’s Micro/Autoteatro Work, Online: http://www.rotozaza.co.uk/etiquette2.html [accessed 23 February 2013])) Rotozaza communicates the lack of confidence we have to act on our own thoughts. Etiquette allows for the participants to be directed by what feels like our own inner thoughts. Journalist, Jason Zinoman for The New York Times, also highlights the ‘way around the problem of pesky performers by giving the audience something else to look at: themselves.’ ((Zinoman, Jason (2007) ‘A Two Character Play Starring Both Members of the Audience’, The New York Times, Online: http://theater.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/theater/08frin.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1361744832-aav9iGUW/96EAQVDQ40abA [accessed 23 February 2013])) Rotozaza’s work is arguably so thought provoking because the audience is in the performance- they make the performance. Generally, the best way to learn from something is to experience it for oneself.

In our piece we wanted the audience members to sit around the room, with no order or centre focus, as there was nothing to see visually. With the audience all around and between us, we hoped that the experience would surround them, so that they felt within the performance, in the same light as Etiquette. It would be interesting to experiment with the sound recordings playing on headphones and wearing a blindfold. Or, to make it a one-to-one experience, an audience member could just be in the room, in the dark by themself. Rotozaza suggests there is a ‘resulting thrill of disowning responsibility in a performance situation.’ ((Rotozaza (2007) Etiquette/Rotozaza’s Micro/Autoteatro Work, Online: http://www.rotozaza.co.uk/etiquette2.html [accessed 23 February 2013])) Therefore, the use of headphones, for example, would allow the audience to trust the sound and be coerced into whatever or wherever the performance wants to take them.