Month: March 2013

T.A.N.K. Part 2 – Development of an Idea

Callum Pepper / / T.A.N.K

Just like William Tritton, William Rigby and Major Wilson did in 1915, Myself, Ben, Gabby and Steph had a meeting to discuss and layout our ideas of what we could do about the Tank and its development in Lincoln, but also how it could relate to The Great Grandstand.

Our first couple of ideas centred on how the Tank could link to the Grandstands building, but we realised its more about the area surrounding the Grandstand than the building itself, most notably West common. Research we had found prior to our meeting suggested that West common had been used during the First World War for the testing of new aircraft, also the practising of building trenches, but there was no evidence about the First Tank and West common.

We had come across a problem, how could we relate the Tank to the grandstand?

That question got me thinking outside of our meeting and after reading the hand out we had been given during our seminar, Mike Pearson had posed the question “What are the marks, traces and details of human activity: past and present” ((Mike Pearson, 2011, Some Approaches to Research)) Could there been traces from testing of the Tank in Lincoln? Could we try and replicate its testing on grandstand area? Because I had asked myself those questions it got me again thinking about how we could leaving our mark just like the Tank had done 98 years ago. Even better could we replicate the Tanks process start to finish? Drawing our own blue print, construing a model on site and final testing it out at the end of our performance.

How would the site be affect by us bringing a piece of the past to present?

Come to the factories

Jamee-Lee Fleming / / Women of War

Following onto the idea of women during the war, I have been focusing on the war posters. They were created during World War One and Two in aid of advertising the recruiting of jobs. Women before the war were known to be classed as housewives in which stereo-typically they did jobs such as nursing. It changed when the war began, men had to go to war and fight where “women were called upon to fill their jobs” (Barrow, 2011). For example factory work, farming, mechanics and engineering.  So in order to help the soldiers, they had to do the work. There are many war posters around but this particular one stood out to me. The reason why it did was because as a group we are focusing on the war, especially in our sub groups; women of the war. The strong stance from the woman shows an invitation to others to come and help the men at war, and with the aeroplanes flying over it shows a representation of what she has done in able to help them.

 

Come to the factories

(http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~pv/pv/courses/posters/images1/womenfact.jpg)

With the aeroplanes flying over head, it links in with Emily’s, Phoebe’s, Sophie’s and I’s idea on focusing on the making of the aeroplanes wings. I want to be able to create this image during the performance. Gabby came up with the idea of smashing cups and plates to represent the Roman pottery, which her group had found during their investigation of the site. I want to be able to use her materials and make the image of the poster above as a mosaic. The artist that inspired my idea is Mark Storor, he created a piece called “Our Caravan”. It is a “caravan completely mosaiced on the outside with broken china and filled with tea and an abundance of bakewell tarts” (Addicott) This installation was exhibited in firstsite gallery in March 2003. Whilst participating in a workshop with Mark himself. He showed us many art projects that he had created and the idea of the mosaic caravan stood out to me the most as it is a simple piece of art but it can have many ideas behind it and this is what I wanted with the outcome of the poster I will create.

Works Cited

Addicot, Matt. Workshops/ Matt Addico, Online: http://mattaddicott.com/MAWorkshops.html (accessed 13th March 2013)

Barrow, Mandy (2011) Jobs for Women during the War/ Britain since the 1930s, Online: http://www.chiddingstone.kent.sch.uk/homework/war/women.htm (accessed: 13th March 2013)

Part 1. The City.

Charlotte Restall / / A Restoration

After our trip to the grandstand it made me realise that it is one of the first things people see as they drive into Lincoln. The race course and stands of the Lincoln Handicap are a part of Lincoln history. Knowing now that what we call the ‘grandstand’ used to go by the name of the ‘Tattersall stand’ brought me to think about the stand as a landmark and the idea of urban restoration. What was the reason for the demolition of the other two stands? Perhaps through the process of “demolition by neglect situations” ((Weiss, John M. (2012) “The Fitch Forum: Protecting Landmarks From Demolition by Neglect: New York City’ Experience , Widener Law Review, 2012/01/01, Vol: 18, p. 309.)). It stands strong that “more attention should be devoted to the mechanisms through which the city is perceived” ((Sainz, Maria Alvarez (2012) “(Re)Building an Image for a City: Is A Landmark Enough? Bilbao and the Guggenheim Museum, 10 Years Together”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology; Jan 2012, Vol. 42 Issue 1, p. 100-132.)). The grandstand is a part of the history of the city and should be treated that way. Currently the future of the grandstand is unclear, however, a restoration project could help to bring life back into the grandstand and create a focal point for the history that lies within the walls and grounds of the building.

Restoring the Grandstand Part I

Abigail Dawson / / A Restoration

After many trips to the Grand Stand, exploring inside and on the land around it, it became clear what me, Charlie Restall and Daniel Ridealgh wanted to research about the site. There is a slight difference in the old and the new architecture of the building, mainly the colour of the bricks. But we noticed that objects had been taken away from the architecture, such as the tannoys that were used deliver the horse racing news and notices to the public who used to go to the Grand Stand. We were able to find the remaining hooks that the tannoy wires would have been supported by on the bricks. The main idea that came about from the removal of the tannoys was the loss of voice from the site. It could no longer speak, forever muted; it gave the building a sense of isolation, the voice trapped inside. This became a starting point for our performance; it was up to us to restore those tannoys. A simple sound system which would give the Grand Stand an ability to speak, perhaps reply the announcements of the past races.

While researching Lincolnshire and the Grand Stand during the 19th and 20th centuries at the Lincolnshire Archives, we came across two other stands that used to be a part of the site but unfortunately got demolished, the date we are unsure of. The significance of this research was that what we’ve always known as the Grand Stand is actually the Tattersall’s Stand and because it was the only surviving building it got renamed the Grand Stand. The memories from the demolished buildings no longer exist, they got destroyed. Mike Pearson states that “landscape becomes embedded with memory” ((Pearson M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance, London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 95)) and we plan to bring back the memories, which were created by the public during the races, to the landscape surrounding the site.  This will be done by attempting to re-produce the original Grand Stand and the Silver Ring Stand.  Through research the measurements of these buildings have been found, so our recreation will be exactly to scale, we hope. Not only will this bring back the lost memories, it will also create new ones with the audience we bring into our performance that have never stepped foot on our site before.  From this it may be seen that “performance can play a role in the public engagement with landscape’ ((Pearson M. (2011) Why Performance?)), our audience will be able to engage with the ‘restored’ stands once again by learning what was lost from the landscape and imagining it’s past appearance.

The British company, Station Opera House, are known for building structures of an architectural scale. They use thousands of concrete blocks to create a breezeblock structure. One out of many of their famous pieces is The Bastille Dances (1989) where they used 8000 of these concrete blocks in the construction. It was assembled and dismantled over the course of nine days by the company and was initially created to represent the French Revolution. It started off as an image of the demolition of the Bastille in Paris with the concrete blocks dispersing, representing it’s destruction through the city. This company’s ideas are fairly similar to what we want to do. Re-creating the other stands on a grand scale and then tear it all down to show the destruction and loss of these buildings, what it has done to the landscape as a consequence – it no longer looks like the Grandstand, just an old building left deteriorate. Yi-Fu Tuan argues in his book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience that “architecture can educate people’s awareness and concept of reality” ((Tuan Y. (1997) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, London: Edward Arnold, p. 117)) , we aim teach and inform our audience of the site’s history so they are no longer ignorant of how the past and present society that we currently live in has let the Grandstand decay into nothing. The easiest way to do this is to give it back its voice and bring the buildings to life once again, by bringing Lincoln’s history to present day it is will also help the other groups performances who aim to go further back in history before the Grandstand itself existed.

Here is a video of our group’s first attempt at re-creating the original Grand Stand:

Developing Performance Ideas Part II

Jordan Benjamin Holland / / Personal Posts

With the recitation of the poem, I originally felt that performing the poem 1 to 1 would create the greatest possible experience for the spectator and myself to share together. I researched the concept of 1 to 1 performance and came across the following – “Solo performance can draw together narratives… can play a generative role in interpretation and the creation of new ways of perceiving; animating through fiction…. Solo performance can include truth and fiction, lying and borrowing: the fragmentary, the digressive, the ambiguous… It can include traveller’s tales, poetry, forensic data, quotations, genealogies, lies, jokes, improvised asides, physical re-enactments and autobiographical details.” ((Pearson, M (2011) Why Solo Performance? Online: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/landscape/impactfellowship/peforminggeographieswarplands/toolkit.aspx date accessed: 12/03/2013)) This quote opened up the options of what I could potentially include in my performance, and also presented the new idea that performing 1 to 1 can create “new ways of perceiving…” ((ibid))

When I next visited the site with the class I did a run through of the poem, and I discovered that while performing the poem 1 to 1 did create an incredibly strong connection between myself and the audience member, it was not practical to perform the poem 1 to 1 within the context of our group performance. This was because if we had a large audience visit the performance, not only would they have to wait in turn to hear the poem, but then after that they would have to wait before they could move on to spectate the next part of the group performance. Although this would have tied in with the original theme of waiting which my first blog post was about, due to the confines of the time frame we had booked the site to hire for the performance, performing 1 to 1 would not be possible. I decided it was best, with regards to the time constraints, if the audience as a whole heard the poem together. I also added in the use of music during the poem, in aid of enhancing the emotional connection which the 1 to 1 performance created. This was done by collaborating with another member of the group who could play the tenor horn. They played The Last Post, to which the poem repeatedly references.

During this visit to the site I also discovered that there was another member of the group who wanted to show the Military history of the site through their performance and we began to work together on a short piece which would not only introduce the performance, but would also introduce the audience to the rich Military history of the site. We decided that one of us would present the World War One history and the other would present the World War Two history of the Lincoln Grandstand. As I had a lot of research regarding the Military history of World War One I decided that I would take care of the First World War performance.

We decided that we would begin by bringing the audience into the weighing room of the Lincoln Grandstand, addressing the audience together and introducing them to the performance. We would then split the audience into 3 groups. One group would go with the World War Two history, one group with the World War One history, and the last group would go with the T.A.N.K group. After the audience had experienced one of these 3 performances, they would be rotated to experience another. No audience group would see the same performance twice.

I decided that this would be the perfect time to bring the golf bunker into the performance. The bunker would be used as a trench. I gathered 50 small bags together, went outside to the bunker and filled them with dirt from the bunker. The performance would consist of me performing solo, giving each audience member a bag of dirt and I would then take the audience outside and lead them to the bunker. The audience would play the role of soldiers and I would be training them in the use of the trench. I would tell the audience to get in the trench, be told about the use of the trench and then be tested in some duck and cover drills. The bags of dirt would then be poured back into the bunker one at a time by the audience members as they said their name and place of birth. This would be the introduction of the concept of becoming one with those who had gone before them. By helping to ‘build’ the trench, the audience would join the soldiers who came before them and would also become amalgamated in the First World War history of the Lincoln Grandstand.