May 2013 – Page 3

The Winner Takes It All – Evaluating the Race

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

‘At Site, there may be no recourse, no second chance’ ((Pearson, M (2010) Site Specific Performance Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan p.17)) I believed that this quote really connected to my group piece because once the newspaper was stripped off the walls and swept of the floor our performance space had gone and we were standing in an empty weighing room in The Grandstand

On The first of May 2013, it took just over three hours to set the space ready for the 1 pm performance.

On Your Marks Get Set Go!

Myself, Eloise, Emma, Rachel and Kash walked in towards the wall of newspaper, we emerged ourselves in the wall of media before our audience entered the room again. We performed the Ric Basta Poem and then the race began.

Have you ever heard the saying “I could eat a horse”? Why do people say this? Does the meat on the National Handicap Winner Levitate look appealing to you? I did not think so.

If i was going to perform this piece again, I would like to have the whole room completely covered in newspaper; as i felt that the part that was not covered broke the illusion that we wanted to create. I feel that my group had achieved our overall aim in bringing back the theme of gambling back to the Grandstand.

Aircraft At The Grandstand- The Preview

Christopher Greg Sellers / May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 / War and Loss

It is performance day but before we perform Safe Bet at 1:00 pm a preview of the performance will be held , we were told to treat this with as much professionalism and concentration as the 3:00pm performance. There would also be an audience.

Before beginning I had an issue to solve when the audience are constructing the paper aeroplanes. Instead of me demonstrating how to make them , each audience member is given a paper aeroplane template which they should follow. Between each of the three groups there will also be a laminated copy of the instructions. I also learnt that Jordan and I, before the introduction would welcome the audience, inviting them to sit on the Grandstand steps and wait for the performance to begin. I was also informed that, as I have already took up a lead role in the introduction , that I should act as a tour guide, taking the audience from the ‘women at war’, to ‘Jordan’s memorial’ and then outside to the ‘Penny For Your Thoughts’ display. These activities are all connected with the theme of war so it seems logical that I can lead the audience through .

Paper Aeroplane Template

On reflection, the preview performance went quite well. There were several strengths to this run-through. Firstly, my concentration at the start of the piece was excellent . I didn’t break character or give any information away about the piece , just remained ambiguous. My accompanying posture worked well and so did my expression. Furthermore, I projected my voice well during both the introduction and as the spectators were flying their planes. I spoke with clarity and diction , didn’t rush my speech and brought meaning into all actions. My instructions to make the paper aeroplanes were furthermore clear , and my eye contact surveyed the whole group throughout, improving my circle of attention Finally, my attention to detail on my uniform was outstanding. It represented the period and the level of authority for my character extremely well.

Area Outside Of The Grandstand Where My Airmen/ Audience Members Will Stand Against When Flying Thier Aircraft

There were however quite a few weaknesses to my preview performance Firstly, the rotations of the 3 groups around each of the war activities were messy. Once I brought my first group back to the weighing room in The Grandstand, I forgot to reseat them at the back of the room, so that the representative of the ”Tank group’ would know to collect them. Therefore not all the audience were able to participate in all the war exercises In addition, before the introduction I occasionally made conversation to Jordan which wasn’t focused or relevant . In my performance I must instead stay on task throughout. Moreover, I stood too far forward when my aircrew were throwing their planes.. Thus, this didn’t give a poignant impression, instead sometimes seemed slapstick messy and inappropriate Instead, I should ensure that “traces of those who have lived and died here before, along with their ghostly handiwork” remain ((Pearson, 2010, p169)). Finally, I feel that I should have been more prepared when giving each audience member a betting slip. Some looked confused as to where to sit. In future I should gesture to what I want them to do throughout.

Overall, I know what needs to be developed for the final performance . Likewise, following the performance a slight change has been made to the format. At the end of the piece, once the audience have offered their own suggestions for the Grandstand’s future possible uses, I will lead them back to the ‘Penny For Your Thought’s group, so that they can announce the last few numbers, stopping at 9,000. Of course this highlights the fact that 9,000 Lincolnshire Men died at war. Also, when taking the audience , for the first time, to the pennies I have been asked to find the sunlight, and position the audience in this area. They are able to see all the pennies clearly and so will have more of an understanding of the process and message of the group.

Works Cited

Pearson, Mike (2010) Site Specific Performance, London: Palgrave Macmillan

Producing a stable diet – Main Course : Running on an Empty stomach.

Rachel Miller / May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 / The Odds Are Stacked

Our papering of the weighing room bares similarities to artist Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures of negative space. She fills the unused space around domestic objects with all kinds of material to make casts and then removes the object inside. They are ghosts of interior spaces or, if you like, positive impressions of negative spaces (( Rachel Whiteread,EMBANKMENT:About, Tate,http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/unilever-series-rachel-whiteread-embankment/rachel-whiteread, Accessed 4/5/2013)) The focus of her work is to concentrate on the absence of life within these spaces and the memories they use to hold. As critic Kathryn Chadason comments on her work ” Revealing the space we cannot define” (( Chadason, Kathryn, Sculpture “Negative Space with Rachel Whiteread”, http://trendland.com/negative-space-with-rachel-whiteread/, Accessed 3/5/2013)) In response to this our aim as a group was to work on revealing the Grandstand by helping to restore its lost/absent definition. In particular her sculpture cast House (1993) (( Augustine, Luhring “Rachel Whiteread Bio” http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/rachel-whiteread/# ,Accessed 3/5/2013)) a uninhabitable east end London Victorian town house. A large scale project which was filled with liquid concrete to create the mold then knocked down on the inside once set. This was a empty domestic space which was abandoned and represents the absence of life as it was deemed too dangerous to live in. Her use of concrete helps to stimulate the cold lifeless state of the house.

The weighing room is a space we felt had no life or definition. From first sight we witnessed its bare white chipped walls, with its cold stone floors and moldy ceiling. A place where life was very much absent however held a bundle of silent memories. So we like Rachel Whiteread define our empty space by filling it with materials however we wanted our audience to witness a journey of the space coming to life to it then being emptied and swept away, stored into boxes by the end of the piece. In order to help answer Why is the Grandstand empty? My Grandstand Journey equation : + / – = [?] When researching Rachel Whiteread’s work i came across this statement in a thesis abstract written by Graduate Artist Analisa Violich Goodin which is included in her visual criticism on ” An Imagined Absence” “We have become invisible, while all that was unseen has risen to the surface of the visual field. What we think we know is suddenly unfamiliar, what we think we see is now obscured.” (( Analisa Violich Goodin “Thesis Abstract An Imagined Absence: Images of Loss and the Performance of Representation“http://sites.cca.edu/gradthesisevents/visual_criticism/goodin_analisa/1.html Accessed 3rd May 2013 )) In comparison to our piece we can relate to this statement through our representation of human camouflage. We may not have made our selves completely invisible but our aim was to be conceal and make our identities invisible, in preparation for us to become part of the space as well as perform in it. So it was in the corner of a news papered weighing room that we were “ unseen” however due to our bodies and outlines we did appear “risen from the surface “. Our audience members ( peers and lecturers) people with whom we are familiar could of become immediately confused and oblivious to who was who underneath our broadsheet skin. We therefore became objects of unfamiliarity. By this we wanted to convey how the Grandstand is becoming increasingly unfamiliar to the city of Lincoln. If the Grandstands past self was to fast forward and see the way it has been abandoned and forgotten today, would it recognize its own self ? With regards to the Grandstand being possibly used as a mortuary in the second world war we decided to apply this appropriate factor to our theme of loss with our horse motif. So in the style of a murder crime scene we depicted a black tape outline of a horse on the floor, which we did not reveal until the end of our piece as it lay underneath a layer of newspaper carpet. It is here that we “obscured” something from what our audience’s initial acquaintance with the space . We decided to reveal it near the end of our piece as we wanted the Grandstands original purpose and silent hero to be the last imprint in their minds. However to lighten the mood of the piece we decided to play with the current news on the horse meat scandal and this year’s Lincoln handicap winner to comprise a bit of a dark humored joke about what might of really happened to the winner Levitate after the race.

“When you lose playfulness , you lose inspiration” –Willi Dorner ((Pinchbeck, Michael, 2005, NottDance, Dance4 Toolkit))

Upon reflection

Charlotte Restall / May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 / A Restoration

Our process started when we investigated Willi Dorner and his belief that to “see the space you also have to feel the space. [Which makes you] feel closer to the city” ((Pinchbeck, Michael (2013) Site-Specific Performance Week Two: Practice [shown at Lincoln: The University of Lincoln. Main Admin Building] [viewed on 3^rd May 2013])). From this we investigated the space around us, feeling the architecture and landscape to and learning more about the historical context of the site. We learnt many things about the uses of the site during the war but we wanted to focus on the site during its most in use time and then relate it back to now. Wanting to personify the Grand Stand allowed me to think about the memories the architecture held including how it might feel now, perhaps: lonely, cold, isolated, lifeless, dilapidated, old and broken. We wanted to see how the city engaged with the site, wanting to know their view as to the uncertain future of the Grand Stand. To make it fair for the audience, as a class we realised that we needed to take the audience on a journey through time as well as through the site where it would end with us receiving feedback from the audience regarding their suggestions.

Our performance took place on 1^st May 2013 where we presented the audience with plots of the two demolished stands which were made from horse hair twine and 200 suggestions attached to this. The audience explored the suggestions, tracing the plotted stands, taking them in and adding their own. By doing this they were able to walk in someone else’s shoes: those who once were. The audience was able to perceive the landscape as a way of “carry[ing] out an act of remembrance” ((Pearson, Mike (2006) In Comes I Performance, Memory and Landscape, University of Exeter Press. p. 12)). I felt through our performance we were able to carry out this act by showing ghosts of the past intermixed with the infinite amount of future options. On reflection we found the performance to be hard hitting for some members of the audience. On some of the thirty seven ‘demolish’ suggestions they had been tampered with to say ‘no’ and ‘don’t’ which was an unexpected conflict. We appreciated that we were able to impact the audience in such a positive way that it created debate between the audiences.

Our performance developed from our first investigation of the space. We used the technique of drifting as a way of “disrupting routine” ((Goven, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Nicholson (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices, London: Routledge. p. 142))where our investigation helped us to re-imagine “the social order of the city into a more fluid and interactive space” ((Goven, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Nicholson (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices, London: Routledge. p. 142)). Our perception of the space changed as we learnt more about the history and we realised that the city is “a ‘potential’ space, a place of inquiry and invention” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Macmillan. p. 25))of which is free to be explored. Rob Shields states that “a site acquires its own history… connotations and symbolic meaning” ((Shields, Rob (1991) Places on the Margin Alternative Geographies of Modernity, London: Routledge. p. 60)). The Grand Stand is so full of its own history and connotations yet through our investigation we used drifting to get rid of these preconceptions so we could imagine our own.

This documentation of our post-show performance shows some of the hundreds of responses we received. We hope that the legacy of the Grand Stand remains.

Even though our performance and post-show performance has ended our performance similar to the saying ‘how long is a piece of string’… It does not have an end, it is a continuous performance which will outlive the Grand Stand. Upon leaving this project we can only imagine and dream of what is to come of the Grand Stand. Hopefully it will not end up standing lonely and broken but above all, never forgotten by the city of Lincoln.

A Weave of Performance

Charlotte Restall / May 13, 2013May 13, 2013 / A Restoration

“The word ‘text’, before referring to a written or spoken, printed or manuscripted text, meant ‘a weaving together” ((Barba, Eugenio (2006[1991] ‘Actions at work’ in B. Eugenio (2^nd ed.) A dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The secret Art of the Performer, London and New York: Routledge. p. 66))

Our performance weaves together many different elements in order to show the connectivity of our journey including audience and performance. It begins in a betting shop where someone: maybe someone with an addiction or a first time better, picks up a betting slip and places their bet. Some of the slips will have been winners however the majority will lose because that is the way the games are designed. We have acquired some of these betting slips as they have already been taken on this journey and been held by many different people. This interconnectivity weaves into our performance as we took the betting slips and wrote the future ideas for the Grand Stand on them. These ideas had been on a journey of their own as they were given to us by members of the public and then taken to the Grand Stand. Remaining betting slips were kept for our performances so the audience could make an informed choice as to what they felt it should or could become. One audience member I spoke to felt that it should become a

“Drive-in cinema. This is because I thought the site was nice and open plan and in a good place (in terms of being just outside central town) for the noise of a drive-in cinema.” ((Watson, Cassandra. 2013. Reaction to ‘Safe Bet’. Interviewed by Charlotte Restall. [written] University of Lincoln Library, 12 May 2013.))

So some of the audience were informed by our performance choosing things like:

Some of these suggestions were interlinked with the site on a different level whereas others wanted to adapt the site so that it would become something new.

Lone Twin created a response to a recent freak tornado where “the performers carried a pole as the crow flies between two buildings which took them through Colchester town centre” ((Govan, Emma, Nicholson, H. and Normington, K., (2007) Making a Performance Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices, London and New York: Routledge. P. 123)). We want to recreate the idea that Lone Twin had with this performance: Totem (2005). We took twine through the city, after the performance, to interact with members of the public and collect ideas for what they think the grandstand should or could become in the future. We were able to discuss our project with them to collect more ideas in a post-show discussion. Many members of the public interacted with us as they wondered what we were doing. We were able to explain how we recreated the demolished stands, brought back the voice of the remaining stand and that this, currently, was us bringing the future of the Grand Stand back to the public. “Events that project themselves on the city… are part of the experience of the city”. ((Wodiczko, Krzysztof quoted in Kaye, Nick (2003[2001]) Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation, London and New York: Routledge. p. 37)) Some people added suggestions to add to our growing list whilst other simply browsed what was already proposed. The performance is an on-going process as we will be presenting our findings to the Lincolnshire Archives.