A Restoration – Safe Bet

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.

Post Show Hope.

Abigail Dawson / May 9, 2013May 10, 2013 / A Restoration

Kastner and Wallis’s typology of land art (1998) suggests involvement: “the artist in a one-to-one relationship with the land, using his or her body in forms of ritual practise” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 33)).

Our performance developed a significant amount from this first stimulus. Originally we wanted to become a part of our architecture physically, playing around and finding shapes and spaces that our bodies could reproduce or fit into. Willi Dorner stated that to “see the space you also have to feel the space. Feel closer to the city. Closer to where you come from” ((Pinchbeck, Michael (2013) Site-Specific Performance Week Two: Practice [shown at Lincoln: The University of Lincoln. Main Admin Building] [viewed on 23/01/2013])). From this we were able to become a part of the landscape around us, be physically in touch with the architecture that has been built over the years. By being part of the architecture, thoroughly connecting with the space around us, it enabled us to gain a solid understanding of our site. We studied The Grandstand’s past and the many different experiences it has encountered through the years, its current present state and we ended in searching for hope in the site’s future. This would not have been possible if we did not connect with it, physically and most importantly emotionally. The relationship we had with our site was strong. From this we endeavoured to take our audience on a journey through past, present and future. We wanted to “recreate journeys and see how time has affected memory of the movements and memory of the space” ((Pinchbeck, Michael (2013) Site-Specific Performance Week Two: Practice [shown at Lincoln: The University of Lincoln. Main Admin Building] [viewed on 23/01/2013])). The aim was to have the audience experience the many different events that had taken place at The Grandstand, from World War One, the role of women during the war, the treatment of horses at the races and finally the dilapidation of The Grandstand itself. The journey the whole class created for the performance was successful overall. By the time spectators arrived at our restoration piece they had been given sufficient time to form their own opinion of The Grandstand. This made it easier for them to write down what they thought the site should become, through experiencing its past and present it enabled the audience to contemplate on the space’s strongest function. The responses we received from the spectators were excellent and nobody refused to participate. Each and every one wrote down their own suggestion, many quite similar to the 200 we had already collected and attached to our restored stands. An unexpected response we received was some spectators writing on ideas already attached, such as demolish, and they wrote answers such as ‘no’ or ‘don’t demolish’ next to the suggestion. Although unexpected, we were pleasantly surprised and delighted with how the audience were engaging with our performance. We were thankful for their participation and helping build the hope for the site’s future. We successfully managed to show that “a space is not empty but full of meaning” ((Goven, Emma, Helen Nicholson and Katie Nicholson (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices, London: Routledge, p. 121)), we believe we brought the meaning back to the site through our performance.

As a part of our post show performance we took the twine with all the suggestions attached into the centre of Lincoln town. We then laid the twine across the high street, allowing the public to attach any ideas they had. Many members of the public approached us, asking what it was we were doing. It was explained to them what we had done in our performance before hand, and that we were then bringing the future of The Grandstand back to the public. Some people added their own ideas and others just wanted to take a look at the suggestions already provided on the twine. It would be fantastic in years to come to think that The Grandstand may become something from one of our founded suggestions; we would have given the site a future. Our performance became “a restoration of the absent present” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site- Specific Performance: New York, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 46)). We leave this project with hope, hope that our site won’t always stand bare and vacant and hope that it won’t always be forgotten by the people of Lincolnshire.

Here is a video of a part of our post show performance:

How To Build A Grandstand

Daniel Ridealgh / May 7, 2013May 7, 2013 / A Restoration

The Purpose of this blog post is to give further detail into the process of rebuilding the two stands to scale. The Lincolnshire archives contained two separate maps of the original Grandstand trio; one was dated 1906, the other 1946, the trio being the Tattershall’s stand, the Grandstand and the Silver Ring stand. By collaborating what was shown on these two maps I was able to sketch out the two stands at a scale of 20 ft = 1 inch.

The Silver Ring stand (which is the bottom sketch on the image below) was the largest of the three stands, with a width of 170 ft. The size of the entire pavilion meant that foundations would have covered the ground beneath what is now flat grass land. At points along our reconstruction we felt these foundations as the twine was supported at corner sections with foot-long tent pegs.

The actual “Grandstand” (the top sketch on the image) was far smaller than both the Silver Ring and Tattershall stands, this was because it did not include in it’s architecture any form of pavilion styles steps. This building was used for those who wished to pay to sit in a private viewing box. The other stands would have been open for any to stand on throughout the day. When we reconstructed this particular stand, we could not support some corner sections with pegs as a concrete car park now sits upon the old foundations. Therefore we were forced to use chalk to complete the parameter of the Grandstand.

It was at this particular visit to the archives that I also discovered the track was “three hundred acres, first used as a racecourse in 1771” (( Williamson, James (1890) A Guide Through Lincoln, Lincoln Printers: Lincoln. p.23)). Which meant that racing events still occurred at this course prior to the construction of the three stands in 1856. After further investigation we found that a single stand, also named “The Grandstand” was constructed on the site before the trio. This stand was much smaller than any of the three built afterwards and stood significantly further away from the track. This perhaps was the reason behind it’s deconstruction. It was both too far away to be beneficial to race-goers and to small in size to accommodate the crowds.

Post-Performance Evaluation

Daniel Ridealgh / May 7, 2013May 10, 2013 / A Restoration

On Wednesday 1st May 2013, we presented to the audience our restoration project. Having set up the two plans, and attached the two hundred suggestions collected earlier in the process, we allowed the audience time to explore what we had presented. As we had expected the audiences spent time looking at the ideas of others before attaching their own. New suggestions were added from what had previously been collected including: a school, nursery, health clinic, interactive exhibit, gardens and a play park. What was not expected was that the audience felt they needed to comment on the suggestions of others. An example of this would be that on some of the 37 ‘demolish’ attachments we found people had crossed some out, drawn disapproving faces or added the words ‘no’ or ‘don’t’. This provides the project with an essence of debate, having audiences interact and disagree with each other, although not foreseen it is still welcomed.

The second part to Wednesday’s performance was the return to the high street. This was not as successful as we’d have hoped because of the time of day. As we had not set up our display until after 5pm, the town centre was not as busy as first anticipated, with most passers-by en-route to return home from their work/school, the majority did not stop to look at the work. Those who did, listened to a brief description of the project and gave us some more ideas. The responses from this demographic of people, centred around evening entertainment facilities, such as bars, clubs and hotels. This for us as a group highlighted the versatility of the site because of it’s size and location.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC_E1lUh_h0&feature=youtu.be

In reflection finding an end point to this project was difficult. The section presented to the audience during Wednesday’s performance was part of the process, not an end result. Afterwards it was then walked back into the high street, where it continued. We did not want it to just finish here, so instead we decided on a fitting finish for the project. The company which built the Grandstand in 1856, Porter & co, had a factory in Lincoln which has now been demolished, and the site is used as a car-park. We will be taking the completed length of twine and suggestions, placing it at the location responsible for the Grandstand’s very existence. After which, once complete correspondences have been made with the Lincolnshire archives, we would hope to present them with this twine, as the archive building is conveniently located across the street from the old Porter & co factory. This is where we would hope to leave our contribution to the legacy of the Grandstand. An artistic research group called Wrights & Sites created a similar scaled project in 2007 called Possible Forests. This involved the group embarking on a series of reconnaissance drifts through the forest with specialists in diverse fields discussing ways of experiencing, re-imagining and planning the forest landscape. The exhibition documented these dialogues through maps, texts and video, and gave the public the opportunity to contribute their own ‘possible forests’ to the collection. Wrights & Sites explored new ways of interacting with the space around them, and sought after ideas for the future of the forest, just as we did with our project.

As we shared similarities, there is also a correlation with criticisms. Cathy Turner analysed Possible Forests in the Contemporary Theatre Review, in which she examined the relationship between architecture and dramaturgy. “Despite my stress on the provisional and imaginary nature of the architectures proposed by this project it is a small step from here to the production of new architectures” ((Turner, Cathy(2012) ‘Mis-Guidance and Spatial Planning: Dramaturgies of Public Space’, Contemporary Theatre Review vol. 20(2) p.149-161)), which may also be true for our piece. The legislation involved with any reconstruction efforts on a listed building will take local councils a great deal of time to complete. Therefore even if our project convinced the council to begin restoring the Grandstand immediately, it could be years before any changes are put into effect. We can not however, let this dismiss the importance of our work as a potential ignition for change. As well as this we also finished with a great number of suggestions, as did Possible Forests, and this is a positive of both. Turner in the same article writes, ‘despite its open-ended nature, concrete proposals were made’. The idea’s our audiences contributed ranged from practical transformations, to ones that would involve a great investment to change. It is likely that some of the suggestions (i.e. the museum) would have already been thought of by stakeholders of the grandstand, whom hold interested in it’s future.

Retrospectively having more time with the project would have been ideal. Extensive work could have been carried to raise awareness to a larger majority of Lincoln about the Grandstand. Being able to have contact with the council and perhaps the local media, such as the Lincolnshire Echo newspaper, would have enabled for this raise in awareness. Fundamentally the infrastructure is in place for the Grandstand site to operate in any new or past usage, meaning that financial investment would not be as substantial as constructing on empty land. For Lincoln economically, there are incentives to restoring the Grandstand by implementing the suggestions that this project has uncovered.