Category: The Odds Are Stacked

Our performance at the grandstand on the first of May 2013 was one that I was really looking forward too despite the fact that I was very concerned about the performance as a whloe. I had had no sleep the night before and because of the nature of out piece we had never been able to go through the whole thing start to finish with much ease and everybody had so many ideas that it was rare for us to get through an entire rehearsal without one of us thinking of something to add in, or wanting to change something. The performance itself was one that we had spent weeks and weeks changing and adjusting in order to create a piece that all five of us would be proud of and felt passionate about. Throughout the entire process we kept asking ourselves how our performance related to the site as we felt as a group that this was the most important aspect of the entire module and if we found no meaning within the site to try and convey to an audience then the site itself would be wasted. Mike Pearson states in Why Performance? that performance can be ‘a means of exposition and representation,’ ((Mike Pearson Why Performance? 2011)) and the idea of exposing a history that had seemingly been long forgotten by Lincoln itself became a very important aspect of the project that we didn’t want to forget. We also kept in mind that we were actually representing the grand stand in a way that as far as we were aware had not been explored before.
First of all we hit a number of hitches in the pre set up for the performance. Due to the large area that we had to cover we had decided to create large sheets of newspaper that we would then put on the wall. However some of these sheets had become quite screwed up and we therefore had to use single sheets of newspaper to cover the walls that took a lot longer than we had anticipated. Secondly we ran out of blu tack with which we needed to stick up the newspaper on the wall. Which meant that a couple of us needed to run out to get some. This left a smaller number of people to help cover the walls and floor, a job that ideally needed everyone. However due to everyone’s hard work the entire room was covered in just enough time for the one o’clock performance. Due to the nature of our performance we had to then decide within the group just how much of the performance we could do at the preview show. We decided that to do the entire performance with us completely covered in newspaper wasn’t really plausible and so decided to just paper up our joints and hold the masks over our face so that the preview audience still got a feel of what the actual full performance would be like. After this preview we then had to set up the space again and completely recover ourselves in newspaper.
For the second performance we started to run out of time for all five of us to be covered and so everybody from the other groups all pitched in to help us. All five of us had at least two people helping each of us and without that there is no way that we would have been ready in time. From the start of this project there was a real sense of team work despite the fact that everyone had their own performances to focus on and this sense of all working together I believe really helped to pull everything together.
Our full performance was literally the first time that Charlie, Kash, Rachel, Emma and I had had an opportunity to go through the whole performance in its entirety and due to this at the time of the performance I was very nervous and was hoping that I would remember everything we had to do. However, the performance went well and I am hoping that it really showed how much work we had put into it and how much we wanted to relate to the site. There are a few things however about the performance that with hindsight I think I would change if I could.
Firstly, being covered in newspaper head to foot for the prolonged period that we were became very uncomfortable after a time and it didn’t really allow that much movement. Also because of the aesthetic elements of our piece we spent a lot of time trying to get the ‘set’ right and lost time when we could have been considering how to have more of a journey to our piece. Secondly, we decided to cover our faces by using plastic masks that were then covered in newspaper. While again this may have looked good aesthetically it became very uncomfortable after being in them for a long time and so by the time it came for the performance I personally was eager to rip it off! Also the sweeping away of the newspapers at the end of the performance could have been made a little easier if we had brought slightly bigger brooms because it would have been easier to clear the paper quicker but the ones we did have did the job just as well.
Apart from a few minor problems that we encountered I believe that overall our finial performance went well. I think that we engaged with the site that we had chosen and that our overall concept was one that I became very proud of. All five members of my group worked incredibly hard to achieve what we eventually came up with and at the end of it I was very pleased with the performance. I hope that we created an performance that an audience enjoyed as well but more importantly I hope that we created a performance that showed a history of our site and made our audiences consider the forgotten history of the historic Grandstand.

Idea for covering the walls of the room in newspaper came to us from more than one source. The First idea came from the works of Chisto and his wrapping art. However, our idea seemed to be more of a reverse of Christo’s work for while he was wrapping the outside of buildings we wanted to cover the inside of a building and from this idea we discovered a new inspiration.
The Artist Emma Hack is a body artist who paints bodies and then camouflages them against walls that are painted exactly the same. From further research It was discovered that Emma had been given permission by signature prints to use the designs of Florence Broadhurst, and iconic wallpaper designer, and was using these designs and incorporating them into her own work. After looking at Emma Hacks work we got the idea to cover ourselves in newspaper as this would allow us to be camouflaged into the wall and would allow us to almost break out of the wall, as if we were breaking out of the wall to draw more attention to the grandstand as the grandstand cant draw attention to itself.
Our original idea was to use copies of the racing post with which to cover the room and ourselves with. However, after some discussion we decided that we should use more than just the one paper. Although using the racing post would be very specific to the site seeing as it used to be used for horse racing we could also relate the performance to each of us by using paper from all different places. For example, we used some of the Student papers that featured the universities slogan on it as it related to all of the people in the group as we are all students of the university and the whole project had been brought to our attention due to it. We also used a lot of Lincolnshire papers and looked out for anything that had stories about the grandstand or about the history of Lincoln itself.
According to Emma Hacks website, ‘The reaction new viewers have to Emma’s work is usually one of intrigue,’ ((http://www.emmahackartist.com.au/emma_art/the_artist.html)) and we hoped that the reaction of our audience would also be one of intrigue and that our performance would pique the interest of our audience and they would want to find out more about the site itself. We also hoped that the use of paper would intrigue an audience and that they would pay attention to the papers we used as they did indicate a deeper meaning as outlined in a previous post.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude have become well known names in the art world due to their projects in which they ‘wrap’ famous monuments, Trees and even coast lines. Perhaps one of the best known of these projects came from 1995 when they wrapped the Reichstag in Germany. Christo and Jeanne Claude state on their website that “the work is more about altering an environment than wrapping,” ((http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/faq)) and this quote really resonated with our group and has helped to influence the progression of our piece.
The grandstand has been sat without a purpose for so many years that it seems to be in a disused environment. The horse stables across the road in the common is an everyday reminder that could be said to signify the grandstands previous grand purpose but, more often that not, the grandstand is completely ignored. Within our piece we wanted to draw attention to how easy it is to blend into your environment and how it is possible to break out of it and alter your environment, much like how Christo believes that his wrapping work helps to alter environments. We covered half the room on wall newspaper to try and draw attention to that part of the room but it also allowed a backdrop with which to camouflage ourselves. To create the sense of taking an audience on a journey through our piece, we felt the changing of the environment was essential. In order to achieve this it was important to show a progression and this was achieved by having a series of parts to our performance. The first part where we were dressed in newspaper and were standing up against the wall of newspaper signified the way in which the grandstand often goes unnoticed and the poem we recited was reminiscent of the grandstands history. The second part with the betting slips was a comment on society and to try and make an audience think about maybe the darker side of the grandstands history. Then the Horse projection. This was important to our piece, as the horse image was the first moving picture ever produced. We felt that this was not only relevant to the grandstands history of horse racing but also solidified the horses place in history and shows that it was an important animal to all generations. Then in contrast to this we then wanted to show how the Horse as an animal has lost some of its grandeur, much like how the grandstand has lost some of its grandeur. The last part of the Performance incorporated the latest horse news and we touched on the horse meat scandal and then related it to the Grandstand by naming the mince after the Lincoln Handicap Winner.
Throughout the entire process we found that the performance took on a lot of new meaning for each member of the group. As we developed our performance further we added a lot of new elements that we felt related directly to the grandstand and also were indicative of the environment that the grandstand would have been, in such as the use of the betting slips. The betting slips were indicative of a time when the grandstand was used for the horse racing that we had based our performance on. The betting slips we used to try and give a different element to the performance and to show a theme of loss and how fickle gambling can be. By throwing up the betting slips at the end we wanted to try and show an ending to the grandstand and that there was an ending of life happening there.
Donald Brook states on Christo’s work that ‘A function of art, is perhaps, to provoke life out of its closed circuits and dying ritual,’ ((Donald Brook – The Little bay Affair – Art and Australia – December 1969 Volume 7 Number 3)) and I feel that by using the grandstand as our Site we helped give life back to a place that’s had its only purpose die.