Safe Bet

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.

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.

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.

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.