Tag: grandstand

The wall that remains outside, next to the Weighing Room, is set to be a prominent aspect of the performance. The Women of War group have since developed the ‘Suppression versus Liberation’ idea, and the wall is now likely to mark the end of our piece. Rather than the wall and chains representing women’s societal position pre-war, the location will be strongly visual, hanging objects that symbolise key aspects of the whole performance. For example, the group that are particularly interested in horse racing and betting, their object may be a horse shoe. The Women of War group are planning to hang a china tea cup, to symbolise the domestic role of women, and the community essence of the site that still remains today.

After more group discussion, the installation is possibly going to be developed further, with audience members taking part in the hanging of the objects. The effect of audience participation highlights the importance of the Grandstand as a landmark for the community of the city, and suggests a sense of ‘ritual’ or ‘memorial’. The wall will subsequently remain as a commemoration of the performance, being fixed, as opposed to the performance itself, which will be unique and cannot be the same again. The wall installation idea is inspired by the Pont de l’Archevêché, a bridge in Paris that is covered in padlocks left by lovers. The intriguing display is an example of evoking repercussions, emotion and brings life to the site itself. The tree structures on Luzhkov Bridge in Moscow also display padlocks; each representing the strength of a relationship. These random spectacles created purely by human intuition demonstrates “the transforming of the everyday into the extraordinary, the finding of poetry in something so mundane as a padlock” ((Daily Mail (2012) The Lock of Love, Online: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2172901/The-lock-love-For-years-couples-world-left-padlocks-bridges-tokens-love-Now-Britons-unlocking-inner-passions-too.html (accessed 21 March 2013).)). The objects that we choose to hang may also be seemingly unexciting, yet their presence on the wall brings about a new meaning, and equally emphasises the importance of the wall.

The padlock displays are similar to the recurrence of hanging shoes or trainers, sometimes known as ‘shoefiti’. The mysterious appearance of shoes, commonly on power lines, is an event that occurs anonymously, and is then discovered as a piece of contemporary, urban art. Credibility as art is questionable for many, but the shoes are thought to resemble “the number of runners” ((Gabrielle Giroday (2011) Running down theories about hanging shoes, Online: http://www.brandonsun.com/breaking-news/running-down-theories-about-hanging-shoes-118826304.html (accessed 21 March 2013).)) that pass down a street in some areas of Europe. The shoes have a ghostly effect, in the way that they resemble someone that has once been there to hang them, and the site can then conjure up questions and discussion by onlookers.

Sage Vaughn, a fine artist from Los Angeles, has recently collaborated with Converse to create a piece of public art for the SXSW Festival in Texas.The Monument 1 installation consisted of a metal structure with hanging Converse trainers. The company have also created pop-up stores in Paris, with similar decorative hangings of shoes, as a method of demonstrating their creativity.

The above examples demonstrate the connection between visual art and site that has also been discussed by Kastner and Wallis, in their typology of land art (2008):

Integration: the manipulation of the material landscape in its own right, the artist adding, removing or displacing materials – marking, cutting, rearranging – to create sculpture, drawing out the relationships between existing characteristics of site and evidence of human intervention. This is often monumental in scale, as in Robert Smithson’s large-scale construction Spiral Jetty (1970) ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site-Specific Performance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.)).

Thus, our performance at the Grandstand with the inclusion of symbolic visual installations can communicate the relationship that the group has established with the site, and emphasising the connection of the site and the city itself. The objects on the wall will also indicate the historical context of the site, both past and present, and as a result will bring about a positive future for the Grandstand.

The notion of a journey is important to our Women of War performance piece, as we want to portray the transition that women took in society (as a direct effect of the war). To present the power and liberation that women gained during the war effectively, the Women of War group want to contrast the image with a representation of the lack of power that the women had previously.

 

The piece will begin outside, at the wall originally used to chain up the horses. One idea is to tie the female characters onto the wall, to symbolise how they were supressed in pre-war society. However, Pearson questions how performance can be “adjusted for different audiences” ((Pearson, Mike (2011) Some Approaches to Research, Online: http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_67088_1%26url%3D (accessed Friday 8 March 2013).)), and in relation to our piece, we need to consider the age of our audience. Furthermore, the fact that our piece centres on war is significant to Pearson’s question, as awareness to sensitivity may be necessary for certain audience members. For example, we will use ribbon to tie the women to the wall, to ensure that the image is not too brutal, at a time when the notion of conflict is still resonant in our society. Another reason for the use of ribbon is that it will be taken directly from the garments that make up the cloth installation, revealed later in the piece. The ribbon will thus be a momentous aspect of the performance, as it links the outside scene to the inside. Equally, the image of the women tied to where the horses would have originally been kept connects the Grandstand’s war history with the more obvious history of the horseracing. Therefore, the idea can successfully “illuminate, explicate and problematize the multiplicity of meanings” ((Pearson, Mike (2011) Some Approaches to Research, Online: http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_67088_1%26url%3D (accessed Friday 8 March 2013).)) that resound within the Grandstand.

Our ideas and research is gradually developing into vivid performance pieces now. A particular practitioner of site-specific performance who has inspired us is John Newling and his recent performance Where a Place Becomes a Site (2013). His participatory performance involved an installation of a long yellow jacket, suspended from the ceiling of Broadmarsh shopping centre, which draped along the floor for members of the public to admire.

Newling’s performance relates to our Women of War theme, as we wish to recreate a sewing factory atmosphere inside the Grandstand. Therefore, we are similarly creating a long piece of cloth, from scraps of material throughout the ideas/rehearsal process, which will then become an installation for the final performance. The cloth represents the role of women during the world wars and their newfound purpose in life. The process of sewing the large piece of cloth is being regularly documented in videos, which we then hope to project onto the cloth itself during the performance. The group is keen to use the corridor space that connects the main room with the RAF room, and could otherwise be forgotten as ‘dead space’. Consequently, we want to install the cloth there, for the audience to view as they journey from one space to the next.

Newling was there in person at the shopping centre, to ask passers-by for a ‘value’ in their life, and in appreciation he offered them a small piece of the jacket material. The concept of audience participation is significant to the Grandstand site, as collectively as a group we all feel that it is important to capture the audience members’ thoughts, emotions and ideas for the future of the Grandstand, as part of the final performance. Furthermore, the ‘values’ that Newling collected during the performance “will become a script for this live reading at Nottingham Contemporary” ((Nottingham Contemporary (2013) Where a Place Becomes a Site: Values, A Reading, Online: http://www.nottinghamcontemporary.org/event/where-place-becomes-site-values-reading (accessed Wednesday 27 February 2013).)), and likewise our feedback from audience members will, we hope, become part of an ongoing process for the Grandstand’s future.

The prospect of our performance as a starting point for the revitalisation of the Grandstand is discussed by Mike Pearson, who states that performance can function as “occasioning a critical reappraisal of the inherent qualities of places rarely visited” ((Pearson, Mike (2011) Why Performance?, Online: http://blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id=_716442_1&course_id=_67088_1 (accessed Saturday 2 March 2013).)). Thus, with a strong focus on research, there is the opportunity to place the site in the public eye once again, and to re-establish the Grandstand as a well-known landmark of Lincoln.