As the New paper curtain fell for the last time, it had come to pass that all the research weeks and preparation of collecting newspapers and boxes had come to an end. It came First as a amazing experience to be a part of. With the special close working bond i built with my group i could definitely agree that we all thoroughly enjoyed our selves…

1st Place of May and our premier and preparation of covering the room had run smoothly. As we news papered the windows to shield the light for our projection of Eadweard Muybridge’s Horse, it began to feel complete.  As William Tells Overture began to play, the heart started to race as i burst out of the newspaper cocoon and picked up my betting slips. My Horse bet ” Aint got a Scooby” chosen from a random racing post defined my cockney accent and background. As we overlapped and lapped around the audience i began to get more and more excited as i knew what would happen once we had all reach the end of our lap.  The HIGH light was ” Ladies and Gentlemen place your bets here ” Throwing the betting slips in the air as they flew down and around the audience, created a sense of falling wealth, as they could be seen as cash feather floating to the ground.  My proudest moment of the bible verse declaration resonated with the finality of the performances end. Nothing.  The audiences faces as the meat from Tescos was presented : LADIES AND GENTLEMEN I NOW PRESENT TO YOU THE WINNER OF THE LINCOLN HANDICAP 2013 LEVITATE.  As the laughter and syncopated applause echoed in the room it was humbling to know from taking a theme of loss we had gained the audiences recognition of our humor.

 

The Piece felt at its most whole as some of the other groups helped to paper us into the people we were then on that day. It represented to me the build up to the final performance and how information i had consumed whilst studying this module. Up until the mask when i felt a complete loss of identity as my smile or expression could not be seen it felt restricting to my voice and movement when waiting off stage. If i could change one thing it would be to of stylized the news paper skin in a more comfortable and efficient way. I also would of like to had each of us project a verse from the bible chapter. In order for us to give  a clearer understand towards the audience through a different level again or how gambling can theologically affect man. I was really grateful to of had just the one verse shared it was something i felt personally needed to be in the piece to make it feel complete.

Space.race.space.race. On your mark, get BETS. NO.

 

 

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))

As our piece has  moved over hurdles over the past few weeks  we as a group have been looking forward to the finish line for our final product.  In order to created our journey from the start to the end, we first looked at the space’s connotations and how we would apply them to our process.

Once a resting place for the homeless, the Grandstand a fellow outsider of Lincoln society stands on the out skirts of the city looking in. From the glory of  temporarily housing the once lucky to the unlucky. The potentially rich to now the penniless; We discovered an overall theme of loss permeates this building. Similar to site specific choreographer Willi Dorner we too looked into the past and future of our site.  We also found similarities between his findings from his Snienton Market project in Nottingham in 2005 and ours from The Grandstand. ” I got to see a place which seemed to me empty, silent and uncared for… I had a feeling that the perspective of tomorrow seemed vague and empty” ((Dance4 Toolkit 2005)) As we were shown around inside of the Grandstand on our second week we came to realize that the future of this space is a question mark.  Likewise to the market, the insides of the Grandstand are empty and in terms of the weighing room (our main performance space) it also seems uncared for. Taking this into consideration along with the theme of loss, we explored further into the spaces  past purpose as a racecourse center and felt it necessary to continue looking into its journey from being a positive to a negative space.  So in order to capture some of its old life we felt we needed to critically address what our performance could include with inspiration from Mike Pearson’s Why Performance study notes this helped us question ” What happens here, has happened here, might happen here” (( Pearson, Mike,2011,Why Performance,http://www.landscape.ac.uk/landscape/documents/eventpapers/toolkit/1whyperformance.pdf,Accessed 12/03/2013 )). When drawing upon”what happened here” we were intrigued by the loss caused by the gambling and betting that would of taken place, and how that experience can turn from being a positive to a negative experience.

We even placed a bet ourselves at a local betting shop in the opening race for the Cheltenham festival to get a first hand experience of  the emotions that go through a person when gambling.  From a personal perspective, i was a little unsure about placing a bet due to my beliefs. As a Christian i am taught that seeking wealth and love of money is not the root to true happiness. Even though  gambling is not directly mentioned in the Bible, it does mention that a love of money can be a curse and cause all kinds of  downfall:  Ecclesiastes 5vs 10-17 ((The Holy Bible, New Century version,2003:Thomas Nelson Inc))

” 10 Who ever loves money 

Will never have enough money

Whoever loves wealth will not be satisfied with it “

“13 I have seen real misery here on earth:

money saved is a curse to its owners.

14 They loose it all in a bad deal 

and have nothing to give their children.

15 People come into this world with nothing,

and when they die they leave with nothing.

16 -So what do they get from chasing the wind?

17 All they get are days full of sadness and sorrow,

and they end up sick, defeated and angry.”

 

Here i have highlighted the words in this passage which i find most significant to my personal thoughts on what loss is and also its links towards gambling and the emotions it can cause.  When betting on a horse to discover it  lost, it did result in some emotion of defeat although i was not in complete distress because i lost, i did it for the experience but i was reminded a  real gamblers aim is to win. When i was  in the shop i observed  that the majority of spectators were men. It posed the questions of : Are some of these men fathers? Back in the days of the Grandstand the likelihood of spectators being fathers was most likely, as it is a place of heritage. A place of memories for some families and Grandparents. Another was; Have their trips to the betting shop been made apparent to their children? What is the probability that this is how they increase their money to provide that bit extra for their family; in hope they do not loose it completely ? This relates back to verse 14 They loose it all in a bad deal. This could be the definition of all kinds of gambling. When the Bible talks about children here, it can also show  loss through a generational context rather than just in the present. It gives an insight into how gambling and loss can have a butterfly effect in the future.  Here is were this passage links loss with the Grandstand.  in depicting how loss can  have a chain reaction with its past and future.

So to make this journey slightly personal i decided i wanted to include some of this scripture in the piece, however due to timing issues instead of  having a line each from the chapter, we collectively chose verse 15 as we all felt it conveyed a harsh but true reality. The mention of the word nothing we felt related very contingently with the last line of the poem which we recite at the beginning of the piece. ” The Horse gets nothing“. (( Bastasa,s,Ric ,2010” the horse that i am riding”,http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-horse-that-i-am-riding/, Accessed 12/03/2013)) Furthermore showing loss can affect all things regardless of what race your in.

 

 

 

 

 

Mike Pearson states in Why Performance (2011)  that ” Performance can enhance public appreciation and understanding” ((Pearson, Mike (2010) Site Specific Performance, London: Palgrave Macmillan))  When discussing our preferred outcome for the performance, the overall decision was about giving the Grandstand it voice back to the community of Lincoln.  Therefore i found Pearson’s point very relevant to our site piece as the Grandstand is no longer being used for  its original purpose or hardly at all. It is now just merely a site being seen through the window of a car or a caged looking obstacle in the periphery of a drifting civilian. However instead we want to make it a site to be seen and appreciated for its true history and its role in being an important part of Lincolns heritage.  As well as identifying the Grandstand as being isolated in terms of where it is situated in relation to such historical buildings as the Cathedral, the building its self can be seen as quite misunderstood.

In relation to past class exercises Myself, Eloise, Emma, Charlie and Kash expressed our interest in resuscitating the Grandstand’s voice through a silent performance but with written opposing themes on post it notes which we placed over our mouths.  We stood in front of a projection  depicting an old sepia photo from the Lincoln Handicap. This showed a busy scene of the site alive with crowds of people and therefore was the antithesis to our sticky silence. There was one element of a crowd sound which we played to enhance the business of  the picture behind us.  With neutral faces as we tore each layer of post it note off, each singular word dropped slowly to the ground. Such themes as winning,losing, loud quiet, grief were written in capitals all relating to the feelings and atmosphere of what the spectating audience would of been experiencing and therefore we wanted our audience to think about what those losses were and what was the lasting affects from going to a day at the races. Were any of those themes linked with memories made in that place?  Our developing performance we  also found related well to Pearson’s statement that ” Performance can provoke questions about the attachment of memory to place” (( Pearson,Mike ( 2011) Why Performancehttp://www.landscape.ac.uk/landscape/documents/eventpapers/toolkit/1whyperformance.pdf Accessed 12/3/2013 )) In particular we wanted to focus on the theme of loss and what it feels like to loose.

As a result from feedback and observation of our performance we found that the way in which the post it notes had been dis guarded on the floor, was quite representative of forgotten  lost or thrown away betting and race tickets. Furthermore our interest continued to  now focus on loss and what those possible failed gambles on horses did to people and families living in Lincoln at the time and equally now, in a present day betting shop.

Finally we drew our attention to the horses themselves and their voices.  As the only living and breathing  main purpose of the Grandstand, we considered as they loose a race, how much their passiveness as an animal, fades them into the background and that their experiences and treatment in the space is missing or not even considered accountable.

The Horse as a missing body, the unspoken hero’s of keeping the Grandstand breathing for as long as it did. This leads further to more questions of  comparing the difference between the spectators loss from a race, and then the horse/ horses that loose the race.

Taking into consideration that horses have been bearing the weight of he human race for thousands of years apart from animal activist groups possibly and My Little Pony horses their silence has been long lasting however that relationship between the two different species has remained close.  Some earlier evidence of this is shown below and proves how the Horse has been a key figure of helping advance technology.

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrRUDS1xbNs

 

Shown above is one of the first moving motion pictures. Created by photographer Eadweard Muybridge in 1878.  Called ” Horse ( Occident) trot with sulky)  and taken at Palo Alto stock farm in California triggered by a trip wire as the horse galloped down a track past twelve stereoscopic cameras.  This short revolutionary film helps to show the beauty and mechanics of  the horse itself as a body and what power it emulates. ((Muybridge Eadweard,1878,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrRUDS1xbNs,Accessed March 6 2013))

However as we run our race through victory and defeat will they continue to run theirs in silence but after our performance who will reign supreme?

 

 

 

 

 

“Buildings wobble” 

 The Cathedral. Again… But wait…Again. De ja vu.  When doing my task of  placing my card i observed the cathedral from the south side of    Lincoln. Out side of the high street, on Sincil Bank  where the Cathedral would seem to be at its highest.  when looking at this card i found it hard not to be too predictable and apart from flying to see the Leaning tower of Pisa  i could not actually find a building that wobbled. So i thought of this in an metaphoric way. Again.  I thought about the cathedral being the focus point, championed so much as the main focal building in Lincoln. It appears so that all the building underneath the cathedral would wobble in fear that they have so much to live up to.  It could be seen that in a way it over shadows all of the other wonderful buildings as its lit like a trophy in a Cabernet.  In which the others cower and wobble with fear. The Holy qualities that the building possesses within questions the other building’s purposes.  Although i felt it would also be fitting to shake the card slightly when i took the photo for some dramatic irony.

#Lincolnshireheritage.