What does it do?

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Jessica Martin

Reading Theatre Archaeology has opened my eyes to looking at a site differently. “Do not begin with the question ‘what is it?’ Instead ask what does it do? (Pearson et al, 2001, 53) This made me think back to the cathedral, and when asking the question ‘what does it do?’ it opens all sorts of possibilities. The Cathedral: offers a place of worship,is a symbol of Lincoln, attracts tourists and is a place of architectural beauty. Many more purposes are to be discovered when you ask the question What does it do? rather than What is it? Linking with the Tim Etchells text on certain fragments, the Cathedral can be seen to someone differently depending on their personal history, Etchells talks of certain places in which he talks about and he gives them their own names “names dreamed up by the group of us when we first moved here” (Etchells 1999, 78) suggesting a place can have personal history and I am quite interested in incorporating some of that into our final piece should we aim to do a misguide as I believe personal history is just as important to a place than general history. One way we can aim to do that is to ask passersby to the Cathedral what connection they have to the place; Did they get married there? Is it the first place they ever visited in Lincoln? And perhaps create a mythogeographic misguide based on people’s emotional attachments to the place.

Pearson, M. Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre Archaeology. London: Routledge

Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments. London: Routledge

The power of speech and sight

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Charlotte Roberts

After reading Tim Etchells’ Certain Fragments the importance of sight was one aspect that stood out for me. We all see things in different ways, that’s the wonders of perception. However, there is a clear difference between seeing something and acknowledging its existence, and seeing something and appreciating its existence. This lack of appreciation for things was always apparent in not only myself but for a lot of people in our class. Within our walk around the city common phrases cropped up such as ‘I never knew this was here’, or ‘I’ve never really looked at this before’. It is common today for the speed of modern life to impact upon how we view our surroundings. Do we really understand and appreciate what’s standing right in front of us? Tim Etchells stated that ‘site is nine-tenths of ownership’ (Etchells, 1999, 78). This phrase really made me think about what it means to own something. To own something literally is to have a connection to it, physically or emotionally. Therefore, to really see something and appreciate it allows for a sense of personal ownership. Thus appreciation of a site is born. Etchells continues to speak about his time in Sheffield, however it immediately made me think of the views from steep hill. ‘To see the city from one’s bed, from one’s bath, from one’s rooftop – how perfect to live in a city, like this one, with hills.’ (ibid, 1999) Etchells may have been talking literally about seeing the city from your house that’s places idyllically on a hill, however it made me think of a way of combining housing and ownership with an appreciation of Lincolnshire sights. Below is a spontaneous drawing of a performance idea that stemmed from both Etchells quotes (my forte is clearly not in art). Recreating living rooms, bathrooms within a small confined cornered off area to create a sense of personal ownership, where photo frames are hung around views and objects that people may have know are there, but never really stopped and appreciated. For example, the view from the roof terrace in the secret garden. I had seen the view before from walking up the hill, but never stopped to appreciate it, this site allowed me to do so. Same with the gargoyles we found, people had seen the cathedral before but never appreciated the smaller detail of it.

Speech can also be a powerful tool in performance. Our group is interested recreating myths and stories about the cathedral through verbatim from local residents. Potentially placing verbatim performances at different areas around the site, creating a misguide. A group I briefly looked into is Look Left Look Right and their site specific performance of The Caravan. It is ‘a half-hour verbatim show edited together from hours of transcribed conversations with people who […] were victims of the floods in 2007.’ (Moran, 2009) I feel that verbatim works well within site specific performances as it allows the audience to experience the surroundings as well as the real emotions of an event or site.

Etchells, T. (1999) Certain Fragments: Contempoary Performance and Forced Entertainment. London: Routledge.

Moran, C. (2009) The Royal Court’s Caravan: a flood victim writes. [blog entry] 19 February. The Guardian. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/feb/19/royal-court-caravan-flood-victim [Accessed 15 February 2015].

Experiencing Audio Performances

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Fleur Kenneally

After last weeks lesson, I went home and listened to a few audio pieces, mainly The Guardian Culture Podcasts, which are meant to be listened to independently as an individual type of performance art. Now, when originally asked to participate in something like this, I wondered how an earth something like listening to audio could be classed as a ‘performance’. We listen to audio through our headphones most days, don’t we? Some listen to music whilst walking to various locations, some to podcasts of their favourite radio shows and much more, yet I had never once considered this to be a performance.

The first audio I listened to was read by Adrian Howells and is number eleven in part of the Everyday Moments Podcasts, whereby audience members listen to this ‘audio drama’, in order for them to participate in and become their very own ‘private performance.’ (Howells, 2011). Each audio in this series are to be listened to at different moments throughout the day. This particular one is to be listened to in the early hours of the morning whilst sipping on a hot drink. Whilst getting myself sat comfortably, I was awaiting to hear some sort of instruction. Instead, I was acquainted with the sounds of some sort of running water – rain, a warm shower or bath running, perhaps? I then heard sounds of rustling paper, as if someone was reading a newspaper and loud sipping and loud ‘ahhh’ sounds after drinking it. At first, I didn’t find this irritating, but as the audio went on I found myself getting frustrated with his ‘ahhh’ ritual. Although I found this of annoyance, I did find myself doing it with him in synchronisation. In order to try and change my perception on private audio’s, I thought it would be wise to try out another order. This time it was from Fuel Theatre, in their collection of ‘While You Wait‘ for something, to ‘allow for a moment of reflection’. (Fuel Theatre, 2015). I took part in the first one called ‘Waiting Now’ and found something very intriguing about this piece. Unlike the Everyday Moments Podcasts being audio from one individual, Fuel Theatre culminated various different sounds, recordings, and telephone calls. There were lots of pauses to give the audience member time to reflect and reoccurring sounds. One aspect that particularly stood out to me, was the use of everyday phone calls. They were all to the same person ‘Paul’, and all followed similar topics of conversation: “Hi/Hello, its … er [name]”, “erm”, “The reason I’m calling”, and “I’m ringing today regarding”. In a way it was quite humorous listening to the same sentences, just with different tones of voice. It almost made me realise how staged our voices tend to sound when we ring people on a day to day basis. Similar to people working in retail when they ask the same questions to each customer. I remember repeating “would you be interested in any of our discounted offers for you today?” and it became almost second nature saying it. Towards the end of the recording, Fuel perfectly edited people responding about a certain time they would call or meet and fitted them in order so that they counted up from 1. After that, I then began to here words such as: “afternoon”, “about half 4?”,” tomorrow evening” and “last night”. As listening to this, I wrote down these specific things and realised it was all linked with ‘time’ and how life is sometimes perceived to be going by fast and in other cases, going slowly.

Works Cited:

Fuel Theatre (2015) While You Wait. [online]. London: Fuel. Available from: http://fueltheatre.com/projects/while-you-wait. [Accessed 13th February 2015].

The Guardian (2011) Everyday Moments 11: audio drama for private performance. [online]. London: The Guardian. Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/culture/audio/2011/nov/21/everyday-moments-podcast-adrian-howells

Thinking about Performance Documentation

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Fleur Kenneally

Whilst exploring Philip Auslander’s The Performativity of Performance Documentation, it made me begin to question what really counts as a ‘performance’. He splits performance documentation into two types: Theatrical and Documentary. Auslander describes ‘documentary’ performance as the traditional way of performance art – being performed there and then, with people witnessing or recording it actually happening. However, ‘theatrical’ is almost the second hand performance. Although in the final performance documentation, it may look real – this type of performance is staged to look as if it really happened, but actually didn’t happen. Only in the final documentation (the photograph) is when you can see something happening. This made me think of our present day society. How do we know what is really real, with editing apps such as photoshop and green screen to make film settings and imagery look more enhanced? What is the original picture or performance art – taking the original photo, or adding to it to make it something different? The power of photography and camera works is something that particularly stands out to me.

Auslander uses two performance art works by practitioners Chris Burden and Yves Klein as evidence of these two classifications. Chris Burden’s 1971 performance art named ‘Shoot’, fits into the category of ‘documentary’ performance/body art. In this performance, Chris Burden is shot in his left arm and we can visually see and hear him being shot on the recording. (Waldir Barreto, 2008). Although it is clear he was definitely shot, who are his intended audience? The people who were present at the onset of the recording, or us, the viewers watching through the recording? In this sense, body art performance works needs the photograph to confirm its having happened: it is an ‘anchor for its indexicalities.’ (Auslander, -). Without the recording, Burden would only have the people present at the time to vouch for the shooting happening. Secondly is that of Yves Klein’s ‘theatrical’ performance documentation called ‘Jumping into the Void‘. In this performance art, Klein intended to generate a piece of art which would have some sort of ‘social impact of mass media as a means of persuasion.’ (Zone Zero, -).

Klein was actually only falling onto a padded matt beneath him and then the photograph was edited to put the outside photo with the upper part of the photo. This is why it is so contrasting to see the man on the bike acting so casually. This photo can completely alter someone’s view of that space and time. As stated by Klein, he believes that ‘man will only be capable of conquering space after impregnating it with his own sensitivity.’ (Klein, 1961.)

When using this knowledge of what is the real, authentic act of the performance, Auslander talks about audio recordings, using The Beatles as an example. When they record their music, the instruments do not always play with them, they play separately and are then added together to make layers of music that mould together to make one. Therefore he makes the reader question whether the music we listen to really is true or authentic. During one of our sessions, our group decided to use these theories as a possibility for performance work, playing with the idea of complexities of photo’s within photo’s. Whilst sat in the cafe, we took this photo using multiple devices, which could then possibly carry on if people were to take a photo of ours and so forth. Here was our experiment in performance documentation:

Works Cited:

Auslander, P. (-) The Performativity of Performance.

Waldir Barreto (2008) Chris Burden : Shoot, 1971. [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE5u3ThYyl4 [Accessed 12 February 2015].

Zone Zero (-) Jumping into the Void. [online]. Available from: http://v1.zonezero.com/magazine/zonacritica/saltaralvacio/index.html [Accessed 12 February 2015.]

What is a performance?

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Jessica Martin

Reading The Performativity of performance documentation by Philip Auslander has opened my eyes to the broad spectrum that is ‘performance’ and what is classed as such. Auslander defines the two types of performance: Documentary and theatrical which leads us to the question – what is the performance? The process or the finished product?. Originally I assumed it to be the latter, however after a comment I read I have slightly changed my mind “to argue that Klein’s leap was not a performance because it took place only within photographic space would be equivalent to arguing that the Beatles did not perform the music on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album” (Auslander, 2006, 7) and of course when you consider a piece of music the original performance in your mind is the art and you are recreating this by listening to the recording. However when you think carefully the recording you hear did not happen at one time it is an accumulation of talent and arts recorded at different times, just like Klein’s leap it is not the true representation of what actually happened. Which leads to the question I stated earlier what is the performance, the process or the finished product? Musically I would argue it is the process, yet in terms of a traditional play you would rarely consider the rehearsals as a performance the whole lead up is to that finished product. This has truly opened my eyes to the possibilities site can offer as it is a form of non traditional theatre which we have the freedom to do whatever we desire with.

After forming our groups yesterday we considered doing a piece of Verbatim theatre, perhaps in the form of a tour or misguide. The text would be taken from snippets of conversation we would record from tourists/locals in and around the cathedral to see if we can create a mythogeographical walk based on rumours and old folk tales. The walk would probably be around the cathedral in our order to make our audience/participants take a different stance on the cathedral after our performance had finished instead of just looking at the front and seeing it as a building of breath taking beauty, we want to dig deeper.

This is a map me and my partner made my walking around the cathedral. We chose to do this because just by chance when walking around the cathedral we found very interesting things unnoticed at the first glance, such as headless figures and skull gargoyles. We are interested in bring this feeling to our audience by making them look at the cathedral differently during and hopefully after our performance.

Auslander, P. (2006) The Performativity of performance documentation. PAJ 28:3

The top of the hill

Documentation from a Site Specific Performance Project in Lincoln, UK (2015)

Monthly Archives: February 2015