4. Exploration

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Megan Langer

In this session we really explored different ways of thinking about the site, whether it be creating text fragmentations inspired by the area, creating our own unconventional map or making up a misguided tour. Fleur and I spent our time around the site looking at it from different perspectives, particularly in terms of the idea of “play”. As Peter Brook infamously said, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage” (Brook, 1972, 11), and this is an idea that a lot of our “creations” from the session our rooted in. When making our new map of the site, we thought about the different senses of the place, such as its sounds and visual shapes, not just what was physically there in front of us when we wandered around. We noted down interesting moments on our walk, creating something that was very personal to that moment. Similarly, on our misguided tour, we looked at the area from a child’s perspective, transforming what was there into our own playground in which we moved, gestured and acted younger than normal. This allowed us a freedom in “performing” in an open space in front of the public, using the mask of acting as children. This session was a really great way into thinking about how we can view the site and the different possibilities available to us.

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My session notes, including my map.

Brook, P. (1972) The Empty Space. London: Penguin Books.

Misguides and gargoyles

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Charlotte Roberts

This weeks tasks had me really engaging with the idea of guides; an idea that I unexpectedly enjoyed. One of the tasks that we were given was to create a map, any type of map, but it had to be unconventional. My partner and I wandered around the cathedral, drawing freehand lines in correspondence to where we walked. We were originally going to recreate the shape of the map with objects we found on our walk. However we were then rapidly distracted when we found controversial gargoyles. This then took us onto a completely different track, and we then started to mark down on the map where the controversial and simply out of place gargoyles were on the cathedral. Within his book Mythogeography, Phil Smith stated that ‘after a while certain things may begin to connect and once that starts happening, without obsessively pursuing a story, you can begin, collectively, to ‘compose’ your drift, allowing what has happened so far to determine your next choices’ (Smith, 2010, 199). This slight tangent that we allowed our drift to go on meant that we developed something that truly interested us, something that was inspired purely from the site itself. I particularly like the idea of a misguide around the cathedral, creating elaborate storied about why and how theses particular statues are here. Allowing people to look beyond the typical tourist view of the cathedral, and discover new information about a place they may have thought they knew so well. Below is the map we drew and some photos of the gargoyles we found on our journey.

As well as experiencing this oddly enlightening drift around the cathedral, we also explored the misguide. Despite finding this exercise difficult at first, it turned out extremely fun and interesting, both as ‘performer’ and audience. Although the facts aren’t true, the audience are shown a new and sometimes outrageous perception of a place. For example there were several misguides that took place, all with brilliant ‘stories’. Each one brought a new perception to the area around where St Paul in the Bail church once stood, and ultimately I’ll now see that place in a completely different light.

Smith, P. (2010) Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways. Devon: Axminster Triarchy Press.

Week 2: Site, representation and perspectives

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Fleur Kenneally

When originally exploring the site, I took many photos of documentation to reflect what intrigued or inspired me about the uphill surroundings. Having lived in Lincoln for over a year, it would be more than likely that I would carelessly walk through the site without really taking in every aspect of its culture and history. As described by Phil Smith in the chapter: The Handbook of Drifting, he encourages that individuals who partake in Guy Debord’s ‘derive’ (also known as a drift) must look for a theme: textures, the old, the new; looking for meaning in everything. This type of walk described as ‘drifting’ aims to detach us from our comfort zone and take chances on where a walk may take us. One of Smith’s instructions is to ‘get rid of rational-way finding’ to collectively allow ‘what has happened so far to determine your next choice.’ (Smith, 2010, 119). It is almost like being an excited child and letting your instincts guide you, rather than guiding ourselves by what we merely think we would like to see. Thus, Debord developed a concept known as ‘pyschogeography’ – intertwining our conscious everyday critical thinking as a ‘playful encounter with [a site]’ (Govan et al, 2007, 141).

Continuing from the idea of playfulness, we were set a task to go on a walk and create a map of some sort to record our encounters of the space. Me and Megan decided that we would focus on that of the senses – drawing buildings that we found distinctive, textures that grabbed us and conversations we could hear around us. Here is my mix-matched map of our walk around uphill Lincoln:

Our mix-matched map!

As you can see, we noted particularly snippets of conversations we heard as passers by, which we found quite comical. Once we had returned from our short explorations in pairs, we came back to St. Paul’s courtyard in Bailgate to create our own misguides and tours of our own. Arlene Sanderson talks about ‘Wrights and Sites’ for those interested in the performed activity of walking. A manifesto was created which depicted how they wanted to generate walking that ‘engages with and changes the city, it recruits the arts not as passive expressions, but as the active changes of it.’ (1991, 70). In this sense, we were given the freedom to create misguided tours around the courtyard. Me and Megan decided to act upon the idea of playfulness and decided to view the courtyard as if from a child’s perspective. The benches near the well were the safety zone, whilst the shape formed on the floor further away from the well was the deep dark depths of the underworld. Other groups took us on various tours and some of these intriguing misguides are shown on my flickr photo stream, which you can view through the link at the beginning of my blog post.

Works Cited:

Smith, P. (2010) Mythogeography: A guide to walking sideways. London: Axminster Triarchy Press.

Govan, E., Nicholson, H., and Normington, K. (2007) Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. New York: Routledge.

Sanderson, A. (1991) A Manifesto for a New Walking Culture: ‘Dealing with the City’. In: Wrights and sites. United States: Washington Preservation Press.

Dog Maps and Gladiators

Posted on February 10, 2015 by Stephen Crowe

Yesterday was an interesting day in our site specific module as the tasks varied from interpreting everyday signs to a short misguide. Yet the most enjoyable and creative for me was designing an unconventional map. Me and my friend Jamie have explored the ideas of incorperating animals such as dogs and cats into our performance and try to understand the complexities of ownership as well as equality. For my map I decided to find someone who was walking their dog and see where went and follow them noting each passing landmark that they pass (as well as the odd bush or particularly interesting bin). Yet in doing this, I found myself asking the question why are these particular buildings considered landmarks or places of note? Why aren’t trees bushes or bins held in the same reverence? So I read ‘The Place of the Artist’ and particular passage about ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ sites intrigued me. I understand Govan et al’s point of view when he says that there are “places which are rich in history and non-places which he see’s as soulless, alienating places with only functional value such as airports and motorways” (Govan et al, 2007, p.121). However, I disagree with this as I believe that value is personal whereas history is ever changing and coincidental and that what we see in the landscapes we walk across, a lot of what catches our eye is not particularly valuable or historic yet still sparks our interest. Is Primark a particularly historic place, I’d argue it is entirely functional yet this is as much a site as anywhere else because of what Primark represents i.e. Cheap Capitalism, Disposable Income and Recession.

As for the misguides and maps/guided tours, I found them interesting and the interpretation of our landscape at the top of steep hill varied wildly from grizzly murders to gateways to Narnia. However, I still believe that a performance is what I plan to do at the end of this module and I’m looking forward to learning new things next week and challenging my own views as well as challenging the readings.

Govan, E. Nicholson, H. Normington, K. (2007) Making a performance: Devising Histories and contemporary practises. Oxon: Routledge.

Gargoyles and Mythogeograhpy

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Jessica Martin

Today, on our walk to draw a map we came across a very interesting and odd gargoyle on the cathedral. Like many Lincoln residents we have all seen the Cathedral probably hundreds of times, yet never noticed the interesting additions its stonework has to offer. This gave us the idea of doing a walking tour around the cathedral of the non conventional areas of attraction. By studying the Cathedral you notice there are more unconventional gargoyles are than you first imagine, even in the surrounding walls which we can presume to be religious symbolism. Even on the front on the cathedral there are images suggesting the devil or sinning as a deterrent to turn away from God to the onlookers of the Cathedral. The idea of doing a misguide, or maybe even just an audio walk I think would encourage people to look past the ordinary which is why we chose the cathedral, looking at the non-obvious aspects of a typical tourist attraction. Our idea was to emphasise the more ordinary or darker bits to the cathedral either based on fact or fiction.This idea is also spoken about in Making a performance: Devising Histories and contemporary practises chapter ten Between Routes and Roots: “The emphasis on localism in community theatre has done much to challenge the idea that there was one official history.” (Govan et al, 2007,138) The idea which springs from here is to challenge the facts that people cling to and perhaps change them completely or maybe even just slightly.

Changing facts completely is something that never occurred to me to do in sites so rich in history such as the Lincoln Cathedral. However, some of the suggestions from Tim Etchells ‘a text on..’ opened my eyes to the possibilities. Today we were asked to write something from the list we had heard and I chose ‘a text of obvious lies’ and due to the location where we were writing – I chose the Cathedral:

One day the people of Lincoln awoke to a very dark morning in the middle of summer.

Confused, they stepped out of their houses to see a huge building towering over Lincoln blocking out the morning sunlight.

The once empty field of grass on the top of the hill now housed a large Cathedral which seemed to have appeared overnight with no trace of where it could have come from.

Although clearly a lie and slightly ridiculous this instruction did lead me to think of possibilities once you step away from sheer facts and eventually inspired me to think of an audio walk with either slight shifts from the truth, or an emphasis on the less obvious attractions from a tourist place.

Making our own walk:

Although this was very challenging at first ideas soon became much clearer once we had decided our first destination for our walk. This then led us to view things differently that we had originally seen them before. For instance we stumbled across a wall and the only thing obviously different about it was the different bricks in one particular area, this however led us to develop an elaborate story as to why the bricks were different and soon devising a walk came quite easy.

Govan, E. Nicholson, H. Normington, K. (2007) Making a performance: Devising Histories and contemporary practises. Oxon: Routledge.

The top of the hill

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

Monthly Archives: February 2015