Inspiration: Antony Gormley

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So as I said in my last blog that I was going to write about the artists that have sparked an idea for this site specific performance. Those artists are:

  • Antony Gormley
  • Nele Azevedo
  • Do Ho Suh

So this first ‘Inspiration’ blog, I will be talking about is Antony Gormley is known for his works on sculptures all over the world, one of his famous ones is the ‘angel of the north.’ Gormley’s work started to be critically acclaimed in the 1985. The work I will be talking about that relates to my group’s piece is the ‘Field for the British Isles’ where this piece is created by volunteers. Who create their one terracotta figure to place in a room where the room is filled with them, corner to corner, end to end. http://www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/245#p6

Antony Gormley says “I wanted to work with people and to make a work about our collective future and our responsibility for it” (Gormley, 2014).  Where the artwork faces you and makes you responsible for these figures as they constantly stare at you. This feeling makes us think that we are “responsible for the world that it [FIELD] and we were in” (Gormley, 2014).

The idea of figures such as these spread all over the cathedral garden gives it have a dramatic effect from the end of the journey from creating your piece from Pottergate to making sure its ok from the path which we take to the garden to put it in its final resting ground. I feel the dramatic effect that Gormley’s work gives a great effect for our piece to make the garden more a live and gives an impact to the volunteer of a permanent memory and impact on the place, by placing down a part of you and part of your imagination.

As it says in the Site Specific Performance book Pearson puts that a “French archaeologist Laurent Olivier has termed a ‘relationship of proximity maintained regarding places, objects, ways of life or practices that are still ours and still nourish our collective identity’” (Pearson, 2010,43). By bringing the idea of our sites into a performance that gives an impact on the place but also gives it nourishment to our piece. That make us feel what we are doing to our sites makes it feel like ours for a day and hopefully to the volunteers as well. It shows the “relationship between material culture and human behaviour” (Pearson, 2010, 44) as these places are neglected and should be given back to the public, like they were back in their day then being in the background.  With making a performance with salt dough figures and making a path between the hidden gems (Pottergate and The Cathedral Garden) it does make the work look back at you, as this piece is a simple figure of you, created by you, looked after by you, carried by you and placed down by you. It gives you a connection to you to the piece, giving that feeling of responsibility.

References

Gormley, A. (2014) Field, 1989 – 2003. [online] London: Antony Gormley. Available from: http://www.antonygormley.com/projects/item-view/id/245#p0 [Accessed on 19 April 2015].

Pearson, M (2010) Site-Specific Performance. 1st Edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CCTV ‘Ballet’

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Week starting 23rd March

We have decided after our meeting/ presentation with Conan that we would try to get some CCTV footage of the Castle Square, from the camera situated on the corner of the Magna Carter so we could have it on one of the iPads we will be using.

Our group created a piece of theatre and performed it to a CCTV camera for 30 minutes. Rachel gave us the idea to do this and called it a ‘CCTV Ballet’, we also took some inspiration from a group Surveillance Players who have done a lot of CCTV performances, their performances/ protests focus on political issues and say that “The surveillance camera Players are not watching you. They are watching the cameras, because we have forgotten to.” (Surveillance Camera Players, 2006) We are using their ideas of performing to the camera to create awareness of CCTV cameras and how they are constantly watching us.

We then thought that it would be interesting to walk in any direction across, through Castle Square, Tania still being the constant and following wherever the CCTV camera pointed next. Instead of walking away we decided that we would all stand in a line facing the camera, count down from 10 then disband in different directions and repeat this where ever the camera moved to again.

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I personally found it really interesting and actually quite enjoyable, we were all quite apprehensive and nervous at first but then after the first 5 minutes we were all enjoying ourselves. It was really interesting to see people’s reactions to what we were doing, passers-by were confused, and some were interested in what we were doing which was good because they stayed to watch, also workers were giving us odd looks as we moved around the square.

To get the CCTV footage we’ve had to do some research around how to retrieve it and who to contact. We have may have to make a Freedom of Information Act request or we may be able to get the footage through Lincoln City Council.

GOV (2015) Make a Freedom of Information Request. [online] United Kingdom: GOV. Available from https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request/the-freedom-of-information-act [Accessed on 28 March 2015]

Surveillance Camera Players (2006) 1984 [online video] Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RILTl8mxEnE [Accessed 10 April 2015]

 

Here’s a link to my flickr for more pictures

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lilybinghamdavis/

Meeting with Conan

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Week starting 16th March

This week we focused on putting together our presentation/ pitch for Conan, going over feedback questions that Rachel gave us to consider.

We also went back to our previous weeks plans and we have decided to scrap the idea of the live feed to a laptop element of the performance that we would have had situated in the Magna Catra. We want an accidental audience not a forced one, so we thought that the idea of pushing our audience to take part in a viewing would not be appropriate, if we had kept this idea we would also be heavily relying on an audience which we don’t want to do.

Ready for Conan we tried our technology (iPads) in the site as they are a big part of our piece, they were working well until we actually had to show Conan. This has shown us that we cannot rely on technology because they can be very temperamental and unreliable so we would need a backup plan for the real day. Conan seemed to like the ideas that we presented him with, he especially liked the CCTV ideas and the concept of the time lapse videos although he did say that they could easily become tenuis and an audience would be bored if they had to watch it for a long period of time. Although he explained that we were never going to be able to ‘be’ the CCTV cameras but to still use the concept of CCTV and how it constantly watches the square, he also wanted us to take our ideas to the next level.

Ideas/revaluations we have made after our meeting with Conan:

  • Look into retrieving the CCTV camera footage of the meeting
  • Look into the Freedom of Information Act
  • Definitely use Go Pros – incorporate a live feed this way instead
  • Think about time lapses – we may just use them as documentation rather than in our performance piece
  • Look into the Surveillance Camera Players (SCP) theatre group

Lets back track to 9th of March

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Weeks starting 9th of March

After scrapping the idea of a Ghost Walk we came up with a new idea based around CCTV cameras specifically the one on the corner of the Magna Carter. We thought that it would be interesting to look at people and how they crossed the space, thinking about why they were there, where they were going or coming from and how they actually crossed the space.

We decided to base and call the piece after something a group member heard on one of our Site Specific lessons as we were walking in a large group. The passer-by said “Nothing happens here apart from us”. We wanted to capture ‘us’ so we decided that an interesting way to do that would be to use time lapse photography and turn them into videos, by doing this we could show our subject (everyday people) happen slowly, yet when put into a time lapse video creates a smooth impression of motion. A subject that changes quickly is transformed into rush of activity.

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Taking time lapses from these 4 directions will hopefully allow us to capture different angles of activity in the square. We are also thinking about having a live feed for the actual performance and having a laptop stationed in one of the Magna Carter pubs windows, so audience members can come and see a time lapse video that is happening at that moment or we are also thinking about having one of us wear a GoPro that could follow different people around the square. Alongside this we will have 2 people in the square holding iPads that will be showing the time lapses we have taken and the other 3 people will be moving around the square following people as they cross or will be wearing a GoPro doing the same thing.

We also had an idea of recording voices to layer over the time lapse videos which would give the videos more of a purpose and depth, we would do this by having headphones connected to the iPads so the audience could come to watch and listen.

Back To Work

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map

              Route Map

After Easter we had a route planned (See Above) and an audio in process. We didn’t meet up in Easter as much as we had like so fell behind a little bit but in the week after Easter mange to pick back up. We kept sharing ideas to add to our audio and some of us would go out a record in the site for material we could possibly use within the audio.