Space as a Performance

Through reading Mike Pearson’s introduction on Site Specific Performance I have found an interesting quote; “The play as an event belongs to the space, and makes the space perform as much as it makes the actors perform”. (Wiles, 2003, 1) I believe this means in a site specific performance you take more interest in the space and you start to notice what makes it unique, whether it be the people, the time of day or the weather, these factors all have an impact on what the space is used for. The space ‘performs’ as itself like we did today practising every day occurrences such as ‘pause from time to time and take a photograph’, except it becomes a performance because it is forced, not natural. Just as the space is recognised as a liminal space in performance yet perhaps not in every day life. When you take a space in its natural form, for example not dressed up for performance, many different factors affect the outcome as it can’t be controlled.  Today for instance – the weather was cold, people were not socialising outside perhaps as much as if it were a sunny day. Most people were in a rush, therefore there was a high volume of people in a fairly small space. That is the beauty of a liminal space; lots of different people with different objectives cross its path daily never really noticing the space until something slightly strange catches their eye. Today for example we merged two instructions together: ‘Pause from time to time and look up’ and ‘Find a raised point to stand and wait for others to join you’ which resulted in catching the interest of a few onlookers curious to know about our seemingly hidden objective.

Setting off

Welcome to the blog of the University of Lincoln’s Site Specific Performance class 2015.

We are working towards creating a series of public artworks and performances which will take place during 6-9th May 2015.

This blog will contain documentation from our project: our processes, thoughts, encounters and reflections. We hope you’ll follow along with us as we work throughout the spring to investigate, explore and illuminate areas of uphill Lincoln.