Small town

Image

Carrying through my theme of miniatures and perspectives, I created a map of a town using the patterns of a stone floor. It already had the characteristics of a place with its shapes and levels, all it needed was someone to see it. I started off by choosing a piece of the floor that I thought had the most potential; this involved traits such as daylight, shadows, litter and shapes and depth of stones!

This was the area I chose for the birds eye view map:

I figured that there was no need to be 100% realistic in what I was doing and this allowed the simplist of things to become important. This notion has become very relevant and useful in site specific performance as it has taught me to look beneath the view.

Stones became buildings, cigarette butts became crash sites from where they had fallen from the sky, scratches on the stone became the aftermath of a tiger escaping from the local zoo, the daylight and shadows became the separation between AM and PM in the town and so forth.

After blowing the picture up and printing it off I was able to draw my imagination…

https://www.flickr.com/photos/130878920@N06/16647407236/

I also made a key to accompany my map, so it makes sense to everyone else too!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/130878920@N06/16050990094/

Second Hand News..

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Tania Smart

On Monday 2^nd February, we started our second week of site specific. We were taken on a tour all around Steep Hill, Lincoln. After viewing the lovely sights it had to offer I decided to dig deeper and discover some of the history behind Ellis Mill.

After doing some background research, I have ascertained that Ellis Mill is the last remaining mill to operate and still produce flour in Lincoln. The mill has continued working after an incredible two hundred years from when it was first built. There is evidence that proves there was a mill around Steep Hill before the Cathedral (the main tourist attraction) had even finished being built.

Looking further into the history of the mill, I have discovered that in 1551, Lincoln suffered an absence of wind for five weeks. As a result of this, the mill was unable to produce flour. This left most of the people in the city deprived of food, as the whole population relied on bread, especially the poor.

History of Ellis Mill:

http://www.lincstothepast.com/exhibitions/places/windmills/ellis-mill/

http://www.visitlincoln.com/things-to-do/ellis-mill

After investigating the historic past and backgrounds of windmills in Lincoln, it has now enabled me to appreciate how Ellis Mill is a major importance for the industrial history of the city. As Mike Pearson suggests:

“a visitor’s experience of the same place may invoke reactions and associations entirely differently from that of the inhabitants: it is possible to be in a place without realizing its significance for the groups of people who have historically inhabited it.[…] A pile of old stones to walk your dog over then, or the defeated hopes of a nation?” (2010, 24).

When I first visited the mill, I was not particularly captivated or interested by it, as I did not have a great underlying knowledge for it. Having a sense of understanding for this, has allowed myself as a spectator, to admire the layers of history attached to the site, offering more than what meets the eye.

Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131412114@N08/

Pearson, M. (2010) Introduction in Site Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Its the uphill climb

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Sophie Louise Levesque-Payne

So Monday just gone we had the wonderful opportunity to have a guided tour (or drifting) of uphill lincoln by Rachel. Which was an amazing thing to explore and really got me thinking about life and death. Strange I know however here are my two reasons;

Death – walking up steep hill on a Monday morning for 9am in the freezing cold! Okay I’m being a little to dramatic but at the time I thought I could of ended my life.

Life – overlooking Lincoln from a viewing point near the cathedral & castle I felt like God looking over the world. It made me appreciate the uphill climb of the famous killer steep hill.

When I used to live in Lincoln as a child. I never really enjoyed the buildings and historical facts that were connected to the uphill section of Lincoln. But after the drift I discovered a lot more that got my creative juices flowing!

“To be a place, every somewhere must lie on one or sereval paths of movement to and from places elsewhere. Life is lived, I reasoned, along paths, not just in places, and paths are lines of a sort“. (Ingold, 2007,p.2)

This quote links to a task we were set in the gardens of the old Victorian mental asylum located west of the castle. As a group we collected a twig/stick each and followed it. My stick had three main paths to choose from . I picked the middle path which led me to some broken yellow foam from a dog ball or lemon skin.

After walking around the cathedral and the secret garden it made me and a couple of friends decide that we felt connected with this site. The garden felt like a place you would enter after you’ve passed like God’s waiting room. I think it’s connected more by religion as the garden is right next to the cathedral’s door to heaven.

I’m looking forward to doing some more research into the site(s) on Monday but not as excited about the walk up the hill again.

Till next time…

Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essay on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skills (London, Routeledge).

Geographical locations are exciting!

Posted on February 1, 2015 by Lily Bingham-Davis

This module wasn’t one that I was completely looking forward to I will admit. As I didn’t have a full understanding of what ‘site specific performance’ was, but after the Mike Pearson reading and the introduction to Site from Rachel; who is obviously passionate and experienced in the topic gave me confidence it would not be as bad as I had first anticipated.

In the introduction of Mike Pearson’s book Site Specific Performance, he describes and outlies what Site Specific Performance is and how many practitioners have different approaches and methods of practicing Site Specify Performance. Pearson uses Fiona Wilkes’ words here to show how non-theatre venues provide “an enquiry into what theatre is and might be” It also incorporates ‘a set of productive special metaphors, whereby practitioners use their focus on geographical space to explore a range of theoretical conceptual, political and virtual spaces” (Pearson, 2010, pg. 9)

I thought that this quote was relevant to the task we were given in the workshop, which was to create a subtle mob which we as a group were to perform but were also given individual tasks to follow. I found that the task reflected the idea of geographical space in relation to a theatrical space, which is interesting as at the top of the sheet we were given was the geographical location in full alongside the co-ordinates of the space outside the LPAC, Library and The Engine Shed. We then used this specific location to create our subtle mob. The idea of having a very specific location down to the geographical co-ordinates of say a five by five meter space is interesting to me, as it is so exact and confined yet it could be out in a large open space. So the idea of playing around with an extremely specific space is appealing to me and I am now really looking forward to our next workshop up at Castle Square.

Pearson, M (2010) Introduction in Site Specific Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

The top of the hill

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

Tag Archives: locationlocationlocation