Tag Archives: Site Specific

Ideas.

Posted on by
Reply

In the last lesson we spoke about doing a route on heaven and hell; however Rachel advised us that it would be better to steer clear of this idea due to religious views etc. This allowed us to think clearly about what we really wanted to do our piece about and it made us look deeper into what we could focus on and what would draw the audience in. We headed into the cathedral for some inspiration and noticed a room which I personally have never seen before. This room was a war mayoral room which pushed our ideas towards something to do with the fact that Lincoln has a RAF base however there was not enough data on the RAF base to explore that idea. After looking into the RAF idea, we discovered that there had been an earthquake in Lincoln in 1882, which destroyed most of the Cathedral. We found that this would be an interesting thing to base our Site piece on and looked further into it. We started to work on the audio, finding bits of rumbles to put in, however we found that when recording up the hill, the wind would affect the sound.

Working 9 til 5!

Posted on by
Reply

Hi all,

After many weeks of piecing our little moments together on a trial and error bases im pleased to say we are finally decided on our end product (so far).

Our piece having many names ‘the secret garden group’, ‘the pottersgate group’, ‘the potters’ to our final title ‘the clay walkers’. Being titled ‘the clay walkers’ should give the participants a better understanding of what we are doing, which is:

We are going to be separated into three different areas. Someone will start at Pottersgate measuring out lumps of clay (or in our case salt dough) and this person will be greeting our participants explaining the tasks and handing them the clay. Another person within our group will also start the day at Pottersgate as this person is going to be taking the participants up to the secret garden with their clay. The third person in our group will be starting in the Secret Garden. This person will be inviting the participants to put their clay on display with the others and ask them if they would like to stay a while maybe to have a drink with us and enjoy the beautiful scenery. This person once doing all this will then make their way down to Pottersgate to swap roles with the person stationed there. The person stationed there becomes the person that takes the participants to the secret garden and the person who took them to the secret garden last stays in the secret garden until the ‘walker’ gets there. This should rotate all day.

So what are we actually doing with the clay?

We would like our participants to meet us at Pottersgate where we hand them a piece of clay. We would like them to make a figurine of how they see themselves. They have as much time to do this as they want. When the ‘Walker’ within our group gets to Pottersgate they also make a figurine. When the ‘Walker’ is finished they ask the participants if they would like to follow them to display their figurine within the Secret Garden. If they are not ready, they simply stay there, the ‘Walker’ heads off anyway, leaving the participants to wait for the next ‘walker’.

So where did this idea come from?

We have been playing around with our sites for many weeks looking in depth in their historys and stumbled across and tried many ideas but we have always gone back to what we knew from the second week was that Pottersgate was once a communications portal that potters from different places outside the city would come through to bring their goods to sell within the town. Knowing this and being in the area we finally felt that pottery is what we intended to do. The idea of asking the participants to sculpt themselves is inspired by Antony Gormley’s instalation piece “FIELD FOR THE BRITISH ISLES”. “Antony Gormley’s FIELD FOR THE BRITISH ISLES is a startling and arresting sight: thousands of unglazed, fired, small clay figures, standing closely together, all staring towards the viewer and filling a large enclosed space. There are more figures than can be counted, more still disappearing out of sight into a further space. Their number seems to be endless.” (Searle, 1996).

When is this happenining? What is the duration of the piece?

We are performing this on Wednesday 6th May 2015. The duration of the piece will be eight hours long, we are starting at 9am in the morning and finishing at 5pm at night. This is because we are essentially working potters and we would like to do this within the working hours of the day which is usually 9am until 5pm.

Bibliography:

Searle, A. (1996) Antony Gormley: Field for the British Isles. [Online] London: Hayward Gallery. Available from: http://www.antonygormley.com/resources/essay-item/id/108 [Accessed 25 March 2015].

 

 

 

Ritual performance to Conan

Posted on by
1

Today was a nerve racking day to the whole group, as today was the day we presented our ideas and site work/research to Conan (Module Leader). Being short on members within our group we felt a little under pressure. However upon reflection with informing our ideas I was pleased that Conan with Rachel included like the idea of a misguided tour with rituals connected to the history of the potters that worked on the uphill section of Lincoln dating back to 14th Century.

As a suggestion by Conan is to make the most of the open space that the ‘Secret’ Garden has to offer with the connection of rituals idea. One thing that has always stood out for me was the open fire place within the garden, back in the beginning  of this module I thought it would make a brilliant puppet theatre. However today Georgia & I agreed with Rachel & Conan that it makes a better connection to the original kilns that would of been used by the potters.

One thing that didn’t work out well with the connection to the misguided tour was the walk up to St Anne’s Well located behind the cathedral. If the well wasn’t locked up it would of made a perfect link as the water supply for the Potters clay to keep it moist and wet.  Also basing our performance around P.Pinkering would make the misguide more of a drama performance than site specific.

Think now we have a strong idea with site, more research and testing (playing around is needed) next week within the garden.

Till next time

 

Bye

Oh, let’s go back to the start

Posted on by
Reply

When creating a piece of art work, whether it be performance art, culinary art or traditional hang-in-a-gallery art, it has to go through some sort of process to evolve into the piece you will end up publicising, right?

Upon a quick showing of what our group came up with so far, it was clear that we became caught up in the motion of everything. We became carried away with a small idea we had and create a lot around it. Some of it is useable if applied to other things, some is not. We were naive in what one of our plans could look like. The use of ‘heaven or hell’ based around the cathedral could be construed as being unoriginal or ‘base’. The idea could also be slightly antagonistic by using religion/heaven/hell, would people think we were preaching at them? Will they get offended by their religion being used in a ‘dark’ performative way?

So thinking on this, we decided to go back to basics, to go back to our idea, from which this idea steams from, back to the war time.

The list of seemingly never ending question

Posted on by
Reply

Will we be able to get our equipment?

Will we be able to learn how to use it correctly, quickly?

Will it work on the day?

Is it too tech heavy?

Will people want to take part?

Are we over thing this project?

Are we under thinking it?

Will it complete within the time frame?

Will the ideas come together?

Does simple mean basic?

Is that bad?

Why do our ideas constantly change?

Is that okay?

Nothing is set in stone yet, right?