Tag Archives: Site Specific

Trying to understand

Posted on by
1

Today’s demonstration was to present the range of ideas we have discussed and wish to include in our final piece so we worked on what we thought we wanted and what our work should be based on.

We worked on the writing with chalk task in Pottersgate (https://flic.kr/p/rxyLQB ) and the ritual with St Anne’s well (https://flic.kr/p/qAzbDY ).

The chalk task consists of the participants thinking of a wish or a good memory that they would like to reflect on and then them actually transferring that into a physical mark on Pottersgate. By making this physical mark, they have, in effect, ‘set it in stone’ on stone as that is what the pavement is made of. The participants will have already been made aware that this will not be a permanent mark and that they will be washing it away however, before they do that, the very act of making the mark is a tangible confirmation of their wish or memory being made permanent albeit fleetingly.

At St Anne’s Well, we wanted to make our own version of the folklore ritual which involves walking round the well 7 times and then placing a finger in one of the holes in the door to find out if that person is going to heaven or hell. We wanted to add some new rules to the ceremony so, as the participants went round the well, they might be asked to ‘place your hands on the roof’, ‘turn around and shout the first thing you see in your surroundings,’ or ‘make a wish on one of the bricks’ for example; this would add our own little twist to the whole procedure.

As these were the only things we could come up with, we were aware that we were not fully connecting and linking together so eventually, as a group, we decided on the idea of giving a misguided tour from Pottersgate to the Cathedral garden whereby we tell real stories of the places as well as sham stories that we have created.

Since I did not properly understand the meaning of a ‘misguided tour’, I searched for it on Google and found some very interesting websites one of which included: http://www.foolsfestival.com/2013/misguided-tours/ .

These ‘misguided tours’ are very popular with the public and obviously great fun as they involve the participants listening to ‘hidden stories’. These can only be described as real stories with a mysterious or magical twist that have been recounted by local people or are similarly made up tales. The idea of doing some ‘hidden stories’ really appealed to me especially if we could find some by asking those  people who are longstanding natives of Lincoln.

I still wanted a clear description of a misguided tour however so I found a good explanation:

“We like to blur the distinctions and play across the boundaries of the real and the fake…They will amuse you with their irrelevant insights and entertain you with their opinions on everything but the hard facts.”

This great quote is from Fuse Performance who base their work on the events or the place they go to such as Belfast, Glastonbury festival etc. http://www.fuseperformance.co.uk/fuse_Performance/Gallery/Pages/Misguided_Tours.html

I continued with my research and came across a fascinating YouTube video of an interesting artist called Willard Morgan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CMUT53tjNY.  He created a character called ‘Gino Gelati’ who, from the YouTube description, is “possibly the world’s worst travel guide.”  His special ability is that he can make the truth merge with obviously fake ideas that just pop into his head and while it is not believable, it is very funny and quite amusing to watch. I researched him further and found his website http://willardmorgan.com/ only to discover that he is a filmmaker, artist, photographer, actor and comedian and is involved in many different materials of the arts such as music and film.

So, the next step is for my group and I to reflect on what I have researched and then consider the idea of searching out some hidden stories told by the public and/or making up our own interesting stories associated with our chosen areas.

My next job is to look at psycho-geography and myth-geography in urban areas.

Devil in a well?

Posted on by
1

These are my notes, thoughts and reflections from today.

Today, we actually managed to try out our ideas and actually put them into practice. We started at Pottergate.

Here we started by inviting our audience/participants to start by finding a slap on the floor and in chalk writing a wish or a memory of any kind. Look at it for a minute then wash it away. – We did this because after spending time within Pottergate we found many names and messages inscribed into the wall from many different dates. Also Pottergate when it was built was used as an entrance to get in to the city. There was a communications portal in the bottom for people on the ground and the people in the building could communicate to each other. People had to give a reason why they wanted to come through. After further research we found that a group or Monks called ‘Sand mandala monks’ made patterns meaning the circle of life and they would then wash them away to cleanse the mind and soul. This is what further inspired us to wash the participants memory or wish away so that they could cleanse their mind of it. We then asked that they step out of the arch looking up to the sky for 10 seconds. Then close their eyes, thinking of a bad memory and asking them to concentrate on that memory. Then we asked them to open their eyes. This made them try cleanse their mind of also a bad memory. We had different reactions one of which made one of our participants cry. This is very important to think about as we do wish people to see this as a performance and a mythical adventure and not a self help pilgrimage.

We then walked toward Saint Anne’s Well, where it is said that a devil lives inside. Legend has it that if a person walks around the well seven times, goes up to the door putting their finger in one of the holes in the door, they would be rewarded with feeling the devils breath meaning they would be going to heaven or if they were a bad person they would be going to hell and this would be shown to them by having part of their finger being bitten into. Again, we want this to be fun and not taken really seriously as Rachel advised that again this could be like self help, but we also wanted to make it link in with what we have just done and make it have a purpose. So when I arrived home I was thinking about this and to tie in with Folk tales and myths, so I came up with a little poem that could perhaps be read out before they do the tasks as a little introduction to why we brought them here.
This is only a rough draft of the poem for now and I need to develop it a bit more but this is what I’ve got so far:

“There once was a Devil in a well,
He decided if you were going to Heaven or to Hell.
You had to walk around in a ring,
And put your finger in.
For that naughty little Devil in the well!

P. Pinkering did think it,
This silly little trisket.
That it was rewarding for landscape,
to create such a silly myth.

You may feel the nibble of the Devil’s teeth,
Or you could be overcome by slight relief.
But by now you may have guessed,
That this is all really made in jest.
And is all in the name of fun.

So come on P. Pinkering’s mythical journey.
We invite you to take this task,
There really is no reason to ask.
He made it all up, we are going to give it a go.
Now come on lets get on with this show.”

Pervasive Media

Posted on by
Reply

Pervasive media is “any experience that uses sensors and/or mobile/wireless networks to bring you content (film, music, images, a game…) that’s sensitive to your situation” (Pervasive Media Studio, 2015) The Pervasive Media Studio is a community of artists and creative companies who explore using technology and art to create an experience.

‘Shadowing’ by Jonathon Chomko and Matthew Rosier is a piece that I found particularly relevant to our performance ideas. Although we may not have the same access or experience of the technology used the piece seems to be communicating an important and similar message to our own…

http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/project/shadowing

“compressing time into a single space”

“technology is often used to drive us in different directions and onto different paths. [Shadowing] stops people for a moment to think about the same old street but in a different way”

Nothing Happens Here Apart From Us

Posted on by
Reply

After taking inspiration from the comment Charlie overheard during a workshop a few weeks ago- ‘nothing happens here apart from us’- and using ideas of documentation and pervasive media, my group and I have had a very positive week beginning to put together and experiment with our ideas and have decided to rather than create a performance in our chosen site, use our site as the performance. We are going to be heavily reliant on technology and gathering evidence over the next few weeks is crucial as ‘sometimes the performance will only exist through its documentation’[i].

As well as looking into companies who have used time, ‘layers’ of performance and accidental participants in their work, such as; ‘Uninvited Guests’ I have also looked into some photographers to see if any work generated new ideas for us as to how we can use photography to help communicate our message.

Attached are a few images that I think my group and I could look into further and experiment with creating our own versions of…

Blog Post 4 2 Blog Post 4Blog Post 4 3

[i] Lavery, C 2005, ‘Teaching Performance Studies: 25 instructions for performance in citie.‘ Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol. 25, No. 3, p 233.

Finding the Path

Posted on by
Reply

 

On Wednesday, 2 of us from our group started to put the basic ideas together for our piece however, we found it difficult to formulate our ideas for our sites especially Pottersgate, even though we were passionate to have it in our piece. I discounted the idea of people marking their names in Pottersgate and came up with the proposal whereby the audience use chalk to mark the pavement with a feeling or a memory and then scrub it away as though wiping it from their memory; that way, they start the walk with a fresh mind and a new beginning. This idea was enhanced by an inspired thought from my lecturer who suggested we do something similar to Sand Mandala sculptures.

My notes on Sand Mandala sculptures:

  • Kalachakra Mandala made out of coloured sand
  • Created in 3 weeks
  • This is a lesson about the impermanence of life
  • Practitioners use mandala to visualise in meditation the steps along the path of enlightenment.
  • Kalachakra means ‘wheels of time’.

Source: http://www.buddhanet.net/kalimage.htm

* The key things I picked out are in bold.

We have designed our performance so that we progress around 3 areas in the vicinity of the Cathedral which are Pottersgate, St Anne’s Well and the Cathedral garden. The idea of a pilgrimage came to mind however, we did not want our piece to be regarded as religious although this would be understandable with Lincoln Cathedral looming around us! so, I decided to ascertain the definition of the word ‘pilgrim’.

Oxford Dictionary definitions:

  • A person who journeys to a sacred place for religious reasons.
  • A person travelling to a place of particular personal interest.
  • Chiefly literary a person regarded as journeying through life.

Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/pilgrim

 

* In bold are the key things I picked out.

 

Having looked at the definitions of the word pilgrim, I liked the idea of our piece being an adventure of personal interest whereby the performance is unfolding a story and that the meaning of the walk will be told at the end of it; it will be very similar to a learning walk.