| FEAR OF FANTASY | Jessica Bark | Final Submission |

Jessica Bark / May 15, 2015May 15, 2015 / Jessica Bark

09193711
3209 words.

Framing Statement

Fear of Fantasy was an installation based piece, performed on the 7^th of May 2015 in The Worth Room of the Great Central Library, a part of the University of Lincoln. The installation took four and half hours to set up, with performances starting from 12:30pm until 19:30pm, followed by a break down until 10:30pm. The piece was performed by Harry Walsh, Ruth Scott and I.

Upon examination of The Great Central Library as a site, we began researching the variety of reasons people might use it. The library’s catalogue can be split into two categories; facts and fiction. We could determine that the library is mainly used by staff and students for research, essays, revision and assignments, therefore facts. Although the library houses a wide selection of fictional books, we found that these books are rarely used for enjoyment, but more so used in analysis for essays and projects.

We began to consider the library as a ‘catalyst’ into adulthood, whereby students use the space in order to prepare themselves, through education, for adult working life. Therefore we made the decision to create a piece that promoted fiction for enjoyment, with particular emphasis on fantasy and fairy-tales. We chose fairy-tales because they are associated with adolescence, and so by re-creating this we hoped to promote the child-like enjoyment of fiction and reading. However, in order to make this appropriate to adults, there were several things we had to consider. We were aware that many students do not have time to enjoy fiction, with the pressure of deadlines and exams dictating which books they must read. We also knew that we couldn’t use typical children’s fairy-tales, as these are not often appealing to adult readerships.

So we decided to create an installation piece, giving students the opportunity to physically immerse themselves into a ‘world of fiction’ so that they could literally get ‘lost within it.’ By using an installation framework, students could experience fiction, but in a short-time span compared to reading a book. The decision was made that the installation would be highly materialistic, with several components creating a ‘fantasy word.’ For example, objects, sounds and smells that are associated with the fantasy genre. We chose to black out the windows, so that the Worth Room would be unrecognizable, we decorated each wall with real ivy, fantasy books, origami flowers made from pages of books and fairy lights. In addition, to make the piece ‘come to life’ we decided that we would all take on characters from fairy-tales and ask our participants to become a part of the action by helping us with tasks. In order to make the fairy-tales appealing, we decided to use Grimm’s Fairytale’s as our fictional influence, in the past, were considered as too “violently descriptive for children” (Grimm, 1999, xi). Therefore more appropriate for our adult participants.
Reading a book is something a person does alone. Therefore, we made the decision to make our piece a ‘one-to-one’ performance, whereby only one participant could enter the installation space at a time.

Analysis

First Idea

In class, we were given the task to create an ‘Art Book,’ titled from an earlier exercise we had done. The previous exercise was to ‘just write’ book titles, without thinking. I noticed that the majority of my title could be classed within the ‘fantasy genre.’ Therefore, I chose the title “Facts and Fairy-tales.” I knew that finding the time to get lost within a fictional story is rare, and that this was the case with many university students. We often only find ourselves reading in order to gain factual knowledge. I realised that the only time I really get lost in a story is when I’m asleep and dreaming. Therefore I decided to create a book of fairy-tales. Fairy-tales have importance because their totally unrealistic nature is a mode of escapism from the pressures of University. Furthermore a Fairy-tale is not attached to a specific site. But it had to be appealing to students. Grimm’s Fairy-tales, first published in 1812 were banned for being too violently descriptive and frightening for children. Perfect, however for people aged 18 upwards. I decided my book should predominantly be of pictures and only include short snippets of fantasy text – therefore being visually stimulating.
Keeping in mind my idea of dreams, I decided my book should take on the form of a baby mobile. I used string, burnt paper and dead flowers to further enhance the visual imagery. This idea behind this ‘Art Book’ was that it could influence a person’s dream state; thus allowing them to get lost in a fairy-tale world.

Fear of Fantasy is an idea discussed by Bruno Bettelheim. The idea that children are sometimes neglected from fairy-tales and fantasy because they do not offer representations of reality.

“Some people claim that fairy tales do not render ‘truthful’ pictures of life as it is, and are therefore unhealthy” (Bettelheim, 1978, 116).

We realized we could apply this theory to the students of the University, who rarely use the library for fiction reading because it is ‘unhealthy’ to their study. Rather we believe that students only used] the library for factual research. The University library has a large selection of fictional books, so we began to wonder why students might not utilize the space for this purpose. One reason stood out.
Deadlines and exams dictate how students use their time in the library.
However, before we could go ahead with a project – we had to ensure that our theory was true.
We conducted a ‘visual survey’ in order to determine how many students use to library for fiction.

photo 1 (2) — The Visual Survey. Credit: Jessica Bark.

We found that only 2 out of 18 people who engaged with survey have ever used the library for fictional reading. As a result of these findings, we decided to continue with the idea of presenting fairy tales. The choice was made that our main aim would be to promote the library as a place to enjoy fiction.

Further developing the ‘Art Book’ our group began to think how we could expand this idea of making a Fairy-tale a ‘visual’ experience. Something that could be enjoyed in a shorter amount of time than physically reading. We made a mood board to demonstrate how a book could become a visual experience. Using different materials, images and lots of glitter it led us to our performance idea.

photo_4[1] — Our Mood Board, Credit: Jessica Bark.

We felt the best choice would be the use of Installation Art.
In our initial pitch, we hoped to transform a large section of the second floor. Our idea was to ‘install’ fairy tale props, attached to ivy which would lead to an installation room. However, taking on board comments from our tutors we decided it was better to just go ahead with a room installation.
We felt this would emphasise the effect of ‘walking into another world’ so that people could ‘literally get lost within fiction.’

Theatre and Architecture

“Staging a performance is about acting in architecture: it is a practice that demands we pay attention to distance, scale, style, person to volume ratio and the immaterial architectures of light, heat and sound” (Rufford, 2015, 3-4).
Fairy tales are not often associated with a specific site, especially not in a library. But in order to make our piece effective, we knew we had to use a space which promoted the idea of ‘another world.’
Reading Rufford’s Theatre & Architecture allowed us to apply the possibilities for different contexts to specific spaces. By looking at architectural physicality of certain areas, we could determine if they would be appropriate to house an installation.

The Worth Room of the library displayed excellent qualities to exhibit an installation.

The Worth Room Exterior. Credit: University of Lincoln

As a modern addition to the library, it holds different meaning to the rest of the building. The library building was previously used as a grain warehouse. The Worth Room, however was added specifically to cater to the needs of study. The interior of the room features three glass walls, looking directly outside. We felt this could be interesting to build an installation piece on, as we could ‘block out the outside world.’ The outside world being a metaphor for ‘reality.’ One main aspect of the architecture we felt would be beneficial to our project was the inside window.

Looking through the window. Credit: Harry Walsh — Looking through the window. Credit: Jessica Bark

This window would mean that anybody passing by could become an audience member by looking in at the installation.
In terms of the dimensions of the room, we felt it was a good size in order to create the installation. Designed to be an intimate study room for small group meetings, it meant it could also be utilised as an intimate performance space.

The Installation

Bishop states that Installation Art should be something that the viewer “physically enters” (Bishop, 2012, 6). It should be “theatrical”(ibid), “immersive”(ibid) or “experimental” (ibid).
In regard to viewers ‘physically entering’ a space to experience art, this was perfect if we were to achieve our goal of participants entering a world of fiction. However to make the ‘world’ seem realistic, we also took on characteristics of immersion art. Immersion means creating “the convincing depiction of detailed reality” (Dixon, 2007 128).

In order to achieve this, we knew that the installation had to be highly materialistic in order to create a world that totally transformed The Worth Room, giving the space a different meaning.
We installed several layers of objects into the room in order to create this world,with the intention to stimulate four out of five of the human senses; sight, smell, feel and hearing. This decision came after reading that “immersion can relate to experiences that are both mental and physical” (Dixon, 2007, 127). By appealing to these senses, we could appeal to both mental and physical aspects of our participants.

We began by blacking out all of the windows, except the internal one, thus removing any influence from outside of the space. We made hundreds of origami, felt and netted flowers to drape around the room.

We used many other objects such as fantasy books, feathers, bird-cages, rose-plants, mirrors, grain, fake blood, glitter, different coloured nets, and so on. Vast amounts of ivy were used in order to cover the entirety of the space. We used fairy-lights, and covered the built-in lights with green gels in order to make the light of the room gloomy.

Fear of Fantasy Installation. Credit: Jessica Bark.

This ensured we had many layers of visually interesting objects, in order to stimulate the participant’s sight. The benefit of the many layers of visual stimulus meant that passers-by could also become an audience by looking through the window at the transformation.

Another benefit of the ivy was the smell it gave to the room. This scent was locked in, and participants only experienced it upon entrance. Therefore this stimulated the participant’s sense of smell.

We created a soundscape. A collaboration of fantasy sounds; birds, harp-song and a light piano tune with the addition of a narrative ‘story-teller’ as the track progressed meant that the participant’s sense of hearing was also enthused.

Soundscape: [https://soundcloud.com/harrywalsh95]

In order to fulfil the sense of touch, we firstly invited our participants to explore the space, whereby they were allowed to pick up books, objects and touch the surroundings. A main aspect of the installation, however, was the implantation of a bed in the centre of the room.

Going back to Bishop’s guidelines of Installation Art, we decided that the ‘theatrical’ element to our piece could be intensified by us taking on characters of Grimm’s fairy tales and using them to conduct one to one performance. Within these performance’s we hoped to fulfil the sense of touch.

One to one performance

We developed our understanding of one to one performance through Zerihan’s definition of it being “the inter-relationship between performer and spectator” (Zerihan, 2006, 2). Furthermore we understood its function as “subjective personal narratives that define – and seek to redefine – who we are, what we believe and how we act and re-act” (Zerihan, 2006, 1). By placing participants into a ‘different world’ we hoped that it would affect their behaviour. When conducting research, we performed ‘mock’ runs to participants. One stated that “when I entered into a space where people were already acting, I felt like I had to act as well. I felt a bit vulnerable!” (Hill, 2015). Furthermore we wanted our participants to react to the performance tasks which the fairy tale characters set. These tasks functioned in order to build a relationship, making them move involved, between participant and performer. By building this relationship, we hoped that
For example, the first task was telling the participant to “get into bed.” Some did so willingly, but others questioned why. It meant that not only did the participant react to the nature of the performance, but the performer also had to react to the changing behaviours of each participant.

Other tasks used sense of touch as a foreground.
The character of Ashputtel insisted that the participant must help her “separate the grain from the ash” so that she could “go to the ball.” By asking participants to physically engage with the performer, we hoped it would make the surroundings more ‘real’ – thus successfully creating immersion. Touch was further used when the participant moved onto the next performer – The Girl With No Hands. The participant was told to wash their hands in a bucket of soapy water, their hands touching the performers.

The final one to one performance was with The Queen character, who, standing behind the participant with arms reached around them held a mirror up to their face. The participant was asked to pick out their faults. By letting the participant see their reflection in the mirror within the installation we hoped it would make the realisation of, as Zerihan describes “who they are” within the space.

Each character involved in the one-to-one performances were drawn from Grimm’s Fairy-tales. We did a lot of research into Ashputtel, The Girl With No Hands and Snow White. We discovered that these three stories, as Bettelheim has argued about fairy tales, allow readers to “understand the complex world in which we need to cope” (Bettelheim, 1978, 5). All three fairy tales display a story about vulnerability, and how to overcome obstacles. Highly relevant to a student target audience, as University faces us with several obstacles which we must overcome.

We felt the use of one to one performance was highly relevant when re-creating the experience of ‘getting lost within fiction.’ We base this on the fact that reading is a solo activity, therefore the experience of Fear of Fantasy should also be an individual engagement.

Characterisation
The costuming and make-up of our characters was highly influenced by Carnesky’s Ghost Train.

Carnesky makes use of fictional ‘ghost’ characters in order to “breach the gap between art and entertainment” (carnesky.com, 2015).

carnesky2 — Carnesky’s Ghost Train. Credit: Carnesky.com

Carnesky1 — Carnesky’s Ghost Train. Credit: Carnesky.com.

In the same way we wanted to do so with our piece, removing the gap between the installation and the performance. Therefore our characters embodied similar materiality to the surroundings. Ashputtel, in a dishevelled, ash-stained dress with black bags under her eyes displayed a fairy tale character highly relevant to the violent imagery in Grimm’s Tales. In addition, The Queen wore several layers of make up in order to display the “harsh vanity” (Grimm, 1992, 5) of the Snow White Story.

By placing one to one performance into installation art, it was our aim to immerse participants, based on their mental and physical senses into a fantasy world whereby they could enjoy the fiction being displayed in a shorter time than reading a book.

Evaluation

Due the one to one performance nature of our piece, we created appointment slots on a Doodle Poll which was advertised on a Facebook event page.

There were 15 slots available, starting from 12:30pm until 19:30pm. All 15 slots were filled by the day of the performance, and we had an additional two participants who walked in of their own accord. We also found that our installation catered to an audience of passers-by, who were intrigued to see the transformed space.

The reactions we received to Fear of Fantasy varied dramatically from person to person. Our research led us to believe that by creating an installation, participants would look around the environment upon entering the room. However with the addition of character’s in the room, ready to engage in one to one performance, we discovered that participants were reluctant to do so, due to feeling uncomfortable. Therefore after this realisation, we began inviting participants upon entry to “look around.”

In regard to the tasks set out for the audiences, we also found that the longer we made them partake in these, the more immersed they felt within the action and the bigger the reaction we would receive at the ending. We discovered that by starting the action slow, building the tension at a steady pace, it meant the end reaction was greater. We seemed to lack the escalation of tension in the earlier performances, but starting the one to one performances too quickly, and not allowing participants to enjoy the space. Once we slowed the pace down, with performances lasting around 15 minutes as opposed to 7 minutes, participants left the room with a far bigger reaction; some scared, some laughing and some just shocked.

The intricacies of the installation worked well. The layers of visual imagery completely transformed The Worth Room to an unrecognisable place. “I couldn’t believe that this was a study room I was revising in yesterday! I didn’t recognise it” (Maskill, 2015). Furthermore we catered to a far bigger audience than just the 15 participants. Many people came up to look through the window at the transformed space, examining each detail. I think the installation worked well because it removed the meaning from the space, and instead prescribed it something different. Instead of holding the meaning of ‘studying’ the site became a place that could be seen as a fairy tale land.

If improvements were to be made on the final performance, I would like to immerse participants within the action for longer. The intricacies and characterisations weren’t allowed enough time to fully be appreciated. I felt that had the appointments been an hour long, then we could have experimented further with how long we could engage each participant based on their reactions – as some really did not seem to want to leave!

Furthermore, if I were to alter the piece, I would like to experiment with this idea just as an installation piece, removing the one to one performance and focusing even more on the idea of transforming space and prescribing it a new meaning. I feel then audience members could spend as long as they want enjoying the performance.

This module has heightened my awareness of how a specific site can hold meaning, but also that we can change that meaning. It allows us to experiment with performance that the constraints of the theatre do not. The theatre has a set space, which dictates audience to performer. As I have experienced through one to one performance and immersion, site specific performance allows us to create reactions from audiences based on the individual’s mentality.

Bibliography

Bettelheim, B. (1978) The Uses of Enchantment. London: Penguin Books.

Bishop, C. (2012) Installation Art. London: Tate Publishing.

Carnesky, J. (2015) Carnesky’s Ghost Train. [online] Blackpool: Blackpool Visitors Guide. Available from http://carnesky.com/ghosttrain/ [Accessed 15th May 2015].

Dixon, S. (2007) Digital Performance. A History of New Media In Theatre, Dance, Art and Installation. Cambridge: MIT press.

Hill, C. (2015) Questions on testing the space. [interview] Interviewed by Harry Walsh, 1 May.

Jones, K. (2015) Site. [email] Sent to Harry Walsh, 7 May.

Maskill, H. (2015) Questions on testing the space. [interview] Interviewed by Jessica Bark, 1 May.

She Paints Red, (2013) Phantom Wing. [online] Available from: https://shepaintsred.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/phantom-wing/ [Accessed 24 March]

Rufford, J. (2015) Theatre and Architecture. London: Palgrave.

Zerihan, R. et al (2009) Live Art Development Agency Study Room Guide on One to One Performance.

Zerihan, R. (2006) Intimate Inter-actions: Returning to the Body in One to One Performance. [online] Available from http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol0601/rachelzerihan/home.html [Accessed 8 May 2015].

Final Blog Submission – Set In Stone

Michael Tarrant Kirby / May 15, 2015May 15, 2015 / Main Page, Michael Kirby

Framing Statement

Our performance takes influence from physical performance art, sound art and sculpture. By combining all of these within our performance, we created a lot of layers and depth to our performance. Because we had so much within the performance we made sure that we kept each element of the performance simple enough to not distract from the main context.

When first approaching site specific we were entering a whole new world of performance. I knew buildings as a place where performance took place, however I never thought of Architecture as being performative itself. It was this performativity of buildings that first inspired our creative exploration. We spent time looking at the architecture of the library and the difference between the original architecture and the parts that had been added when it was transformed into a library. We decided to explore the staircase at the rear of the library because it is a space that is often over looked. People use the stairs all of the time but never pay attention to the performativity of the staircase itself.

The real power of site-specific work is that it somehow activates, or engages with, the narratives of the site in some kind of way. That might be with its formal architecture, or it might be with the character of the building. It might be to do with the history of that building. (McLucas cited Morgan, 1995, 47 cited Pearson, 2010, 35)

This quote was one of the main theories that fuelled my understanding of site-specific performance and my creativity when approaching the creation of our own performance.
The general concept behind our performance was the activation of the architecture through the use of the body and to include the present use of the building as a library.
The performance as a whole is an experiment which allows us to be constantly exploring ideas and creating new ideas to include in the performance.

For our performance we had three people with mod rock casts attached to them on each level of the stairwell. This was to explore the relationship between people and the site. Without people the site would stop being a staircase and become and empty room. This means that people are metaphorically a part of the building. By mod rocking ourselves to the building, it shows the metaphor in a physical instillation.

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The other three people were continuously exploring the stairs and different ways to interact with them. We installed the body casts and left them throughout the day. We performed three times for twenty minutes during the day. Each time we performed, we switched positions allowing variety through the performance, meaning that no performance is the same. This is an exploration of the site in itself as it emphasises how the building has changed over time and how it is used differently every day, by different people.

The last part of our exploration was the sound collage that we had playing for the full twenty minutes of each physical performance. This sound collage, of walking up and down stairs, creates another level of exploring the use of the stairs. It explores the sound that the physical action of walking up and down stairs creates. This explores the rhythm of life and the rhythm of the stairs.

Analysis Of Process

My first inspiration came from a task that we were set in class. This task was to draw a part of the library and then switch drawings and create a transmedia response to said drawing.

I had to create a transmedia response to a drawing of the library’s steel support frame. I decided to create a sound collage in response as the first thing that came to mind was the transformation of the raw material being forged into a vital product for the building’s creation.

Below is the sound collage:

Here is some documentation of the process of editing the sounds.

Because the sound recordings were taken at different times of the day I had to edit each clip individually so that they would run smoothly off one another.

This experiment allowed me to open my mind to the world of performance outside of the theatre conventions. To see performance not only as the intentional theatrical performance that follows conventions; but to look at the performativity of everyday actions and of objects. For example by physically creating an installation of objects the performance of putting said objects in a specific place for a specific reason and understanding what it will represent.

From this we decided to look at different forms of performance art. Kira O’Reilly was one of the first artists that influenced us. Her work exploring the body and its environment was a bridge to us deciding to explore the body’s relationship with our site.

(Michael Pinchbeck, 2015)

#6 The Drawing Board: Re:Calling from traci kelly on Vimeo.

The sound used in this performance, linked with my past experiment with sound collages, caused us to include the sound collage of footsteps. The rhythm of the sound helps to emphasise the link that we are making between body and architecture. It does this by creating a strong atmosphere in which the performance takes place. The audience enter the atmosphere which automatically intrigues them and makes them really focus on and absorb the performance/instillation around them.

Antony Gormley

The next piece of inspiration was from an artist called Antony Gormley. He is an artist that is well known for his exploration of body in relation to space through the medium of sculpture. He creates sculptures of the human body and presents them in different spaces that create different meanings.

REFLECTION II, 2008 Cast iron, 2 body-forms: each 191 x 68 x 37 cm Installation view, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2008 Photograph by Bob Goedewaagen, Rotterdam

(Gormley, 2008)

This was what sparked the idea to create body casts. Body casts seemed to be the best pathway for us as none of us had any skills in the art of sculpture. We started off by creating one hand cast, which we took to the site and explored its relationship with its surrounding. Straight away we were interpreting this in many different and interesting ways. The cast had a chalky texture and was pure white which invited us to think about the shape and history of the object.

We thought about the history of the library, a grain factory, and began thinking about the difference between the people that would have occupied the space in the past and the people that inhabit the space now. We decided that we needed to create more casts fill the space and show a better representation of the vast amount of people that have passed through the building.

We spend around 100 hours in the art department creating these casts, resulting in:

60 books
40 hands
30 feet
3 faces

Now with a substantial amount of casts we could go to site and begin experimenting with placement. We decided to cast feet, faces and books as well as the original hand trial. We cast the feet because of the relationship with the body and the stair case. Feet are the main body parts that activate the stairs.

We decided to cast a face as an experiment. The face cast experiment created another level to our performance. Because of the detail of the cast it created a feeling of a human imprint. This creates a relationship with the people who worked in the library in the past when it was a factory. When looking at this extremely detailed cast it gave off an earie feeling and was quite disturbing to look at in ways. It has no life in it, yet it looks so life like. It dehumanises the most human part of a person. This experiment was so successful that we continue to create 3 more.

The book casts created a link between the rest of the casts, focusing on the architecture and the past of the building, and the modern day use of the library. These casts were also extremely detailed, which made you really focus on the physicality of the books themselves, which is opposed to the usual value of the content and knowledge that the books hold. In this sense the books also become part of the human casts as they represent the education and craving of knowledge that separates humans from the rest of the animal world. This is what a library represents, and what we wanted to convey in our performance.

When we first explored the cast’s positioning within the site, we had the idea to place them on the stairs because this is the most active part of the site.

After consulting with the library staff we discovered that this was not a plausible option because of the trip hazard that it created (because the stairs were being used regularly throughout the day).

After receiving this news we had to place the casts around the stairs in more interesting and obscure ways to create the same effect. We placed the casts around the static performers and also around the multiple window ledges that cover each side of the staircase and ledges that thrust out of the original architecture of the building.

When we first installed the casts on these ledges we realised that it worked better than originally planned as the ledges represented the book shelves of the library and the idea of archiving.

BLOG IMAGE 53 — Lilly placing a book cast on a ledge

The idea of people creating a space, and space affecting people, is what brought us to the idea of having re-attachable mod rock casts that we could have on us. We wanted to convey the importance that people have to the building. People created the building and use the building. In this respect, people are part of the building. The building is designed and created to be compatible with the human body. By physically casting ourselves to part of the building we are physically representing this metaphor of being a part of the building. The fact that we used ourselves as part of the instillation as well as the casts represents the currant architecture of the library. The new and the old. The performers representing the newest parts of the library and the body casts representing the preserved history of the building.

This could also be representative of the amount of time that students spend in the library. Our audience, the vast majority of which are the students that use the library, would find this understanding a lot easier to read as some of the students spend hours on end in the library doing work and research. The people that spend a large amount of the time in the library become familiar with the building and begin to feel a connection with it. This ability to create relationships with objects and places as well as other people I one of the things that represent the human consciousness in a very bold manor. This makes people feel a part of the library as they feel a sense of ownership of their surroundings that they know so well. Our performance creates a physical image of this human emotion that people overlook.

The second part of our performance is the physical exploration of the stairs. During our exploration of our site we explored the stairs by truly thinking about their design and use. When people walk up and down the stairs they don’t think about what exactly it is that they are doing. They take it for granted and just focus on the level that they need to reach. Because we fully explore the variety of ways to go up and down the stairs we are highlighting the process that has to be completed when using stairs. One example of our exploration is that we slowly moved up and down the stairs focusing on our precise movement and on each individual step as its own physical object.

By adding this aspect of the performance we explored into further depth the relationship between body and architecture. The audience will watch us and in turn be forced to think about the action of walking on stairs and how they would scale the building without this essential feature of the building.

Michael Pinchbeck’s work on The Drawing Board was an influence that helped us add to our performance. We has heard about this work but had not applied it to our performance until very late on in our process. We took their idea of rolling chalk down the stairs and applied it to our own performance. On the last segment of our physical performance we took some of the casts that we had made and dropped them down the stairs. This was to explore the idea of the disintegration and decay.

Time causes decay and everything decays; buildings, people and ideas. The physical disintegration of our casts represent the disintegration of a building over time. It also represents the disintegration of the past from our minds. The building used to be a factory and has now been adapted into a library. A lot of people have no idea of the history of the building that they believe to know so well. The memories of the past decay along with the building and the people that used it. The body also decays over time. The physicality behind the crumbling of these casts over the architecture shows the relationship that everything has with the past and with time itself.

The Drawing Board worked very well as an influence for us because of the fact that they used chalk and our casts were made of plaster which has a very similar texture to chalk and leaves behind a chalky residue.

Costume was the last decision that needed to be decided upon. We had many ideas ranging from nudity to wearing pure white full body suits. Because we were representing the body and the architecture, the most effective way to convey this raw idea would have been through the body’s purist form (naked). We decided against this idea because of the fact that it would have been inappropriate for our specific site. The stairwell has windows completely covering each side which allows members of the public that walk by to see inside. This could have been indecent if any children or people who would be offended by nudity would walk past. We decided in the end to wear all white as it matched with the casts. This link between our costumes and the casts allowed the audience to associate the colour white with the form of the body for the entirety of the performance.

Performance Evaluation

After the day of performing, I can confidently state that it was a success. We achieved our goals of exploring the performativity and relationship between body and architecture. As our performance itself was an experiment we managed to learn a different way of performing through creating an instillation, becoming part of an instillation and improvising the honest exploration of the stairs. Also the fact that we ourselves were experimenting during the performance allowed u to make sure that no performance was the same. By the time the third performance had come we had come up with new ideas and managed to explore these ideas as we performed. During the first two performances we didn’t touch the casts and we realised that this was a key part of the performance that we had missed. In the third performance we were a lot more active with the casts. This was when we rolled the casts down the stairs and analysed the deconstruction and disintegration of them. By the end of the performance we were left with a lot of fragmented casts that perfectly reflected the exploration of time and the change in the architecture and in the people that inhabit the building.

Another thing that we incorporated during the final performance was the movement of the books and casts. The building itself is forever changing and the people inside are forever moving and changing positions. We moved the books to different shelves and had the static performers interacting with them to create a stronger link between the body having a huge effect on the space and the use of the building.

I knew that we had created an interesting performance because as I was performing I realised that a lot of people outside were pointing and stopping to look at what was happening inside the stairwell. Also I noticed that a lot of people that were going to use the stairs would realise that something was happening; our performance must have sparked their interest because they would then return with more people to observe the performance.

Although we did get a lot of interest, we didn’t have a massive audience. A lot of the reasoning behind this would have been people not using that staircase very often, and being intimidated by their original image of the staircase that they know as being empty and quite.

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Bibliography

Gormley, A. (2008) Reflection II. [image] Available at: http://www.antonygormley.com/sculpture/chronology-item-view/id/2058/page/224#p1 [Accessed 18 Apr. 2015].

Michael Pinchbeck, (2015) #6 The Drawing Board: Re:Calling. Available at: https://vimeo.com/112927930 [Accessed 1 Apr. 2015].

Pearson, M. (2010) Site-specific performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fear of Fantasy – Final Blog Post – Harry Walsh

Harry Walsh / May 15, 2015 / Fear of Fantasy, Harry Walsh

Framing Statement

Fear of Fantasy was an installation based piece that took place in the Great Central Library’s Worth Room. The piece was performed by Jessica Bark, Ruth Scott and I on the 7^th May 2015. The set up of the installation process began at 8am and was completed by 12pm, with performances starting at 12:30pm and lasting until 7:30pm. The get out process to transform the Worth Room back to normal was completed by 10:30pm that night.

Upon initial examination of the University of Lincoln’s library as a performance site, we started to explore the reasons as to why people used it. Predominately, the university library is used by students and staff as a place of learning, to conduct research and write assignments. This was interesting to us as typically libraries are thought to be places that shelve vast amounts of fiction for users to enjoy and get lost in. The Great Central Library itself houses a large collection of fictional books that are not read for their intended purpose of pleasure. The fictional books in the university library are primarily used for in-depth analysis, and the world that the authors create is usually ripped apart by students in essays and exams. For a library that is home to so much fictional work, it seemed a shame to us that these dramatic worlds that writers create are not being explored intently by library users.

With this in mind we were drawn to the idea of visually exploring the worlds narratives exposed as a form of installation. This would enable library users that don’t have time to read for pleasure whilst struggling with university assignments a chance to get lost within the world of the fiction that inhabits a large proportion of the books in the library. This also led us to explore what the library meant for its users, and found it be a catalyst into adulthood. Students spend a lot of time in the library building a future for themselves by the means of the hard work it takes to achieve a university degree. Through this transitioning stage into adulthood that students undergo whilst at university, we were able to draw parallels with the themes of childhood innocence and adulthood found in the fictional work of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

The fantasy world created in the Grimm tales was something that had the potential to inspire a visually appealing installation piece, which we thought would make our student audience want to take time out of their studies to explore. Three of the fairy tales we were drawn to most that dealt with the loss of childhood innocence were Ashputtel, The Girl With No Hands and Snow White. We thought that by using the world of fantasy as a basis for our installation, we would be able to successfully portray the fictional brought to life. The combination of why people used the library, the effect that the library had on changing adolescence and the magical potential of fairy tales is what led us to create our installation, Fear of Fantasy.

Analysis of Process

Theatre and Architecture:

When exploring the possibilities of performance that the Great Central Library had to offer, it became evident that each space would denote different performance outcomes. Rufford states that: “Architecture articulates space, giving it a particular feel. Staging a performance is about acting in architecture: it is a practise that demands we pay attention to distance, scale, style, person-to-volume ratio and the immaterial architectures of light, heat and sound.” (Rufford, 2015, 3-4)

We came across the Worth Room, a small group workroom, located on the second floor of the library. This space was instantly appealing as it is a new part of the building that had been specifically added on to the architecture of the building, making it stand out structurally.

The visually appealing aesthetic of the Worth Room, as seen from the picture above, enticed us to want to use it as a performance space. As the small room is largely hidden from the viewpoint of somebody inside of the actual library the idea to make an installation piece inside the Worth Room that symbolised a fantastical ‘secret escape’ was created. Another thing that attracted us towards the idea of creating an installation-based piece was the structural feature of the window looking into the Worth Room. From the inside of the library, the window seemed to lend itself to the idea of people being able to look in at a magical environment that would be created in the library.

The picture above denotes the view of the library through the window of the Worth Room, which creates a notion of ‘looking in’ on something fantastical. We believe this notion provided something darker that we wanted to explore further. This led us to produce a sinister element to our material in relation to the loss of childhood innocence in fairy tales that would interlink with the notion of students losing their childhood adolescence whilst at university.

Installation Art:

Due to the nature of the Worth Room, we wanted to create a space that felt immersive in fantasy and fiction, and thought that an installation of this world would bring the narratives to life. “Installation art is a term that loosely refers to the type of art into which the viewer physically enters, and which is often described as ‘theatrical’, ‘immersive’ or ‘experimential’.” (Bishop, 2012, 6) We wanted our installation to appear authentic and give viewers the impression that fantasy fiction had been brought to life in front of them.

To achieve this aim we explored how installations could have the potential to make viewers feel fully immersed in the environment. Bishop states that installation art: “addresses the viewer directly as a literal presence in the space. Rather than imagining the viewer as a pair of disembodied eyes that survey the work from a distance, installation art presupposed an embodied viewer whose senses of touch, smell and sound are as heightened as their sense of vision.” (Bishop, 2012, 6)

Using this quote we were inspired to make the installation as immersive as possible for the viewer. We began to create mood boards of ideas surrounding what we could include in our installation. This was helpful as we were able to get a visual sense of the scope of the project and the kind of supplies we would need to execute it.

We decided to incorporate Bishop’s idea of the viewer using all their senses in our installation. We thought to use real ivy, which was cut fresh from Jess’ house a few days prior to the performance day, to decorate the walls of the Worth Room in order to produce a genuine, earthy smell that would help represent a fantastical forest.

Exploring fairy tale installations, we came across the work of Jennifer Crighton. Her work on fairy tale installations, as seen in the picture below, seems to explore the sinister element attachted to Grimm’s tales. Exploring this sinister notion within fairy tales, we came up with the idea of ‘time running out’ as a way to frame our piece, which underscored it with an unnerving atmosphere. This linked to the loss of innocence within the tales and how time runs out on a student’s childhood whilst at university, which provided greater depth to the immersive element of the piece, as the audience would feel that because there is limited time, they are put under greater pressure to succeed.

Jennifer Crighton's installation. Photo credit: She Paints Red — Jennifer Crighton’s installation. Photo credit: She Paints Red

We also decided through this that we wanted a soundscape to play, through a speaker, throughout the viewer’s time experiencing our installation. This would add to the ambience of the installation, and we experimented with numerous different types of fantasy music. We wanted the music to provide a sense of the sinister side of fairy tales, highlighting the potential fear created by the idea of lost innocence. Using Audacity, I created a fifteen-minute soundscape that used a mixture of sweet sounding and sinister musical interludes as well as a recorded piece of narration centred on the initial concept of our piece. This is available on Soundcloud through the following link: https://soundcloud.com/harrywalsh95/fear-of-fantasy and through the widget below.

I recorded and distorted Jess’ narration, which acted as a guide to the audience members. “Open your eyes, pull back the sheet, there are characters here that you need to meet. Dear Ashputtel, a girl and a queen, there is importance in fantasy stories, let us see what they mean. Don’t run or hide or scream or shout, enjoy this story before the time runs out.” (Bark, 2015) The illusion to time running out helped create a sense of fear and worry, and I used voice distortion tools on Audacity to emphasise the unnerving nature of this.

Bruno Bettelheim and The Uses of Enchantment:

After realising that we wanted to explore the idea of a fantasy and fairy tale installation within our piece, we looked to the work of Bruno Bettelheim. In Bettelheim’s book, The Uses of Enchantment, he states that fairy tales get across the message to children that: “struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, it is an intrinsic part of human existence – but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.” (Bettelheim, 1978, 8) This particular quote highlighted the parallels between what users in the library go through to get their degrees and the message of fairy tale fiction.

We started investigating the notions of ‘struggle’, ‘hardships’ and ‘obstacles’ because of this and found links between the original usage of the Great Central Library as a grain warehouse and the imagery of grain in Grimm’s tales. In the story of Ashputtel, the title character is forced by her stepmother to separate a mixture of grain and ash in order to go to the ball. This image of manual labour related both to the original historic use of our performance space and the notion of students working hard. Due to this, we were then inspired to make our piece centred on audience interaction using forms of manual labour involving grain.

Experimenting with grain. Photo Credit: Harry Walsh

The audience were to be asked if they would help Ruth, who was playing the character of Ashputtel, to separate the glitter and the grain as seen in the photo above. By having the audience contribute to this task, we wanted to emulate Bettelheim’s ideas of facing hardships and obstacles and being able to overcome them with adversity, as fairy tales represent.

To allow audiences to feel fully immersed in the fairy tale environment in such a small room as the Worth Room, especially whilst actively being involved within the piece, we explored the possibility of one-to-one performance within our installation.

One to One Performance:

“One to One performance foregrounds subjective personal narratives that define – and seek to redefine – who we are, what we believe and how we act and re-act. In One to One we are lifted out of the passive role of audience member and re-positioned into an activated state of witness or collaborator, or more subtly energized into ‘acting’ voyeur.” (Zerihan, 2006) The idea of audiences as active contributors to a performance is something that intrigued us. This seemed to compliment our idea of having the audience take part in tasks involving grain.

Due to this, we decided One to One performance would be a more effective way to immerse the audience and create a sense that they were an integral part of the piece.

After deciding this, we began to explore ways of making the performance immersive for the single audience members. “One to One performance affords the spectator to immerse themselves in the performance framework set out by the practitioner. This can be a seductive / scary / liberating / boring / intimate prospect and an even more intensive experience.” (Zerihan et al, 2009) From exploring the sinister notion in the Grimm’s tales, we thought it would create an intense experience for the viewer.

To create this feel, we experimented with different ways of interacting with the audience member. In relating to the childlike innocence in fairy tales, we explored the idea of having the individual have to lay down in a make shift bed, emulating ‘story time’. We tested this idea on a group of students, and had them lay down in the worth room on a duvet. The students claimed they felt uncomfortable and unnerved the longer they had to lay down, which was the desired effect. One of the students we tested this one stated: “It felt weird, it felt like something was going to happen! I was on egde.” (Hill, 2015)

The Makeshift Bed. Photo Credit: Jess Bark.

Pictured above is the concept of bed in its fully realised state at the day of the performance. The level of detail in the installation helped to create a greater sense of immersion, and for audience members to engage with the environment on a direct level.

Performance Evaluation

Prior to setting up our installation we arranged timetabled performance slots using a Doodle Poll that was advertised through a Facebook event page. These performance slots were half an hour in length, providing us enough time to reset before the next audience member would enter. The slots ran from 12:00pm to 7:30pm and were fully booked a day before the piece went ahead. We performed 15 times throughout the day to solo audience members.

One audience member commented: “Just been into see your Site-Specific piece (I hope I left at the right time!) I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed it. I went to see Grimm Tales in London a few weeks ago and it reminded me very much of that.” (Jones, 2015) Many other audience members that took part in the piece shared positive reviews of the piece on the Fear Of Fantasy Facebook event page, as detailed in the photo below.

Audience comments on the Fear Of Fantasy event page. Credit: Facebook.

Throughout the process of continuous performance the nature of our piece changed and developed as each audience member stepped into our installation. With this in mind, the performances towards the later end of the day appeared stronger than the initial ones. The earlier performances lasted around seven minutes on average, with the later ones lasting around fifteen minutes each. This development came around as we found that we wanted to allow the audience members more time to engage with the environment that we had spent time creating in depth.

The Installation. Photo Credit: Harry Walsh

These images detail our installation after it’s completion. In spending a lengthy amount of time in the environment when it was complete, we began to truly appreciate the environment that we created as a piece of performance in its own right. We felt like our audience should have a larger opportunity to appreciate this too. This triggered the decision to allow audience members a much longer time to explore the environment before we began interacting with them directly. This allowed for a more immersive installation experience for the later audience members.

It was beneficial to us to have the opportunity throughout our piece to perform multiple times, as we were finding ourselves constantly reacting to the space in unique ways for each audience member. For example, one audience member at the beginning of the process was very keen to explore the environment of the installation, leading us to the decision to adapt the way we interacted with them. Due to the audience members level of immersion within the installation, we decided to act less manic and much more subdued in our interaction. We felt this was more effective in terms of a one-to-one performance, and the audience member was able to get much more of the feeling of fantastical exploration of what we desired.

From spending the entire day in the environment of our created installation, I began to appreciate the potential that installation spaces had as stand-alone performance pieces. If I were to alter the performance in the future I would focus even more time and effort into creating an environment for all audiences to truly be able to have fun exploring and getting lost in. By doing this we would be able to further achieve the goal to allow audiences to submerse themselves within the world of fiction while at the Great Central Library.

Word Count: 2704

Bibliography

Bettelheim, B. (1978) The Uses of Enchantment. London: Penguin Books.

Bishop, C. (2012) Installation Art. London: Tate Publishing.

Hill, C. (2015) Questions on testing the space. [interview] Interviewed by Harry Walsh, 1 May.

Jones, K. (2015) Site. [email] Sent to Harry Walsh, 7 May.

She Paints Red, (2013) Phantom Wing. [online] Available from: https://shepaintsred.wordpress.com/2013/09/27/phantom-wing/ [Accessed 24 March]

Rufford, J. (2015) Theatre and Architecture. London: Palgrave.

Zerihan, R. et al (2009) Live Art Development Agency Study Room Guide on One to One Performance.

‘Set In Stone’ Final blog post

Lilian Basford / May 15, 2015May 15, 2015 / Lilian Basford

Set In Stone

Our initial stimulus and research began with our site, The University Library, allowing us to explore its history, architecture and function. As a group we chose to set our piece in the back stair way of the library, as we found it was somewhere many people, including ourselves, overlooked. I personally really like the large glass windows as they create a framed effect from the outside. We were also very interested in the different levels as well as the way in which people anatomically use the library, such as the use of the stairs and sitting at a desk. Our performance consisted of two parts; an installation piece for which we made clay casts of body parts and books, and three 20 minute performance that consisted of 3 members of the group exploring the way in which people walked up and down the stairs, and the other 3 members sat one on each level with a part of their body in a modroc cast.

cath

The point of this was to see the relationship between the physicality of the human body and the architecture of the library brought together through the use of the body and book casts. The materials were strategically placed around the performers and many placed on the window ledges to create a framing effect that also mimics the shelves in the library. We performed three times throughout the day, each time changing positions and roles to offer alternative interpretations on the use of space and time to represent the connections between the architecture and the body. The key ideas for our performance were stemmed from three mail elements; instillation and sculptural art, physical movement and sound art. These three components resulted in us getting our main influences from artists such as Kira O’Reilly, Rachel Whiteread and Traci Kelly and Rhiannon Jones.

Analysis of process

Firstly, site was an extremely important aspect of my research and for this, I decided to study further into the Library’s past functions and purposes in order to get a better understanding and knowledge of the building itself. According to Mike Pearson “The play-as-event belongs to the space, and makes the space perform as much as it makes actors perform” (Pearson, 2010, p1) therefore, by understanding and learning about the building the more we can use it to enrich our performance.

To begin the process of understanding what a ‘Site Specific performance’ is, we were given an article on Etchell’s ‘Eight Fragment’s on Theatre and City. After reading through it, I fund two ‘fragments’ which interested me and gave me a further insight into how performance can be produced all over cities.

‘Maintenance’ describes a person’s repetitive “ritual” (Etchell, 1999, 77) in which he/she walks the same way at the same time every day. The person’s strange actions oppose the everyday normalities of life, however the repetitive nature also reflects human’s tendencies to repeat their everyday lifestyle as if it is ritualistic. (Getting up, going to work, going to bed).

This correlates with the repetition that flows through our site, both past and present. When the library used to be a factory, workers would have had set repetitive tasks to undertake throughout the day. Similarly this repetitive act is seen throughout the library; whether it’s through the essay writing process (research, plan, draft, re-write, submit) or through accessing and navigating round the building (sign in, find somewhere to sit, do work, sign out).

‘Destruction/Construction’ concerns itself with “the fascination of ruined places, of incomplete places” (Etchell, 1999, 78). These buildings create an impression of unfinished business and decay. The history of such a place cannot be ignored as with every building, comes a story, a past. For Mike Pearson, places like this allow “the past to surge into the present” (Pearson, 2010, 10). The people who resided in or merely visited these places in the past leaves a residual impression in the place itself.

Although the library isn’t incomplete, visually we can distinguish the old parts of the building with the new. Personally I find it really interesting how the new architecture integrates with the old, how its past is still visually accessible.

-Structure of wooden beams on the third floor

-vast array of old style windows

-large glass windows making up walls

-different shapes, angles and colours of new building

-evidence of reinforcement

Drawing further onto the building and its architecture, we were given the task to find a place of interest within the library and spend time there just being. I recorded my thoughts and responses to my chosen site in a form similar to a stream-of-consciousness. My chosen area was the back wall of the first floor where the black windows are. At first the idea of taking notes on a part of the building didn’t sound too appealing, but I found it fascinated me leaving many unanswered questions and thoughts in my head. My observations are listed below;

-brick wall displaying the building original structure

– Metal black/grey beam

-aged/eroded bricks

-Evidence of reinforcement through nails and bolts to help with stability

-areas of concrete highlighting absence and decaying of bricks

-Areas where the bricks are black- intentionally?

-the pattern of the bricks changes above the window, possibly built at different times/possibly a design feature.

-all bricks look very similar- are they all original? Who placed them there?

-the low window starting from the floor is an appealing feature of the architecture

I found this task highly intriguing as it made me pay close attention to detail I would have otherwise looked past. I feel that it has furthered my focus onto the building and its architecture, allowing me to see the building as a performer itself rather than just containing a performance.

As a group we decided the majority of our interests lied within the architecture of the building, coupled with the human interaction that goes on within it. We felt that as students the Library plays an influential and critical role in our studies and work. It’s a place designed for us, to help enhance our learning. This resulted in us feeling personally connected and involved with the library making us a part of its history. Expanding on this, Rom’s theory that “to walk is to leave footprints” (Pearson, 2010, 21) suggests that each person adds to the history of a place or space and that these footprints resemble the mark and memory of that person. Every time we enter a space or a place, “the visitor is aware that each surviving doorway was once entered, each window was once looked through” (Pearson, 2010, 24). Their residual presence survives in these spaces and it is vital to recognise the importance of this in order to fully understand the history of a place itself. –does this then make us influential to the building? Will our presence remain or make an impact?

We toyed around with the idea of us adding to the history of the building exploring the connection we have with it. Which lead to our starting idea of being embodied into the architecture, becoming a part of the building itself. Through the possible use of body casts, we want to explore further into creating links between the body and the building, possibly trying to integrate ourselves into the architecture. Hopefully, this will display more of a literal visual influence and involvement that will contrast the subtle unrecognised influence we have on the building that until now, I know I have overlooked.

Exploring movement on site

Marvin Carlson theorises that “places of public performance […] are marked by the traces of their other purposes and haunted by the ghosts of those who have used them in the past” (Govan, 2007, 139). In my spare time I re-visited our chosen site and focused solely on the stairwell. I wanted to look into the way in which people physically use the stairs. I documented the physicality of the movements required to move up and down the stairs also interactions between people when they passed each other. The variation was astounding. Not only did I see a difference in the way people physically placed their foot on the step; ranging from the heel first, to the ball of the foot and toes first to side stepping down the stairs, but also a huge deviation in pace and rhythm. This experiment made me question the way I walk up and down the stairs and the pace in which I do it. It began to turn into a sequence, a type of pattern with the different overlaying footsteps that didn’t visually match the person’s feet I was watching. However, the main thing I noticed was the reliance and dependence on the hand rail, in particular when descending. Is this just because it’s there, or do people genuinely rely on it for support and assistance? I experimented walking up and down the stairs both with and without assistance from the hand rail.

Using the rail: I felt relaxed and natural, not really having to focus on the physical movement. My hand slid along the railing offering extra ease and guidance especially when descending. I felt that the railing added an element of safety and support.

Without the railing: when walking up the stairs I felt an added strain on my legs as they were the only thing propelling me up the stairs, however, I still felt relatively natural and able to climb them. Although, when walking down the stairs I felt myself notice a decrease in stability and comfort. It created a sense of vulnerability, and unease, and I occasionally found myself reaching for the railing out of instinct.

After feeding back to my group about my exploration of the stairs, we decided to take our research further and looked into the work of Kira O’Reilly, who explores the physicality of the human body through her work. One of her most influential piece’s for us was her durational performance of ‘Stair falling’ (2010). It’s a slow motioned piece in which she falls down the stairs backwards.

(See fig. 1)

https://vimeo.com/15900495

I found her work very inspirational as it has a direct correlation with our piece. In particular, the way in which each movement was so definite and precise, coupled with her intimacy with the stairs and careful control of her body. “Body and building architecture are compared within a precarious relationship, trying to find moments of balance, which are lost to the ungainly.” (The drawing board, 2013) For me the piece exemplified the trust and reliance she shared with the building as well as the care and control taken in each movement. We were then further able to progress our rehearsal process through developing a closer more and familiar relationship with our site. Ultimately this will help develop our confidence when working with the stairs to create a more comfortable performance.

Exploring the use of materials

Rachel Whiteread was one of our main influences when working with space and materials. She is widely recognised for her popular piece ‘House’ which explores the use of materials and preservation to create a theatrical meaning. In an interview, If walls could talk, Craig Houser question Whiteread on her most recent body of work including the ideas behind ‘House’. “I was thinking for this piece that I wanted to try and flip the architecture a little bit. I wanted to change the way one might think about how you walk around or through something” (Whiteread, 2001, 51) as our focus is centred around architecture and the body, Whitereads work directly links with what we are trying to achieve.

(See fig. 2)

Further exploration into her work displayed a transformation in site and meaning. Her manipulation and subversion of materials and objects, is something I feel inspired us all, we wanted to create a new experience for our audience giving them a new perspective on what we show/perform “to redirect our gaze to that which was an absent, a void, the uncanny spaces beneath the surface of everyday life.” (Whiteread, 2001, 33) Sigmund Freud’s theory of the ‘Uncanny’ is something I personally am very interested in and looked further into. The uncanny represents ‘that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’ (Freud, 1919,1) The Etymology of ‘uncanny’; is the English translation of the German words ‘heimlich’ (homely) and ‘unheimlich’ (‘unhomely’). Heimlich can mean familiar, intimate and cherished, but can also mean weird, concealed and secret. This linguistic ambiguity underlies the ‘special core of feeling’ that characterises the uncanny. Through our exploration of body and architecture I want to create a sense on the ‘Uncanny’, using everyday familiar objects and spaces subverting them giving a new meaning and purpose. “what is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.” (Freud, 1919, 2)

As drama student we know the limitations to working with the human body are endless. We experimented with the use of modroc casting parts of the body to stimulate a similar effect achieved by Rachel Whiteread. The effect replicated the arm we had cast, however, didn’t pay close attention to detail.

11050219_844615515619225_5690077067183610400_n

With help from the art department we were shown how to create a more realistic, life-like version of what we made above. To do so we used a variety of materials such as, alginate, modroc and plaster. The results were amazing. We couldn’t believe detail the alginate had picked up, every vein, every line, every bit of detail was evident.

We worked very close with the technician Robert Britt who gave us an induction on how to work with the materials and in the workshop. As a group we dedicated a lot of time to creating our sculptures which resulted in us making 60 books, 40 hands, 30 feet and three faces.

We explored the possibilities of use for our body casts by placing them on site and documenting people’s reaction to it, some people stopped to have a look curious to what it was, where as many people ignored it and walked straight past. The mixed responses we got displayed a sense of curiosity coupled with the reflection of the ‘uncanny’ a familiar object presented in an unfamiliar way. Our interest in sculptures stemmed our research further to discovering the work of artists such as Antony Gormley who is a British artist who works closely with architecture, the human body and sculptures. In an interview he stated “The sculptures will be like standing stones: Markers in space and time, linking with specific places and their histories.” (BBC, 2015) Antony Gormley has a direct link with ‘site specific’ and links all his work “with specific places and their histories” something we are trying to achieve through our piece.

Working on site

Originally we wanted to place items on the stairs for example, books stacked up as if on a shelf and feet placed to mimic a walking effect, that also cause passers-by to feel restricted as to where they can walk, visually displaying the footsteps that had been there before theirs. However, when consulting with the library staff they raised concerns about health and safety as our chosen site is the library’s designated fire exit route. Luckily we were only experimenting so this didn’t come as a setback, instead we laced the books on the window ledges still creating a shelved effect. We placed the hands and feel along the back wall of each level which represented a blend of the past workers and history with us the current users of the library.

Traci Kelly and Rhiannon Jones work on Michael Pinchbeck’s The Drawing Board came as an inspiration to us much later on in our work. The main thing we took from their work was the way in which they threw their creations down the stairs allowing them to crumble and break. This disintegration effect highlighted the vulnerability of our work, also reflecting the way in which the building has crumbled and worn away overtime. Further suggesting that noting last forever, the change of physical shape of our sculptures when dropped down the stairs symbolises the change undergone by the building, its structure has been manipulated to suit its purpose.

shoes

Video accessible from link below (See fig. 3)

http://drawingboardproject.tumblr.com/page/2

Furthermore, another aspect of The Drawing Board that also inspired us was the use of chalk. We incorporated this into our work by putting chalk and white face paint on the palms of our hands and feet. This allowed us to leave a visual trace of our presence in the building.

Another influence in our work was through the use of audio. We created a soundscape of people footsteps walking up and down the stairs. When exploring the site we noticed it’s diversity concerning its acoustic opportunities. Covering three floors, we noticed that we could hear people in close proxemics but couldn’t uncover where the sound was coming from. With this in mind we played the soundscape’s for the duration of all three of our performances. I feel this gave the piece an added depth and combined the real with the artificial, causing our audience to have difficulty distinguishing between sound of the footsteps and our movements.

Evaluation

Our performance took place on Saturday 9^th May, the installation was available to view from 2pm-7pm with three live performances at 4:30, 5:30 and 6:30. Our desired connection between the building and the people within it was evident in our final performance. As a group we hadn’t ever devised a performative piece quite like it, but the end result was incredible interesting to not only be a part of but also to witness. The layers of sound, art and performance all came together to produce a fascinating exploration of the body and its relationship with the building.

One part of our performance that I thought created a particularly eye-catching image was through the way in which we place the plaster hands and feel along the back wall on each level. This represented a blend of the past workers and inhabitants with us and our hands and feet still in the basic modroc casts. I feel that this symbolises our involvement in the building and its history as it is still being formed and shaped. Our incomplete casts contrast the ones that have been completed and have already left their mark. Furthermore, this stillness is contrasted through the soundscape of multiple footsteps and the three performers constantly moving up and down the stairs.

Although our audience was predominantly made up of the people wishing to use the stairs, the framing effect created by the glass windows allowed us to expand our spectators with people viewing the performance from all angles and distances. It was interesting to see people’s responses to what we had created, some tried to interact with us, asking what we were doing and why, others merely walked past not knowing what was going on around them- perhaps we made them feel uncomfortable? Or like they were intruding? Whilst it was apparent other people were intrigued by what we were doing and wanted to explore it further making themselves spectators. I really enjoyed how the site was kept open to the public and students as it resulted in an array of reactions that we wouldn’t have achieved if it was a typical performance. In many ways the audience created an added layer to our performance highlighting the buildings purpose and adding to busy fast pace motion of the piece, the audience became part of the performance without realising it.

For me the most interesting thing about performing Set in Stone was the constant flow of ideas throughout the piece. Each performance resulted in a brain storm of new ideas on how to evolve the piece further. This allowed our piece to constantly be changing and developing, with our exploration of books heightened in our last performance. For example, we would move books from one window ledge to another whilst walking up and down the stairs to highlight the ever-changing qualities of the library.

Overall, I feel his module has taught me a lot about performance and connections with heritage and site. I have learnt a lot of new skills and attributes over the course of the module and have deepened my knowledge about art and performance as a whole. Additionally, I feel we achieved our main aim of making connections between architecture and the human body to create an exciting, new, thought evoking site specific performance.

Bibliography

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

Etchell, T. (1999) Certain Fragments. Eight Fragments on Theatre and City. London: Routledge.

Govan, (2007). Between Routes and Roots. Performance, Place and Diaspora. 136-143.

Rachel Whiteread: transient spaces. (2001) New York, Guggenheim Museum publications.

BBC (2015), Sir Antony Gormley sculptures placed at five UK beauty spots. [online] London:BBC Available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32702277 [Accessed 10th May 2015]

Whiteread, R. (2013) House [image] available from::http://www.apollo-magazine.com/house/ [Accessed 2nd March 2015]

Kelly, T. and Jones, R. (2014) The Drawing Board #6 [image] Available from: http://drawingboardproject.tumblr.com/post/104331954125/the-drawing-board-6-traci-kelly-and-rhiannon# [Accessed 15 April 2015].

Final Blog Submission

Catherine Hayes / May 15, 2015 / Catherine Hayes

Set in Stone

Framing Statement

The way in which we chose to tell the story of our library was through art combined with performance and history. By creating a performance that spreads over all three floors, we explored the concepts of body, architecture and time, and how they come together to create the story of our building.

Our piece took place at the back stairs of the library. Through the use of levels we were able to create a performance that explored how the body and building could come together to create performance. As we were a group of six, this enabled us to be able to explore the whole of the site at any one time; spreading our performance out over all three floors enabled the audience to always be in contact with at least one group member as they travelled around our site, ‘one can see the floors above and below-one after another, endlessly.’ (Borges, 2000, 19). We explored the concept of history and time by using our bodies to appear ‘stuck in time’.

One of our main aspects of our performance was art installation. Through the use of art, that we ourselves created, we were able to install something that we knew would catch attention of the audience; we used mod-rocked body parts and books. We used the installation art both for interest for an audience member when they were watching the performance from inside the space, and also as a device to attract members of the public walking past the library, whose attention was caught by the mod-rock displayed in the window and on the stairs. The idea of institution of those particular things that we created (hands, feet, legs, arms, books and faces) enabled us to explore ways of why the human body is such a relevant part of the library as a building ‘by which the artist contrasts conventional expectations with the newly found possibilities presented with instillation’ (Rosenthal, 2005, 54). Although the majority of the pieces we created were delicately made, we also explored how the use of pieces that were imperfect, also have an effect on the audience.

Analysis of Process

When figuring out a final idea for our site specific performance, our group came to the decision that we wanted to focus on both the history and architecture of the library building. After researching the building itself, we learnt that the library was once a grain factory before it had become part of the university. We felt that this was an interesting point, and one which we could focus our performance around. We therefore began developing ideas and had the inspiration to do a performance based around the people that are part of the library building, by actually becoming ‘part of the building ourselves’. Our main objective was mixing real life with art.

We began to think about what part of the library we felt we could show not only the historical elements of the building, but also focus more on the people involved in the building itself. After exploring the whole library as a site for a while, we focused on the back staircase; finding that each floor had a white blank space on we became engrossed in the idea of a ‘white blank page’ and the amount of things we could do to explore this, almost as though it symbolised something that was asking to be changed, or added to. Our first idea when looking at the blank wall was to explore the ability of actually placing things onto the wall. As we knew we wanted to incorporate real life into art and focus on the body mixed with architecture, we came up with the idea of putting a person onto the wall, and working around that. As Lily from our group had experience with mod-rock, she suggested we should use that to stick one of our bodies to the wall, and from there we thought we could add and adapt other art pieces or drawing and writing around that. We understood that the library would not allow us to impact any damage straight onto the wall, so we therefore wanted to incorporate a large white blank sheet, which would be stuck onto the wall and then onto that would be our mod-rocked body. We began to look at how we could gather the right materials that we needed for this to work, and our tutor had told us to contact the art department to ask about the supplies they had, and whether we could work with them. We met with one of the art technicians later that week and told him our idea, to which he suggested we could come back before we had to present our idea to our markers and the library staff and have a practice at using the mod-rock. We were shown how to use the mod-rock, and made one cast of Ellie’s arm to bring into present our idea. After giving our presentation, we were given the advice to keep the idea of the mod-rock the creation of objects, but that instead of focusing on mod-rocking a body into the wall, as this wasn’t practical, we should explore how else we could show our idea.

After our presentation, we went away as a group and discussed how we could change our original idea into something more realistic and appropriate. We knew we wanted to stick with mod-rocking and created pieces of art, so we instead had the idea to create numerous body parts, as appose to one whole body stuck to the wall, and that we could place them around the blank wall’s on each level but still have at least one person on each level, placed by the wall in a sort of ‘statue’ mode that would allow us to explore the concept of time in the building, and also the allow us to explore the history, almost as though we were ‘stuck in time’.

In one Site Specific session, we as class watched a piece of work by Adrian Howells in which he created an artistic piece centrered around a hair salon and explores the bonds that can be made with the clients that visit there. This linked into how our group wanted to explore the people of the building, and the impact an atmosphere from a certain site can have upon people, changing their attitude and behaviour in a certain place. He investigates the relationship between the hairdresser (portrayed by himself as Adrienne) and the client he is looking after. The video shows the break down of certain boundaries we may expect these two people to have; normally at a hair salon there would be a certain amount of small talk between the client and the hairdresser but to a certain point, not usually revealing anything that could be seen as ‘personal’. Adrienne asks the clients to take ‘a long hard look at yourself in the mirror’, commenting that usually people start to describe the superficial things amount themselves such as ‘the bags under my eyes’ but Adrienne pushes them further, getting them to concentrate on the metaphorical things they see when they look at themselves. To enable his customers to share more about themselves, Adrienne will always give something back to them, a personal thing about himself that then creates a bond of trust and respect, meaning that the client can then respond and share something equally as personal. What’s interesting to think about with this video is what effect the piece being set in a hairdresser has upon the performance. Personally, I think that it symbolises how a hair salon can be quite a personal space, where people become very aware of themselves, thinking about both flaws and positives about themselves and how exploring this is important in understanding the mind-set and emotions of people in certain places compared to others. Adrian Howells’ work helped our group to focus a lot more on the individual people that come into our site, why they come here and how they may change the way they act because of the atmosphere of the place they are in.

When looking for inspiration for our performance, our group looked towards performance artist Kira O’Reilly and in particular her performance that surrounded stairs and the exploration of movement on them. Obviously as our chosen space for our performance was the library’s back stairs, this was extremely relevant to us. Watching the performance, it became clear how although a simple part of a building, the stairs can be explored in many different ways. O’Reilly presents this by ‘falling’ down the stairs in slow motion, which creates a sense of pure concentration on each step and the impact that has on her body. A particular theme that I took from the performance was danger and how that fitted in with stairs and the movements we take when exploring that space. I found that the slow motion of the piece really helped to focus on the damage that can be done to a body when falling down the stairs. O’Reilly also interestingly focuses on using the entire staircase, taking particular care to go step by step, touching as much of the stairs and handle rails as is possible with her body. Looking at O’Reilly’s work made our group think about the way in which we could present different ways of moving and exploring the body in our performance. As our performance was on a staircase, it made perfect sense to do this by playing around with how we could move up and down the stairs in different ways. We set the task of trying to see how many different ways we could travel the staircase, from how we normally felt we walked, to more unnatural ways such as crawling or sliding. This impacted the way in which we thought about how we normally move around, which was made more interesting when we added the focus of the stairs, as architecture, and how that impacted our movements. We decided that it would be effective for us to actually incorporate our idea of travelling around the stairs into our final performance. Therefore we chose to split our group of six into two separate three-person groups and concentrate on having both small groups performing at the same time. We thought this would be more effective in portraying to the audience our idea of mixing architecture and the body, by having one group presenting how the human body is a part of the library as a building, and another group exploring how the human body fits into the building and how it changes around it, such as travelling on the stairs.

Another inspiration our group had for our piece was the work of Rachel Whiteread. As an artist that primarily produces sculptures, which mostly take the form of casts, she, and her work were an obvious interest to our group that we felt we should look further into. One of her most famous projects, House, took our group’s interest. House was a sculpture project that took place in East London, with a wide range of views about the project, meaning that Whiteread ‘had won the 1993 Turner Prize, and a gathering of Bow Neighbourhood Councillors voted that House should be demolished with immediate effect.’ (Lingwood et al, 1995, 7). The work was a complete concrete cast of the inside of a three-story house, but with no roof space. This immediately struck our group as something that we could focus around; there were obvious similarities between the work we wanted to produce, using mod-rock and concrete, and Whiteread’s project. One thing I found that particularly linked with our work and Whiteread’s was the fact that we were making nothing extremely abstract, but rather ordinary parts and objects, such as books and hands. Similarly, Whiteread had focused her art around and everyday object, a house. Our work then gave me the particular interest of focusing on how something so normal can be made to look some unnatural and abstract, purely based on the site the art is in. Focusing on placing our mod -rocked body pieces around the staircase meant that it would create interest simply by looking so out of place, and hopefully resulting in the audience being drawn in on why we had done this.

Our group took an interest in both Traci Kelly and Rhiannon Jones and their work they created together that centrered around a staircase. The performance art is similar to the work that our group were investigating, regarding mod-rock surrounding the stairs. What was particularly interesting was the way the concrete used in the performance appeared to have been crushed down so that it had become dust that was spread over the stairs and surrounding area. The artists had then stepped in the concrete to create footprints that were leading up to a pair of shoes. What I liked most about the performance art was the simpleness of it. In the photographs the crushed concrete appears to lie naturally on each step with only a few materials added in to enhance the performance.

Studying this particular piece of work gave us the inspiration to explore not only the art that we created, but also the excess parts such as the broken down clay or the parts that had been crushed and how that could possibly be added into our performance. We decided that instead of keeping a ‘clean’ performance space, we would embrace the ‘mess’ that was created when positioning our art around our site, we did not want to give off an ‘art gallery’ sort of impression, but instead focus on how the mess created would symbolise the fact that this building has always revolved around work, and aiming to create something; ‘Processes from drawing, printmaking and sculpture seemed to find purchase on living physicality’ (O’Brian, 2014). By showing the effect of our broken down pieces of art, we felt this created a sense of ‘work-in-progress’ art, that highlighted an intention of the building, to provide a place of work for the public. We also thought that audience members would be drawn in by the imperfect pieces lying around as it is not something one would expect to see in instillation art, which would be expected to be of a perfect standard, ‘plaster casts were […] not in themselves objects of serious study in the way that original pieces should be’ (Frederiksen et al, 2010, 189).

Another aspect of our piece that we developed was the sound used in our performance. We recorded what sounded like mechanical machinery to play constantly during our performance, we used this to symbolise the history of the building, as a factory and warehouse, and also to explore the concept of the stairs as a piece of architecture, and how easily sound travelled through the space.

Performance Evaluation

As our performance was split into three twenty minute slots, this surprisingly created a sense of three very different performances. As previously mentioned, our group was split into two and in the performance as three of us would act as human statues, with one or more body parts embodied in mod-rock, the other three would be roaming the staircase in different ways. This meant that the audience members we had, had multiple things to focus on as they went up and down the stairs. It was interesting to discover that audience members would actually almost be travelling with us as we explored the staircase. As we had three of us moving around, it meant that at any point an audience member would be walking on the same set of stairs as one of us, meaning there was entirely no fourth wall for any of our performance. It was interesting to see how the audience reacted to our performance, especially the more deformed looking pieces of art, which got a lot of reaction.

What stood out in the reaction to our performance was the feedback we were given after our second showing; our markers had noted our work with the body parts, but wanted us to explore the concrete books that we had created even more. This meant in the break between our second and third performance, we had to discuss what we could add to the performance to put more focus on the books used. As we had positioned the clay books around the windowsills, to look like book shelves, we decided that the group that were wondering the staircase could perhaps be moving up and down the stairs, whilst carrying books, taking them off and putting them, on the shelf, to impersonate how library users collect and return books. This had a huge impact on our performance, and allowed us to be even more creative through improvisation, resulting in the final performance being our most effective one, which was proved as some audience members stopped to record or photograph our work.

If performing again, I would suggest that our group had incorporated with moving the books, and other objects, around in all three performances, rather than just the last. This would have improved not only the appearance of the performance but also furthered our understanding of the body and we can explore when moving around.

My engagement with the site specific module, and the theories studied, has helped me to understand the ways in which performance can be changed and altered depending on the place it is set in, and the impact this has on the piece. For example, our performance would have had an entirely different effect if we had presented it in another site. Bringing together the context, architecture, history and the people within a place in a performance gives the audience an entirely different look at a piece of work than any traditional piece of performance that they may see in a theatre.

Words Cited

All photographs are groups own.

Borges, J. (2000) The Library of Babel. Michigan: David R. Godine.

Lingwood, J (ed). (1995) Rachel Whiteread House. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Fredericksen, R., Marchand, E. (2010) Plaster Casts. Germany: Walter de Gruyter.

Rosenthal, M. (2005) Understanding Installation Art. London: Tate Publishing.

O’Brian, M. (2014) The Art of Kira O’Reilly. Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 19 (4) 85-87.

Framing Statement

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Analysis Of Process

My first inspiration came from a task that we were set in class. This task was to draw a part of the library and then switch drawings and create a transmedia response to said drawing.

I had to create a transmedia response to a drawing of the library’s steel support frame. I decided to create a sound collage in response as the first thing that came to mind was the transformation of the raw material being forged into a vital product for the building’s creation.

Antony Gormley

We spend around 100 hours in the art department creating these casts, resulting in:

60 books

40 hands

30 feet

3 faces

Performance Evaluation

Bibliography

https://vimeo.com/15900495