Category: Cultural Terrorists

Another huge influence to our performance was the performance led by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of the ‘Wrapped Reichstag’. They change a iconic and influential building in Germany over the course of a few days and watch how the public react to this. The public reaction in our performance is something we are extremely interested in and believe many people will stop and watch our performance throughout to see the end product. They re-create the Reichstag and make it original and unique which is what we are aiming to achieve when creating and building our own Big Ben. Although the huge difference is that we aren’t actually using the site of the Big Ben, we are still changing how it would potentially look and re-creating another iconic structure.

This is the Youtube video link to the performance- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esiErDm62E4

After researching and finding pictures of the planning Christo and Jeanne-Claude went through it has given us ideas to try out many different materials, after the polystyrene was unsuccessful we know we at least have a lot more time to try different ideas to make our structure the best it can be.  Also it has helped seeing they used drawings to give them inspiration, we have decided to start to draw how we want the structure to exactly look like and make smaller model before making the final one. The works of the ‘Wrapped Reichstag’ has helped us as it shows using an iconic building brings a lot of meaning and questions to the performance.

The original drawings of the ‘Wrapped Reichstag’ during planning.

A computerized picture of how they wanted the final outcome to look.

During the performance, whilst being ‘wrapped’, shows how many people were interested in what was going on, as it wasn’t being explained throughout, which is what we aim to do during our performance.

The completed building.

The Grand Step Project is a performance which inspires and relates to our own. Stephan Koplowitz devised a piece of dance in which his group of dancers then perform on steps of iconic buildings around the world, bringing a different type of art and culture to different cities. Their website quotes- “The work also functions as a way for local arts presenters to both reach new audiences and help connect different strands of their cultural community, specifically in dance and music.” Like our performance they are bringing different cultures. Similar to our performance with the Big Ben, Stephen Koplowitz has a huge interest in the grand staircases, particularly in New York- “I am fascinated by the grand staircases’ grandeur, imposing architectural stature, and the ostentatious embellishments that belie the stairs’ mere utilitarian function as a means of approach and retreat.” Although these performances are made up of dancing and singing it relates to our piece as we have a lot of movement throughout the gallery happening and also the use of soundscapes can be seen as a type of music.

This is a link to their website which has videos of their performances throughout-

http://www.koplowitzprojects.com/grandsteps.html

During the very first lesson we had on Site Specific we found it hard to get to grips with the performance piece we was being asked to create. We did not believe as a whole class we would be able to come up with an idea which could work in the James Usher gallery. Because we were given the gallery as a site we firstly thought of doing a contemporary dance piece, as this may fit around the surroundings. However after extensive research into other companies Site Specific performances we became excited about how unique we could make our performance. Also after reading Michael Pearson, ‘Introduction to Site Specific’, the task became more understanding and this is when our ideas as a group came together.

The first time we explored the gallery we were surprised about how big the two sites we had been given were and this meant we were able to create a performance without being restricted. However there was the set back that the gallery was being ‘re-hung’, meaning whatever we had seen may move by the time it comes round to our performance. We first of all decided that we liked a window which looked out into Lincoln in the room which explores the History of Lincoln itself. We believed this would be extremely interesting to research as we are new to Lincoln it would be beneficial for us to find out the background of the town we now live in. Next to the window there was a timeline of what was outside the window many years ago, for example ‘2000 years ago you would have looked out through oak woodlands, down to a marshy river’. Although the facts we had read were interesting we decided the space near the window was to small to create the kind of piece we wanted. We did not want it to be subtle and knew we needed to make use of the space in the rest of the gallery and museum. Whilst then exploring the Usher Gallery, we noticed a recurring theme of clocks and pocket watches, after research we found out this was because James Usher was actually a watch maker and collected them himself (see other post). After discovery this information we knew as a group we would definitely base our performance around time and clocks, our aim was still vague at this point but we knew at least a small concept of the idea. We then went on to find a room in the Usher Gallery which is upstairs; it is a huge space with many paintings of how Lincoln used to look. We found the photos extremely interesting to see how much the town had completely changed. This then gave us another small idea for our piece that we wanted to base out performance in Lincoln but by bringing something new to Lincoln.

As a group we all done separate research and thought about many different ideas. We then met up and discussed each individual idea and tried to combine these into one performance. We are using ‘Lonetwin’ as an inspiration towards our performance also (see other post). The initial idea was to make sure we interpret time and show our different culture as we are all from areas surrounding London which is extremely different to Lincoln. We come up with moulding the iconic clock ‘The Big Ben’, which is in London, and placing it into the gallery during the performance, as if we are smuggling our own culture into Lincoln. We decided that polystyrene would be a good material to use and it is light and easy to carve. Furthermore we thought about the costumes we would wear and came up with the idea of wearing balaclavas as it would be more shocking to the public walking through and would highlight the idea that we are not meant to be bringing this sculpture into the gallery. A soundscape was an idea we were also keen to use, and have decided to play throughout the room noises you would usually here whilst in London and maybe even sayings or songs which are iconic to London.  Under each clock dial on ‘The Big Ben’ it says in Latin, “Domine Salvam fal Reginam nostrum Victoriam primam”, which translates to, “O lord, save our Queen Victoria the first”, we thought this maybe a good quote to repeat whilst we were sculpting.

After ordering some polystyrene and trying to carve it into Big Ben it was more difficult than we thought and also very expensive to buy. This gave us doubts about the sculpting idea and we began to research other materials we could use. We are happy we decided to try this option out very soon as it shows us that we need to come up and try out many different ideas.