When we first approached the Collection we were intrigued by both the Collection and The Usher Gallery, however were instantly drawn to the clocks and jewelry owned by Henry Usher himself and the history and design behind each object. The idea of time and the cyclical feel to the buildings allowed us to explore both places with our intention in mind and explore the deeper meanings.
We then moved onto looking at the audience’s perspective on the art within the two buildings, seeing how little things can affect their visit to a museum. We were shocked by the room with the dead man on the floor and had already considered how people would react if one of us just sat on the floor.
Would they assume it was art or a piece of performance? Or would they even stop to consider whether someone was ok?..
We also looked at the seating outside the building and how we could play around with the noticeable glass rooms that stick out of the collection.
Whilst outside we noticed an engagement ring circled around a tree. We found out the idea behind it and fell in love with the story of a marriage bond between us and nature! We liked how this piece of art tied in with our ideas of time and therefore the cyclical feel of time going by.
The concept that the ring could only be revealed during winter when the trees are bare, allowed us to run with the theme of revelations and revealing something that isn’t normally noticed!
When standing on the balcony in the Collection building, we realised that this specific space was unnoticed by the general public. We were out of sight yet were able to look at other people without them knowing. This was very powerful and enabled us to play with the public who were oblivious to our presence on the balcony. We ourselves thought that the idea of revealing a space would be a good start to carry out practicals and form ideas for our performance.
In the initial weeks we spent time exploring spaces on site. Looking round we liked the exhibitions on Time and the four seasons seemed to be a popular topic in the Usher Gallery. We later learned this was because James Ward Usher born in 1845 was a jewellery and pocket watch collector who owned shop which he displayed these goods in, in Lincoln where he took over from his father in 1874. When he died he bequeathed his collection to Lincoln City which is why it is in the gallery today. As for the four seasons, we noticed a large ring on a tree outside, a staff member told us an artist installed it there to show the bond between love and nature. In full bloom the ring was hidden but in winter when it was at its barest it would apparent. This sparked the revelation and concealment idea.
We were also keen to learn about the architecture of the building. Research showed it was founded in 1906. It was very interesting to learn that the building sits on an ancient monument. Where the gallery is situated was once sat the roman and medieval city. Excavations showed that in this area Roman, Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval archaeology would be prominent and that Victorian buildings would previously have occupied the site.
The buildings on site had so much history beneath it! Many a time there must have been the excavating of walls and the demolishing of others, I really liked the idea of our concept being like history repeating itself. Pearson and Shanks talk about the archaeology of theatre related to a space, ‘the stage becomes a place of absolute scrutiny, although it may change in nature, constantly alluding to other times, other places: it might play with notions of hiding and revealing, screening and disclosing, see or half seeing. (2001, p.23) This to me exemplified the idea that site specific performances were conditioned by their very space and should reflect its history.
4/3/13
This week we brought materials that could be used on site to help us achieve our aim of revealing space to the audience. Initially we wanted to use five spaces around The Collection Gallery and have subtle movements going on in each site. We started with the window alcove in the exhibition gallery. We liked this space because of the questions it provoked, such as why were people drawn to this space?
Our materials ranged from army figures, stacking cups and plastic ducks to marbles and balloons. We started playing around with the idea of covering up the space to be able to reveal something behind it. We tried building a wall out of the cups. From our results it proved to be a success as we found the higher we got the more interesting the piece became. However we did find they were far to light-weight and small.
We then decided we wanted to build the wall over a long period of time and in silence to create intrigue and suspense for our audience.
I was inspired by Station House Operas work which, specialize in the building and demolishing of architecture and explore the intimate relationship between people and the environment they inhibit. One of their projects, Dominoes, explores having breeze blocks standing in a line and journeying through a whole entire landscape of the country.
Although on a much bigger scale, the principles were still the same about the construction of something in a public space. I liked the way the audience followed as if on a journey with the piece.
When looking in the main gallery we found inspiration in the Roman centurion’s reconstruction. What interested us was that centuries ago this building used to inhabit the Romans. We had the idea of merging the stacking of cups and figures together to create a battle field scene. This was because we wanted to highlight the relationship between the objects and the space. It became a very intense piece which we responded to by asking questions to each other so we could get a feel for our collective experience.
We also wanted to incorporate words into our piece and in doing so develop the idea of layering and building something up and then bringing it down. This was metaphorical as words overlapping the building of the tower and the construction of the army reflected the building and deconstruction of the wall.
Spending time in the window alcove led to acknowledging the intricacies of things such as the recording on loop. We liked the idea of repetition, using singular words and phrases to create a fragmented atmosphere in the space. This fragmentation is derived from our own interpretations of the recording, writing down our responses in a stream of consciousness form and thus recording what the art provoked from us. This was most interesting for us and something we would later develop in next week’s session.
We wanted to use balloons as a way of revealing something to the audience. Our idea for this was contrived by the concept of posting secrets in balloons and leaving them in a space in the gallery for the audience to pop and hence reveal the secret. We did however decide it didn’t correlate with our theme of space all that well.
A space not often noticed by the public is below the galleries. This space was interesting as it was ultimately ‘dead space’, deserted and unknown. One thing we observed was the acoustics, they created an echoing effect, and the colour of the walls- a deep red added to the atmospherics.We decided to use the marbles and drop them down the stairs in a sequence that would build with pace. This showed how we we’re filling the space and also how we were adding to the space as one marble following another created a rush of sound which intensified rapidly.
We then repeated the action again and involved one of us acting as if running away from something. The sounds of the marbles helped create this illusion and atmosphere. We concluded this experimentation would not aid us in our development of revealing space, although it proved useful in helping us explore spaces and narrow down our focal points. Further exploration showed there was a parallel window space like the window alcove, in the opposing space which we wanted to use. Our ideas were starting to become more finalized now. We’d gone from many spaces to two where we felt we could concentrate on the idea of empty space and yet still be able to reveal something in it. Susan Bennett suggests Kirschenblatt-Gimblett argues today’s museum is a ‘theatre, memory place, a stage for the enactment of other times and places, a space of transport, fantasy, dreams’. (2013, p.4). This demonstrates the links that can be drawn between the Theatre and the Museum and that they’ve gone from two separate forms and now can interlink together in a very modernist way.
Our practical exploration proved very successful this week as we were not only able to narrow down our ideas but also develop an understanding of how we could create something in the space by the window. Our main focus would now be building a wall in the space. From our exploration we learnt that we would need something on a much larger scale, therefore our choice will now be cardboard boxes.
Word count: 1232
Works cited:
Bennett, Susan (2013) Theatre and Museums, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Pearson Mike and Michael Shanks (2001) Theatre/ Archaeology, New York: Routledge.
Station House Opera (2009) Station House Opera’s Dominoes…(part 1), Online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XlEKesUDAX8 (accessed: 1st May 2013).
Today we were able to show what we have decided to do for our performance.
It was a helpful session as we were able to get feedback from the rest of the group and insight in to what worked about our piece and what did not.
Good:
– It engaged the audience and made them think about their own meanings of the piece
– The simplicity is effective, less is more
^^this was something we were happy to hear as we had taken this from Site-Specific Art by Nick Kaye:
‘minimalism in site-specificity can be said to begin in sculpture, yet reveal itself in performance, a move which calls into question its formal as well as spatial location.’
– The words read over the performance add intrigue to the action
Concerns:
– The use of the pens on cardboard distracted from the words read due to noise
– the words written on the boxes were overly obvious ‘baby #2’ and ‘why is this happening?’
– The link between the film installation and out performance – was it too much?
We are going to look in to these feedback comments and work on our performance further.
After all of the bizzarre things we have tried out (see other members of the group’s blogs for more detail), we thought in preparation for our performance, we could share with you a brief outline of our script.
Late night dinner, eavesdropping, being a great friend
doing what you love, midnight calls and knowing what’s around the bend
sight seeing, grazed knees, crying tears of joy
cigarettes, make up sex, the excitement of a girl or boy
nameless faces, finding your lover, learning things anew
building foundations, learning from mistakes and being sad when it’s through
office chairs, nails clippers and doing a job you hate
interlocking fingers, building blocks, loving some one when it’s too late.
Hide and Seek, bed time tales, making a den
New school jumpers with hair to match, – biggest worries when ten.
Missing the cracks, taking a risk, telling the time
Seeing to believe, storm clouds, forgetting the punch line
Stability
Loyalty
Something to call my own
There’s no place like home
one breath, that’s all it took
_____________________________________________
We took inspiration from the installation found in the space that we are using for our performances.
Even during the first week at the collection, one of the things that I found added to the atmosphere of the collection was the sound wall, found in the main entrance. As you can see from the blog posts from the other members of the group, we experimented with sensory ideas, such as releasing marbles down the stairs in order to create a loud echoing noise that was almost unsettling in the space in which it was done.
After we decided that we would no longer be using all five spaces around The Collection and The Usher Gallery, we still used the ideas of the sound wall and a voice over in our piece.
This was the week in which we decided to really try and focus on what our objectives were as a group in order to begin to build a foundation for our performance.
Here’s what our initial idea was:
Our aim is to take an interesting space created by architectural structure and explore the way in which we may turn it in to something passers-by will notice. We want to look at the concealed areas around the museum and expose them. Our aim is to make places that would usually be passed by noticed by the public.
Aim: Make the Audience pay Attention to details!
THEMES FOR OUR PERFORMANCE
Consciousness
EXPOSURE
Make the audience KNOW what our aim is
Obscure view of the gallery itself
METHODS IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE CLEAR OVERVIEW:
TALK TO STAFF
Everyday staff, ask for their view
FIND MORE SPACES
OUTCOME:
We managed to use our time asking the members of staff around the collection
– Did your perception of the building change as you began to see it on a daily basis?
‘Yes, everyday when you come in you notice something slightly different with the space around you as there are frequent changes in the art found in the gallery. I guess that has a lot to do with some ones perception as each piece of art can be seen as changing the space in which it inhabits.’
– What is the most interesting space in the building
‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed the way in which the cathedral is framed in the entrance hall. It is almost breath taking, although I do worry sometimes it goes to waste as people walk past and don’t seem to look up and notice it. In my opinion, the window itself is a work of art.’
– Which piece of art draws the most attention?
‘Generally, the more contemporary art, for example the stuffed tights and the gnome made out of cigarettes seem to attract the most attention as people see its obscurity and are forced to ask the question, is this art?’
– What is the most drastic reaction someone has had to a work of art?
‘On a day to day basis, there aren’t usually any reactions that are out of the ordinary as it is always interesting to hear people’s views, but recently we have had an installation put in place in the usher gallery which depicts the body of an artist as a dead man, lying face down on the gallery floor. Last week some time, a visitor came across the installation and fainted due to its incredible life-like features.’
^ Not for the faint-hearted!
I found it helpful to talk to the staff as it was useful to have an insight in to the way in which becoming familiar with a space may alter someone’s perception.
