Figurer 1 (visitlincoln, 2014)
Site specific work is understood as a reaction to its surrounding and is a performance that will not work if it were to be moved into a different setting. The site specific performance’s development and process is heavily influenced by the site and its history and these are questions that I and my group are going to have to ask ourselves what is the history of The Collection? Expanding our knowledge of The Collection will mean our understanding of how the building we know today came about but also means we will be able to decipher what path we wish to take in representing The Collection, for example demonstrating how The Collection had been a home for the Usher family before it became a museum, could audiences still have the feel of a family home or has that been lost over the years.
These are questions we have to ask ourselves because as a group we need to decide on; who are seen, who are heard and who are represented from our performance? The advantage of working in a museum is that there are many different aspects we can investigate and see which works best, which other groups may not have.
However with advantages come disadvantages and there are many of them and this is because we are in a museum and we will be surrounded by pieces of art, some of which are priceless and some costing amounts we can’t imagine. Not only that but we are not allowed to change the lighting within the museum, no liquids or food are permitted on the site and no flash photography or changing the temperature or the use of pens, only pencils are allowed. These may seem like silly requests however they all come with good reason, any flashes to a water colour painting can fade the colour, the use of water and food I think are quiet self-explanatory, the use of pens there might come a risk of staining on a piece of art and so on.
Over coming these restrictions is a challenge in itself but understandably the rules have reasons behind them and ideally performing inside would be preferable but we have to adapt ourselves and can’t ignore that the grounds are still classed as part of the site. By solely focussing on the inside of The Collection we will be restricting ourselves on what we could achieve, working outside means we can look at the architecture of the building and grounds and, examine the statues placed outside.
Mia
Work Cited
Visit Lincoln (2014) The Usher Gallery [online] Lincoln: Visit Lincoln. Available from http://www.visitlincoln.com/things-to-do/the-usher-gallery [Accessed 26 March 2014]