Framing Statement
In Mike Pearsons “Site-specific performance” he introduces site-specific performance by quoting Kwon in saying, “According to Kwon, site specific performance remains ‘a problem idea, as a particular cipher of art and spatial politics’ (ibid., p. 2)” (Pearson, 2010, 1) This was only made more apparent as the weeks went on and developing our piece became more challenging.
Site-specific performance has a lot more to it than what the title suggests, which I have learnt over the past few months of researching it and developing my own piece of site specific performance. This type of performance is so vague, as examples of site-specific range from Thai artist Rikrit Tiravanija’s first untitled solo show at 303 Gallery, New York in 1992 which involved Tiravanija cooking thai food in a kitchen in a gallery to Michael Landy’s most famous piece, Bread Down in which he destroyed all of his possessions. My group and I have gone through what seems like a million different ideas, walked around the usher and collection on repeat and tried to make connections with the pieces displayed in both the gallery and the museum. During this semester we’ve been trying to come up with ideas and links between the museum, the gallery and James Usher and trying to come up with something of worth and relevance to this specific site. Something that our audience will care about, that people will see as they’re going through these buildings and know what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Our final performance was named “The Tree”, something specific yet vague. We wanted our audience to be intrigued and curious and therefore more likely to attend out performance. The main theme for my group was tea. In the gallery, there is a room with displays of beautiful, tea sets all belonging to James Usher. When browsing the The Usher and Collection it is clear to see that James Usher was a keen collector of many things including watches, jewellery, ceramics and tea sets. With this in mind, we had the idea of destroying tea sets and making something completely new with them. The thing we struggled with and was constantly changing was what we were going to make. We tried out many ideas, including creating the Lincoln Imp but our final idea stuck with the theme of tea as we made a Camellia Sinenis, the plant which tea leaves come from.
The performance lasted throughout the whole day, however we gave ourselves breaks. This gave us a chance to prepare for the next stage of performance as well as give us a little rest. During one break, we chose to sit at our table with a cup of tea to give the audience a chance to ask us any questions, or come and get a closer look at what we were doing. This did work to our advantage as a couple did ask us what we were doing and also asked to take a picture of the finished tree.
Analysis of Performance
To begin the Site-Specific module, as a class we visited The Usher gallery and The Collection museum in Lincoln. This was to be our Site and after a quick history of the building, a few rules and signatures; we were let loose.
As I wandered through the gallery, desperately aiming to reach some sort of philosophical understanding of the works before me, I was taken aback by one piece. It shocked me; because at first glance I thought what I was seeing was a portrait of some poor, disfigured man in sorrow. But, as I got closer I noticed that my reaction was possibly intended, that my shock and feelings of sympathy and sadness was the aim of the piece. Among further inspection I discovered the piece was of Picasso, not by Picasso but of him. It was actually a piece by Robert Doisneau and he named it “Picasso and the loaves”. Although it’s very interesting that a famous and accomplished artist photographed by a Parisian Street photographer was hanging on the wall of The Usher, that’s not what train of thought my mind went on.
http://mentalmuseum.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/picassos-bread-hands/
I began to think of restrictions, like this poor man who couldn’t use his hands because they were no longer hands, but loaves of bread. I began to think of all artwork we could look at but not touch, I thought of the code of conduct we were asked to sign before venturing out into the gallery and all the rules and regulations we had been briefed on prior to the visit.
When we returned from the gallery, we were asked to express our feelings/questions/thoughts of our visit on paper with different materials. With restrictions and incapability on my mind, i produced this…
(Copyright, Bryony Joyce)
Lost or abandoned?
The following week we were all given tasks, some individual and secretive, others were shared objectives. I was asked to collect items that had been lost or abandoned whilst walking through the city. So, on my way to the usher and collection I carried out my given task. Whilst doing so a few things came to mind. Firstly, Lincoln is actually quite clean! But, secondly, I began to wonder; what is lost/missed and what is abandoned/forgotten?
My list of objects included:
A pink/purple sparkly hair bobble
An earring
A plastic fork
A bottle cap
There are loads of possible narratives for each of these objects. For example, the plastic fork. This could’ve been someones fork they had specifically packed in their bag that day to eat their lunch with. Or, it could’ve been used to shovel chips and gravy into a drunkard youth’s mouth on a night out and slung on the floor once it was no longer needed. In which case, you can see how the importance of the fork differs with each scenario.
I really liked this task and the direction my train of thought was headed in, so I wanted to see if this could be used as a rubric for a possible performance at the usher and collection. Later on in the day we were asked to write something on a post it note, something of substance which came to us by what we had been doing/looking at. I chose “Lost or abandoned?”
We grouped up with people who had similar ideas and discussed how we could develop these ideas. Kirsty and I connected by looking at objects or places in different ways, imagining narratives for these things and places and questioning their significance and importance.
This Pearson and Shanks quote explains how mine and Kirsty’s simple tasks could be turned into something more, a performance. It’s about the process and how the experiences of that process become the performance;
“to regard performance as generative of materials produced before, during and after the event, not only as technical information but as a personal experience” (Pearson and Shanks, 2001)
Relating our ideas back to our site, the usher and collection, we thought about what objects are collected and acquired over the years and displayed as art and as representations of the times they were from. Which got us thinking; what objects would be displayed in gallery’s and museums in 100 years to represent our current time? What is classed as significant and what is simply litter or waste?
“The Art of Memory”
The title of this post was taken from Charles R Garoian’s “Performing the museum”. Having pitched our ideas to both our module leaders and the head curator at the Usher and Collection, our ideas became more refined and final. We we’re given feedback to work on and told what elements would work and what wouldn’t. Baring both this and the Charles Garoian reading in mind, our idea began to gain momentum.
Our original idea was to collect broken crockery from the people of Lincoln, break it and re create something new entirely. But this didn’t have enough depth or connection to the site.
Garoian compares a museum to Einstein’s brain, saying it is something to be preserved but also something to be exhibited. This got us thinking of brains and memories and how they connect to museums, you can’t walk through a museum without history surrounding you, these histories al have a way of connecting with your brain and relating with memory as Garoian says “Performing the museum is tantamount to performing memory and cultural history”.
We decided to collect/acquire items that had personal memories attached to them, and use those items to smash before the performance. Due to certain rules and conditions in the usher and collection, we were not able to smash the items on site therefore we decided to film it and then project it during the cataloguing section of the performance. Then on the second day, we wanted to create our own version of the phrenology diagram on either a 3D skull or 2D trace.
We felt that bringing Garoian’s ideas of theatre of memory and the connections with museums would’ve strung our piece together and really engage with the site.
As time passed, our final piece took all sorts of new and old directions.
Ally advised my group and I to focus on what we definitely knew we were doing for the final performance and all the other parts of it that were up in the air would just have to stay there.
So, we took a step (or 2) back and decided to film the destruction of the collected items, which were mainly crockery although we did smash a few items relating to personal memories. We thought it best to have a few films to choose from, just in case our idea changed course again.
Here is a screenshot of one of the original films,
Screenshot (Copyright, Mia Kaur)
We decided to smash and film in Eden’s back garden, we attempted to disguise this with sheets to form a backdrop but after a few test runs we decided we preferred the filming without the backdrop. The space felt old and abandoned, which is apparent in the image above.
Behind those doors were traces of insects that had inhabited the space, an old bathtub and some rusty pipes. It was like the space was once used and appealing but over time it’s lost its functions and slowly, over time become unappealing. Similar to the items we were smashing but unlike those kept in the usher, which have been preserved, carefully looked after and admired after James Usher died in 1921.
After smashing these items, we collected all the pieces to catalogue them.
Film Process (Copyright, Mia Kaur)
Originally we planned to stretch the 3 stages over two days, during the first day of our performance; we planned to catalogue all of the broken pieces of crockery/pot/china that we had broken. As this was performed on the museums grounds we felt we needed an in depth knowledge of how things are done behind the scenes in the museum.
During our pitches Ash mentions a chain of command system, in which only certain people can hold certain items and precautions have to be taken before touching any items. Eden and I visited Ash at the Usher during the time new artworks were being delivered and prepared for display. He showed us where it’s all done, the materials used to handle the objects, how the artwork arrives and what it is protected by. He took us through a very complex system that Ash and his co workers must abide by when dealing with the artworks.
The artworks/sculptures are delivered in crates, sometimes on crate per piece, they offloaded by the delivery men and are put on skates used to transfer them to the room in which they will be displayed. The museum then receives a delivery report which tells them what they have been delivered and this must be checked and ticked off. An exhibition receipt is then signed; with this a list of the objects is provided along with information on each piece of artwork for example, the size, the lighting requirements, temperature requirements, material the piece is made of, the handling instructions (e.g. no gloves on wood sculptures).
Once all of this is clarified, the technicians undo the crates and bring them to a table, faced down, with fabric blankets covering said table. Medical gloves are used when placing the artworks onto the table and also to undo the wrapping which the artwork is protected by. The protection materials include acid free tissue paper and plastic sheeting, Ash managed to save some of these materials and kindly gave them to Eden and myself to possibly use in our performance. We discussed buying more of these materials and wrapping our broken pieces of crockery with them. Once unwrapped, the artworks go through a ‘condition check’ which is to be carried out by the courier (who comes from the institution where the artwork has been sent from) however the courier is only insured to check the artwork visually, no touching allowed. A condition form typically includes questions such; has any frame damage occurred? Something interesting Ash mentioned was that the couriers are mostly women and the techs are mostly men; is this something the art world does on purpose? And if so, for what reason? Is it simply old traditions that have carried on to present day? Or is it harder for women to become techs and for men to become couriers and vice versa?
Ash told us that this process usually takes a few days with a team of people. To make sure everyone is on the same page and knows what can be handled and what cannot the crates have safety tape on them which are indicators for if you can handle them or not, if artworks are still in the crates. For this particular museum, the crates will either have red or green tape on them, red indicates an obvious, no and green, go.
Performance Evaluation
The performance had 3 stages; cataloguing, installing and the ‘tea party’. Initially, we were going to perform the first stage on the Thursday and the other two stages on the Saturday, but after performing the first stage on the Thursday we felt people might not understand what we were doing on the Saturday if they missed the first stage, also it meant we would have a longer performance on the Saturday and therefore have different audience members coming through all day. For the first stage, we brought the pieces of broken crockery that we had smashed beforehand and carefully unwrapped them from their protective wrap and made note of what each piece had been labelled with, a type of tea. We also had the video and audio of us smashing the crockery playing on an iPad which was displayed on the table we were working at as well as on speakers. For the second stage, we brought out the Camellia Sinenis that we had made prior to the performance and connected the pieces of crockery to the tree as thought they were the leaves. Finally, we displayed the finished product and had a ‘tea party’.
We performed outside, in front of the cafe windows so that people could learn about tea whilst drinking it! We didn’t really make an invitation as such (for example, other groups made facebook events to invite their audience) so our audience wasn’t huge but that wasn’t an issue for us because we just wanted people to sort of stumble across us when walking past, or peer through the windows at us. Unfortunately, being outside had its problems for example the heavy rain showers we had. But we did come prepared and used a gazebo to protect us and our performance materials and therefore wasn’t too much of an issue, also our audience didn’t have to be outside with us so that didn’t deter them away.
Being outside the cafe did generate some curiosity as we had a few people coming up and asking us about what we were doing and looking at the video we had displayed on the table, one woman asked to take a photo of the tree. We overheard people discussing the audio, where it was coming from and what was it. So we felt the audio and video was quite successful however we were disappointed that our original plan to have it projected in the window above us didn’t work, that would have built up curiosity as you could see it from further away.
To improve the performance I think we needed to explain ourselves to the audience a bit more, we didn’t really give them much information about what we were doing and therefore if they didn’t come up to the table and ask, they probably won’t have understood what was going on. We could have had another iPad on the table with us that had some background information on it, or some explanation on it. I think this would have left our audience feeling a bit more involved and able to comprehend what they were witnessing and why we were doing what we were doing.
I feel like this type of performance, as difficult as it is to grasp, has definitely altered my views of performance. This quote from Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘Relational Aesthetics’ explains how I learnt to approach Site-Specific performance;
“It is the human flow of visitors, and its possible regulation, which thus becomes the raw material and the subject of the piece. Before long, it is the entire exhibition process that is “occupied” by the artist.” (Bourriaud, 2002, 38)
Here are some photos of our final performance;
“Tree” (Copyright, Aylwyn Walsh)
“Tea Party” (Copyright, Aylwyn Walsh)
“Tea Party 2” (Copyright, Alywyn Walsh)
Works cited
Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Doisneau, R. (2005) Picasso’s Bread Hands. [online] The Mental Museum. Available from: http://mentalmuseum.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/picassos-bread-hands/ [Accessed 5 February 2014].
Pearson, M and Shanks, M. (2001) Theatre/Archeology. London: Routledge
Garoian, Charles R. (2001) Performing the Museum. Studies in Art Education, 42, (3) 234-248.
Walsh, A. (2014) Site Specific Performance – 1314: Week 7: Ally’s group only. awalsh@lincoln.ac.uk] Sent to DRA2035M-1314, 17 March.
Chakya, K. (2011) WTF is… Relational Aesthetics?. Hyperallergic, (February)
Bourriaud, N (2002) Relational Aesthetics. France:Les Presse Du Reel
Walsh, A. (2014) Tree
Walsh, A. (2014) Tea Party
Walsh, A. (2014) Tea Party 2
Kaur, M. (2014) Film Process
Kaur, M. (2014) Screenshot
Joyce, B (2014) Unnamed