‘the factual with the fictional, event with imagaination, history with story, narrative with fragment, past with present’ (Heddon, 2008, p.9) in (Pearson, 2010, p.11)
After our visit to the Lincolnshire Archives about a month ago now, all my ideas for developing material on site are central to the past life of the Grandstand, its history, what the site used to be and what it experienced. I’ve been obsessed with what has been and how to put this back into the site but at the same time, taking this and creating a fresh, contemporary reaction from it. There are 2 ideas that I will briefly describe the main concepts of; I feel these both reflect the aim of combining the past and the present, forming a juxtaposition of time portrayed.
The Waiting Room
This idea originated from the trip to the Archives where we discovered a building plan for a potential mortuary during the World Wars. What I refer to now as the ‘RAF room’ was labelled as a ‘Waiting Room’ on the plans, presumably where family members would wait to see if their loved ones were still alive. We were then told that the room could have been used during the War as a different kind of waiting room where men would wait to test planes.
WHAT IS IT? The initial idea is create the look and feel of a ‘Waiting Room’ in this particular space, developing a durational performance, which heavily involves audience participation, through use of instruction within given envelopes. Without giving too much away to potential audience members, the themes that we have spoken and devised through are: time, weight/wait, war and death – along with some others with a strong relation to the Grandstand.
Whilst discussing what the next plan of action was, in terms of the development of this piece, we hit a brick wall. We felt that we have a strong concept that would be exciting, atmospheric and rewarding for a creator (both referring to us who are creating the set up and potential audience members who would in fact be the material) but it’s our relevance to the site where our ideas lack. In the next week, we feel that more research would be beneficial for us to make sure that our link to the site and its past is as strong as we feel our contemporary concept is. We think our visit to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life will help with this and give us further inspiration we need to develop this piece.
Expo 1969/2014
When looking through the pictures and factual documents that were displayed for us a few week ago at the Lincolnshire Archives, I felt quite sad at the nature of what I was looking at- death, injury, war, mortuary plans… UNTIL I came across articles, magazine cuttings and pictures of EXPO 69.Even though this event didn’t happen on site, EXPO 69 was a carnival like event held on the West Common area (on the fields parallel to the front of the Grandstand) where we discovered concerts and fashions shows took place with local Lincolnshire businesses such as ‘Curtis’ providing food and drink for the event. Myself, Keiren and Sam were intrigued and excited about this as it was something different and fun we could use to develop something, in comparison to the stories of war and death that surrounded the site.
WHAT IS IT? Our idea is to re-create EXPO 69 by developing an installation within a confined space on the site e,g, a small cupboard or toilet cubicle which would portray the event and the original carnival atmosphere. Whilst creating a contrast to some of the other historical events that also connect with the site, it would also reflect juxtaposition and the integration of the past and present. We aim to infuse the past into the present by retrieving back the character and fun that is connected to a site where the words ‘abandon’ ‘cold’ and ‘empty’ are presently used to describe it. Expo isn’t directly linked to the Grandstand but being in its eyesight, we feel it would have been a lonely spectator in the years it became disused as a racecourse, so giving the site a lease of life, we thought we would bring the party to it.
I feel that we need to make sure our historical knowledge of this event is correct so perhaps another visit to the Lincolnshire Archives will benefit us as there was a lot of information there that we didn’t necessarily look through which could be helpful. To make this installation what we want it to be, a lot of materials will have to be sourced and others hand-made to re-create the presumed atmosphere of this carnival event.
References
Heddon, D (2008) Autobiography and Performance. Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan in Pearson, M (2010) Site Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillian.
