Author Archives: Katherine Alice Copley

Waiting Room Part 3

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John Newling performed a piece at the Nottingham Contemporary in January 2013, Where a Place Becomes a Site: Values.  This began with the installation of a riddler jacket in a shopping centre.

riddler jacket

 

Passers by would naturally stop to look at the jacket and would be offered a trade.  They would be given a piece of the jacket but in return they had to say something that was valuable to them.  Below is a link to the itunes podcasts from Nottingham Contemporary, there is a 3 minute video in which the piece is discussed.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/nottingham-contemporary/id349866879?mt=2
[accessed 3/4/14]

Later on those responses were turned into a script which was performed at the Nottingham Contemporary.  The Waiting Room is using this idea in regards to the survey we did about what people are waiting for.  So far the piece has enough relation to the site in terms of what we know people wait for and have waited for in that building and now our practical aim is to develop narratives using the research we have done.

We are also thinking about what others questions we might need to ask in order to develop these sections of text or whether we can develop them using our own ideas.

References

Newling, J., 2013, Where a Place Becomes a Site: Values [electronic print] Available at http://adrian4acn.com/2013/01/25/john-newling-nottingham-contemporary/ [Accessed 3.4.2014]

 

Waiting Room Part 2, featuring John Cage…

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There are many different circumstances in which you can be waiting for something and many of those circumstances involve carrying on with your life.  In our public survey two answers involved waiting for a wedding; you can imagine that there probably isn’t a great deal of sitting down and reading newspapers during that wait.  Our piece also focuses on all the pilots and soldiers that would have waited at the number 4 aeroplane acceptance park (The Grandstand) for their chance to test their planes or learn to dig trenches on the common.  These men would not just have been sat around, they would have written to loved ones, they would have played football, they would have talked with their friends.  The Waiting Room Piece is making strange all of these things by putting them into a traditional waiting room setting, as you would imagine them now.

John Cage’s “4’33′” is a piece that is very much an inspiration for the setting of our waiting room.  The sounds you hear are not deliberate as they encourage listeners, or in our case audience members, to listen for things they wouldn’t usually.  This performance of the piece features the sound of a child crying and people moving around etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAdR5N7eXog
[accessed March 28th]

The point in relation to our piece is that we want to include moments of silence and yet we want for the audience to realise that they aren’t moments of silence at all; in much the same way that this is not really how you wait.

Waiting, part 1.

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As part of the development of our site specific performance I set up an online survey to try and ascertain what people are waiting for, and what they think the grandstand is waiting for.  There were 28 responses to the first question “What are you waiting for?”, 28 responses to the second question “Have you ever visited Lincoln grandstand?” and 26 responses to the final question, “What do you think, if anything, the grandstand is waiting for?”  Now, not all of the answers that were collected were even remotely useful, for example one response to the first question was “for this survey to be over”, although this is an honest answer it’s not entirely useful to our creative process.

This idea behind doing this research is that we know that this specific room that we are working in within the grandstand has been used in a variety of waiting room settings and we, as a group, were interested in what people generally waited for outside of the grandstand setting.  We were interested in the idea that the passing of time while you wait for something to happen was more important than the actual event you are waiting for.  This is reflected through the fact that if you go into the space now you don’t have any indication of a majority of the events that happen or have happened there.  The grandstand, it seems, is waiting for something to happen to it and what happens now isn’t leaving a mark so time is just passing until something stands out and catches the attention of the public.

We are currently in the process of developing narratives that incorporate what we know about the space, how it has been used to wait, and add into those narratives the answers we have collected from the public.  Here is the narrative I created using the following things: the grandstand is currently used to host carpet boules for seniors; survey responses that a member of the public is waiting for a wedding and that the grandstand is waiting for some T.L.C.

You know your immediate future, you know that after Margaret has had her go it will be your turn again.  You also know that Margaret isn’t very good so you’re going to have time for a cup of tea.  You stand there, you glance around the room, you wonder why the bloody windows don’t open.  You think about how warm it will get here in the summer, how you’ll probably need one of those hand held fans.  You think about the wedding you’re looking forward to so much.  You think about how happy everybody will be.  You look around the room and you wonder how many happy moments it has left in it.  You think about this place, how all that it is waiting for is some T.L.C. and if somebody just did something it could thrive.  You think about how this place deserves so much more than carpet boules on a Wednesday afternoon.  And then it’s your turn again.

The line between fact and fiction – accidentally not posted in February…

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It was mentioned that the Lincoln Grandstand may have been used as a mortuary during WWII, during a visit to the archives I took this picture of a map of the place.  It’s not very clear but it is certainly clear enough that when you look at it you can see the word PLAN in capital letters at the bottom of the page.

P1040097

The friendly gentleman who was introducing all the information on the grandstand explained that it is unknown whether the grandstand ever was used as a mortuary and all the evidence we have of that is the map in the picture that clearly says PLAN.

The council, I imagine, would have put the plan in place as a precaution.  If the bombing in Lincolnshire got so bad, the grandstand would be an ideal place to keep the dead – after all, what else would it be doing?

Town Halls, schools, drained out swimming pools, gymnasiums… all examples of the kind of place where you could find a make shift mortuary during WWII.

Now, we know that during WWI much of the West Common was used to test aircrafts and as a location for training men to dig trenches.  But what do we know of the West Common in WWII, I myself know nothing, and this is not through lack of looking it is merely through not finding anything.

Perhaps I am too fixated with the issue that it is not a known fact that the grandstand was used as a mortuary.  The only evidence is a precautionary map and I think it is foolish to allow oneself to be overcome with a chill of what it could have been – the idea that had it have been a mortuary, it wouldn’t be used today as a community centre where children play or used as a makeshift mosque; that it would be more neglected than ever and wouldn’t be a place for anybody except ghosts.

All this being said I appreciate the idea of site specific performance being “a balance between ‘the host and the ghost’”. (Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks quoted in Govan).  I understand that we must take into consideration the history of the grandstand when creating a piece that reflects it, but the mortuary is an assumed past – we do not know it to be true, therefore is it right in supporting Govan’s thoughts in that “fiction and fact are shown to be equally unreliable and the notion of history as a stable entity is banished.”  The past of the grandstand is that it Could have been used as a mortuary, but this capitalised Could is what is blurring the line between fact and fiction.

 

 

References

Govan, Emma (2007) Making a Performance. Coxon: Routledge

A Letter to the Grandstand.

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Dear Grandstand,

Yesterday, at the archives, I saw a lot of your history.  I saw plans for you, I saw what you could have been.  Then I learned about the expo of ’69 and I thought about how brilliant it was that you got to be part of something like that (after all why would I be learning about it if it wasn’t to do with you).  After closer inspection of the map of the expo and reading the articles, I discovered that you actually weren’t part of it.

Lucky you, being part of the West Common, getting to look at all the fun that could be had.  But you weren’t part of it were you, Grandstand?  Ever since they stopped the races all you have been is a sequence of plans and what ifs.  At least if you had been used as a mortuary you would have served a purpose.

So back to the expo, with all its wonder, and colour, and fun – did it make you sad?  Did it make you realise how insignificant you are?

Yours Sincerely,

Katherine Copley.