Site Specific Documentation

Site Specific Documentation

By
Toby Saddleton

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Proeject: Blue Plaque

For this project we had to team up into a group of

4. We had to come up with a location and had to
write something on the blue plaque that was
relevant to the location we chose. We each chose a
place and what to write on the card and then drew
a map to give to another group so that they could
follow a trail of our memories. We tried to draw a
route in which it allows easy access for the person
reading the map but also a very straight forward
map in the sense that no one has to retrace their
steps. There is a simple turn around sign after
number 3 and all the person has to do is just walk
back up the hi8ghstreet and back to the start point
which is also next to number 4.

These are a couple of images that

captures myself putting my blue
plaque onto a lamppost outside of the
Air Arena trampoline park. The reason
I chose to place the blue plaque
outside here is because after I had
finished a clowning module, the group
I was in decided we should blow off
some steam and celebrate by going to
the air arena. On my blue plaque, I
had wrote:

“Big Block Tower:

I fell for you as much as I fell off you. I

thought I was a clown when really, I
was just a kid.”

Despite it not being a blue plaque,

Forced Entertainment's Nights in the
city is like a performative version of
the plaques. Even though one is a bus
tour and the other is writing, they
both have common link. They search
for a "different Truth"

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Project: Public Gift

For this Project myself and Rachael thought that

it would be good a good idea to give the
members of the public a gift that is free and that
is also a gift that will make them happy. We
chose to write on a white top and find a way of
covering our eyes. On the top we had written:

“What is your happiest memory?”

By doing this, I feel like I was able to let people

reminisce into what has made them happy,
whether it is in the past or present.

When performing in this project (2 x 5 minute

performances), I felt as if there was a different
reaction each time we chose to do these. We
performed in two different locations, the first
was just outside of an empty building. I think
that I was a bit unprepared for this project as I
can imagine it looking a bit creepy with my red
hat over my face and then asking people for
their happiest memory, so in that sense I think
this would have gone a bit better if I had a better
blindfold. I think that because of this it made me
less approachable and therefore more people
wrote on Rachel’s top.

Here are some of the memories that

people wrote on my shirt:

 Falling of the boat 

 When we told each other
we loved each other for the
first time.
 Going on Holiday to
Padstow every year.

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Project: Little People in a Big City

In this project I tried to capture this little Lego man in normal situations but placed him with/in
locations that make him look normal. The Project was inspired by the photographer Slinkachu's
book Little People in the City

1. The first photo that I took was at my window when I woke up that morning. The reason I
put him there is because when first approaching this project, I tried to make it so that I
was capturing the Lego man performing my every day, however I quickly changed my
idea and thought that the condensation on my window made a nice photo and it takes
away the focus of him being so small. So, then I decided to try and make the rest of the
project about the Lego man being seen against bigger objects but captured in a way that
makes him look like he belongs there.
2. This photo I decided that I would capture the Lego man sitting on a deck chair. The point
of this was to allow people to realise how small he is even when put against something
that we would most likely think as small and therefore make its appearance change and
making the chair look bigger than what it is and the Lego man still looking small.
3. With this image I tried to stage a little campfire. By doing so I folded a piece of A4 paper
and put it over the Lego man, this is his tent. His sleeping bag is a Rizal pack and for his
fire it is a lighter. With this image, I found it to be more of a symbolic picture and yet like
the second photo, the objects that we would associate with being small are made out to
be bigger than what they are.
4. For this image, I wanted to try and capture a more creative and natural picture with the
Lego man. With this, I found a little plant pot in the town and decided that it would be
an interesting place to capture this photo. The aspect of this image that I really like is
that it gives the impression that it’s somewhere completely far away from the town and
in ways looks a bit like a jungle.
5. In this picture, I thought it would be rather creative to have the Lego man rest his head
on a cigarette butt. This made me think about the homelessness and someone may think
something has no use to them but how someone else could value that item a lot. When I
thought of captions for the photos, I thought the caption “One man’s trash is another
man’s treasure”, was one that stuck out the most.
6. With this image, I tried to find a way to capture a slight part of my personality without
showing myself or revealing too much. For me, I’ve always really loved listening to music
and often find myself shopping for cd’s in my local HMV. So, I felt like this was a good
time to capture something music related with the Lego man. I also thought that the price
of the Fleetwood Mac vinyl was nice to have in this image as it shows how much other
people may value music.
7. My favourite thing about this image is how cosy and how warm this photo is. And what
is even better is that the Lego man is sat in between the legs of an Elmo toy.

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Project: A day out of the window (Durational Project)

With this Project, I decided that it would be interesting to take a photo out of my window
everyday at any given time. I was inspired by the work of Tehching Hsieh. For this type of project,
he would take a photo of himself every hour for every day. This totalled up to him making a 6-
minute film in which you can see the progression of time and his growth. Unfortunately, I was
unable to continue that project for that long period of time, so I managed to take a photo out of
my window for a week. At the start of this project I would take a photo at any given point of the
day and at any window. I soon realised that this had a flaw as it wouldn’t be able to show the
duration or growth and would be a dramatic change in image and wouldn’t also connect the
images together. After a while I soon came up with the idea that I would take a photo out of my
window whenever I woke up. This way it was always at the same location and the viewer can see
a change in the environment around me.

I was able to find a website by www.CaféPress.co.uk. This website

includes funny slogans such as ‘shit street’ and ‘I’m from Shithole,
Kentucky’. From this I decided to add a font onto one of my photos
from my durational project and thought that I would put my
interpretation of those slogans. For me I found it particularly ironic
that there’s nothing special that stands out in the image I’ve
chosen to use. Instead of using an image of Chichester Cathedral
or the market cross, I like how plain and slightly empty the image
is.

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Project: Bognor Beach

At the beginning of this project, we first went and had a long walk along the beach at Bognor.
Along our walk we were silent and observing the area that was around us. By the end of the day
myself, Chelsea and Grace had organised to work as a three so that in the following week we
would be able to perform a small 3 – 5 minute long performance. When observing Bognor along
the coast we felt that it was rather run down and that there seemed to be a lot of dullness and
emptiness and there were some rather creepy closed kids attractions or old and worn down food
sheds. As a group we decided that we would like to approach this task with a creepy aspect. We
created a song that would be sung at the location. This would make it a site specific performance
as our song was based on this creepy shed at this specific beach. We thought of what kind of
characteristics that may evolve around this certain location and we ended up devising these
characters that work for the shed. One of us was the manager, the other was trying to be some
sort of an entertainer and I was a clown that didn’t care about his job, hence why I’ve got a
cigarette in my mouth for the majority of these pictures. Below are some images of the shed and
some other images of the performance.

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Project: The Canal. (Final Project)

“Site Specific – Specifically generated from/for one selected site” (Wilkie,2002a,p150)

For the final project we made sure that there was a specific reason as to why we were going to
perform. Early in the process we were going to be looking at performing in an abandoned place.
However, as the process went on we found it hard to find an abandoned location and also we
would have had to talk to the local council about performing there and explain why we wanted
to perform in the certain location due to trespassing laws. It became a bit frustrating however
we manged to find a place that was rather quiet and rather peaceful. It was in public and was
easy to access. Myself and Holly went on a trip when looking for abandoned places and then
stumbled upon the Chichester Canal. We ventured about 2.5 miles and then back to see what
kind of area it was. We pitched our findings to the rest of the group and we thought it was easier
to do a Site Specific piece based down by the canal. We started to think of ways we were going
to perform this and were going to create a music score and have it play out in different areas of
the canal. A lot like Alicia Jane Turner’s performance of Take Another Little Piece of My Heart
(2018) in which she “explores our awareness of sound and the sounds that surround us in public
spaces and city landscapes” (http://www.crisap.org/research/projects/city-sonic-places-
experiencing-the-urban-soundscape/artworks/#Alicia). However the difference with our
performance it wasn’t a one to one and the performance was longer. We would also have had it
so that the speakers would be scattered across the canal path instead of having headphones in.

When reading Mike Pearson’s Site Specific Performance (2010), he mentions some great advice
on what to do and how to make the most out of a site visit. He raises some good ideas in which
we felt that were relevant such as “Am I here by invite or an I intruding or trespassing?” or “Who
am I and what am I doing?)

When eventually getting to the performance, a lot had changed from our early ideas. We weren’t
going to be using the music and also we had organised it so that we were going to be this kind of
History Club and I was going to be really getting into my facts about Joseph William Turner (who
painted a landscape of the canal in the early 1800’s.

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Site Proposal

Chichester Canal has a rich history, ‘officially’ opened in 1823 as part of the Portsmouth and
Arundel Canal; it was a pass through for large ships carrying cargo and was a busy working
place, now it is an area of relaxation and nature, somewhere just distant enough from the
city centre for you to feel in the countryside at times. ‘Joseph William Turner’, acclaimed
painter from the 1800’s, could defiantly sympathise with this feeling. The inspirations for his
works (water colours) all came from his spiritual connection to the sublimity of nature. One of
his famous works, purchased by TATE modern, is called ‘Chichester Canal’ and was painted
during the eruption of the Indonesian Tambora Volcano which caused so much ash to fall
over Britain what the sky was full of black and orange smog.
The savage, awe-inspiring grandeur of nature’s sublimity translates heavily in the
colours and mood of his work and after reading into his process we decided to use a style of
art/performance that did completely the opposite.

We want to make Tuner’s aged but awe-inspiring work into a form more assessable to all
ages something informative, engaging, fun and educational.
The aim of our piece is to take our audience on a journey back through Chichester’s history
along the canal. We will play an unlikely group of history club goers recreating the past for
our audience though performed poetry, melodrama and the nostalgia of a secondary school
history trip. The piece will be as a group lead walk along the canal and will offer a glimpse
through the water, into the past.

The history students we will be playing focus their efforts on Joseph William Turner’s
‘Chicheater Canal.’ The painting currently owned by Tate Modern, is slowly dying, it is
delicate and cannot be restored, it is slowly fading away. Half of our characters will seek to
commemorate this paiting and its artist and pass on the story of how his work came to be,
the other half couldn’t care less. This common divide between people would love history and
people who see it as a waste of time and money is a conversation many audience members
may be able to reflect on in their own lives, as one of our cast playing Jospeh William
Turner, youthfully recounts feelings towards that landscape around him that are not
dissimilar to our own.

The piece that mostly inspired our process is In Mike Pearson’s Site Specific
Performance (2010) he goes to talk about a performance called Carrlands which he describes
it as “a series of three sound compositions inspired by and set at locations in the agricultural
landscape”. This inspired our collaboration with the place that we want to base our final project
at, and encouraged our aim to incorporate some sort of music or soundscape in the location of
the canal. In relation to David Seamon’s “Place, Place Identity, and Phenomenology: A
Triadic Interpretation Based on J. G. Bennett’s Systematics” the use of the of us choosing
the canal as a location to perform at would mean that we would have an impact on the
“People in Place” as the performance would have an impact on someone’s routine as
whenever we decide to perform along the canal, we will surely be distracting to the passers-
by as we will be using the canal for a non-typical purpose.

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A second inspiration for our piece was another Mike Pearson production performed by
‘National Theatre Wales.’ The piece is re-enactment of ‘The Persions’ performed in a
deserted military village. Whist this performance is more site-responsive than site-specific,
and is by a heavily budgeted, professional company, the act of telling an old story to a new
audience and giving it a new relevance is what inspired us with our own piece about
Chichester and Joseph William Turner .

We can apply the People Place Triad to our piece. The public, in the space when we perform,
will be there to go for a walk or a stroll and will, on their journey, be able to see the painting
that Turner was trying to create in both the our portal of him through acting and the scene he
painted all those years ago, still very much alive before our eyes.

As with any performance, there will be some variety risk factors to consider when performing
our piece and ensuring the safety of our audience. Our style of promenade theatre will
be performed along a path commonly used by cyclists, who with our audience distracted
by the performance, may not be noticed. We will scatter ourselves, as a cast,
strategically, through our group of audience and be their ears to avoid any unhappy
accidents. Our performance is suitable for people of all ages, and so if any parents do
happen to watch the piece with their children we will advise them to stay on the inside of
the group away from the water’s edge.

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Reference
1. Birch, A., Tompkins, J. (2012): 'Performing Site-specific Theatre' Palgrave Macmillan

2. The Guardian (n,d.) ‘The Persians’, Viewed 3rd March 2018

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/aug/13/the-persians-review-brecon-
beacons

3. The Guardian (n,a.) ‘Site-specific work is not just about location, location, location’
viewed 3rd March 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2007/apr/26/sitespecificworkneedsm
oret
4. Pearson, M. (2010) 'Site-Specific Performance': Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire
5. Routledge Performance Archive (n.a.) ‘Site Specific Performance’ viewed 3rd March
2018 https://www.routledgeperformancearchive.com/browse/subjects/performance-
art-live-art-performance/site-specific-performance
6. Tate (n.d.), 'Joseph Mallord William Turner', Viewed 4th March 2018,
<http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558>.
7. Wilkie, F. (2002a) ‘Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site Specific perfroamnce in
Britain’, New Theatre Quarterly
8. CRiSAP. (2018). City Sonic Places: Artworks - CRiSAP. [online] Available
at: http://www.crisap.org/research/projects/city-sonic-places-experiencing-the-urban-
soundscape/artworks/#Alicia [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].
9. CafePress. (2018). CafePress | Best merchandise to express yourself.
[online] Available at: https://www.cafepress.com/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].
10. CRiSAP. (2018). City Sonic Places: Artworks - CRiSAP. [online] Available
at: http://www.crisap.org/research/projects/city-sonic-places-experiencing-
the-urban-soundscape/artworks/#Alicia [Accessed 24 Apr. 2018].
11. Pearson, M. (2010). Site-specific performance. Basingstoke, Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan, p.19.
12. Wilkie, F. (2002a) ‘Mapping the Terrain: a Survey of Site Specific
perfroamnce in Britain’, New Theatre Quarterly
13. Kaye, N. (2013). Site-Specific Art. Florence: Taylor and Francis.
14. Slinkachu. (2008). Little people in the city. London: Boxtree.
15. Nights in this City is a Forced Entertainment production.
16. 1997 Rotterdam version commissioned by Rotterdamse Schouwburg and R
Festival (Rotterdam).
17. One year performance by Tehching Hsieh (1980 - 1981)

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