In the space below, write a 300-400 word response that outlines your intended approach for your site based on the data or information you have your initial research
Site: Footpath from town along old railway line to woods and stone circle
Brief Concept: The audience walks the footpath with the performance going on around them, being taken from a modern feel where the houses are closest to the path, to a 'faery' circle and bacchanalia.
Filter: The Physical Site (some elements of Community and Current Use)
Choosing a walking performance along a public footpath to a public wood implies that then level of traffic could be varied. Some sections of the planned route are busy roads, but, for most of the route it's a footpath and cycle track, so the biggest impact would be to/from the cyclists. The final section is likely to be quiet as it is a walk away from most of the town. There is nothing much at any point along the route, except the back of people houses, but it is well delineated along most of the pathway. It is all outdoors, and the sounds are that of nature, so any music played for a performance would potentially be an intrusion, but keeping a simple acoustic/traditional sound should have less of a jarring effect. Because the audience would be walking from a modern feel to an otherworldy experience. Because of the route the textures are varied, with concrete and bricks at the beginning, and vertical lines of young trees surrounding a large open clearing with the stone circle in the middle. One of the angles that interested me most along the route was that of being able to look back from the top of a bride along the path you have just walked which could be used as a pause moment, with the performance occurring 'underneath' the audience, or at a level depending on the size of audience. At this point there would be some potential obstructions from lamp-posts and similar. The only lighting I would plan to use would be the natural light, making this a summer project, as I'm in Oxfordshire, UK the weather is likely to be a risk.
Filter: Site History
Whilst this particular site is only a couple of decades old it links back to similar sites in concept which are thousands of years old (e.g. Stonehenge) and the magic of that history could be exploited to build up the expectations and feel of otherworldliness.
Part 2: Description of Work / Artistic Approach
In the space below, write a 300-400 description of the work you are proposing for the site. You should include:
- The title of the work, if you have one
- A brief summary of the work
- Where it will be located in the site
- How an audience would encounter this work
Your response should also address some of the conceptual ideas behind the work. Some questions that might help you are:
- Is your work site-specific or site-adaptive?
- What filter(s) are you examining through this work? (Remember, you don’t have to use all four filters here!)
- What are some of your conceptual ideas behind the work? How does the work align with your existing practice or ideas about performance/installation/etc?
- What do you hope to accomplish with this proposed work? Or why is it important to make this work for this site?
You will have an opportunity to refine this response in the next assignment, so don't worry if you haven't finalized your idea at this point.
Title: Awen (A Welsh word meaning inspiration/spirit of creation type things)
Summary: The audience will gather, likely as an amorphous set of small groups, at the start of the footpath on what is a fairly busy road. Here there would be a small performance piece while the audience are stood with a slightly futuristic feel to it, this is likely to be a reframe from the studio type piece, the piece would be heavily influenced by street dance as a style. The styling of the performers however would have to be quite extreme, as they need to be the first instance and feel of dark faery types, as they will start to 'steal' the audience along the route of the performance.
As soon as this first set piece is done then the audience are invited/encouraged/herded as required onto the path, the music changes to being a little more contemporary and familiar. Over the net few hundred meters the audience are ushered to a bridge. At the bridge they hold and the future faeries are joined by the acts, who now look less extreme for costumes, but are heavily of the era of the music, and at the bridge this should have reached about the 50s/60s. The audience pauses at the bridge, and looking back along the footpath they should see the performers doing a jive type dance, taking it back through each of the Latin partner dances, to be left with the Charleston before being ready to continue. This set piece is again likely to be a reframe from the studio, whilst the performers when walking would be doing something slightly more site-specific.
The performance then travels again, with two lots of 'faeries' who can interact with the audience.
The next point of journey is a young wood, the trees are still quite regimented in their growth, with noticable lines of trees. At this point we are joined by the dryad type faery, who beckon the audience and their brethren into the centre of the stone circle, around which the different types of faery come into the bacchanalia style and end by drifting into the woods and away from the audience. The music by now should be folk type music, heave on acoustic instruments. This is site-adaptive work at this point.
