Research – Page 2 – ________-Safe House-_________

On the Street Where We Live

Ellen Louise Pearson / May 12, 2013May 13, 2013 / Home, Research, West Parade

House Research

The Street
The setting for our Site Specific performance is a house on West Parade, Lincoln, to the west of the city centre. It was built in 1932, the date proudly displayed on the house itself, but beyond that the history of the house is a mystery.

A trip to the Lincolnshire Archives reveals that as far back as 1842 West Parade was actually called Clay Lane, after the clay pits which were used during that era. Though the house does not lie on top of any of these pits, it may be worth experimenting with clay as part of the performance process as it relates to the street and the pits played an important part in the building boom of the 1870s and 1880s producing bricks and tiles which were used all over the country.

It transpires that the current job centre on the corner of West Parade and Orchard Street used to be the site of St Martin’s Church, which was built in c.1873. The vicars of the church lived in the vicarage which is still situated near to the house we are using, so a religious theme could be a performance route.

Above: St Martin’s Church ((Parkinson, Wendy (unknown) Lincoln St Martin New (original: Lincolnshire Echo) [Online] Available at: http://www.wparkinson.com/Churches/City%20photos/Lincoln%20St%20Martin%20new.jpg (Accessed: 25^th February 2013). ))

Another near neighbour, around the time our house was built, was the Oxford House Private School, Preparatory for Girls and Boys and run by Principal Miss Brunner. It may be worth researching the school as it was open from at least 1932-46. The idea of a private school within a house could be an interesting concept to explore.

In the 1946 Lincoln Directories there is finally a reference to our house. In the house next door there is a James Alfred Wright and in our house there is an Alfred Ernest Revill aged 66.

Alfred Ernest Revill

Above: 1911 Census record for Alfred Revill ((‘Alfred Revill’ (1911) Census return for Motherby Lane, Lincoln, Lincolnshire. Public Record Office: PRO RG14/19744, folio 51, p.3. Find My Past (2013) Available at: http://www.findmypast.co.uk (Accessed: 21^st February 2013). ))

Looking at the censuses I managed to discover some information on Alfred Revill. He was born in 1880 in South Collingham, Nottinghamshire. His parents were Matthew (age 35), a Groom, and Julia (age 25) and he was the second child of the six they had. Surprisingly, all his siblings lived into adulthood.

Alfred’s parents were born in Lincoln, although in the 1881 Census, they were living in Binbrook, Louth. ((‘Alfred Revill’ (1881) Census return for Binbrook, Louth, Lincolnshire. Public Record Office: PRO RG11/3264, folio 35, p.16. Find My Past (2013) Available at: http://www.findmypast.co.uk (Accessed: 21^st February 2013). )) By 1891 they had moved back to Lincoln and were registered at 8 Winnowsty Buildings, Winnowsty Lane. By this time (when Alfred was 11) all of his brothers and sisters had been born:

John J. Revill, born 1878
Alfred E. Revill, born 1880
Blanche M. Revill, born 1881
Elizabeth A. Revill, born 1883
Walter N. Revill, born 1886
George H. Revill, born 1888

The eldest son John, aged 13, was working as an Errand Boy while Alfred and the rest of his siblings (apart from toddler George) were listed as ‘Scholar’. ((‘Alfred Revill’ (1891) Census return for Winnowsty Lane, Lincoln, Lincolnshire. Public Record Office: PRO RG12/2594, folio 24, p.41. Find My Past (2013) Available at: http://www.findmypast.co.uk (Accessed: 21^st February 2013). ))

In the 1901 census, when Alfred was 21, all of his siblings, apart from Elizabeth, still appear to be living at home. They were now living at 6 Motherby Lane, which is just around the corner from West Parade. ((‘Alfred Revill’ (1901) Census return for Motherby Lane, Lincoln, Lincolnshire. Public Record Office: PRO RG13/3062, folio 152, p.44. Find My Past (2013) Available at: http://www.findmypast.co.uk (Accessed: 21^st February 2013). )) John is now a Journeyman Blacksmith, Alfred is a Coachman, Blanche is a General Servant, Walter is a Joiner’s Apprentice and George, now 13, is a Chemists Errand Boy. Elizabeth is listed working as a Domestic Servant in a house on West Parade.

Above: A Victorian Coachman ((Nanton, A.M. (1919) C. M. Wright, the Coachman, at kitchen entrance with Victoria and pair [Online]. Available at: http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/features/timelinks/imageref/ref0293.shtml (Accessed: 20th March 2013). ))

Ten years later, in the most recent census of 1911, only two of the children were still registered in the house with their parents. Alfred, now 31, was a Domestic Coachman like his father and George, now 23, was a Clerk in a Draft Office. Interestingly, there is another addition to this census; an 8 year old boy named Harold Starr who is registered as grandchild to Matthew Revill (Alfred’s father). ((‘Alfred Revill’ (1911) Census return for Motherby Lane, Lincoln, Lincolnshire. Public Record Office: PRO RG14/19744, folio 51, p.3. Find My Past (2013) Available at: http://www.findmypast.co.uk (Accessed: 21^st February 2013). )) After some more searching it transpires that Blanche was Harold’s mother, registered with her husband Thomas Starr (Iron Planer) and their younger son Robert at 22 Hungate, Lincoln. So why was their eldest son staying with his grandparents and uncles instead of at home? ((‘Blanche Starr’ (1911) Census return for Hungate, Lincoln, Lincolnshire. Public Record Office: PRO RG14/19744. Find My Past (2013) Available at: http://www.findmypast.co.uk (Accessed: 21^st February 2013). ))

The final piece of information I have found so far is a Marriage Certificate. In late 1925, in Lincoln, there was a marriage between Alfred E Revill and Mabel Atkinson. At the time Alfred would have been 45. ((‘Alfred E Revill’ (1925) Certified copy of marriage certificate for Alfred E Revill and Mabel Atkinson. Find My Past (2013) Available at: http://www.findmypast.co.uk (Accessed 21^st February 2013). )) The house was built some seven years after they were married. Whether they were the first occupants remains a mystery. All I can determine is that by 1946 Alfred was living there alone.

Waiting…

Hayley Misseldine / May 12, 2013 / Documentation, Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms

The waiting room – it is unique in itself concerning the other rooms in the house as it is not a room commonly associated with a home. My first impressions of it were not pleasant, its set up feels more corporate and judgemental somehow compared to any other room in the house.

The first thing I felt when I entered the room was a sense of foreboding, it reminds me of the waiting room at school, where sadly I frequented often, usually because I had done something bad, and was awaiting my punishment. Another memory it triggered was the waiting room at hospital, another place I had waited, where the outcome had not been a good one, it reminded me of the long hours I had sat waiting for news, hoping and even praying at one point that the news would be good. So to sit in this room alone, with all the bad memories stirring up inside me, forcing me to be painfully aware of not only my feelings, but the room itself, although not pleasant, was infact productive.

With these memories, I can distinctly remember analysing every aspect of whatever waiting room I was in. When you have nothing but time, and nowhere else you can go, you are practically forced to observe your surroundings in a more scrutinising way. This is the first thing I did when beginning the research process was to just sit in the waiting room and analyse everything. I used an exercise I found in Pearson’s Site – Specific Performance – ‘Pay attention to detail. Later: (a) eyes closed, mentally reimagine your visit; (b) from memory, draw a map of the place – include significant features….’ ((Pearson, Mike, (2010), Site-Specific Performance, Palgrave Macmillan, P.84))

This is the map I came up with that illustrates a portion of the room that I could directly see in non-peripheral vision. You can see its bareness, lacking all personality, what worried me most was how my room could possibly fit in with the rest, how it contributes to the house as a whole? “We identify so closely with our homes. They are so personal, so familiar and our relationships with them so intimate, that they become projections of ourselves. And any interference with them becomes unnerving and profoundly unsettling”. ((Heathcoate, Edwin, (2012) the Meaning of Home, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd, P.186)) After reading this quote, it struck me that the fact that my room was not conforming to the notion of home could be a good thing – it sticks out, and it gives me the opportunity to do something, offer up a different experience to an audience that the other rooms cannot.

How do you create a home?

Hayley Misseldine / May 12, 2013 / Home, Performance process, Research, Rooms, West Parade

When I first stepped into the house that was to become our temporary home for the first time, despite the fact that it wasn’t so aesthetically pleasing, I couldn’t help but feel oddly comforted, for one it reminds me of the house I currently reside at in Lincoln, and two, its emptiness calls out to me. I see an empty space, and instantly all I want to do is decorate it, to make it feel ‘homey’ and it wasn’t until I visited this house on West Parade that I realised how strong this desire seems to be.

‘What does homeliness mean and how is it created?’ ((Bollnow, Otto, (2011) Human Space, Hyphen Press.)) To me, a house is not a home until it looks like one. This definition of how a house exactly can look like a home is up to the inhabitants, but you notice different examples in every home you have ever visited. You notice small objects, whether they are photographs, sentimental objects, even the decor, they all add up to make a space feel like a home, it feels like someone lives there. On the other hand there are homes which infact are inhabited, but it feels neglected, this is the case with the house on West Parade – it is set up this way, it is meant to feel like whomever lives there do not lead a happy home life, which brings me to my next point – home is not just about how it looks, it is also about who live there.

Personally, I can’t feel at home unless I am living with someone I am close to, family or friends, I won’t feel at home with strangers. It took several months for me to feel at home in Lincoln at first, due to the fact that the people I was living with were not close to me. Though contrary to how I felt in Lincoln, it was a different case when I lived in London for a month, I lived in a large house with 15 other people, and within the first week we had all grown close and made great connections, so in result I felt at home marginally faster than I have done here. In theory it comes down to human connection, ‘Home is wherever I’m with you’. ((Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s (2009) Home, Vagrant Records))

So this house, that we will work in for the next 5 months – will it become a home? Or will it become something else entirely? Thinking of all the possibilities this house possesses, especially knowing that there is a CCTV camera in almost every room, is quite daunting. There is so much we could do, we could – judging from some of the rooms interiors go to some dark places, the cot room for example, has got to be one of the creepiest and most unnerving rooms I have ever been in. Just from a simple piece of furniture and absolutely nothing else, makes the room practically scream neglect at you. The only room in the house I felt semi-comfortable in was the living room, and only because of the furniture, take that away and it would become just as uncomfortable as the other rooms. This proves my point – to make a house feel even remotely like a home, you need comforting objects inside of it, and you need people who care for one another, otherwise all you have left is a building.

Talking Through Tactility

Samuel Mant / May 10, 2013May 10, 2013 / Performance process, Research, Rooms

Everywhere we explore, we explore with our eyes (that is, those of us lucky enough to have eyes). As humans, our primary sense is sight and we define the world around us through vision – everything has to be seen to be believed, after all. Our reliance on visual interaction is doubly apparent when our ability to see is impaired – every single human being has been scared in or by the dark, partly due to the intrinsic fear of the unknown (which our eyes abate by making it known) and also in part due to our inability to see.

What can we do when sight is denied to us? One of the first instinctive reactions is to thrust out one’s arms and use a bizarre shuffling gait to move around. We try to feel the world around us and it is that instinct, that reaction that I want to examine.

Our eyes deny us the opportunity and motive for tactile exploration – basic human reliance on sight does away with the need to feel the world around you. But how do we cope when we must explore a place physically? What happens when you only know somewhere by touch.

In the house, in the little ante-room beside the living room, I posed myself these two questions. Blindfolding myself with my scarf, I set about discovering the space with a new pair of eyes – my hands. I was inspired, in no small part, by the work of Mark Wayman, who’s work centres around the idea of the disembodied narrative – as the South London gallery’s website describes it, ‘Monologues, describing the surfaces and architectural features of the room in minute and accurate detail, are delivered by Wayman from hidden or obscured locations within it.’ While this does key in to some of my performative ideas that are brewing (or rather, since this post has been delayed for a while, have already come to fruition), my main inspiration comes from his one-off performance wherein he took a small audience round a secluded garden while blindfolded and described the space in minute detail, entirely from memory.

Mark Wayman describing the minutiae of the garden.

I have attempted this within my little ante-room, with favourable results. Once I was free from the yoke of sight, I could (after a fashion) quite easily explore the space, learning the size of things, the room in which I had to move, the texture of different parts of the walls, different parts of the floor. If I stood still, I could become aware of the draft from the little portcullis over near the floor. The heat (or lack thereof) that denoted certain areas was fascinating; with my hands I could judge a thermal map of the room, finding places where the chill was especially strong, the wall directly opposite the draft. Even in the darkness of the blind, the size, shape and layout of this room became as clear to me as it would be if I used my eyes. While blind, I could become part of a space – so intrinsically linked with the proximity of knowledge (for when tactility is your main means of discovery, being close to your surroundings is inevitably) that I could almost become a feature of it. In performance, I want to be part of this space, not merely some inhabitant of it.

REFERENCES:

http://www.liveartwork.com/dvd/current%20issue3.htm (Picture, accessed 22/03/13)

http://www.southlondongallery.org/page/mark-wayman-shifter (Quotation, accessed 22/03/13)

Brutality through performance.

Andrew Tinley / April 23, 2013 / Documentation, Performance process, Research, Rooms

Decomposition is regarded as a normal inevitable action in which certain elements can act as catalysts to speed the process along.

In the performance varied jars containing food will populate the space. These jars symbolise the aftermath of consumption. What exactly happens to food when you’ve chewed it, yes it’s been made smaller by your teeth but then what happens on its journey through your body? They’ll be scientists who can analyse the exact transformation but I’m interested in how this can be portrayed and become an integrated performance.

The breakdown of substances in the jar are getting reinforced by the sounds on the soundscape to create a sensory performance outlining the route and transformation of food in an extremely short space of time. The effects that have been added to original sourced sounds make the clips sometimes barely recognisable. As the materials change, whether it is the sound, props or environment, it will signify the constant decay and so representing a constantly changing performance environment. Having barely recognisable sound clips adds to the potential unknowing of the substance in the jar, depending on how long it has been rotting. This sense of the unknowing reinforces the fact that these materials and objects, which are apparent quite significantly in everyday life, can become extremely unfamiliar once transformed. Taking something that we have become comfortable with and then catalysing its transformation in to an unknown or unusual state can increase peoples’ awareness but also makes this performance real. These real and truthful elements of life are touching upon dangerous material which can be left unexplored, yet the exploration of this provides an educative and surreal situation for audience members and so enabling us to explore this material in a safe, controlled and visually simulated environment.

(the photographs above were taken by myself source: flicker)

The images above show the methodology of my approach and so show the transformation of some of the food in the jars. I used catalysts such as fresh air and sunlight to enhance the material and speed the process of decay. Some of them are more advanced them others depending on the dates which are all on the back of the jars. The collaboration of the different levels of deterioration is great to enable the audience to compare and analyse. The strangest thing about these jars is that when fresh food was situated inside it looked quite aesthetically pleasing and created a sense of glory and beauty, but as they started eroding, causing the material from the tops of the jars to crumble, they suddenly became less visually capturing. Concentrating this process allowed me to analyse the destruction on a steady basis enabling me to try and understand the reality of this development.

This cycled performance and overall narrative is the story of food progression. But this process when mixed with performative element creates dilemmas which has made the realistic narrative of this method slightly inaccurate and surreal. As you go through the soundscape a separate story is being expressed visually. This confusion links to the element of control discussed in my earlier posts and so the surreal ambiguity

(the photographs above were taken from http://miista.com/damien-hirst-putrid-profit/ source: flicker)

A Thousand Years by Damien Hirst he brings together a similar cycle, this time though, of life. He uses a dead cow’s head in a box with an Insect-O-Cutor hanging above. This very literal vision of life and death expresses the cycle so shockingly and again touch upon a familiar issue but the exploration has always been censored and limited by cultural attitudes. Similarly to my performance it includes quite literal material which could come across quite shocking and therefore unsettling. This notion of unsettlement occurs throughout my performance and has been a rooted influence and idea throughout my production process. This evident audience reaction has then been reinforced by the intimate relationship between the audiences and the jars of rotting food, alongside the disjointed and metaphorically ‘decomposing soundscape’.