Trial and Error

Practical exploration of our site or any site that you are planning to perform in is key to the process. Our group discovered lots about the GCW and the surrounding area when visiting the local archives and from researching we had plenty ideas that we could work on. After visiting the site we hit another road block and once again went to visit the archives and the local library in the town centre. We also took inspiration form Tim Etchells – Nights in the City, where he gave a guided tour of Rome, within Sheffield. The idea of plotting things and places over something that is already there and getting the audience to see the space in a new light was something we really like the idea of.  Together this gave us enough background information to ground our ideas for our performance. However, we had yet to explore our ideas practically.

Our idea of the industrial reconstruction of the train lines that ran past the library was vague in detail, even though we had explored the space the idea of actually laying down materials to construct and form what we wanted was still in our heads, we were therefore encouraged to co and source materials that could be both cheap and effective. Initially we thought bamboo, we knew that it could be purchased cheaply and could be strong enough to become a structure.  We would attach each bamboo stick to one another to make the train lines. Here is a sketch of what we intended to do, it is very rough but is compiled of the photos and maps we had found of the area.

.Picture2

After we went and collected the materials we wanted we the tried out our ideas to see how possible our idea actually is.

Picture1  Picture3

 

 

Here, we know, it was not the best looking material we could use, however after exploring the DIY shops that sold the materials we thought of at the time we couldn’t afford anything else. Though we were convinced that as a performance if we did a full days work on constructing these lines we could make it look right. We would bind more than one together to make them more study and even though the material just looked like bamboo we thought that the overall construction would be more important that what is was made of.However after pitching our idea we we hit with a few roadblocks. The overall idea was taken to be interesting although the practicality if it was called into question. We have now been set the task of sourcing a material that could be used to create the tracks but also be stunning. Therefore we are having to reconsider our choice of materials and create something that will make our audience take a step back and think about the transient space that is outside our library.

Don’t Mind People Grinning In Your Face

Side C – don’t mind people grinning in your face…

communique transcript – agent #11255465 smith, a – 31/01/2014
f.a.o. handler ix; re. subject behaviour/possible intervention

dan,
as discussed, I followed the subject on the day in question and have a detailed report of his movements and interactions – find it attached below. however, during the course of my investigation I became concerned the subject was alerted to my presence and had to make additional efforts to blend in with the crowd. at one point I’m pretty sure he looked right at me, but I broke eye contact immediately and circled away.
based on my observations, I think that the presence of an outside threat – as I no doubt would have appeared to him – might cause the subject to react in a potentially unpredictable, possibly dangerous manner. at one point I’m sure he deliberately went into a supermarket, circled the aisles a few times and then left – what would you call that except the actions of a paranoid man on the verge of a psychotic break? what is my authorisation in the event that I get made and the subject confronts me? am I allowed to subdue him – for his own safety as much as my own?
also – and I’m aware that in my position this comes off as paranoid in the extreme – but I’m beginning to think that I myself am being followed. at least twice on my rounds I’ve observed a man with blond hair, a wide-brimmed hat, a white leisure suit and spats tailing me from about a block away. when I likewise tried to lose him in a supermarket – a method that turns out isn’t that efficient – he followed and pretended to shop. keeping my distance, I got the impression he was enjoying himself; he kept humming this really catchy song I couldn’t immediately recognise, but I’ve since realised what it was – “hush” by deep purple. that song has been haunting me ever since the incident.
I like to think I’m not asking for much, dan, but this whole [expletive deleted]-up scenario is really bugging me out. I’m really worried I may be compromised.

axs

p.s. do I have to keep taking these pills? I haven’t slept in two weeks and I swear to [expletive deleted]ing god my laptop has started talking to me. I’m having a bit of a shocker.

interdepartmental memo – dan [expletive deleted], hammerspace corporation
response to 31/01/2014 report – f.a.o. agent smith

okay, hold fire, smithy. this is no time to go squirrelly on us. this may be your first time in the field, but I’ve seen many agents over the years go completely [expletive deleted]ing bug-[expletive deleted] because they started getting too close to the mark and the mark’s bad juju started rubbing off on them. this guy you’re following is in all likelihood a high-level dope fiend, as well as a practitioner of arcane sex magick, so any attempt you make to reason with him will likely result in your death, mutilation and forced skull-rape – in that order, if you’re lucky. so do yourself a favour – follow your directives, keep your distance and don’t get made.
as for the other thing – look, you come from the big city. you’ve never had a creepy guy come onto you before? he’s probably just lonely – guy clearly has an interest in you, no accounting for taste. either that or he’s an interzone agent testing for weaknesses in our operation – either way, it will be dealt with. you’re just feeling paranoid because you’re not taking enough of those pills. do not – repeat not – stop taking the pills. you will only ensure that you end up experiencing more and more intense hallucinations, followed by crippling anxiety, nausea, palpitations, cold sweat, gastric disturbance, nosebleeds, priapism and eventually death. trust me, you’re better off just taking the pills – what’s a little mental confusion between friends after all?
Seriously though, whatever you do, do not stop taking the [expletive deleted]ing pills. if anything, I should requisition more for you. I personally take two every three hours – I’ve not slept since the challenger disaster and I feel [expletive deleted]ing amazing. hammerspace has given us this great bounty and we will show our love for her by doing our job every day of our drug-addled, goat-[expletive deleted]ing, quantum terrorist-fighting lives.

all hail hammerspace!

dan [expletive deleted], section chief, hammerspace corporation

p.s. quit blinking – that’s when they get you.

communique transcript – agent #11255465 smith, a – 07/03/2014
f.a.o. handler ix; re. possible propaganda action by subject

dan,

during a routine sweep of the library, I found subject [redacted] photocopying what appeared to be work-related documents. however by sidling past him I was able to swipe one of the copies. they appear to be photocopies of a crudely made pamphlet – possibly in support of interzone. I’ve reproduced the text of the document below verbatim for your review.

axs

p.s. is it also normal for my teeth to be falling out?

an interzone manifesto

“let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” – douglas adams
“nothing is true, everything is permitted.” hassan-I sabbah
death. life. time. the slow but inexorable crawl towards the long black limousine and the wooden box.
in a closed system, entropy is inevitable and constant growth is unsustainable. fossil fuels will not last forever, our pursuit of cosmetic beauty is futile. prices will always rise, politicians will never be trustworthy, that fad diet will not prevent you from dying, most likely fat, ugly and unloved.
things we are told we have no control over.
we are interzone. we say different.
watch for our sign.

we the undersigned recognise the authority of interzone. long may it live. nothing is real, everything is permitted.

viva interzone!

jack yeovil, peter van houten, kilgore trout, sal paradise, william lee, stephen dedalus

interdepartmental memo – dan [expletive deleted], hammerspace corporation
response to 07/03/2014 report – f.a.o. agent smith

smith you devious little snotrag, stop reproducing enemy material in your free time – the last thing we need is one of our agents – one with an already weak grasp on the rigours of internal security – reproducing interzone propaganda designed specifically with the brainwashing and conversion of hammerspace operatives into interzone sleeper agents in mind. in future just throw the thing away.

and yes, losing your teeth is normal, [expletive deleted]-for-brains. fret not, though. I will happily knock all your remaining teeth out for nothing and give you genuine false ones if I ever find out you get within thirty feet of your target again. triple your dosage, you lizard-[expletive deleted]ing sissy – it’ll keep you sharp. hammerspace has the best drugs, because they love us and we love them. and start smoking – all my assets smoke. I personally smoke at least fifty cigarettes and a dozen cigars before dinner. and dinner is meat. raw meat. the cook serves me an entire live animal and I tear off the bits I want and eat them, and then I have the rest buried. in north hykeham. for hammerspace.

all hail hammerspace!

dan [expletive deleted], section chief, hammerspace corporation

The Talking Asshole – William Burroughs (Naked Lunch)

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard.

This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.

This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called “The Better ‘Ole” that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, “Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?”

“Nah I had to go relieve myself.”

After a while the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.

Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and started eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: “It’s you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don’t need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit.”

After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole’s tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous — (did you know there is a condition occurs in parts of Africa and only among Negroes where the little toe amputates spontaneously?) — except for the eyes you dig. That’s one thing the asshole couldn’t do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn’t give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab’s eyes on the end of a stalk.

Re-Entering GCW

This task asked us to find a spot somewhere in the library and take a close drawing of it. The task was not about fine detail (thankfully for me and my shockingly poor art skills) but at looking closer than ever before at one specific detail of this vast building. We then shared these drawings between the class, swapping our ‘masterpieces’ and making new copies of each other’s drawings.

The next step of this task was to take our copy and reconnect it with the library in some way. The aim of this was to examine how an image can be removed, distorted and then reconnected to the space – how a performance may take one aspect of a site, dissect, expand, reconfigure it, without losing its relation to the site as a whole.

I swapped a drawing of the front, roadside face of GCW Library which I then zoomed in on for my copy, focusing on the protruding Worth Room on the second floor. To reconnect this with the library I swapped mediums; choosing photographs over pencil drawing. I started with a photo of the roadside wall and repeatedly zoomed in on the Worth Room before moving inside the library and zooming out from the Worth Room, through the library and back around to the front. 

This idea of moving through the library whilst challenging our usual focus really interested me and will most definitely influence our performance.

The Book as Art

 What is a book?

It sounds like a simple question but we’ve taken this question above and beyond type-on-paper-bound-by-a-cover. We looked to the University of West Essex’s, Reading Around (take a look here, http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/reading.htm ). A project that saw artists creating books in a variety of forms and styles.  

We linked these ideas of what a book means to us with previous work exploring the psychogeography of Lincoln. Having wandered the city looking for the best places to do or see a number of things from, seeing true beauty, to shouting without being heard or go sledging, I chose to link the best place to see two old people holding hands with the best place to pour your heart out and came up with this book entitled ‘Waiting on a Woman’ – inspired by Brad Paisley’s song of the same title.

096097

Our collection varied from edited books that had been cut, stuck and re-written over, to single images or conceptual ideas. The issue then of having such widespread variety was how to catagorise our newly created library – a task that we ultimately realised as futile.

This task really inspired me and made me want to explore the catagorisation and ordering system of GCW. How can a place that can be so welcoming in so many ways, a  helpful home away from uni-home full of familiar faces, also be a clinical, elitist structure based on an almost ridiculous amount of formal rules and social conventions? Perhaps our piece will be able to answer such a question.