f.a.o. control; re. possible subversive behaviour and misconduct of agent smith 26/04/2014
control,
the mental state of one of my operatives, agent #11255465 smith, has deteriorated rapidly since I last reported in. I managed to catch a glimpse of a recent piece he wrote for some cult film and tv website (in the comic book section, no less) in which he rambles at length on various comics – all degenerate filth in my book – and then starts screaming about trousers and something called videodrome (I think it’s one of those designer drugs them young people use these days). I’ll include a link to the article below for you to judge for yourself, but I believe that it’s ample reason to recommend a burn notice and to sanction him with extreme prejudice. it’s all very sad and repulsive – the boy’s losing his mind and if we don’t ice the little [expletive deleted] soon he’s going to blow the gaff on our north-east operations. also his spelling and grammar have really gone downhill. I await your decision. link follows:-
A key area we wanted our Site Specific project to explore was the different labour and ongoing development process for the site that has happened over the years.
‘Site history-
The Brayford Pool itself has always played a pivotal role in Lincoln’s history – indeed Lincoln began to be settled because of it, and the banks of the north and eastern sides have since Roman times been occupied by wharfs to facilitate the handling of water-borne goods. The southern bank of the Brayford was never used for this purpose. Prior to 1846, the area south of the Brayford Pool was low lying undeveloped common land known as Holmes Common, drained by the Delph Drain. The Building of the railways began in 1846, and by 1851 the loop line of the Great Northern railway had been built, taking the same line as the present day railway across the site. The area remained in this state until the 1880’s, when an engine house and several goods warehouses began to ppear. This continued into the twentieth century, and by the 1920’s the site was completely covered by railway sidings and goods yards which became known as Holmes Yard. These sidings served the burgeoning industrial area around the railways, and included a coal stage for refuelling trains. During the twentieth century, and certainly until the 1970’s, the nature of the site did not really hange, with railway sidings and goods handling still apparent. As the city’s heavy industry declined, so did the necessity for the goods yards, sidings and warehouses, and these were gradually abandoned. The area then fell into disuse dereliction until the mid 1990’s, when the University campus was begun The Brayford Campus was established in 1996, as part of the new University of Lincolnshire & Humberside. The development of the site was made possible by a large highways project, connecting Tritton Road to Carholme Road by a new road called Brayford Way, and allowing the area to be accessed from the north and north-west. In 2001 the University relocated its headquarters from Hull to Lincoln and changed it’s name to the ‘University of Lincoln.’
Allies & Morrison (2012) p.35
University of Lincoln
Masterplan 01
Design and access statement
August 2012. P.34
When making the QR codes we found a free website online which was simple to use. http://www.qrstuff.com/.
However in my opinion this was still the hardest part in regards to the making of our performance. However I gained new skills from learning how to make QR codes, which I am excited about infusing into my future work, whether it be at University or in the future. Generating the QR codes is as simple as copying a HTP link into the generator making sure you have the correct format, which we used dynamic. Then simply downloading the QR code. The hardest part of this task is linking the material through public websites in order to link the HTP link. As at first we struggled to get the QR codes working as we had applied our material to private websites. However luckily we figured that they didn’t work in our first tech run, and quickly solved the issue. Our end product looked like this.
An Extract from “Psychonautics and Psychogeography” – A Lecture, by Richard Jeperson, with apologies to Jack Yeovil
Since the dawn of the human race as we know it, people have been getting out of their tiny minds on whatever happened to be close, just eating whatever came by. Our distant ape-ancestors ate mushrooms and were blessed with dreams and sentience. The pagans of old, and the superstitious Christians that persecuted them, ate mouldy bread and poison berries and then were completely surprised when they went into fits of convulsions and started seeing God, Jesus, the Fallen One and a multitude of angels and demons circling on leathery wings above their heads. All those martyrs, saints and holy creatures trying to rationalise the infinities of our consciousness using the relative intelligence of a protozoa swimming in a drop of water. It never occurred to them – as it is only beginning to catch on among the present scientific community – that the human body, mind and soul were not a done deal and a job well done. We are given a pre-set number of genes but with almost infinite variations. Evolution is a journey, not a destination, and it is becoming clear that genetic mutations becoming increasingly common isn’t just a symptomatic response to the hostility of our environment – it is in point of fact essential to our survival as a species.
Over the decades we have had fits and starts, the paradigm shift always a little too early or too late. Old Bull Lee the Agent of Interzone, with his arm jammed full of bug powder, wife dead from manslaughter, exiled to one foreign limbo after another, where he would encounter such fiends as Doctor Benway, a dealer of the narcotic Black Meat and a disgrace to the medical fraternity, and metaphysical terrorists like the Nova Mob, intelligent criminal viruses that work on our very mental convolutions and psychic protoplasmic matrices. Doctor Duke and his attorney, driving around in a Great Red Shark full of dangerous substances, too out of it to be anything other than a massive bore. The recent flood of a new designer drug called Aklo, similar in many ways to PCP, into the punk and industrial nightclubs of the UK and US has led to the hospitalisation of many users for acute psychosis. Even the Golden Lotus, considered sacred and medicinal by certain Eastern and West Indian communities – as well as a fair amount of crusty hippies and biker gangs, no doubt – remains a point of contention. We’ve had crises of various stripes, survived hot and cold wars, wars on terror and drugs and wars purely in our imaginations. We are the veterans of a thousand psychic wars.
The original brickwork of the building still stands and is still visible as an outer shell for the new building which now stands. From looking at the outside of the building we can see the new additions to the building that have been added as the new library has extended to become part of the university.
IMAGE 1: The Original Building.
IMAGE 2: (Booth, Francesca, 2014) The Building Today.
As part of our tour, we wanted to show the distinct difference to how the building used to be and what it used to store and its contrast to the information and knowledge that is now stored there for the students of Lincoln. From reading articles based around theatre and using the original framework of a space, I came across the quote “The temporality of performance and the archaeological project is neither linear now a slice through time; it is convoluted. Memories, pasts, continuities, present aspirations and designs are assembled and recontextualised in the work that is theatre and archaeology” (Pearson, 2001, 55), from this statement we gained a sense that through our tour we should include of both the present and the past of the building, to show its development, and how it became what it is today, again, making the participants aware of their surroundings.
The Worth Room on the second floor of the building, is the most prominent example for a later addition to the building, as you can see in the image above, the box hovers on the exterior of the building, working as a group room within the library, yet when inside gives a panoramic view of the most prestigious sites within Lincoln. I felt it would be necessary for us to include this within our tour, showing how the library links to the overall surrounds of Lincoln, rather than just the university. The quote, “Site related work has the constitution of the performance environment as a fundamental concern and an examination of such projects must consider the way in which the performance space interacts with the wider culture both in theory and practise” (Govan, 2007, 104) adds to the idea, of showing Lincoln’s full background, and how our site links into the city as a whole, and how the site has had an impact on the whole city, whether its sharing of the good it used to store or the knowledge in which it now shares with the community. Using this room we are also able to comment on the brickwork which is still intact within the building, from looking through the windows looking at the original wordings on the exterior wall and the use of the brickwork on show throughout the library, giving an authentic feel of the buildings past, showing its memories and giving a sense of how many people have passed through these floors over the years.
Using the technique of an auditory based tour, we can speak to the participants about the history of the building as they are paying attention to parts of the library in which they have never seen or paid any attention to before. Drawing from the unfamiliar, gives us the opportunity to have our participants open their eyes to the past of the building, showing its history and how this is important to the way the building is today.
WORKS CITED:
Pearson, Mike (2001) Theatre/Archaeology, London: Routledge
Govan, Emma (2007) Making a Performance, London: Routledge
