I really enjoyed watching The Passion of Port Talbot – Part One and it made me realise how much thought, time and effort needs to go in to making a site specific piece, and also what actually is meant by site specific… creating a piece built on the lives or events that happened in a specific place and involving the community past or present which is what we want to do in our piece from the soldiers who trained at the drill hall and the people who visit our piece on the day.
Lone twin are a theatre company i researched, and i looked specifically at one of their pieces- The Boat Project, which,”used the latest yacht building methods to turn wooden objects donated by people from across the South East into a seaworthy archive of stories and memories…” such as guitars, hockey sticks, coat hangers, pencils- each with a story behind them that is recorded in an archive book which was published the same time as the boat first set sail.
I then realised that it was made as part of “Artists Taking the Lead, a series of 12 public art commissions across the UK to celebrate the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.” (atwork) which i took part in as part of the East commission ‘On Landguard point’. “In 2011, the On Landguard Point team gathered stories and local knowledge with help from East of England residents to develop the project, culminating in a feature length film. Inspired by the histories and culture of the East of England, On Landguard Point exists at an intersection between live performance, community and cinema – where local people and places really do become the stars of the show.” http://www.onlandguardpoint.com/about/
“The film also features work by internationally acclaimed artists such as Michael Nyman, Julia Bardsley, Rajni Shah, Kira O’Reilly, Harminder Judge and Mark Peter Wright.” – which is a coincidence as i researched Rajni shah last week!
“Pacitti artist-led projects is committed to providing the public with ways to engage with the programme on their own terms, in a meaningful way that has a lasting impact.” This is why in our piece we want the audience to take away something from their visit to the drill hall whether its through memory or a gift we want them to remember our piece and what it bought to the drill hall.
“Each of the 205 symbols taken from the People’s Encyclopedia for the East of England have been printed onto black flags. These totemic flags which were raised at Flags Flying 6 – the final live public event of On Landguard Point at Felixstowe on the beach behind Landguard Fort. The 12-hour ceremony was accompanied by readings of the Encyclopedia, as people’s contributions from across our region get sent skywards, to signal out to sea and beyond.”- the use of footprints in our piece are our version of symbols and each ‘scene’/ ‘stage of our piece’ that we do with the footprints will have a meaning to the site, from placing them in rows to scrunching them up, the rows showing the marching drills of the soldiers, the scrunching up shows the wear and tear that they went through in the trenches and the un scrunching represents them coming home having been through a great ordeal.
http://www.onlandguardpoint.com/on-landguard-point-film-teaser/