What do you do when you reach the end of your thoughts? When all of your ideas have been drained from you, creating an emptiness of “ehhhh”?

When we started Site Specific a couple of months back. All five of us sat down, our brains teaming with possible ideas. We played with the idea of an island, where passers by could sit and talk to us about their thoughts. Other ideas included using pervasive media, such as sound via bananas, and of course QR codes. After choosing QR codes we came up with our final idea and searched for a space where we could show it.

Pizza Express’s wall, Lincoln

Steep Hill, Lincoln

Wall next to Ann Summers, Lincoln

The Waterside Shopping Centre, Lincoln

Underpass, Lincoln

Phoenix Health Shop, Lincoln

The Pheonix Health Shop was perfect and we quickly got onto the phone to them. After a week of juggling phone calls, we were finally told by the council that we would be unable to use that space. We searched for other possible spaces up the high street, however they were all slightly out of the public eye. The only other possible space was Marks and Spencer’s brick wall.

Writing the letter to Marks and Spencer

After asking them via letter if we could use their space and power, they said no. We were back to square one. No wall meant no performance space.

After the ‘no’ from the council and Marks and Spencer, our ideas drained from us, creating the emptiness of “ehhhh”.

The question that now stands is this: Is there another level that we can look at? Another way around this that we can use our QR codes? Or another place that we can place them?

The only other space that we can think of is the area outside the doughnut stand, which is owned by Lincoln big. We could use this space by creating our own wall for our QR codes. We are currently thinking of other ways that we can explore the QR codes.

Steep Hill, Lincoln

“Over the next two hours we visit ten such locations the village, places where significant and memorable things happened to me” (Pearson). Unlike Pearson I will not visit ten locations, however there is one location in Lincoln that makes me think of something significant. Steep Hill, whats name arises from the gradient of the hill itself reminds me of a specific time I spent with my family.

Sat on the side of a hill with my brother (James) and two of my cousins (Alistair and Amelia). My family had decided to take us all on a picnic up yet another ‘boring’ (as my brother called them) hills. We (my cousins and I) decided that we would have a bit of fun and show James how to make fun out of the most boring things. We, like all kids, decided to have a game of who could roll down the hill the fastest and get the most giddy. The day was spent rolling, running, jumping down the hill until it was time to go. I still, even years on, say that this was the best day out with my family.

Many places remind me of this significant day, but none as much as steep hill, with the Lincoln wind blowing through your hair when you get to the top. However none of this reminds me of that day more than the sense of reluctance that you get when you’re at the bottom of the hill and then sense of accomplishment when you reach the Magna Carta pub. It reminds me of my brothers change in mood that day.

Pearson, Mike. Site-Specific Performance. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.

The Brayford. To many people passing this waterfront it’s just water, boats and swans. To me however, the Brayford is a place where I can think about home. I get a strange nostalgic feeling from this waterfront, it takes me back to the times when I am at home with my family.

Sport plays a big part in my family, and from a very young age, both me and my brother were encouraged to try out as many sports as we could. 2012 came around and bought with it the London Olympics, and as a very sporty family my mum sat us in front of the television. 35 different sports won medals over the sixteen days that we watched for. However, only one sport really caught my eye. Rowing. I told my mum that I wanted to start rowing, so she took me over to Bedford to try it out. I was a bit ropy at first, but I quickly learnt.

When looking at the Brayford I get a sense of nostalgia from the water. I remember my family and I feel a longing to see them.

superimposed picture of the River Witham (Brayford, Lincoln) and the River Great Ouse (Bedford) with me rowing.

For our Site Specific piece we have decided to wear t-shirts with QR codes on them. The QR codes will consist of things in the city that remind us of memories etc. We have decided to find a place in the city that links to something personal. I think the Brayford is a perfect link to something that is extremely personal to me. We got the idea to do personal stories from the performance ‘I Wish I Was Lonely’. This performance was about technology and how everyone is so busy in their little world, on their phones etc. However, the performance was broken down with true stories. We would like to do a performance similar to this in a sense. Allowing an audience to use their technology to scan us, and instead of them finding an advertisement, they find something personal to us. It should help them to stop and think for a while.

Walker, H. J. and Thorpe, C. (2015) I Wish I Was Lonely. [performance] Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe (dir.) Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, 11 February.

A busy high street. People passing one another without noticing. Too busy with their own little worlds to notice others around them. Cars rushing to different places. Busy. Busy. Busy. Everyone is so busy.

We thought as a response to everyone being so busy, we would video them at peak times in the day. The six different places that we chose to video, were places that we felt that people seem to be most oblivious of the happenings around them. Places that even we ourselves, would blend into our surroundings. Filming in Time Lapse allowed us to speed these busy places up and show just how many people walk/drive through these places in a short time. Even looking back at the video now, it allows us to imagine the Lincoln high street fifty or sixty years ago. It allows us to see the ghosts (not literal ones) of how many people have walked those streets in the past years. Pearson states in his book “I evoke this place fifty years ago: performance as a lens or filter, residing exactly over the current everyday.” (Pearson) I like the idea of performing something like the Village piece that Mike Pearson.

Pearson, Mike. Site-Specific Performance. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.

According to the online Oxford Dictionary, the definition of ‘Inconsolable’ is “(Of a person or their grief) not able to be comforted or alleviated” (Oxforddictionaries.com). Ciara and I decided to take a walk around Lincoln, to find out if buildings could make us so unhappy that we would be inconsolable. We realise now, that although buildings can make you seem sad or depressed, it is not, however, inconsolable.

We played on the fact that these buildings below made us sad:

  This is a picture taken from the side of the Main Building, it is not so much the building that makes me sad but more what I feel when I look at that sign. Although university is an absolute joy of my life, it still upsets me that I am more than halfway through my university days.

 Waterstones. Most people might look at Waterstones and think that it is a happy place, where so many brilliant writers have written adventures and journeys. I however, look at Waterstones and get upset about the amount of books I wished I had on my bookshelf. So many stories I wish to read. Waterstones reminds me that my life is a ticking clock and that I will/may not ever get to read all the books I wish to in my lifetime.

Although the train tracks are not a building as such, they still however, make me late to my lectures. Before taking this picture I met one of my course mates at the barriers. She looked over at me glumly and huffed as if to say “I’m stuck again!”. Everyone who lives in Lincoln knows how much sadness the barriers bring to your life.

Even after living in Lincoln for a year and a half now, Ciara and I still found it strange that tourists and other passers-by, often took photos of this strange staircase that leads no where. This abandoned building upsets me as once upon a time this would have been a thriving business or a home. It upsets me as many pretty places are now no longer pretty.

 The war memorial in Lincoln High Street, although not a building as such, is the one place that makes me feel true sadness. This is because it is a grave stone for the many men who died at war from our city. The lives the war took and the families it left behind are the reasons that this memorial is at the top of my sad list.

Oxforddictionaries.com,. ‘Inconsolable – Definition Of Inconsolable In English From The Oxford Dictionary’. N.p., 2015. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.