Konferenssiesitelmä Spaci Nel Vuoto 2 / Parma, Italia
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In the following paper I shall discuss site specific performances from the view point of Social Environment. First, I look at different definitions that there are for terms such as ”Environment”, ” Social Environment” and ”Site”.
Then I move closer to our topic and give a few recent examples of Finnish site specific productions in which the social level of the environment has been taken into consideration.
Last, but not least, I argue why it might make sense to focus on the social level of the environment as one is making site specific performances.
ENVIRONMENT - ACCORDING TO ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS [i]
There is no stability in the nature. Environment is always in a state of process: the weather, time of the day, the season: everything changes continuously. This does not apply only to the natural environment, but also to the social one. A new event can completely change the character of the place. For example the Taliban executions in a football field changed the site’s character for good – I do not think the place is no longer remembered by the football matches, but by the famous shots.
Environment is not something one can objectively view from the outside. We are always located in the environment and therefore a part of it.
A human and his environment interact with each other: as we are located in an environment, we participate in it, thus we influence it… and the environment in return influences us. The object and the subject formulate an endless circle of interaction.
SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT – DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS
* EU ”A person’s social environment includes their living and working conditions, income level, educational background and the communities they are part of. All these have a powerful effect on health and life expectancy.”
* Wikipedia ”The social environment (also known as the context or the milieu) of an individual is the culture that he or she was educated and/or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts. Social environment is likely to create a feeling of solidarity amongst its members. They will often think in similar styles even when their conclusions differ.”
* ”Place full of Stories” A title of a recent publication by Finnish Environmental Aesthetics Foundation on the topic.
SITE
The Finnish National Board of Antiquities uses different categories as basis for site protection and preservation decisions. There are categories such as pre-historic dwelling sites, medieval castles, ancient roads etc. But, interestingly, the Board also has a category for “sites mentioned in stories and legends”; ie “story sites”.
Story site is a physical place in a landscape with a historical story that is claimed to be a fact (such as a place where Vikings held their trials). Yet the story has not been proved to be true by archaeological or other scientific research. The unique value of a story site – just as remarkable as any other site protected by the law – is based on the value people (often the local community) give it. Thus, a story site has a very important role in its the social environment.
OTHER SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF A SITE AND EXAMPLES OF THEIR USE IN SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCES
A site can be defined by its social function.
A school or a hospital create a social site that has rules of its own. They are open to everyone, but as you enter in, you must accept its social code. We go to these places for something particular: to learn, to be cured. The roles of the people are based to hierarchical positions such as the profession.
The art festivals have a similar social status than hospitals or schools. They are open to everyone, and yet the social code is quite strict and the barriers between the different roles - such as the artists, audience, festival staff – are quite high. In order to make this structure visible – and to shake our festival, Baltic Circle, as a social construction we asked an European performance art collective atworknetwork to participate in our festival this year – in November, that is.
So, during the festival, the network organizes a series of workshops they call The Civilisation Project. There will be both closed session (without the audience) and public ones (with the audience). Their aim, according to director Pilvi Porkola, is not to perform ”ready” productions, but rather to interfere the festival, to spread like a virus into it. These interventions will take place in different festival locations, but not in the ”real” theatre sites such as on the stage – rather in the lobby. The point is to test the artistic ideas with the public.
Director Pilvi Porkola[ii]: ”My presumption is that a theatre festival audience would be more open to these kind of interventions than audience on the street or in a conference. The aim is to collaborate with the audience. To ”test” more than to ”know”.
Therefore, this civilization virus is to integrate the festival’s different social groups. We’ll see what’ll happen.
A marketplace, shopping mall or a city centre are public sites that all of us use every day. We go to these places for several reasons: to shop, to meet friends, to be entertained. The social code and the roles are based on the situation: here I am a customer, here a friend.
Last summer Helsinki-based company Teatteri Naamio & Höyhen used the social code of a public site as their production Walkabout was located in different locations around the city. It lasted for 18 hours. The idea was based on Tarot cards. There were 9 performers and 10 players (=audience).
First, the players met one of the performers in the city. They got a Tarot card reading. Then the actor asked the players to look at everything with the eyes of The Fool – a Tarot figure. With that idea in mind, they were to draw a straight line on the map to the next place, and to walk to that place exactly as the line says (through courtyards, over buildings...well, as best as they could.)
In the second place, they met the Lover and had a "date" on the balcony with him. And so on – The Sun gave players a ticket for a ride at a local Amusement Park, then The Death met the players in Cemetery... Each performer met the players in a location that represented the character of his card. Also, as the game went further, players were given a tarot card role and asked to find a place that represents the card. The result was, that the players started to use the public space as their private playground.
Director Johanna MacDonald[iii]: “There were some great choices: Temperance found a river dam to stand on and be the balance between the waters; the Wheel of Fortune stood in the middle of an intersection of traffic lights, etc. All of this happened without any of the performers influence. There was a real mix of public and private space; of "normal" social space and the fictional one. In effect, the city became a very personal landscape.”
Ritual Site Church or cemetery are environments that are isolated from everyday life. The social code is ritualistic and a canon has an important function. The roles are based on symbols.
My argument is, that theatre rehearsal studios can have a similar social function – sometimes rehearsals remind some weird cults by weird sects...
So, here is a use or creation of a ritual site by Helsinki-based company In Other Spaces.
Director Esa Kirkkopelto[iv]: ”we seek our way as a group into other spaces, life forms and modes of experience unfamiliar to humans. Momentary bodily metamorphoses open unexpected points of contact among beings and widen our views of existence. The group alters for instance into mountains, seashells, asteroids, mushrooms as we seek contact with extra-terrestrial life.
In Secret Retraining Camp -workshops the members of the group teach our techniques and exercises to all who are interested.” The camps are held in secret locations.
Private Site Sauna for a Finn, the place you spent your summer vacation when you were a kid, a family cemetery can have a special, even a holy meaning to a person. The social code in such places has a certain form, often a private ritual – the code is more self-invented than learned.
In Helsinki-based Reality Research Center’s production Mail Order Experimance anyone could order a performance to their home. Each performance was made for one spectator and it was put up in spectator’s house – therefore, each performance was different.
Director Eero-Tapio Vuori[v]: Experimance is a new form of theatre. It challenges the tradition of theatre being something, where one performs and the other perceives. To perform in a site that is important to the spectator, and a private one – in this case his toilet – emphasis the active role of the spectator. In experimance the experience of a particular spectator and the performance itself formulate a phenomenological field, and one cannot be separated from the other.
Hidden Site Last, a few words about my own work. At the moment I am doing a PhD research; my topic is Performance and Social Environment. My own special interest as a director seems to be the hidden landscape – sites of which story is forgotten or too shameful or painful to be discussed in public. These secret stories (can) change the atmosphere and the social code of the site if they are revealed.
At the moment I am directing a monologue that will premiere next summer in a small village called Möhkö in the Eastern Finland as a site specific production of the local Muncipal Theatre. The audience listens the monologue via iPods as they are walking on a 1 km path in the village. The story is about a Finnish soldier that was executed in that village by the Finnish troops in one of the final days of the II WW. Today Möhkö village is a quite important location for the War Tourism, for some of the major defeat battles took place nearby. At the moment nobody knows that one of the heroes of those battles was indeed executed by our own Army as a fugitive. Next summer they’ll know.
WHY TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT?
Theatre goes back to the real life?
Black box theatre is quite young phenomenon. The entire art institution, as we understand it today, was invented in the 19th century. During the period of Romanticism the idea of art being something special, an art work having an unique aura that requires neutral background, was born.
Of course not all the theatre has became institution oriented and – located.
But, quite often, the performing art that is regarded real art and thus financially supported, is theatre that one can see in the institutional theatre buildings, not on public sites. So, first the theatre went away from the public, to its own ”house”; separated itself from the audience – and now has trouble getting people to come in, to watch the performances.
The interest towards urban sites as stages might be linked to a larger change in our culture. Maybe some artists do not think, that it makes any sense first to separate theatre from the audience, and then try to get the audience come to theatre. In order to speak the language that is used today, one needs to speak in the locations we use every day, not from an isolated black box.
The time of a passive spectator is over?
Facebook / Reality-tv / Geogatching... The social medias that are based on participation are the name of the game today. Both the traditional tv and printed medias are in the edge of crisis, for their form of communication requires a passive receiver. Also the traditional forms of performing art, where the role of the audience is to sit still, to watch the play and to clap hands in the end, is of course in similar trouble for similar reasons. I think very few young people will find the ideology of passive assumption very tempting. So no wonder the traditional art institutions have trouble trying to attract new, younger audiences.
The strength in site specific performances lies in the fact that it cannot be made for a passive spectator. When you go to see a production that takes place in a real world, there is always a lot of additional information. A spectator can choose his point of interest. Quite often he can participate in the performance.
In the beginning I spoke about the fact that its viewer always effects the environment – these two form a circle of interaction. For me, the theatre that built walls around it – the black box – broke this natural circle between the subject and the object. It did something that is not known to the nature, something unnatural. Therefore, I see the site specific performing art as a possibility or an attempt to rebuild this broken link.
It is much more save to play theatre inside our own theatre house than in the real reality. But, for me, that is more true. Often far more artistically interesting. And more brave.
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