future present past
Beating the Bounds III
Nottingham
October 25 & 27 2011
Phase III began on the A453 in Clifton and ended in playing fields near the A52
Beating the Bounds II
July 13 2011
'Beating the Bounds' II (Wollaton to Clifton) continued the walk around Nottingham's boundary
Beating the Bounds I
July 7-8 2011
As part of Summer Lodge 2011, 'Beating the Bounds' phase I (from Colwick Park to Wollaton) saw ten participants part-circumnavigate the city of Nottingham, performing actions along and across its boundary with adjoining boroughs.
Beating the bounds: a practice-led participatory project
Introduction
Throughout my research I have been exploring how to best
communicate instructions to participants in my work, be
they students, colleagues or the general public. I have
experimented with instructional recordings delivered via
ipod, instructions written on posters and postcards, and
verbal instructions, whispered from person to person.
Whilst all these media have their place within my
practice, all have limitations, a significant one being
the lack of inbuilt facility to follow up and interrogate
responses to the experiences people have undergone. Also
the tension between my desire to avoid offering
‘rounded-off’ experiences and the short-lived/throwaway
nature of the above have led me to return to the most
enduring form of my practice, the participatory workshop.
This format enables me to build a relationship with a
group of people, to not only give them a more profound
experience but also to glean important feedback from them
as things unfold. The temporal and conceptual space
offered by such a practitioner workshop allows for
collective sharing of tacit knowledge of urban/suburban
space and behaviour.
I have long been interested in the paratheatrical projects
of Jerzy Grotowski (1973-1978) and Marina Abramovic’s
‘Cleaning the House’ workshops (1979-2003). To be able to
work with a group of people beyond habitual surroundings
for an extended timeframe, and to collectively re-frame
experience seems to me to be a progressive model. As
Deleuze (2004) writes ‘We learn nothing from those who say
“do as I do”. Our only teachers are those who tell us to
“do with me”, and are able to emit signs to be developed
in heterogeneity rather than propose gestures for us to
reproduce’.
The origins for my embodied approach and for the
recurrence of walking elements of my practice are probably
located in my youth. I grew up in a village and, with
friends, used to go on long expeditions to neighbouring
villages. In my late teens and early twenties I habitually
went out for night walks across the countryside. In one of
my earliest attempts at creative writing, ‘Autopilot’
(inspired by Beckett’s characters Belacqua and Molloy) a
human figure was endlessly tramping the landscape, day and
night. In my undergraduate degree show work in 1997 a
small group of people were driven in the back of a luton
van to a remote post-industrial landscape and forced to
undertake a lengthy route march by a surly guide,
including through the blackness of an abandoned railway
tunnel. In more recent work, the photographic series ‘The
Way Back’ (2011), images of paths leading forwards and
backwards are displayed side by side, indicating a
momentary pause on an interminable journey.
I am interested in making artwork that refuses to supply a
big, recognizable ‘pay off’, akin to Peggy Phelan’s
(1993:19) expression of ‘a deliberate and conscious
refusal to take the payoff of visibility’ in relation to
my practice. I am aware of a growing revulsion with the
idea of spectacle (‘capital accumulated to the point that
it becomes images’ - Debord, 2002) in connection with what
I make and do. I am reluctant to create and contribute yet
more ‘stuff’ to the existing pile. In failing to provide a
clearly-demarcated, readily-assimilable ‘show’ I follow my
urge to set up ‘human’-scale and compromised experiences,
be they fleeting, frustrating, partial, joyful, or grim,
made possible yet also easily challenged through the
body’s limitations.
This paper presents findings and methodology of a
practice-led research project ‘Beating the bounds’ that
took place in Nottingham in July 2011. The participatory
workshop is a medium with which I am particularly
familiar, having delivered scores of them over 30 years in
my roles of sonic artist and academic. Various
long-standing interests (walking, thresholds, folk ritual)
have been interwoven in this current project.
Research Questions:
How light a touch can I adopt as originator and
facilitator of the project?
Can participants own desires, resistances and knowledge be
harnessed and made use of within the project?
How might the material generated by the participants
during and after the workshop be used/published most
effectively?
There is no research ‘problem’ as such for me to resolve,
but several areas of interest and space for development.
These are grouped together under the following headings:
Format, Commitment, Leadership, and What remains
Contextual review
I find myself operating within a creative field in
which considerable research has been and continues to be
carried out. Whilst I appreciate the emergence of a
context that appears to support my practice I am wary of
fashionability. My creative endeavours have remained
consistently non-commercial and resolutely marginal. I am
able to identify artists and writers who articulate
positions and perspectives that overlap with my own, but
they are a disparate bunch and not altogether current,
fashionable nor academically rigorous. All have influenced
me in their own ways and their currency goes some way to
corroborating my practice and providing it validity (if
any were needed). And all are engaged with investigation
of the challenges faced at the thresholds of human
experience.
A recent publication that proved helpful when planning
‘Beating the bounds’ was Paul Farley & Symmons
Roberts’ (2011) ‘Edgelands. Journeys into England’s true
wilderness’. Using a poetic and upbeat writing style they
convey the atmosphere of the hinterlands of the UK’s major
conurbations and actually make them valid places to
explore and thereby inspire one to visit them. An
interesting artistic collaboration involved Gustavo
Ciriaco and Andrea Sonnberger whose ‘Here Whilst We Walk’
I participated in at ‘nottdance’ in 2007. The artists lead
a group of us around the city within a large rubber band.
This resulted in heightened public visibility as well as
giving new perspectives, such as the painfully-intense
observation as the group arrived on the scene of a timely
car crash and stood facing it for an uncomfortable
extended duration. We were also made to stand for
protracted periods facing sites that had been redeveloped
or were currently barren, on the fringes of the city
centre. Being made to confront one’s personal thresholds
of civic behaviour is sobering and enlivening at the same
time. In the slow walks I have led around the city there
is a similar frisson, and the intention to make people
take a really good look at what is before their eyes.
Two further artistic reference points relevant to the
aspects of my practice involving ordeal and challenges to
stamina and the audience/performer contract are the
Slovenian group Red Pilot (part of Neue Slowenische Kunst
along with the band Laibach), whose brutalisations of
their audiences have passed into legend, and Martin
Burton, whose piece ‘Nausea’ I witnessed at a Nottingham
expo festival in the late 1990s. This was another work in
which the audience suffered, doused in stale milk as we
lay prone in rows of hospital beds in an otherwise
abandoned industrial building.
Author Kay Dick has long been an inspiration in her short
novel ‘They (a sequence of unease)’ (1977) that proposes
the rural as a place of human threat, and dwells upon the
challenge to retain humanity and creativity in the face of
phillistinism, all set in the deceptively idyllic setting
of the South Downs.
In terms of obsessive rule-determined behaviour Simon
Faithfull’s work ‘0º00 Navigation, 2008’ is inspirational,
as the artist apparently walks along the Greenwich
meridian following a GPS signal, passing through houses,
gardens, waterways and anything else in his path. Likewise
the image of Simon Whitehead carrying a table along a
rural road seems to me to reflect the ridiculous nature
(and thereby value) of the grandiose futile act.
Research methodology
The research methods listed below offer potential
approaches in generating an effective group dynamic,
thereby allowing us to pursue our Action Research
fieldwork and Participant Observation at the thresholds
and intersections of the city/non-city, day/night,
comfort/discomfort. They involved a series of ambulant and
durational workshop sessions, interspersed with daily
periods of reflection, to fully and collectively consider
the practicalities and implications of what has (and will
have) taken place.
Walk along the boundary of the city of Nottingham as
mapped by Badder & Peat in the year 1744.
Walk along the boundary of the contemporary city of
Nottingham, during the day and night.
Throughout the walks various actions might be performed:
Following in footsteps
Creating sightlines
Leading the blind
Slow walk
Running
Eye contact with passers by
Smiling at passers-by
Pratfalls
Meditation walk
Gather text from environment
Pause at end of each street/path
Moving an object on (Francis Alys, Richard Long)
Leaving traces
Beating boundary markers
Symbolically beating or bumping one another
Action tracking (see below for explanation)
Stillness
Hailing
Dancing
Stepping across a line in unison
Plant flower seeds
Lie prone
Link arms
Huddle
Take a running jump
Action research in which activities on the walks are
collectively generated, discussed, undertaken and
evaluated
Participant observation
Open–ended, responsive to opportunities, diversions
Sharing of reading material prior to and during the period
of workshop activities.
The use of digital recorders to assist with live
note-taking
A dedicated witness role, provides validity, protection,
outside eye
Live journaling
The keeping and discussion of dream diaries
Historical research, sharing of knowledge, interaction
with passers-by
Overlaying of maps from different periods of history &
locations 1744 map onto contemporary city centre
Consideration of the ‘map and the territory’, reading
Umberto Eco text ‘on the impossibility of drawing a map of
the empire on a scale of 1 to 1’
Reading aloud related texts
Emma Cocker’s studio-based eye contact workshop
Evaluate by projecting the day’s photographs and
discussing key (or forgotten) occurences
Collectively watching and discussing the film ‘Stalker’
(Tarkovsky)
Participants to create their own responses to experiences
of the workshop:
Group photos manipulated on Photoshop with amusing
parallel narrative of the walk (Alice & Katherine)
Becie’s perfume made from flowers picked by the A453
Fern & Sally’s display of old maps
Adaptation of Action Tracking (after David Fenton cited in
Haseman, B ("Rupture and Recognition: Identifying the
Performative Research Paradigm” Pgs 27-34 in Practice as
Research Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, Estelle
Barrett and Barbara Bolt (eds.), I.B. Taurus & Co.
(New York and London: 2007). This will isolate different
‘systems’ including smell, sound, physiological,
encounters. Also, inspired by the talk that Andy Abbott
gave at YSJ, a further category of thoughts/memories
triggered by environmental cues.
Tasks performed whilst exploring the limits of the city
(appropriate to the time and place) will draw out feelings
and potentially ‘worry’ the thresholds of participants,
placing us fully in the ‘Edgelands’, to better appreciate
their qualities, temporal, social, physical, emotional:
Using the seemingly arbitrary lines of borders on maps to
detourne participants
Observation/notation – behaviour
Visualisation – mapping
Concept/mind mapping
Notebooks & pens
Reflection in action – personal narratives
Reflective journal
Exposition of the wall (collective work) – Phoning
location to colleagues to show progress along the route, a
live map
Photography
Video capture (using headcam, still cameras with video
function, HD video camera with night vision)
Audio using Edirol RO9s
Video document combining the wall performance with
workshop documentation
Discussion
In this section I shall elaborate upon the workshop
findings, explain what I found, and add my own personal
interpretations, again, grouped around four areas: Format,
Collaboration, Leadership, What remains.
Format
In what ways might a workshop be a more effective means of
involving participants than instructional postcards?
Whereas postcards have the advantage of immediacy, the
tangible object and the opportunities afforded by a
well-crafted piece of text, the workshop format can
incorporate these whilst offering a multiplicity of
experiences and phases on engagement. The findings above
indicate that the breadth of activities that comprised the
workshop was welcomed by the group, including reading
various texts aloud to one another, following up
opportunities as they occurred and thereby going off-piste
(such as in the 1744 walk when I diverted the walk to
introduce the group to a ‘secret’ tunnel near the city
centre, and at various points made use of my own local
knowledge gleaned from my own reading and taking several
guided tours with local historians). Knowledge was also
shared with those beyond the group, such as people
encountered en route. These included the 80 year-old lady
who had lived on the Nottingham City/Gedling border for
over 50 years, the birdwatcher who allowed us to view a
rare owl that he was monitoring in a dead tree, Boots
security personnel who gently but firmly escorted us out
of the industrial complex, and the woman who invited us
into her home to peruse a Victorian map of what then
existed along the border between Nottingham and Beeston.
A further aspect of the workshop that proved successful
was the introduction and incorporation of different
approaches and extended knowledge, such as the session
delivered by my Fine Art colleague Emma Cocker, in which
she not only introduced her own area of interest to the
group, complete with a further set of artistic and
conceptual reference points, but also initiated us into
the practical work involving sightlines that she has
recently been engaged in with Austrian artist Nikolaus
Gansterer.
A further aspect can be identified as communitas, brought
about by the simple fact of putting a group of social
beings into a consensual environment over a sustained
period of time. A group of between 3 and 7 provided ample
novelty, people getting to know and to sharing new
experiences with one another, without being coerced into
dialogue as might be the case with only two participants.
The ‘relay’ nature of the walks, with people leaving and
joining as we progressed, also contributed to sociability,
as did the varied pacing, the sharing of roles among the
whole group, and the varied terrain passed through, which
provided ample stimulation throughout. Although this was
‘just’ a walk at times it felt extraordinary, a form of
quest and thereby challenge. A common appreciation of the
validity of walking as an art form, the gravitation
towards thresholds as ‘interesting places to be’, and the
anticipation of what might be just around the corner kept
momentum and motivation high. All felt a sense of purpose,
of personal and collective investment in the project. The
roles were rotated among the group and no-one baulked at
being given any particular role to perform, sure in the
knowledge that everyone else would get their turn. The
pivotal Stalker role was assumed in different ways,
according to the character and mood of the incumbent at
any point, but no-one abused the responsibility and all
were largely sensitive to the needs of others.
When the group was in the studio the wall became the
collective focal point, all reading the texts thereon and
gaining insights into one another’s perspective. Studio
discussions provided opportunities for dialogue around
themes such as personal ethics, and offered greater
capacity for criticality than independent, solitary
experience.
Various challenges emerged during the workshop, largely
around compromises necessary to continue to pursue paid
employment during the Summer Lodge. Despite the impetus
gained by fresh walkers joining during the walk, the
discussions and evaluations that took place in the studio
felt less satisfying when people were absent. There was
felt to be a lack of time to read and discuss underpinning
themes & practices. The Meditation walk I had intended
to lead could not be accommodated into the schedule, and
the induction process was sketchy at best for a couple of
late-comers. The demands of keeping a number of balls
simultaneously in the air was discussed, for example how
to successfully combine documenting with contemplation and
simply ‘being’. A ploy used to militate against this was
to limit the particular focus of Action Tracking to ten
minutes in every hour, but there was a feeling of
frustration that a particular ‘state’ of being could not
be fully occupied. This might be addressed by the
intervention of an authoritative outside eye. Likewise,
whilst in the latter stage of the longest of the walks,
there was a change of focus and a sense of the walk and
the requisite mindfulness having drifted off into the
future and personal agendas (ie. our respective beds). A
prearranged exit strategy might have been timely at this
point.
The workshop period could have been extended by
pre-meetings and photocopied set reading distributed
beforehand. The importance of having all participants
together at the outset cannot be underestimated, and
realistically all need to be involved in initial
discussions around personal goals and ambitions for the
workshop.
Regarding the walks, other models were proposed, including
a stricter version, making use of a smaller circuit
(perhaps 2 hours in duration), in which the Stalker’s word
is absolute and only they know where we are going.
Sections of the walk might be repeated, walkers might go
singly, and/or meet others coming from the opposite
direction. Interesting performance actions could follow
from this.
It was felt that 20 miles was the absolute maximum
possible in a single walk, effectively a circuit around
the borders of a small town. Five people was considered to
be the optimum number on a walk at any one time, in terms
of being cohesive, manageable, and maintaining
responsiveness to one another.
It was felt that space should be made to facilitate
engagement with people encountered en route, perhaps
setting up rendezvous in advance with people with local
knowledge.
During the course of the workshop we learned that
capabilities had been underestimated, but also that
H&S aspects need to considered more carefully, perhaps
accompanied by a trained First aider throughout. Insights
were gained into one another’s lives and of the lives of
those in the areas that we passed through. All seems to
become assimilated into the walk, passers-by, landscape,
one’s own mood swings.
The workshop has demonstrated a capacity for collective
action, for sharing knowledge, and as such feels to be
sustainable and repeatable.
To what extent might the essential content of the workshop
be replicable in other settings?
An important element in the success of the Beating the
Bounds workshop at the Summer Lodge was the capability,
generosity and commitment of the participants. This might
be due to a number of factors:
That they are student practitioners who already know my
practice and thus have effectively been inducted and
self-selected.
They have an appreciation of walking as a valid medium in
contemporary art practice
That in the Fine Art studios at least they are on familiar
territory
They are high-performing students who have been inculcated
into typical practices on the programme, such as critical
seminars, and as a consequence can bring a high level of
critique and awareness of diverse cultural reference
points to proceedings.
That the participants were to some extent hand-picked went
some way to guaranteeing their commitment to the venture.
Two of the group, Sally and Fern had been in my level 2
tutor group; Effy, Emily and Katherine had done previous
workshops with me; and Alice had sought my advice on
various practical issues during her second year. Becie is
a PhD student whose interests overlap with my own, and who
participated in the Summer Lodge 2010. Thus I had prior
knowledge of them all and felt they had the requisite
qualities.
There are no guarantees that in another context the
participants would be as capable, generous or committed.
This could perhaps be established through a rigorous
selection process, but running a workshop is not a
risk-free activity.
Regarding the environment in which the workshop takes
place, I can bring prior knowledge of Nottingham into the
frame through having lived in the city for 25 years. This
would not be the case in other cities and thus if I were
to deliver this elsewhere I might need to involve local
historians and/or shift the emphasis of the workshop to
make more effective use of local practitioners. Encounters
with passers by may take place in any location, with
linguistic and cultural considerations taken into account.
Such encounters could be pre-planned; perhaps participants
could enter people’s homes by pre-arrangement (as the
group entered my house and that of the couple with the
map, were offered a drink by the old lady, taken into the
Boots security vehicle, as well as visiting three pubs in
which interactions with local residents took place).
Borders are ubiquitous and borderline activities and
rituals can conceivably be devised for most settings, with
the caveat of the 20-mile maximum distance achievable in a
single session.
Are the approaches applied consistent with the BA/MA level
of the practitioners involved?
There was a level of maturity and experience commensurate
with degree-level study that facilitated proceedings.
No-one baulked at taking on the Stalker role, nor engaging
with Action Tracking or some of the more ‘public’ (and
embarrassing) performance actions. All were familiar with
the contexts for the workshop, having studied contemporary
arts for at least one year at BA level, and Foundation
previously. Having worked with FE students, and for
Creative Partnerships in a secondary school setting I find
it hard to imagine such a workshop for younger or a lower
level of students. Likewise the workshop plays to the
strengths of students on an interdisciplinary,
self-directed contemporary art programme. I can imagine
running something similar with professional practitioners
from related fields of dance and theatre, and
undergraduate students from other creative arts courses.
That said, the students also either knew one another or
knew of one another, so there was little required by way
of icebreaker exercises and inductions. A stricter version
could be applied, but the willingness of the students to
trust one another and me is most likely down to our shared
environment of NTU Fine Art. As for working with the
general public, I can only envisage this working as a
heavily-directed and brief exercise of a far simpler
nature.
Commitment
Does the combination of reading/discussion/physical
activity deepen engagement?
The scope of reference material and activities engaged in
during the workshop was deliberately broad, to capture all
that might be of use and to retain the possibility for
unpredictable connections to be made. The main impetus for
this approach came from when I was writing ‘Trial’ with
the performance company Reckless Sleepers and found I
achieved a high level of immersion when I wrote during the
day and read pre-selected relevant texts each evening. In
last year’s Summer Lodge 2010 I expanded this idea,
organizing my activities and those of the students into
morning and afternoon sessions, one of which would involve
practical activity and the other a mind-mapping
‘wall-performance’ exercise. This seemed to draw more
deeply from all concerned and the results felt quite
exhaustive.
In the 2011 ‘Beating the Bounds’ workshop I wanted
participants to reach the point of immersion and begin to
make connections and take the project into their lives and
practices. Due to the constraints of time outlined above
this was only a partial success, but offers a way forward
for future workshops.
I would like to extend the time devoted to reading and
discussion, and to keep the group together throughout, as
much as possible. Collaborations took place between
participants that I would have liked to push further,
perhaps by getting each participant to work with all the
others. Also the areas of interest/practice that each
brings to the endeavour could be harnessed more
systematically, with each tasked with exploring a specific
angle on the activities and theories behind them.
Performing a critical group reading of a key film such as
Stalker, and doing something similar with salient reading
material would give a common basis to our experience, that
could be referred back to in the nature of the actions on
the walk. So much interesting material is now available to
view via youtube.com, ubuweb.com and so on that extracts
can readily be identified and subjected to a deep
‘reading’.
The wall became a repository for the text, image and
scraps of found material that were thrown up by the walks,
and provided an interface between the boundary of the city
and studio-based activities. Some reading was performed
during the walk, most notably of Kaprow by Alice at the
weir, and this could be explored further, perhaps in the
form of recordings on ipods, to be listened to
collectively (but also individually) on certain stretches
of the terrain. There was opportunity for a greater
emphasis upon the folk ritual of Beating the Bounds,
something I introduced the group to but that we did not
actively pursue.
The 1744 walk took us around the city limits of 257 years
ago and proved a revelation, practically pulling the
ground from under our feet as we described orchards and
dwellings that had long since vanished from the landscape.
Such live readings that produce a dislocation in time (and
potentially in space) are something I have played with
before (including my York in Sepia series, as well as ipod
walks in Somerset and Nottingham) and will explore
further.
Which research methods have proved successful?
Participatory action research could be considered as the
lead research method. Jupp (2006:216) writes ‘Within PAR
people themselves are researchers and the knowledge
generated during the research process is used to create
action or improvements that benefit them directly. The
role of the outsider professional or researcher (myself in
this instance) is not that of an expert but a mere
facilitator of the research/action process’. He warns
against the misuse of PAR in which participants may be
used as ‘puppets’ by the researcher. I believe I overcame
any notion of manipulation by being transparent with the
participants regarding my agenda.
In Action Research terms the workshop will undoubtedly
result in ‘new practices (and) changed behaviour patterns’
among the participants (including myself) as arts
practitioners, if nothing else. PhD student and
participant Becie Gamble reflected on the workshop as ‘an
excellent example of a Participatory Action Research
methodology … in your writing and approach - especially by
making the research process and questioning so open and in
collective documentation…it is so experimental, live and
fluid.’
Participant observation was another method periodically
applied during the workshop, overlapping with Action
Tracking to a large extent. Most of the participants were
engaged in PA and their reflections reveal interesting
insights into the group dynamic. However the encounters
with other people en route may have provided a rich source
of ethnographic material, had this been identified
beforehand. As it was the focus of the fieldworkers
largely overlooked this resource.
The research methods identified as pertinent at the outset
generally proved to be so, and were applied effectively.
The walks themselves acted as ‘containers’ or episodes in
which narrative phases of activity could be readily
evaluated. The sense of historical displacement and of a
landscape in continual flux, were ever-present.
Performance actions were successfully performed in diverse
locations and in different relationships to the border.
Several were devised in situ, whilst others were presented
when an environment was felt to be appropriate. Certain
Stalkers demonstrated more sustained interest in pursuing
performance actions than others, although Action Tracking
was applied fairly rigorously, almost as a default. It is
a consequence of opening up a decision-making role to all
members of a group that it may be interpreted in different
ways, and this should be seen as a strength of the
project. However if I am to repeat the workshop I may
devote more time within the introductory phase to explore
the function of the performance actions, and to foreground
them. Of those that were envisioned beforehand and not
used, the Meditation walk was the one I most regret,
having the potential to bring participants into the
present in a way that could have restored focus when it
had apparently slipped. However I was as weary as the
other participants and neglected to apply it, although it
remains a valuable tool for future use.
One of the opportunities afforded by working with fellow
arts practitioners is the potential for sharing knowledge
of the contemporary arts and related areas. Reading
material was pooled and circulated amongst the group prior
to and throughout the workshop. Some texts were read aloud
to the group (ie. Allan Kaprow interview in gallery text
to accompany his exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum in
1967 & Umberto Eco’s ‘on the impossibility of
drawing a map of the empire on a scale of 1 to 1’).
Theoretical writing has potential to ‘come alive’ when
carried out alongside associated physical activity. For
example the notion of the ‘map and the territory’ was made
particularly explicit. Likewise being able to watch
Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ as a group and to dissect it
immediately afterwards (as well as over subsequent days
when its relevance was manifest) was advantageous.
Various technical facilities were utilized with varying
degrees of effectiveness during the workshop. Digital
recorders facilitated live note-taking, although issues
remain with the time consuming nature of transcription. It
might be worth exploring software packages such as Dragon
Dictation to accelerate this part of the process. And the
inherent inaccuracy of the programmes might even provide
interesting randomised effects. Notebooks & pens
sufficed for most people, despite the difficulties of
writing on the move. The video document made use of
hand-written as well as transcribed text and it did seem
to transmit another layer of experience. Still cameras
were brought out but largely remained secreted in bags and
pockets, the result being that large gaps existed in the
narrative of the documentation. As each photograph
operates as a trace of a performance and almost as an
extension of touch, this could be seen as a missed
opportunity. But as Ralph Fischer (2008) has written in
relation to capturing the atmosphere of a place ‘Each
release of the shutter is… a small experience of failure,
a futile attempt to hold fast the fleeting moment’ and
even a multiplicity of images (such as a video recording)
still falls far short of the profundity of the instant(s)
in which they were captured. The term ‘captured’ seems
highly appropriate, as though an image in ‘captivity’
seems barely alive in relation to in its ‘wild’ state.
Video capture likewise (using headcam, still cameras with
video function, HD video camera with night vision) was
intermittent. Footage was often jerky and hard to watch
although again, this reflected the nature of the terrain
and the embodied experience of the documenter. The video
document of the wall performance was similarly affected by
the terrain (albeit in miniature). To operate the camera
on a horizontal surface would have made for a more stable
result but transferring the wall map from the vertical to
the horizontal was out of the question.
The wall rapidly became a collective work, as participants
plotted key moments and added photographs, bits of text
and objects. These accretions made for a fascinating
articulation of the collective experience of the walks and
many Summer lodge participants were fascinated by it. We
never got around to phoning through our current location
to colleagues in the studios to chart our progression
along the border though.
Other collaborative and solo works were created by
participants in response to experiences on the workshop.
Alice & Katherine manipulated group photos with those
of locations taken on the walks and from the web on
Photoshop to create an amusing parallel narrative of the
walk. Becie created a bottle of scent made from flowers
and leaves picked by the side of the A453 trunk road. The
result was surprisingly appealing, albeit with a faint
undertone of something industrial. Fern & Sally raided
an old bookshop for its maps of the city from various
periods in its development and displayed them on the final
day of the Summer Lodge.
Action Tracking was a method borrowed from theatre
practitioner David Fenton (2007) who proposed five ‘codes’
of ‘screen product, music, gesture, artefact and light’. I
translated some of these into ‘sound, physiology and
visual’ and they were given a psychogoeographical twist by
the addition of further ‘systems’ such as smell and
encounters. Emotions and memories were added, inspired by
artist Andy Abbott (from his talk at York St John).
Environments were mapped on an hourly basis as the
participants collectively passed through them. Ten minutes
was an optimum amount of time to devote to a task that
could be quite intense and demanding on the senses.
It has to be said that despite really pushing for more and
deeper evaluation sessions, the realities of the working
environment and the consequences of our own exertions made
it hard to devote sufficient time to them. The use of
photographs taken earlier in the day, projected on a loop
without selection to be stopped and selected by individual
participants to act as foci for group discussion never
happened. Thus marginal and forgotten occurrences were not
subject to interrogation and opportunities were lost. This
was in part due to the logistics of assembling the slide
show, but also because the walks themselves were so
demanding and finished so late in the day (or night) that
an immediate follow-up discussion and evaluation was
impractical.
Live journaling and the keeping of dream diaries did not
seem to capture the imagination of the majority of the
participants. Had the workshop been over a longer period
it might have been more viable to foreground them. There
was a slight unease at the potentially intrusive nature of
these methods but all were reassured that they need not
submit anything to the group that they would prefer to
keep private.
The role of witness, to provide validity, protection and
an outside eye to the project and the walks in particular
did not fully materialize. This was partly due to the
combining of the role with documenter, to which it may be
connected. However it became apparent that, as with Action
Tracking, one task at a time is preferable. Future
workshops and walks will provide opportunities for further
exploration of what this role might mean. To some extent
Becie Gamble fulfilled the role with regard to the
project’s research methodologies and studio practice.
Is commitment to the project deepened or lessened by its
physical and durational aspects?
Commitment to the walks was sustained for long periods,
but it inevitably waned and collapsed when a level of
exhaustion was reached, after 20 miles and 12 hours of
continuous input. Using ones body in an artwork invariably
requires a level of commitment, and striding out across a
hitherto unknown landscape can feel heroic, evoking tales
of courage and survival; one feels part of historical and
present-day humanity. Anticipation of what is to come
drives you on to a point, but when one ceases to
appreciate what one is confronted with a threshold has
been crossed. Anticipation of that very threshold was a
key part of the preparation for the walks and therefore we
devoted a significant portion of the Action Tracking
towards it.
It was interesting to note the lack of concern about
missing sections, or even of completing the whole circuit
of the city boundary. After the second phase of the walk,
in Clifton, several of the group voiced the desire to
catch the last bus and return home. Those who had wished
to continue reflected for a short while and agreed. The
group simply ran out of momentum.
Several of the participants expressed feelings of
alienation from the group. For example Alice joined the
first walk at 9pm and after two hours had painful feet but
felt she could not reasonably complain to the others
knowing they had walked for 8 hours by that stage. She
wrote ‘The group are separate individuals’. Effy wrote of
feeling an outsider because she was recording in
Hungarian. When Emily kept asking if she was alright, the
feeling of being looked after (but also watched) made her
uneasy.
One of the students who signed up and attended the initial
sessions feared that the physical and durational demands
of the walks might be too much for her and sensibly
dropped out of these beforehand.
Does communitas emerge in heterotopia?
The border of Nottingham city functions as a heterotopia
(‘place of otherness’ in Latin) in which our (mildly)
‘deviant’ behaviour is well-placed. Borders are invariably
contested spaces, even when considered in relation to the
banalities of local government. The borderland makes an
ideal home for the Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs), new
and impermanent territories on the boundary of established
zones celebrated by Hakim Bey and others. In effect our
little ambulant party functions as a peripatetic
autonomous zone, our mission defined by the abstract
border and our collective purpose upon and along it. In a
sense the psychogeographical aspects of the project are
psychotopology, ‘dowsing’ for potential TAZs as sites
conducive to our performance actions. The people we
encounter become absorbed into our game, as Ken Kesey
might say ‘part of our movie’.
‘The social needs to be understood as an embodied field:
society is felt, enjoyed and suffered, as well as
rationally thought’ (Nelson, R 2010:122)
Alice confessed to feeling ‘invincible’ with so many
people and there was an undeniable feeling of not only
‘safety in numbers’ but of claiming something we had a
right to, be it the hours of darkness or the parallel
notion of the city imperceptible to others. In ‘The City
and the City’ China Miéville (2009) describes a uniquely
divided city in which two communities live their lives
within the same physical space yet invisible to one
another, and in which for one to ‘see’ the other would
constitute a ‘breach’, a capital offense. The feelings of
safety and threat as we wove our way around the outskirts
did confirm us as being both ‘in’ and ‘out’ of place. Even
as we treated the border with a certain disdain, skirting
certain sections through their impracticality or our own
fatigue, it took on a magical quality and to deviate from
it was simultaneously no big deal and failure. We were
forever in its thrall.
The initiation for this process took place in the earliest
stages of the project, in psyching myself up to take a
group to the zone. Induction involved many of the group,
but not all, and although both people who joined us late
in the evening at Moor Bridge tramstop were committed,
there was a schism that only partially healed. In this
instance I feel the collective anticipation and advance
visualization of a liminoid experience is a significant
aspect of the group experience. This is reminiscent of
Clawson & Knetsch’s (quoted in Murphy 1985) five
phases of tourist travel in which the initial planning
phase can be ‘a most enjoyable part of a trip’.
Several participants recorded their feelings of having
broken through personal thresholds and their pride at
doing so. It was felt that ‘the group helped people
out-perform’ themselves and for a time there was a
distinct sense of ‘flow’ (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990) or
completely-focused motivation. This phase is evident on
the DVD (Appendix 2) when night starts to fall and the
group enter the woods, approaching a threshold and
bursting through it.
The mood shifted by the time the group had crossed
Broxtowe Park and became disoriented and disparate, and
the trail went cold. We found ourselves on a roundabout
that wasn’t represented on the map and this seemed to sap
our spirits. The group dynamic dissipated as people
retreated into themselves, bodies and equipment felt
heavier, feet became sore and the cold began to permeate
everything. At this point a communal activity such as
sharing a meal might have salvaged the mood. Had we
considered it earlier, with expert advice (such as from
the artist Becky Beinart) we might have gathered edible
plants on our travels and turned them into a feast at this
point.
Despite picking up the trail again, and reaching the
motorway (a definite high point), what communitas there
had been dissipated into a strung-out group plodding
through ploughed fields, taking an age to climb over a
fence, followed by an interminable practically silent
route march to Wollaton and thence, by taxi and first bus,
into town. Individuals started to get tetchy and became
irritated by one another’s vulnerabilities. Each pursued
their own journey, the most direct route to their beds and
sleep. The ambulant party was definitely over.
Despite meeting again that afternoon to evaluate what had
taken place, it took until the middle of the following
week for the group to want to face another walk.
For how long and in what circumstances can liminoid
activity be sustained?
Although the group perform a rite of passage that conforms
to Victor Turner’s structure of ‘separation, transition
and re-aggregation’ the performance is voluntary and
playful and involves no change in social status, and
therefore can be more accurately described as liminoid.
Human beings seem to instinctively gravitate towards
liminoid experience, in their apparent desire to play,
seek out ‘thrills’ of various kinds and we are no
different in this regard. Depending upon one’s viewpoint
liminoid activity may or may not be subversive; endeavour
such as ours could be perceived as operating within the
freedoms of Western liberal democracy. Following a border
more or less accurately not only draws attention to the
futility of such an action but also the constructed (and
hegemonic) nature of the border, and thereby all borders.
Might the impact of ‘bordering’ have some longevity and
capacity for social change?
Emma Cocker (2012) writes ‘Inhabiting the specificity of
one liminal landscape – the border – provokes the
production of new ways of operating, which in turn, might
contribute to a more critical approach to the navigation
or negotiation of the wider cultural landscape’ the making
‘explicit the connection between spatial and social
manifestations of liminality’.
I view the line of the border as a tightrope, to be played
with and upon. To perform a balancing act upon it, between
territories, functions as a form of play. Whilst such
actions do not cross the boundary into illegality they are
questionable. To be out walking at night arouses
suspicion, being difficult to place in familiar contexts
(although a policemen that asked what we were up to when
he encountered us at 1am seemed pretty matter of fact, as
though he encountered such things most evenings).
In the evaluation the feeling was that the walks had
successfully taken participants outside their familiar
student perspective on the city, and their everyday routes
and activities. Individually and collectively we had made
connective leaps between fragments of knowledge, forming
new pathways. As long as we could summon the energy to
remain mindful we remained invulnerable, the border was
ours, no-one else was interested.
Perhaps the state of flow comes with its own risks,
overwhelming and causing us to forget our sense of
purpose? Whereas we had been Action Tracking for ten
minutes at a time on every hour, during the
nightfall/woods phase this was deliberately discontinued
by Katherine, the Stalker at that point. She resumed it
when we emerged from the golf course at 11.30pm, and it
took place again at 12.30am and 1.30am, only to be dropped
altogether under duress and fatigue. Fern felt that some
reached their limit around ten to 1 and by 1.30am public
transport options were long gone. At this point liminoid
activity ceased to be voluntary, all becoming liminal and
vaguely threatening, or at least an irritation.
Collective speculation demands confidence both in oneself
and others, and it demands energy to sustain. Energy may
be derived from food and drink, but also from those around
you. The role of a witness/outside eye, not
combined/confused with that of documenter, might have
delayed the point at which attention turned inwards and
people opted out. Perhaps new blood at key points,
possibly fresh from nightclubs, might be of benefit?
It was interesting to note that at this stage nobody
mourned the end of the first walk, that it was left
unfinished. This betrays ambivalence between the
collective desire to complete the entire circuit and lack
of concern about missing sections of it, or even of
completing the whole thing.
It is interesting to compare our activity with that of
tourists, who like us deliberately seek out strangeness
and alienation. We find joy in such regions, as evidenced
by the palpable excitement (and hysteria) evident when we
had threshold experiences like plunging into the
woods/darkness, getting over the tricky fence, or after
the encounter with Boots’ security personnel We are
liminal figures in a landscape designed not for
pedestrians like us but for motor vehicles and their
owners (provided they remain inside their vehicle). In
‘Tourist behaviour: Themes and conceptual schemes’ Philip
L. Pearce (2005:25) describes the willful separation from
the individual’s ‘normal’ state ‘at home’ into the
liminoid, an elective state of transition in which life is
abnormal, often puzzling, and yet in which possibilities
are expanded. Roles may become inverted, tourists may feel
as though they are ‘king for a day’, or revert to
childlike behaviour before their inevitable reaggregation
into ‘normal’ life, renewed in some way by their
experience.
In ‘Beating the bounds’ we too are attempting to cross the
limen and pass into ‘a period and area of ambiguity’
(Turner), The border has status, as state mind, of
identity, or legal jurisdiction (piracy). Whereas tourists
seek out the exotic ‘other’ we seem to be seeking the
exotic in the familiar, perhaps a more environmentally
sustainable model?
Changes of use result in ruins, the unconscious of a city,
its memory.
Leadership
How light a touch can I adopt as originator and
facilitator of the project?
Emma’s workshop gave me a chance to sit among the
participants and let someone else dictate proceedings.
Otherwise I was the authority figure throughout, no matter
how much roles were shared and I tried to blend into the
background.
Whilst new experiences were shared and the group responded
to one another as respectful equals there was no escaping
the fact that I had lived in the city for 25 years, have
at least 20 more years of life experience than them, had
devised this set or experiences/ordeals and am or have
been a tutor to most of the participants. Had a problem
arisen I would have felt compelled to step in and deal
with it, despite my desire to be non-interventionist. Even
during encounters with passers-by I felt the need to front
things, such as explaining the walk to curious policemen.
Although the students were proactive I felt a need to keep
them gainfully employed, to provide them with an
experience. They chose to follow me on this fruitless
quest and, after all, I was testing out a participatory
workshop.
I might have assigned a deputy to lead proceedings, and
perhaps then I could have avoided being present for some
of the walks and discussions. If a suitable Stalker was
encouraged to operate on a more dictatorial basis I might
be able to blend in more successfully with fellow
participants. If someone with local knowledge was brought
in that might conceivably take it beyond my
control/vision?
Having said that, perhaps having a central Abramovic-like
figure dictating proceedings is unproblematic, if their
aloofness is constructive?
Can participants own desires, resistances and knowledge be
harnessed and made use of within the project?
Despite the need for a workshop leader in a project of
this nature, there seems to be considerable autonomy for
participants. For those with the confidence to express
their wishes to the group the project was very open.
Several Stalkers demanded that the group perform
uncomfortable or strenuous activities, such as running, or
insisted that actions were performed even when
participants were tired. Local knowledge was shared,
creative responses were made, both collaboratively or
individually. Borderline activities were conceived and
carried out, encounters with passers-by took place in
which various participants were active.
Again I feel it is imperative for all to be involved in
the initial group discussion about what each of us hoped
to get from the workshop. For those who missed this
session the opportunities to steer the project were
limited. Alice did write about setting aside her own ideas
for a while, potentially an interesting strategy, but
hopefully resulting in some sort of synthesis at the
culmination of the project.
If reading was introduced at an earlier stage, and a
pre-meeting set up that stressed the open-ness of the
project, there would be a greater chance for those who
wished to share their own reading and research, and
articulate their desires.
An interesting (albeit uncomfortable) development might be
of a Stalker who was not a benign guide but rather with
malign (or at least mischievous) intent. Perhaps more
emphasis could be placed upon the people we encounter,
allowing more space to do so. But perhaps those who
purport to have local knowledge are untrustworthy?
What remains
How might the material generated by the participants
during and after the workshop be used/published most
effectively?
The project has generated a large volume of material, the
majority from participants, but some gleaned during
encounters with passers by. This material is raw and
uneven, making it hard to publish in a single consistent
format. I have tried to overcome this by editing a video
that combines the diverse threads of documentation
including the results of Action Tracking intercut with
footage captured with a microscope video camera of a
‘performance’ of the wall map.
The video, at over 2 hours in length, is designed for a
viewer to enter and leave at any point. It has been edited
without regard for entertainment value, is comparatively
unprocessed, retaining as much of the original footage and
information as possible. Whilst seeking to avoid the
introduction of post-event, non-diegetic elements such as
music I have still been responsible for creative
decisions. The absence of imported materials represents my
appreciation of what is already under one’s feet, the
overlooked or ‘found’ object, sound or gesture. Text is
cut up as opposed to being shown in a linear fashion. I
enjoy the effect of dislocated text, accentuating detail
rather as opposed to the big picture, the latter breaking
down (ie in relation to text)
I removed sections of the original footage in which the
camerawork was especially shaky or where I felt the
footage to be superfluous. It is also organized according
to my own personal memory of the sequence of events and
their significance.
Speeded up and slowed down to represent the pace at
certain points.
Included silence with image (maps) and sound with black
screen, turns viewer’s attention towards the sonic,
creating their own mental images
Playful, (ie referencing the ‘Meat Grinder’ section of
Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ in the run up to crossing the
railway bridge) and lacking obvious climax, it feels
somewhat akin to both walk and wall performance. Viewers
confront their own thresholds and experience something of
the walkers’ experience, lugging video cameras around.
I elected to represent the findings of the workshop
participants, in particular psychogeographical aspects
from Action Tracking, without reducing them to a single
voice. The video provides a means of presenting a
psychogeography of Nottingham’s border regions in the form
of moving and still images, text, soundtrack comprising
found sounds, and spoken word. In this social research, we
have recorded changes of mood, responses to changing
landscapes and the time of day. Invariably it proves
difficult to separate systems ie psysiological and
emotional. The idea is that individuals give their own
perspective and these are reunited in the video.
This is a document of the wall performance using a
microscope camera, including its jerky and out of focus
elements, as it negotiates the landscape of the wall in
its attempt to follow the border, forced to climb over
nails and other obstacles. In the case of the microscope
camera I required the widescreen monitor connected to it
to see what I was doing, while I was in the process of
documentation, like a surgical procedure. To borrow Nathan
Walker’s (2011) terminology, mine was a
‘para-performance’, a document of the recording of a
journey around a line on a wall map, itself a document of
a walk that was an attempt to enlarge (by means of walking
and being ‘present’ inside) a map of the territory to 1:1
scale. The wall map is a map for a new performance work,
an approach, a new pathway to be followed. In this regard
we were forensically retracing the process of the
map-makers (as in an earlier photographic performance
project that I created several years ago, ‘After
Denison’). Of course all attempts to map anything are
doomed to failure, as nothing seems to stand still for
long enough.
And yet in a sense what is significant is what rubs off on
us and the surroundings we pass through, including the
people we encountered and/or who encountered us. We are
marking the boundary at certain points, by our presence,
by overwriting the line of it, committing it to memory and
local folklore. My sense is that the video might also
function as documentation as proposition, a spur for
others to locate and potentially follow their own borders.
Conclusion/Recommendations
Since I have discussed the findings of the project at
length in the previous section I do not feel a need to
re-iterate them here. My impression two months after the
workshop concluded and I have been able to fully process
all material is that it has substantially met my aims:
Participatory experiences were designed, rigorously
tested, documented and evaluated
I worked intensively with willing volunteers and offered
opportunities for liminoid experience
I explored the nature of participation
Tacit knowledge of urban/suburban space and behavior was
shared
Participants’ own desires and resistances were explored
and utilised
Participants did create their own work in response
to/within the workshop
In the course of carrying out the workshop and in the
subsequent analysis of it numerous unforeseen outcomes
have also materialized (described in the Discussion
above), a consequence of the open-ness of the format of
the workshop, the rotation of roles and the liminoid state
in which we were operating.
If I were to conduct a project of this scale in the future
I would aim to adopt a similarly methodical practice-led
approach. This has enabled me to dig down into the
findings and produce outcomes that will undoubtedly be of
value in future workshops that I design.
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With thanks to:
Jim Boxall
Emma Cocker
Sally Croft
Alice Gale-Feeny
Katherine Fishman
Becie Gamble
Jon Gillie
Effy Harle
Fern Mayo
Sam Mercer
Emily Mowatt
Matthew Reason
colleagues at NTU
and all those we met en route