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Salvaged Layers: A Collaborative Site Specific
Performance
TIMOTHY GRAY
Ball State University
MELLI HOPPE
Butler University
This studio challenged students to explore issues of craft, making and place through a series of full scale built interventions in a historic Indianapolis theatre which had been gutted in anticipation of a planned renovation. The raw state of the theatre’s interior gave students a rich and evocative palette to en- gage while simultaneously liberating them from the conventional notions of stage and audience. The project was an interdisciplinary collaboration between two groups of students from separate Uni- versities, a group of eleven fourth year architecture students led by faculty coordinator Timothy Gray and a nine Butler University theatre students led by faculty director Melli Hoppe. PROJECT By positioning this project as a cross disciplinary col- laboration it gave students the opportunity to explore ways in which the different disciplines could creative- ly engage one another while simultaneously ground- ing their activities in the specific circumstance of the site. The architecture students drew on a rich mix of precedents to inform their approach which included looking to the work of such architects as Elizabeth Diller, Thom Mayne, Zaha Hadid and Bernard Ts- chumi, all of whom have been involved directly with performance as an art form but also foreground the idea of spatial performativity in their work as practic- ing architects. Tschumi famously stated, “there is no place without event”^1 , in his advocacy of an archi- tecture “concerned with spatial discourse associated with time, action and movement”.^2
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In addition, the architecture students looked to the work of environmental and installation artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, Walter Pichler, David Ireland and Robert Irwin for cues on how generate built work derivative of site. There was no formal program and the students were un-accustomed to the absence of a functional agenda. Students were encouraged to distill the qualities of the site that resonated with them, to empower emotion over intellect for their initial response, and to then propose what Robert Irwin might refer to as a “site conditioned response”, where “the sculptural response draws all of its cues (reasons for being) from its surroundings”.^3 The theatre students modeled their approach after such precedents as the Welsh performance group Brith Gof, whose “placeevents”….operated within architectures that were not backdrops” but rather “ the performance and place were integrally invested in one another”^4. Inspired by the book Theatre / Archeology by Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks (^5) , the Theatre students began their process by re- searching history, folklore, hearsay, memoirs, and biographies to create material for their performanc- es. In addition, the students reviewed the work of other groups known for their contributions to the field of site-specific theatre, including the Redmoon Theatre in Chicago, Bread and Puppet Theatre in Vermont, Forced Entertainment from England and Elan Wales, The European Live Arts Network. Richard Schechner, founder of Live Arts Theatre, coined the term “environmental theatre” to de- scribe site specific performance. Schechner for- mulated a series of “axioms for environmental theatre”^6 , which included the following; the spatial implications of which were of particular interest to the architecture students:
- “All the space is used for performance’ and ‘all the space is used for audience”
- “One element is not submerged for the sake of others.’ The performer is no more important than the other audible and visual elements”^7 As suggested by Schechner’s axioms, the entire building became thought of as the site for the per- formance, there was no distinction between stage and audience. In addition, the installations the architecture students were challenged to design could have their own significance and identity, cre- ating synergy with but not necessarily in service to the performance. PROCESS Figure 1 : Theatre students documenting movement and light studies with the “SWOPE”
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The architecture students began their investiga- tions by researching the history of the building through an analytical analysis of past uses, his- tory of modifications and so on, but also through an emotional analysis of how the building existed in the present. The students were asked to under- stand the history of the place as it was embedded in the patina of the walls; to understand and ap- preciate the smells, textures and rhythms of the theatre as they existed in the moment. Students were challenged to respond to these cues and to propose built interventions designed to reveal and amplify these existing conditions. Since access to the theatre was limited, all proj- ects had to accommodate a one-week window for installation and removal, a significant constraint. In addition, salvaged fabric from the recently de- molished RCA dome was made available to the students, material investigations interrogating the fabric informed student proposals and lent a coher- ence to the collective. The initial design ideas generated by the architec- ture students were then shared with the Butler stu- dents on a facebook site set up for the project. The theatre students, in turn, videotaped movement studies and dialogue in response to the images, and linked these to the same site. As the architecture students developed their designs, process models and full-scale material investigations, these stud- ies continued to be posted for review and comment by the Butler students and other interested parties. The theatre students posted their work as it evolved in a similar manner, using video and recorded dia- logue. In this way the students entered into a re- mote collaboration (the two schools are a little over an hours drive apart), each group informing and in- fluencing (but neither dictating) the activities of the other. Throughout the project the students at the two Universities used a variety of media to inter- act and collaborate on the project, including Skype, Facebook, YouTube, and SoundCloud. PERFORMANCE Some of the architecture student proposals, such as the “Choppa”, by Jay Weeks and Austin Lucari (fig. 2 btm. right; fig. 3 left), were derivative of the conditions of the theatre but existed as discrete ob- jects in the space. The Choppa scrapes on the bare concrete floor as it rotates, periodically tensioning Figure 3 : The Theatre students interact with the architecture students, work during the performance; from left to right; Joe Esbenshade with the “Choppa; Stephanie Gray and Amanda Miller interact with and project through and onto “Tensioned Layers” by Greg Hittler
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and releasing with a sharp bang. In this piece, the tensioning of the rods as they rotate against a fixed steel plate also completes a circuit which trig- gers a short burst of intense light from the center of the apparatus (the effect similar to a strobe). The Choppa calibrates the scale of the space both through sight and the reverberation of the sound. Other student proposals directly engaged the exist- ing conditions such as the “Perch” by Paul Reynolds (fig 2 top) , which discretely attaches itself to an ex- isting opening, celebrating the moment of penetra- tion through the wall while simultaneously respect- ing the integrity of the theatre by attaching through an elaborately contrived compression system, re- quiring no physical connection (violation)to the ex- isting wall. The uncomfortably dramatic cantilever of the perch confronts and amplifies the audience members’ understanding of the existing condition. Still other student proposals, such as “Strata” from Luke Haas, Mark Vanden Akker and Brad Wanack (fig. 4), were site specific in the most literal way, actually manipulating the base building condition. In this group proposal, a bay of ceiling joists was pains- takingly removed then re-attached to a series of wa- ter jet fabricated hinges, then counterweighted and allowed to pivot vertically through a series of cables and pulleys. Mirroring the realities of practice, the student’s design needed to be modified to address some concerns raised by the building owner, and to accommodate some of the existing base building conditions discovered throughout the process. Fluo- rescent tubes suspended between the ceiling joists completes this installation, which confronts ones un- derstanding of the space as a static, rectangular vol- ume, celebrating and revealing the previously con- cealed depth defined by the roof trusses overhead. Just as the history of the theatre was embedded in the patina of its walls, the students sought to celebrate the iterative nature of their process by re-introducing the process back into the finished work. In one instance, the Ball Sate students kept a digital log of recorded sounds from the actual fabrication of the work, and using Garage Band software mixed the sounds (of chop saws, drills grinders etc.) into an abstracted sound track used at the beginning of the performance, played as a background as the performers interacted with the installations. In another instance, a student sal- vaged sheet goods that had been used as a jig and work surface during the fabrication of another student’s work, and digitally processed the mate- rial and re-introduced them as a finished product complete with screw holes, burn marks and paint splatter marking its previous use (fig. 5). Figure 4: “Strata”, by Mark Vanden Akker, Brad Wanek, and Luke Haas, allows the performers to actually manipulate the base building condition.
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fore the event to see the work being fabricated, which was extremely helpful, but with the work in various states of completion and remote from the site, still limiting. Since access to the building was restricted to six days prior to the event, and it took considerable time to transport and install the work, the ability of the theatre students to rehearse and develop movements with the finished pieces was minimal, and this understandably proved frustrat- ing to the performers throughout the course of the semester. With the notable exception of the SWOPE piece previously described (fig. 1), the per- formers had very limited access to the installations prior to the event. With that said, there was a tremendous energy in the theatre the week before the event as the archi- tecture students were working (installing) along- side the theatre students (rehearsing) well into the night. Much came together in the final week, but in some cases there remained a disjunction between the narratives generated by the theatre students and the physical qualities of the installations. In retrospect it would also be interesting to re-visit a similar project as a collaboration between archi- tects and a dance company, who’s movements and choreography might tend to stem more freely from the qualities of the built work, as opposed to the theatre students who develop characters and nar- rative as part of their approach. It’s interesting to note that despite the concep- tual nature of the exercise, when asked to reflect on the project many of the architecture student’s comments centered around gaining “practical” skills and “real world” knowledge. We take this as a reflection of the complex logistics required to de- sign, detail, build transport and install built work while simultaneously managing a fixed budget and schedule, rather than a reference to the conceptual framework provided the students at the outset of the project. One of the interesting potentials of a project such as this is the ability to bridge between the pragmatic and the abstract in ways that are very tangible and provide valuable lessons to the students involved on many different levels. With all that said the intensive semester for all in- volved was a great success and a good learning ex- perience. In general, the students were very posi- tive and pleased with the semester, proud of what they had accomplished and grateful to have gained some insight into another creative discipline. The architecture students came away with a host of new skills and an understanding of the implications of their designs realized at full scale. The architec- ture students were reminded that buildings do not exist simply as objects, but instead are environ- ments defined by human activity. ENDNOTES 1 Tschuni, Bernard; “Space and Events”,The Discourse of Events (London : Architectural Association 1983). 2 Kahn, Omar; Hanna, Dorita, “Performance / Architecture”; An Interview with Bernard Tschumi; Journal of Architectural Education 61 n.4 (May 2008) pp.52. 3 Robert Irwin, Being and Circumstance; The Lapis Press, Larkspur, CA, 1985, pp.27. 4 Kaye, Nick_. Site-Specific Art_. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Figure 5:Actor Chris Ziegler interacts with “Extracted History” by Veronica Eulacivo; this project processed digital images and used a CNC router to create a series of panels generated directly from images of the base building condition.
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5 Pearson, Mike and Michael Shanks. Theater/ Archaeology. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. 6 Shank, Theodore. Beyond the Boundaries: American Alternative Theatre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. 7 Ibid. 8 Excerpt from the project description; group show smallBIG curated by Dr. Wes Janz, Terre Haute SWOPE Museum of Modern Art ‘10. 9 Excerpt from http://foursquare266.blogspot.com accessed April 23, 2010. 10 Review from “Indianapolis fun city finder” 4-27-
11 Excerpt from “BSU DN On Line”; 4-22-.
