Compendium
Our performance is called Compendium, which means a concise compilation of a body of knowledge, a compendium summarises a much larger work. This is almost a perfect description of our intent with this piece as the aim of our piece is to create a compendium of knowledge by taking the words from a large variety of pre-existing books and meshing them together through the method of Dadaist poetry.
We encourage audience members who are passing through the library to follow long strict list of instructions provided which are given in a handout once they enter. These instructions will lead them through the Free zone in the Library, (our given site location) which will have the appearance of a railway system, with train tracks on the floor and train station signs throughout. At each of these stations they audience will perform certain tasks, from taking a book, cutting out the words and then retyping out individual words on a typewriter which will then make up the compendium. Jordan Leith and I will carry out these tasks when the audience members aren’t at a station and continue writing the Compendium ourselves. The performance is a durational piece lasting twenty-four hours, only taking pauses for toilet breaks and a strict schedule of alphabetised food to be eaten each hour. After the twenty-four hour period is up, we will perform a reading of the Compendium whilst burning the left over books. We estimated that it would take roughly an hour to create a single A4 page, in turn we needed to perform for a long period of time and as the Library itself is open 24 hours a day we chose that duration.
Our major influence was Dadaism, “The word Dada. With its resonance of baby-talk, expressed their protest against art. Dada valued cacophony, dreams, drugs, and the violation of syntax as techniques for freeing the unconscious from the domination of reason and tradition. Previous art Dadaists thought, had served civilization. Their anti-art would challenge it.” (Lewis, 2007, 107)
“To Make a Dadaist Poem:
- Take a newspaper.
- Take some scissors.
- Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
- Cut out the article.
- Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
- Shake gently.
- Next take out each cutting one after the other.
- Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
- The poem will resemble you.
And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.” (Lewis, 2007, 107)
Our process was however slightly different from the original method and rather more complex.
To Make a Dadaist Poem for the Compendium:
- Take a book of your choice.
- Roll three, ten sided dice to select a page.
- Cut out the page, either with a pair of scissors or rip it out.
- Paint the opposite side of the paper and hang it to dry.
- Whilst this dries, take another piece of paper that is already hanging up.
- Next carefully cut out each of the words from the page.
- Place each of the words in a jug.
- Once the jug reaches 100 millilitres of words place it in a blender.
- Turn on the blender for 10 seconds.
- Pour the context of the blender into a mixing bowl.
- Mix the words up with a whisk.
- Pull out more or less than 10 words.
- Type each word out onto a typewriter.
Dadaism “began as a kind of performance art (itself a new concept) in which people would gather at a nightclub, the Cabaret Voltaire, to look at avant-garde art, listen to classical and dance music.” (Lewis, 2007, 107) This gave us the idea to have a large varied mixture of music, we created a playlist on Spotify this varied from current pop songs, to Futurist music, Dadaist compositions, TV themes, classical music, dance music. This playlist was placed on shuffle and the songs came out at random, creating a unique ambience for every audience member.
It certainly wasn’t our intent to particularly going into the history of the building within our performance. Though we soon realised the only thing truly connecting our performance to the site was that it contained books, which didn’t truly seem like a ‘Site Specific’ performance and much more ‘site-generic’ a performance that is created for a number of similar sites. We wanted to narrow down our performance so it was ‘site-specific’ a performance that is created specifically for that site. So we began to delve into the history of the Library itself.
“Once its stout brick walls echoed to the din of the railway goods yard, the clank of the crane and the hiss of the steam locomotive.” (Weekes, 2006, 1) The Great Central Warehouse was first constructed in 1907 by the Great Central Railway and was originally named Great Central Goods & Grain Warehouse. The large metal sliding doors in the east wing provided access to Locomotives, making it easier to load the trains. It was later purchased by a building company in the 1950’s and became a Builders Warehouse and was renamed Great Central Pattinson Warehouse before falling in to disrepair in 1998. In 2004 it was finally reopened by the University of Lincoln as a Library renamed Great Central Library Warehouse.
In our earlier drafts we had different sections throughout the room where the audience would move from with each section of the performance, we kept referring to these sections as ‘stations’ but certainly not in the train sense. Then it suddenly clicked the term stations could easily refer to train stations. We then began to transform the space into a rail line network creating train station signs for each section such as Preston Quays, Paint on Page, Little Shuffling, Book Bridge, Cutting Edge and Hole in Wall which were placed on holes and cracks we found in the wall. We also planned to have yellow lines which would lead people through the space to each section, but yet again we made the connection of tracks rather than lines, like train tracks of a rail line. We made these from black LX tape which would prevent any damage to the floor. Thirdly to make the performance even more specific to the Library we got books that were previously housed in the Library, taking books that were too damaged and were going to be disposed of, also a large amount of journals and the Harvard referencing guides.
An influence of our performance was ‘Break Down’ by performance artist Michael Landy focusing on consumerism. Michael Land collected all of his possessions, literally everything he owned from stamps, passports, food, clothing, furniture, electrical goods, art collection, books, entertainment such as CD’s and films and even his car. They were then taken to a public exhibition at a C&A branch on Oxford street. Over the next two weeks, all of these items were destroyed. They were placed in bright yellow plastic boxes and placed in an industrial assembly line, on a 520 ft long figure of eight conveyer belt. The items were then reduced to their basic materials by smashing, shredding and pulverizing them. The leftovers were granulated and placed in bags that weight 6 tonnes, which were in turn recycled or sent to the landfill.
We took attributes from this performance, for example ‘Break Down’ was focused on consumerism where as we focused on the materialism and sentimental value of books. In turn as Michael Landy destroyed his own possessions Jordan and I placed our personal books within the collection, books we had a connection and value to ourselves. We also followed the idea of an assembly line creating different sections for each step the performance.
Our own assembly line was quite different to that of Michael Landy. As stated above we set out each section as a Train Station with black LX taped train tracks that led from station to station. Firstly we had Book Bridge which was a cupboard like space within the walls of the Free Zone which we stored all the books in a stacked fashion, secondly we had Paint-on-Page where the audience will use rollers to paint on the back of pages and three dice to select those pages. Thirdly they’d move to Hanger Lane where they would hang up the paper to dry. Fourthly was Cuttingedge where cut out the individual words and poured them into a blender. From here they moved to Preston Quays and emptied the context of the blender into a large mixing bowl which was mixed up with a whisk and then these words would be typed on a typewriter. Of course we used the influences of the Library’s history with the train tracks, but we also had a kitchen like element to the assembly line, the meticulousness of the instructions matches that of a recipe from a cookbook, and we added kitchen equipment such as the blender and the mixing bowl.
When thinking of our audience we were at first unsure of who to invite, though we decided against inviting anyone at all. As “the Dadaists, in their questioning of art, also posed the most important challenge yet to the idea of art as an activity elite groups. They shared with the Italian futurists a scorn for museums and for the notion that a particular group of experts other than artists themselves could define art, including some works and excluding others.” (Lewis, 2007, 108) As we couldn’t possibly invite everyone and the majority of people we personally know within the university are of course Drama students or involved in the arts in some way and have knowledge of such things. We allowed the semi-transient hallway of the library and the room itself invited those passing by to take part, making a much more versatile audience than just those in ‘the know’ who have a certain understanding to at least an extent of performance art.
However, we did set out to have a selected audience, the Library sits across from the Students Union’s Engine Shed which on a Wednesday night doubles up as a nightclub. The well-lit Free zone was like a light to moths for the three hundred drunk students coming out of the club known as ‘Quack’. This to my knowledge is an entirely unique audience for a performance piece, passers-by stopped and stared through the large window intrigued, puzzled and intoxicated. A security guard was put in place to stop anyone who appeared to drunk from coming in, to stop damage to the library itself and of course this prevented any damage to our piece. However, the security guard did allow a few girls to use the restroom who in turn joined in our performance. Drunkenly loud and obnoxious the young girls attempted to follow the complex instructions all screaming and yelling over one another, throwing large amounts of paper into the blender which normally simply spins the paper around in a vortex, which was overfilled and turned into mulch destroying any words previously collected in the blender. Eventually the group of girls, began to work together and they worked out the system and made it to the typewriter and attempted to write words into the compendium. During their drunken state this was next to impossible, writing down words and phrases even more nonsensical than the already nonsensical Dadaist poetry. This follows ideally with the Dadaists idea of the rejection of syntax, grammar and correcting spelling specially as the typewriter doesn’t allow things to be deleted. Jordan and I simply stepped back and watched the events unfold, becoming audience members ourselves and allowing those taking part to become the performance, they became an “audience that doesn’t know it is one” (Wilkie, 2002, 152)
Duchamp’s sculpture ‘The Fountain’ which he took a urinal and turned it upside down, signing it R. Muutt. “Duchamp was claiming that, in effect, that he as an artist had only to find some ready-made object, tile it, and display it in a gallery to make it art.” (Lewis, 2007, 108) This gave me the idea of using pre-existing objects to create ‘art’ not in the sense of a sculpture but in the sense of simply a piece of performance art. Taking the ready-made objects, in this case books and using them to create new poetry.
“The establishment and the enemy – dead, stifling, canonical, the reified monuments one has to destroy to do anything new.” (Brooker, 1992, 164) We had to decided what we were going to do with the leftover books and pieces of paper, simply throwing them away seemed a shame. There was the possibility of recycling them but there seemed no artistic flare to that. We passed around the idea of simply shredding the paper but yet again, that didn’t seem to be interesting enough. Researching the disposal of books, we found out that Sikhs burnt their Guru Granth Sahib in a ceremony called Agan Bhet and Muslims did a similar practise when the books were too badly damaged and then the ashes would be buried or poured into the water. The idea of burning the books while reading the finished compendium reminded us of a funeral and the compendium a eulogy. Originally we intended to build a raft and place the books on it, setting them alight and allowing them to float down the Brayford Quay very much like a Viking funeral. Though unfortunately this was highly impractical and we we’d need to get permission from the council and it would most likely be denied. We settled on burning the books in a metal barrel and burning them while the Compendium was read over them, just outside the library. The burning and destruction of the books became a very controversial subject, especially as we had religious texts such as the Quaran, Bible and Torah. Creating a compendium of all written knowledge we felt as though religious texts had to be within this and leaving out the books afraid to offend seemed as though it would make more of a statement to exclude the religious texts. The idea that religious extremists may catch wind was brought up by the Library staff didn’t scare myself or Jordan we were happy to take the risk. But once the proposal that others may get hurt certainly changed our views on the matter and alongside the Library staff we decided to pull religious texts from the performance. However, the offense didn’t stop here, as we were preparing the area for the book burning people began to ask what we were doing, working out that we were going to set fire to books caused some people to argue with us. We however allowed them to vent their opinions and shared our own. Explaining that we aren’t necessarily intending to destroy the books for no reason but the idea that we had transferred the information from one place to another and the books were essentially unreadable after they had been damaged and that this was almost a Eulogy for the old books. This seemed to settle their qualms and produced a relatively large audience.
The piece went extremely well, though of course as an performer the art can always be improved. I’d firstly change how the books were displayed, we simply had them piled up and this pile soon became a disorganised messed. I looked at ‘Excavating Babel’ by Tina Hill. She had arranged the books in a spiral like shape and was much more aesthetically pleasing. The aesthetics of the train tracks, were rushed and jagged. The black LX tape helped as it wouldn’t damage the floor but it was easily kicked up by people walking past and looked rather messy due to lack of time, also I wanted to have the tracks going all over the walls and roof but unfortunately the tape easily fell off when stuck to walls and the ceiling. Next time I’d give myself more time to prepare. A major issue of the Compendium itself was that people more often than not would pick up a copy of Harry Potter, this stopped the Compendium itself from being varied as Harry Potter has very distinctive language as it’s set in a magical world. What I’d do to fix this is rather than having them place the books back they’d need to place the books in a container so they can’t be used again. A major issue was with our equipment, our first typewriter which was electrical burned out so we had to find another typewriter. Which suffered from mechanical issues and the Ink had to be constantly turned.
References
Brooker, P. (1992) Modernism/postmodernism. 7th edition. New York: Longman.
Lewis, P. (2007) The Cambridge introduction to modernism. London: Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, R. and Cascardi, A. (1999) Theorizing the avant-garde: Modernism, expressionism, and the problem of postmodernity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wasserman, K (2001) The Book as Art. New York: Princeton Architectural Press
Weekes, A. (2006) The Great Central Warehouse University Library. Lincoln: University of Lincoln
Wilkie, F. (2002) Mapping the Terrain: A Survey of Site-Specific Performance in Britain. New Theatre Quarterly, 18 (2) pp. 150-158