http://www.lifeintheuktest.gov.uk/htmlsite/index.html

http://www.cititest.com/life-in-the-uk-test/downloads

I texted several friends with the news that I had passed the test. The following are extracts from the responses I received:

• ‘…does this mean you’r not american any more? good show!’
• ‘What ho. Fancy a brew old prune? Jolly hockey sticks.’
• ‘Welcome 2 the family of jellied eels, morris dancing and football hooligansim. It’s an honour to have you on board.’
• ‘Congratulations, now u just have to pass the british aesthetics test in which u must demonstrate ur ability 2 hold a pen like dickens and grow a beard like shakespeare…’
• ‘Jolly good old fellow. One of the natives now. Wot-wot? Tally ho chap! “God save the…”‘
• ‘Eating digestives and supporting a football team?’
• ‘… do you feel at one with the british way?’

Question: Does any other country require immigrants seeking settlement to pass a ‘way of life’ test? I know that in the USA a test exists for citizenship, but I don’t think one exists for permanent residency??

The abstract is available here.

A different presentation under the same title will be delivered at DRHA 2007.

Both presentations aim to contextualize and reflect on the recently finished research project Dialogic Evidence: Documentation of Ephemeral Events.

I’m currently in Belfast on a residency at the Centre for Suburban Research, which is run by Justin McKeown, Meabh McDonnell and Luke McDonnell. They have two lovely rabbits, and two fish:

Bean:

Parsnip:

Tic and Tac:

about csr

about my residency

The residency officially begins on Monday, however today (Sunday) I took photos of animals on food packaging:

Monday 22nd of April 2007

Today I walked around Belfast in search of the following ingredients to complete the option 1 menu selected by Luke and family: monterey jack cheese, flour tortillas, long grain rice, tomato puree, onions, black olives, vegetable shortening, pinto beans, chili peppers, red bell pepper, tomatoes, cilantro (coriander), limes, sour cream and avocados. Also, Justin and Meabh asked me to pick up honey and large rubber gloves. I departed from CSR dressed for a rainy yet warm day with my backpack, hiking boots, compass, pen, map (which I wrote notes and landmarks on while walking), key to CSR (with spart keychain!), camera, sunglasses, wallet, phone and shopping list. After walking across Befast for most of the day, buying items on my list from 8 different shops, I learned that most (if not all) of the ingredients I was looking for could be purchased cheapest at the very large Sainsbury’s located 5-10 minutes (on foot) from CSR. Such is the logic of 21st century capitalist suburbia. However, my goal was not simply to find these ingredients through the quickest/cheapest method, but rather to begin a relationship with Belfast… to haphazardly search for traces (and distortions) of the familiar, to stumble upon the reality of my foreignness… and to go for a long walk in a place I had never before set foot.

It appears that all limes in Belfast come from Brazil. I purchased limes in 5 different shops and they all came from Brazil. Here are a few of the labels:

Limes are expensive in Belfast… I found this advertisement in a shop window amusing.

I was surprised to find Cholula hot sauce (a happy addition to many Mexican meals) in a small grocery store called Sawers, although it was not cheap at £5.99 (or $12 by the current exchange rate) for a small bottle.

In a different shop I found brambles (blackberries) that had been shipped all the way from Mexico. Strange, I though, as brambles grow wild and in abundance locally.

Parts of Belfast look like any other city that I have been to in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. I spent time in a Waterstones bookstore (I bought a Mexican Spanish phrasebook and the only Belfast guidebook they sold), passed by large shopping centres with the familiar retail and food giants (KFC, Asda aka Walmart, Tescos, HomeBase, JJB Sports, Virgin Megastore, HMV, Boots, ad nauseam), walked through student areas with family run cafes and second hand record shops. Belfast’s suburbs are also in many ways like most other suburbs I have visited. Yet overall Belfast feels different from anywhere else I have been. The streets here have many murals which seem to testify to my ignorance of the social history of this place:

I am more than a little intrigued by Belfast.

Tonight Meabh made a delicious tuna dish, which she said was from a Greek recipe. Luke intentionally covered his shirt in strawberries. Justin leant me a book called The Dirty War by Martin Dillon, which I now plan to read in bed before I fall asleep.

Tuesday 23rd of April 2007

I spent today cooking at leisurely pace, and reading my new favorite literary genre which I am currently calling food packaging discourse:

Sadly, the Mexican blackberries I purchased yesterday went moldy:

Other than that, today’s meal went quite well:

The bunnies ate with us:

We are wondering if Bean is pregnant, as she has spent much of today burrowing and making nests.

Following dinner we had a jam session. Luke plays a mean harmonica.

After consulting Justin and Meabh, I have just decided to change the format of the remaining days of my residency… more info tomorrow.

Click here for today’s recommended reading.

Wednesday 24th of April 2007

Today was spent devising a score card (in collaboration with Luke)

Justin, Meabh and myself will each be entering 2 dishes and 1 beverage.

In preparation for this event, which will take place tomorrow evening, I spent some time researching Luke’s food interests. I also asked my friend Shannon from Arizona what 7 year olds like to eat.

Sight Seeing: 1 / 2 / 3

Thursday 25th of April 2007

Today was the much awaited cooking showdown, with Luke as the Judge.

The food entries in the order in which they were served, with Luke’s completed score card for each entry:

Pizza Surprise by Paul Stapleton (uncooked version, as I did not manage to take a photo of the cooked version prior to its consumption)

score card

Cauliflour Love and Tomato Poppers by Meabh McDonnell

score card – additional photo

Carrot Jenga with Camembert, Sun Glasses and the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Justin McKeown

score card
video – a portrait of a family

Pumpkin Pie by Paul Stapleton

score card – additional photo – I ended up making this dish after being shocked by the presence of a small pumpkin for sale in Sainsbury’s (which traveled all the way from Argentina). I normally only make pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving.

Hippy Crispy Nonsense with Pinapple Fluff! by Meabh McDonnell

score card

Sweetie Sushi on a Bed of Sweetie Seaweed and Sea Urchins

score card

The drinks:

Mint and Honey Tea by Paul Stapleton – score card – the mint packaging

Bloody Mary with Intoxication Removed by Meabh McDonnell – score card – the downfall of this entry was caused by the quantity of tabasco sause.

Root Ginger Beer by Justin McKeown – score card – Although this entry scored the highest overall score average, evidence is mounting which testifies to the fact that the Judge was mislead.

Friday 26th of April 2007

A portrait of Ireland:

guinness / shamrock / potato

This evening I had my farewell Irish dinner, beautifully prepaired by Meabh.

and it ended with a song

We performed in two of these locations, Cardiff and Preston. The first performance took place as part of Improvisation Continuums Conference.

Mona sent us a beautiful text after our parting following the Preston performance, and Ben wrote the following blog which has left me smiling…

http://beninbrooklyn.blogspot.com/2007/04/blogging-in-uk.html

The Event took place on the 4th of March 2007, lasting most of that Sunday, starting at Manchester Piccadilly Rail Station and continuing in and around parts of Hayfield, Derbyshire, where Simon grew up and currently resides. Along for the journey were several of Simon’s friends, colleagues and acquaintances. What follows are a few of my remembered and recorded fragments from a day that I found at times relaxing, contemplative, moving, insightful, funny and encompassed by a transient, yet heartfelt and welcoming, sense of community.

I remember parts of the journey from Manchester Piccadilly to New Mills Central. Werther’s Originals, Buber and Levinas, the first of which was a new experience for me. People sitting closer to people they already new in several clusters brought together by the desire to hear Simon speaking. Different combinations of familiarity and unfamiliarity.

Simon’s walk upstream, salmon-like, followed by his lecture on bridges, mostly spoken loudly over the elements, witnessed by us from a bridge. Man and nature, fighting currents and gravity, a spectacle… I was surprised by this. I did not think Simon would do something that so clearly set up the performer/audience distinction. With this said, it was one of my favourite moments of the day. I was engaged by this performance, and enjoyed the role of spectator.

At some point before this, the whole experience began to feel very familiar. The weather on this day, and the group’s general wetness, reminded me distinctly of a previous Sunday With Me (2nd of April 2006) that I had spent with Simon, and for part of the way with Simon’s Dad, walking from Hayfield to Edale.

Simon took us to a heavily graffitied pedestrian underpass and talked to us about public art. Part of this scripted talk included his reflections on one note, a participatory sound installation directed by Simon in various contexts. This took me back to a paper titled Dialogic Perspectives on Recent Soundings that we co-authored and delivered at the Sonic Art Network Expo 2006, which included a performed instance of one note’s basic proposition: Simon sung a note, I tried to sing the same note, then we sung “it?” together. I still think this part of the piece is interesting, often resulting in an experience where proximity and difference coexist. I also remember being glad of the shelter from the rain and wind. Simon showed us a bit of graffiti that he was involved in as a youth, and described to us graffiti now gone.

I think one of my favourite memories of the day was Simon’s lecture on the Kinder Trespass, co-delivered by nearly all who were present. By chance (we were given numbered envelops with texts to be read out in a predefined order) I got to sing the Manchester Rambler by Ewan MacColl, which I first heard sung by Alison McMorland and Geordie McIntyre in their house in Dunblane. I love this song. It was particularly interesting to see how the presence of a video camera impacted on the delivery of these texts, appearing to influence different individual’s tone of voice, reading style, posture, and focus. The camera operator herself was very much involved in this performance, at times asserting both her and the camera’s role in the delivery of the lecture. For me this brought up questions about the agenda of the day. Although what we were taking part in appeared to be for our own benefit, occurring at that specific place and time, it was also made clear that we were responsible for producing documentation for a future purpose. In this situation the option to be either a participant or audience member became somewhat fictitious, as we were all observing and being observed as well as recording and being recorded for future audiences that we may never meet, and for a specific “expert” audience involved in the assessment of Simon’s PhD research.

I enjoy walking up hills in the countryside, and for this reason and more I enjoyed the the walk up to a certain contestable number of trees. We met Simon’s Dad up on the hill and sang a song… the (overtly-masculine?) meeting of an older and wiser man up a mountain (not quite a mountain in this case) imparting oral/aural knowledge. Simon said to me the other day that Levinas once wrote that no one is more Other than your Father. This has stuck with me and impacted my memory of this point in the day. One of my last memories of my father is us walking up a hill to go fishing at a lake in the Sierra Nevadas in California. My memory of that walk is a good one.

Walking does often make one hungry. Meals have seemed to find their way into several previous instances of Simon’s Sunday With Me. The documentation of Simon’s first Sunday With Me is heavily based around a Sunday meal, or meals, if we include Lena Simic’s DVD document of her family eating together in Dubrovnik. This documentary was created as response to a meal that Simon ate with Lena and her family as a guest in their home in Liverpool. The meal on this Sunday, prepared by Simon’s mother, was festive and delicious. Even Phil, an avid cheese skeptic, enjoyed the lasagna (as evidenced by the above image). I am very interested in the links between the acquisition of food, as well as the acts of cooking and eating, with the notion of community. It was at this point in the day that our group felt most like a community, happily engaged in eating, conversation, general silliness, and reflections on the recent time spent together.

Last Updated the 22nd of March 2007

[Full citations and/or web links for all references to be added sometime in the future]

• AHRB, 2003. Research in the Creative and Performing Arts
• Auslander, Philip, 1999, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture, Routledge, London.
• Auslander, Philip, 2006, The Performativity of Performance Documentation, in PAJ84
• Black Market International
• Bodies in Flight, Flesh and Text (CD-ROM)
• Buber, Martin, 1965, The Knowledge of Man, Harper & Row, New York.
• Buber, Martin, 1970. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
• Derrida, Jacques, 1995. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression
• Desperate Optimists, Stalking Memory (CD-ROM)
• Duff, Tagny
• Eco, Umberto, 1992, Interpretation and Overinterpretation
• Ellis, Simon
• Forced Entertainment, Imaginary Evidence (CD-ROM)
• Frayling, Christopher, 1993, Research in Art and Design in Royal College of Art Research Papers (1:1).
• Goldberg, RoseLee, 2004, Performance: Live Art Since the 60s
• Haseman, Brad. 2006. “A manifesto for performative research” in Media International Australia, practice-led research themed edition (118).
• Heathfield, Adrian (editor), 1997, Shattered Anatomies
• Kaye, Nick, 2000, Site-Specific Art
• Mayhew, Michael [Hello, Goodbye, Something Tender]
• Mayhew and Edmunds, 1993, The Dream Garden (VHS)
• McNiff, J., Lomax, P. and Whitehead, J. (2001): You and Your Action Research Project, RoutledgeFalmer, London.
• Melrose, Susan, 2007, Not lost but not yet found: accounting for decision-making process in expert/professional performance-disciplinary practices.
• Melrose, Susan, 2003, The Curiosity of Writing (or, Who Cares About Performance Mastery?) (conference paper), PARIP 2003, University of Bristol.
• Nelson, Robin, and Stuart Andrews. 2003. The regulations and protocols governing ‘Practice as Research’ (PaR) in the performing arts in the UK leading to the award of PhD.
• New Work Network
• Pearson, Mike and Michael Shanks, 2001, Theatre/Archaeology
• Phelan, Peggy, 1993, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge, London.
• Piccini, Angela. 2003. “An historiographic perspective on practice as research” in Studies in Theatre and Performance (23:3).
• Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP)
• Reason, Mathew, 2006. Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance.
• Review of Practice-Led Research in Art, Design & Architecture
• Rye, Caroline, 2003, ‘Incorporating Practice: A multi-viewpoint approach to performance documentation’ in Journal of Media Practice (3:2).
• Rye, Caroline, 2003, Video Writing: The Documentation Trap, or the Role of Documentation in the Practice as Research Debate (conference paper), PARIP 2003, University of Bristol.
• Schon, Donald A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.
• Standing Conference of University Drama Departments (SCUDD)
• Stapleton, Paul. 2006. “Documentation in performance-led research” in Media International Australia, practice-led research themed edition (118).
• Suchman, L. (1987): Plans and Situated Actions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Trimingham, M. (2002): ‘A Methodology for Practice as Research’ in Studies in Theatre and Performance, (22:1).
• Wright, Fiona

This research project seeks to explore the possibility of a productive co-existence between performance and documentation practices.

Brief Project Summary:

Historically, performance documentation has commonly been characterised as an unfaithful representation of the ephemeral art experience. However, in recent years the relationship between documentation and live performance practices has moved towards reconciliation. The reasons for such a shift are many, possibly including the validation of practice-led research, the use of new technologies within performance, anxieties over disappearing legacies, and/or the wider acceptance of the value of mediated memories. Yet not all are encouraged by the promises of digital technologies, or the increasing demands for reproducible evidence by funding bodies and archive-oriented institutions. The role that documentation plays in the recording of performance continues to be described as negative or destructive towards the knowledges embodied in live events. It may be that this oppositional view is largely a reaction to economic values that emphasise the need for reproducible products. Such values are evident in forms of academic assessment and validation that privilege documents of performance over performance per se.

In response to this current climate, the Dialogic Evidence project has aimed to explore the possibility (and the limits) of a productive co-existence between performance and documentation practices. Furthermore, the project aims to discover ways in which documentation practices can remain sensitive to the (often undervalued) temporary nature of performance. Such an endeavour remains a significant challenge in the move towards the wider acceptance of performative knowledge by the academy. With this aim in mind, I have been engaging in the collection, production, and analysis of multiple case studies that explore the diverse ways in which performance and documentation attempt (for better or worse) to work together. To aid in the process of gathering diverse perspectives on this relationship I have found it necessary to adopt a mixed-mode methodology, making use of various ‘knowledge-gathering’ and ‘knowledge-generating’ activities including: a one-day symposium; a 4-day workshop; a peer-reviewed journal article; an audio-visual documentation case study on DVD, which will be accessible through relevant libraries and archives; and a web-based collaboratively authored performance archive and discussion forum. Through these publications the project aims to contribute towards an improved framework for assessing performance research, and provide clearer guidance for PhD students engaged in the documentation of live performance. Several aspects of this research project may also be of interests to professional practitioners and members of institutions who are concerned with the preservation, representation, and reconstruction of live arts practices.

This 10-month project (mid September 2006 through mid July 2007) is supported by a Small Grant in The Creative and Performing Arts from The Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).