urban voodoo
Introduction
Urban voodoo is an idea we have been developing since 2003, when we first dealt with the theme of Me the City. It is a response to the urban environment that addresses the experiences, wishes and stories carried somewhere between the built environment and the memories of those walking the streets.
Our approach was to model sections of the city using digital photographs and simple cardboard facades. We then re-shot these in a live performance where the audience could see both the large, cinematic image and us as performers manipulating the model. Urban Voodoo takes our fascination with architectural model making and returns it to the world of toy theatres and dolls houses, turning the power relation on its head. We model a city not exactly as it is now and not how the city planners and corporations would have it, but on how it could exist in the memories and the imaginations of those who have lived and worked in it. Our idea was to treat the city as a living object and not just a place to live.
The model is used to release the power of story and imagination and honour that which is fleeting, transient and heartfelt; the things that make one place different from the next in a world where the urban environment (especially in the commercial sector) seems to be becoming a model of uniformity.
These issues are especially pertinent to Liverpool as it goes through the massive redevelopment of its shopping centre. It is a city complicated by the need to catch up with the changes that have affected other English cities in the past few decades.
description
Because the stated theme of Liverpool Biennial 2006 was 'Archipuncture', we decided to consider the city as a body and to find out where the heart, head, soul and inevitably, arse of Liverpool are. Our approach was, as it ever is for us, to talk to or canvass as many people as we could in the short timescales we are so often playing with. We therefore made little cards that we distributed in various venues. We also made specific appointment and interviews for a more in-depth approach.
We were looking to tease out the psychogeography of Liverpool. We wanted to get to know specific places where events, that might have made you consider the spot differently, had taken place. The spot could have been were you had your first kiss, went to your first gig, or it might have been the street corner you broke up with your first love. We then videoed, photographed and modelled these areas, mixing between video footage and the model in the final performance.
In the four days leading up to the performance we received about 40 responses to the questionnaires, talked to students studying in Liverpool and interviewed three people in depth about growing up and living in the area. These meetings with people generated stories of different lengths that we then re-told during the performance, placing them in the model, animating this with the live camera feed and mixing with the pre-shot video footage. After each story we performed a simple voodoo rite, marking the locations of these events on a map with hat pins and responding to the specific story: to rid a pub of ever having a spiked drink again or to mark the point of forgiveness as a policeman let a budding musician off a serious offence.
During the performance, the tabletop landscape of Liverpool was transformed by the re-telling of these stories; an architecture of the imagination was created and as we tracked back along the model at the end of the performance, grass had grown down Bond Street, impossible conjunctions of Liverpool Buildings had been created, the city had once again become the natural habitat of forest creatures and snow fell in a warm October.
It was our intention that for a small moment - the time that it took to perform Urban Voodoo - those witnessing the performance could perceive Liverpool differently, a city made up of human interaction, not just the hard materials of concrete and brick.
the future
For us, Urban Voodoo Liverpool was both the end of a long process of research and trial that started with Me the City, lead us through sited shows like Stadtbasteln and Bremer Lupe (a sadly undocumented show we made in Bremen) and the beginning of a way of working we are keen to develop in other contexts.
The show not only responds to each city or environment for what it is, but captures those stories that you wish you could hear upon going to a new place, the sort of stories that bring a place to life and differentiate it from all other places.
documentation
We have a simple, unedited, fixed camera documentation of the performance available on DVD. Please contact us if interested in receiving one, stating whether you are an individual or acquiring it for an institution.
text
You can download the full text of the performance here [35kB pdf]. It was formatted to be printed out on record cards that we used during the show as prompts.