I will fully admit that upon first hearing about site Specific, I simply viewed it as just another performance, a perfunctory task in order to get a mark and nothing more. My opinion is quickly changing though. I realise this isn’t the same for everyone and maybe it’s only specifically to the group that I’m in but as Casey Wright- another member of my group- put it, we are “breaking out of our student bubble”.
This performance is forcing me to view Lincoln in layers. The first layer being that of what you can see immediately. The university, the town, the cathedral. The second layer being beyond that- beyond steep hill, down all the road that don’t lead anywhere, outside of the confinements of necessity. The third layer is the history, and this is the one I’m really enjoying.
I’m learning history doesn’t have to mean the stories of kings and castles, hundreds of years ago. It doesn’t mean wars and it doesn’t mean masses. The history of Lincoln is evolving in my mind with every story told because it adds another perspective to the places I wasn’t properly looking at before. The stories of normal people, of things you wouldn’t find written in books, of things that still make you think and still teach you that everything is a version of something else. I’m learning that Lincoln grows and changes, like every other place. However unlike every other place, I’m starting to learn to love and know what it was, and what it’s going to be.