PDP. Part Two. Research File.

'Sleep No More'

I've never seen a Punch Drunk show but they sound so amazing. I love the idea of being involved in a performance, especially being immersed into a world with all the amazing set decoration.

This piece is incredible and so original. The opera singer wears the dress but the audience does as well. They can snuggle up in the folds like sleeping bags and relax to the music, as well as becoming apart of the performance.

I only saw a video of this but it was a lot of fun. And very different. An unexpected mix between two Italian artists and a Japanese Manga artist.

All from: http://www.visitkingscross.com/history.htm

'The area was known then as Battlebridge and we still have Battlebridge Basin, on the Regent's Canal, and until recently there was a Battlebridge Road. The origin of the name Battlebridge is not universally agreed. The bridge took the Gray's Inn Road over the river Fleet, which still runs in culvert through the area. The battle was said to be between between Queen Boadicea and the Roman general Caius Suetonius Paulinus, and to have taken place in AD61. Boadicea was Queen of the Icenii (an East Anglian Celtic tribe), and a doughty fighter against the Romans. Battlebridge is said to have been her last battle, in which she was defeated, later taking her own life. Legend has it that she is burried beneath what is now the station.'

'The origin of the name is simple, a statue of the King, at the cross roads of The New Road (Now Euston Road), Maiden Lane (now York Way), Pentonville Hill (now Road), and Gray's Inn Road. The statue was erected in 1830-36 and demolished in 1842 (statue).'

'The Regent's Canal was completed through the area in 1820 and this enabled urbanisation to accellerate. The Imperial Gas Light and Code Company built a gas works, supplied with coal by canal boat (from the docks), soon afterwards. More industry followed as the century unfurled and of course, the railways arrived. An Act of Parliament forbade the railways from coming south of the New Road so King's Cross, St. Pancras, and Euston were all built ajoining it. King's Cross opened in 1850 from a temporary station, with the present station opening in 1852.'

From: http://www.kingscross.co.uk/granary

'The Goods Yard complex, designed by Lewis Cubitt, was completed in 1852. The complex comprised the Granary Building, the Train Assembly Shed, and the Eastern and Western Transit Sheds. The buildings were aligned to the axis of the Copenhagen tunnel through which the trains arrived from the north.'

'The Granary building was mainly used to store Lincolnshire wheat for London’s bakers, while the sheds were used to transfer freight from or to the rail carts. Off-loading from the rail carriages was made easier by cranes and turntables powered by horse and, from the 1840s, hydraulic power. Loaded and unloaded carts were moved in to the Train Assembly Shed and formed into trains for departure northwards. Stables were located under the loading platforms – some of these remain in the Western Transit Shed.'

>>>> https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zDoXIAU5tGiw.k4Op2POUgsdc&hl=en <<<<

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'British Burgundy (Beer), refreshes the weary, exhilarates the faint, and cheers the depressed, an infernal compound of juniper and fiery spirits debases the mind, destroys the constitution, and brings its thirsty votaries to an untimely grave.'

Beer Street:

'Two fish women, furnished with a flagon of the same liquor, are chanting a song of Mr. Lockman's on the British Herring Fishery. A porter, having put a load of waste paper on the ground, is eagerly quaffing this best of barley wine.'

Gin Lane:

'nauseous contrast, which displays human nature in its most degraded and disgusting state.  Having bartered away his waistcoat, shirt, and stockings, and drank until he is in a state of total insensibility; pale, wan, and emaciated, he is a perfect skeleton.  A few steps higher is a debased counterpart of Lazarus, taking snuff; thoroughly intoxicated, and negligent of the infant at her breast, it falls over the rail into an area, and dies, an innocent victim to the baneful vice if its depraved parent.'

'"Rookery" was a colloquial term given in the 18th and 19th centuries to a city slum occupied by poor people and frequently also by criminals and prostitutes. Such areas were overcrowded, with low-quality housing and little or no sanitation. Poorly constructed dwellings, built with multiple storeys and often crammed into any area of open ground, created densely populated areas of gloomy, narrow streets and alleyways.' Wiki

St Giles was known to be one of the worst in London.

Charles Booth Poverty Map:

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'Poor women, the parish and the politics of poverty' Chapter Six by Richard Connors

'...over 80 per cent of those classed as poor were women'.

' 'at no time in the preindustrial past was there a golden age when women were not confined - either by prevailing notions of separate spheres, complementary, or partnership...' '

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'London was already the sex capital of Europe, with a reputation for insidious vice'

'According to Old Bailey records, a great may prostitutes were unmarried, with over half of them born outside London.'

Venereal Disease:

'Venereal disease was rife in London, with sexual infections spreading around the city's brothels.'

'Prostitutes bore the brunt of the blame, with the poorest women affected most.'

'Despite its seriousness, venereal disease had become so widespread in the eighteenth century that any libertine in London might expect to catch it and, indeed, many of them did.'

'The 'No Nose'd Club was formed for all those suffering from syphilis who had had their noses eaten away by the disease...'

From: The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital. By Dan Cruickshank. http://www.economist.com/node/14636924

'AS MANY as one in five young women were prostitutes in 18th-century London. The Covent Garden that tourists frequent today was the centre of a vast sex trade strewn across hundreds of brothels and so-called coffee houses. Fornication in public was common and even children were routinely treated for venereal disease. A German visitor observed a nation that had overstepped all others “in immorality and addiction to debauchery”.

English society expected, even encouraged, men to pay for sex. Prejudice barred women from all but menial jobs. Prostitution at least offered financial independence: a typical harlot could earn in a month what a tradesman or clerk would earn in a year.

Thomas Coram's Foundling Hospital opened in 1741 to look after the abandoned babies of unmarried mothers, attracting support from the cream of society. By mitigating the cost and shame of unwanted pregnancy, the hospital hoped to stem the march of women into harlotry. But limited places provoked riots, and the hospital could not, as it had intended, single out the children of mothers who were not harlots.

In 1756 the government gave the hospital money to expand capacity on condition that it accept all children under two months old, with no questions asked. The results were grisly. Despairing mothers across England paid dubious businessmen to offload their unwanted babies on the state: many were lost or dead on arrival. Some three-quarters of the 15,000 babies that reached the hospital died before the government ended its support in 1760.'

Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies:

'Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, published from 1757 to 1795, was an annual directory of prostitutes then working in Georgian London. A small, attractive pocketbook, it was printed and published in Covent Garden, and sold for two shillings and sixpence.

Each edition contains entries which describe the physical appearance and sexual specialities of about 120–190 prostitutes who worked in and around Covent Garden.' Wiki

'The Garden of Earthly Delights is the modern title^[1] given to atriptych painted by the Early Netherlandish master Hieronymus Bosch. It has been housed in the Museo del Prado in Madridsince 1939. Dating from between 1490 and 1510, when Bosch was between about 40 and 60 years old,^[2] it is his best-known^[3]and most ambitious complete work.^[4]

The triptych is painted in oil on oak and is formed from a square middle panel flanked by two other oak rectangular wings that close over the center as shutters. The outer wings, when folded, show a grisaille painting of the earth during the biblical narrative of Creation.

Art historians and critics frequently interpret the painting as a didactic warning on the perils of life's temptations.^[5] However, the intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries.^[6] Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost. American writer Peter S. Beagle describes it as an "erotic derangement that turns us all into voyeurs, a place filled with the intoxicating air of perfect liberty".^[7]' WIKI

Our group has decided to link Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights to our project, as we believe that Hogarth's 'diptych' and Bosch's triptych have something in common. The warning of of life's temptations. Though this is debated for Bosch's piece.

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bosch/delight/ for ZOOM

I had this in my mind as well when I was imaging stilts/crutches. We were shown a few images and a video clip from this very weird Sadlers Wells performance. It definitely stuck in my head! There's something creepy and demonic about these people, or creatures really. I want to somehow replicate an aspect of this in my character.

Too difficult? Too little time? 

Good WEBSITE: http://www.smooth-on.com/Lifecasting/c1240/index.html

Matthew Barney

Jessica Alba?