mina/e
december 2019, QMUL
durational performance (3h 41m)
photography by Johann Kööp
I am interested in the everyday experiences of the human species. Activities such as breathing, making eye contact, wearing clothes and thinking would be magnified in my practice. This would be achieved either by technical enhancements or deconstructed activities. It is taking a piece of a puzzle and putting it under a microscope. None of these actions or performances could make meaning without mine or the audience member’s personal context. It is also important that everything I portray comes from my own perspective and actual experience.
I want to create something that in return creates something. I wish for there to be something left when the performance has disappeared, when the time has passed. I am terribly scared by the passing of time and the finiteness of performance, so to combat this I want my performances to birth new pieces of art, existing within their own context but also as documentation of something now gone.
I need to have something that I can feel in my hands.
I wish to share the burden of making meaning with my audience, by simply asking them to place themselves in the same space as me, watching me and my surroundings. I ask them to help me finish my puzzle by taking out their own pieces.
performance score
The audience enters the space when the action has already begun. They are free to come and go throughout the performance. The audience is allowed to speak, to sit, to stand, to stay or to leave.
The space of the action is a rectangle with a sewing machine at one pointed end. The sewing machine is on a table, in front of it a stool. On the table are also the tools needed – fabric scissors, thread, pins, needles, notebook, pencil, measuring tape, marker, pin cushion.
In the opposite side of the space is a photographer with cameras, including a polaroid camera. The photographer remains at that station for the beginnings and ends of each repeat of the action, but throughout them they are moving in space. The photographer is an assistant in this process.
Opposite each other on the long curves of the oval are two pairs of footwear - a pair of heels and a pair of boots.
The floor of the performance space is of reflective material. The space for the audience is 15-20cm higher than that of the action space and is surrounding it on two sides.
I start in the middle of the action space. I am wearing an outfit of bright red trousers and skin coloured shape wear. A picture is taken. I take them off, leaving me in bra, underwear and tights. I lay them out in front of me and decide what comes next.
I cut them open, following the pattern they have been sewn together in. I make them into new pieces of clothing, using the tools I’ve made available for myself.
I put on these new pieces. I pick a pair of footwear to indicate the completion of the outfit and stand as I did at the beginning of the action. A picture is taken.
I take off the pieces and lay them in front of me and decide what comes next.
The action is repeated until I decide the materials have depleted their existence or reached their final form.
During the performance I can connect with the audience via eye contact. These eye contacts might even make me pause my action or become a larger part of it.
I am not obligated to stay silent throughout the performance.
