an artist statement
Play, curiously. Discover and experiment. Fail now, because you can. Feel the timing of your process; plan intuitively. Distance: shift your context every time and find a new perspective. Offer and receive; listen. Be in the here and now. Forget preciousness and serve the work. Raise questions at the risk of provoking a crisis, for the word crisis in Chinese （危机） is characterised to embody both the element of danger（危） and opportunity（机）. Decisions are violent and so danger must be provoked and creativity enabled in order that the work finds opportunity to evolve and be fulfilled; make an impact. A complete piece of work is secondary and a by-product. Look instead, for possibilities and clarity. It is always a work-in-progress. We are always a work-in-progress.
Essentially, we are seeking a/the vocabulary for our individual performance practice, intelligibly, faithfully and truthfully.
Form can and is always shifting, but a philosophy of practice; that is precious. Not that it will not change, grow or evolve. In fact, it must. In the inspiration of Boal, Art is a pursuit.[1]
And a pursuit it is. I know now that I am responsive. Space, parameters, scale of economy, a particular preoccupation during that time, a random chance encounter…etc. are provocations I thrive on. I know that the work I want to make is always in response to an Other, but the source (for now), always being Me, the material, autobiographical. (And perhaps as it should be, since our voice will inevitably be present in our creations.) I know now, that at this point, this is my form of sorts: one that is ready to shift and respond honestly to each provocation.
I also know now that I do want to make the work and perform in them. I have begun, not entirely but enough, to grasp and to acknowledge that desire to. And I am still constantly questioning that desire to, if only to understand it better, if only to always remain truthful. Because I know now, that something happens within me when I perform. As it is still to be discovered more fully, I do know that something is turning inside, I am transforming with each performance; giving and receiving; exchanging, and I know that this exchange pleases me. I know as of now, this is what I understand by the “live-ness” I am looking for.
In this live-ness, I know what I really value more is the liminal space between the audience member and I. In the same way that “something is turning inside” me, I know now that something is also turning inside him/her/them and I want more than their physical presence. I want more than their gaze. I want them invested in the process, in the here and now, to be with me. I want them to participate. I want them to perform. And transform. And I know now, it is beginning to make sense, why I “shy” away from performing. I am more interested in enabling the Other to perform[2], actively. I want us all to discover, awaken almost, the Artist in all of us. I want us to Live.
I know now how obvious and apparent my influences are in my work. Growing up Catholic, my search for my spirituality, practitioners such Adrian Howells, Augusto Boal, Allan Kaprow – to make the audience member the subject of focus, to shift the spectator to a spect-actor, or to remove the audience all together.
With each audience member, I am looking for a communitas – a sense of solidarity and spirit[3] between maker/performer and spectator – that is derived from a totality of the sensorial, emotional and intellectual impulse and response; we could share one breath. The experience of art, from its conception to creation, is a deeply spiritual one for me. The space is a sacramental reflection of my visceral response to that experience and I want to invite you in. Perhaps through our memory and perception and the exchange of these in the sharing of our stories, we could understand our selves better; we could be truthful with our Self, together. Could we, in the sharing of this communitas, be inspired and empowered to make new the way we see or live our lives? Could we refresh a memory? Could we heal?
I certainly hope so.
And in the nature of these influences and the work I am interested to keep making, I know there is this balance of craft and chance that I am almost enthralled by, obsessed even. There is magic in crafting a work to its most essential, controlling just enough variables to leave just enough elements to chance. And in that fluidity, the work will never be the same with every audience member.
And since I know now that being conceptual can be and is form, I know that I am interested in the daily, the domestic and the real, outside world. To perform (do) the daily tasks, to perform (act-upon) as you would in the world, at home, at work or in the streets, to perform (present) the normal, to perform (complete) the actions of our everyday – so as to investigate the truthfulness of our beings, of how we do what we do, of being a-live.
And with that, I know now I am fascinated by the real places. The city, or specific sites – places that carry history and memory – places with its own context for which determines our behaviour in there.
The world is my performance space and I am an Artist. I am a young artist, only truly beginning to own/hone a practice. And so I know to always remain curious, to venture into all of the things I know I am interested in and fascinated by and want to investigate. And to let the results and discoveries grow and evolve and change the next course of exploration. I do not know how long more before these stop being interesting for me to investigate or how much more around these things will I be inquisitive about. I do not know when something new might come along but for now at least, I know where I want to live[4].
Written over the year 2010. Edited whenever I discover a shift.
[1] Boal, Augusto. “Love and Art,” The Aesthetics of the Oppressed. NY: Routledge, 2006.
[2] “To perform” defined as simply as “to do,” “to act upon,” “to present” or “to complete.”
[3] The origin of “spirit” in Greek is Pneuma [pnév̱ma] and is also understood as breath, wind, to breathe.
[4] Earlier this year I asked Leisa “is concept form?” She answered, “Do not give it any more weight than it should carry. It’s as simple as asking yourself ‘where do you want to live?’ or ‘what kind of relationship’ do you want to have.”
