Nottingham Trent

Performance Piece from the Mid Point Review.

Laptop, projector; table, chair; me, the viewer…and my writing.

The writing appears as i think it, as it flows through to my fingers and then down into the keys and onto the screen and then projected onto the wall.  Parts are quite personal… intimate.   Then the letters come..to make the words… "hot off the press"..the audience read it as I write it…each mistake can be seen and then can also be seen to be corrected or even erased and then lost forever.

After the feedback, I felt this went rather well. I felt that I was succeeding in obtaining the atmosphere and response that I was looking for.

Performance piece using a typewriter, memories, poetry and the audience.

The viewers could read the writing over my shoulder, or on the pages once I had removed them from the typewriter and placed them on the table.

 It was seen as quite uncomfortable because they were not sure whether they should be reading the work. It is quite personal material, and the use of ‘you’ made them wonder whether I was writing directly about them.

and when it comes to it…maybe this is actually what I meant?

maybe I had written my response…and maybe it was for him… replacing the "we"’s for "I"’s and the "us"’s for "me"’s..

I take on a role. Each day as I dress for my audience. Like an actor preparing to approach that spot-lit stage to recite a speech…a sonnet.  Like a prostitute that dresses themselves up, just in order to get dressed down.  Like a politician that speaks what we want to hear, yet know they will never be able to deliver. Like the artist that says it is all for love yet is desperately in need of the money. 

I wake up and take on some kind of identity that is not quite my own. An identity already prepared, packaged for the company I know I am planning to keep… or for the viewers of my life that I am looking to meet, yet have not appeared before me

..not quite yet, anyway. 

Through my art, I show you what I want.  I am asked… "and what audience are you looking at?…who is it for?" And through that I design myself…pushing in, pulling out, mashing up and rearranging, in order to become right for whom I want to effect

…and right now it is you. 

You see what I want you to see. You see me, as whom I want you to see.  I manipulate you, to relate with my work and my ideas, my thoughts and experiences that I yearn to pass over and with which, form a connection.  Even the most honest of artwork is never completely truthful… each second of my life is a moment that I am trying to understand   …trying to understand myself   …and the world around me… and the life that I partake in each day…and throughout this I am continuously changing…being revised and reformed …and I will never find any of this out…because there is no complete and definite answer… Yet I still look…I still search.

 So therefore…no moment is honest…no artwork truthful. Make it up as we go along. Only through that do I find myself on this painful, exhausting yet intoxicating journey… repeating the past, bringing up past ideas and then eventually through finding these, do I see a new take on them, a new possible aspect and yearn to create something virgin…something already known but not looked at in this way.

I seek this…this attempt to not let this life pass me by. Not let it escape my grasp without forming some sort of stamp. Something to leave behind. And if not leave behind…something I have created that definitely was there, yet now remains in some other’s memory.  I have to assert my existence…find a witness… make sure I am not passed by like strangers on the street. I need more than that. Not just to be remembered…I need to be remembered for something I once thought…something I was trying to achieve…and the identity I chose for you to see. I am searching for those perfect people that I can affect…Those people who will remember my work and therefore…me. Those people who will understand and only then, keep a record of the fact I was once here.

A few of us were asked to write for the catalogue…and I was continually getting writer’s block with this…so my friend emailed me what he had written… In all honesty…I didnt quite get it…but from that…all of a sudden I could write…so I wrote this: 

We all take on a role. Each day we dress for our audience. Like actors preparing to approach that spot-lit stage to recite a speech…a sonnet.  Like the prostitutes that dress themselves up, just in order to get dressed down.  Like the politicians that speak what we want to hear, yet know they will never be able to deliver. Like the artists that say it is all for love yet they are desperately in need of the money. 

We all wake up and take on some kind of identity that is not quite our own. An identity already prepared, packaged for the company we know we are planning to keep… or for the viewers of our life that we are looking to meet, yet have not appeared before us

..not quite yet, anyway. 

Through our art, we show you what we want.  We are asked…"and what audience are you looking at?…who is it for?" And through that we design ourselves…pushing in, pulling out, mashing up and rearranging, in order to become right for whom we want to effect

…and right now it is you. 

You see what we want you to see. You see us, as whom we want you to see.  We manipulate you, to relate with our work and our ideas, our thoughts and experiences that we yearn to pass over and with which, form a connection.  Even the most honest of artwork is never completely truthful… each second of our life is a moment that we are trying to understand   …trying to understand ourselves   …and the world around us… and the lives that we partake in each day…and throughout this we are continuously changing…being revised and reformed …and we will never find any of this out…because there is no complete and definite answer… Yet we still look…we search.

So therefore…no moment is honest…no artwork truthful. We make it up as we go along. Only through that do we find ourselves on this painful, exhausting yet intoxicating journey… repeating the past, bringing up past ideas and then eventually through finding these, do we see a new take on them, a new possible aspect and yearn to create something virgin…something already known but not looked at in this way.

We all seek this…this attempt to not let this life pass by us. Not let it escape our grasp without us forming some sort of stamp. Something to leave behind. And if not leave behind…something we have created that definitely was there, yet now remains in some other’s memory.  We have to assert our existence…find a witness… make sure we are not passed by like strangers on the street. We all do it in different ways…yet as artists…which we are becoming… we need more than that. Not just to be remembered…we need to be remembered for something we once thought…something we were trying to achieve…and the identity we chose for you to see. We are searching for those perfect people that we can affect…Those people who will remember our work and therefore…us. Those people who will understand and only then, keep a record of the fact we were once here.

but then after…I sent mine to him…and he said that they were very similar…

I didnt see how, seeing as I didnt actually understand his! but it seems now…that subconsciously I rewrote his in a way that I could understand and in my own way and from my perspective.

So…unfortunatley…this means more work… I have another one to write now!

I am currently attempting to approach writing and language within my Fine Art visual practice. I am gradually moving away from my comfort zones of book work into the realms of Live Art, and am worrying as i am a complet novice in this medium. My ideas focus on the merging of memories and the present, and the audience; thus possibly merging these time dimensions and keeping the past alive a little longer. It also serves to bring the viewers into the piece, where they have to relate to the memories, because they are part of the writing. The experiences, the remembering can be quite personal and intimate, or poetical. I am experimenting with how the words flow or fall across the page, thus developing its own story. The Live element is the actual act of typing. The actual act of writing…recording… I am recording myself and the people who are forced to be participants, and thus creating evidence of their existence. In my last experiment with these ideas, I used a typewriter, and numbered pages, indicating the possibility of a book and almost pushing it towards fantasy and the make believe. I am planning to also experiment with a laptop and projector, making these private thoughts and memories more public, and almost imposing them on the viewer. This may make them feel more uncomfortable, thus giving me more control?

http://www.alexandriaclark.com