#performanceartists

UNRAVEL

Whilst watching Kayleigh brush her teeth during her unravel piece, ‘What do you desire?’, I was reminded of Traci Kelly’s one-to-one performance, ‘The Mirror Pool’. During this piece, Kelly squirts wine from her mouth into her participant’s mouth and vice versa. To use Kelly’s words during her Bunker Talk for Manchester School of Art, she creates “a slippery place that takes place at the boundaries of skin”. It is this description which, for me, is reminiscent of the act of teeth-brushing – both, taking place at the “boundaries of skin” and being “slippery”. Whilst Kelly’s performative act and teeth-brushing are both literally slippery, in terms of their incorporation of fluid substances – Kelly’s performative act is also slippery in terms of her evasive, elusive and unpredictable encounter with her participant. Kelly transforms the typically solo activity of wine-drinking into a duo activity. After watching Kayleigh’s piece, we talked about the nature of teeth-brushing, being a private, solo act. Moreover, we revealed to each other that we both experience embarrassment if our teeth-brushing is witnessed because of our shared struggle to keep the toothpaste contained inside our mouths. This imagery of trying to keep toothpaste contained inside our mouths allegorically visualises peoples’ attempt to keep certain words inside their mouths. In her Bunker Talk, Kelly also said that ‘The Mirror Pool’ “undermines the orality of the mouth in relation to its cultural adherence to language by reattaching it to more primal muscular functions such as spurt, sucking and blowing”. Therefore, Kayleigh and I also decided to undermine the orality of the mouth by transforming the act of teeth-brushing into a one-to-one performative act – Kayleigh watched me brush my teeth and vice-versa. If a person can become comfortable with witnessing (as well as performing) a physically abject leakage, then maybe we can begin to normalise verbally abject leakages as well.

UNRAVEL

During a previous workshop, Kayleigh and I discussed female desire and how that could be perceived as abject. Kayleigh decided to unravel this discussion through a video piece. Within this piece, Kayleigh attempts to tell her viewer what she desires. However, Kayleigh never finishes her sentences – instead, she pulls out words (written on small pieces paper) from her mouth. These words, such as “choke” and “tease”, tell the viewer what Kayleigh’s spoken words fail to express – they tell the viewer what she desires. The way in which Kayleigh extracts the saliva-covered words from her mouth effectively presents her words as abject – the reason why Kayleigh cannot finish her sentences.

The abject nature of female desire is also explored throughout the work of video and performance artist, Louise Orwin. In her essay, ‘On Identity: Survivor vs Victim’, which explores the making process of her show ‘Oh Yes Oh No’, Orwin references one of her interviewees saying: “people don’t want to hear you’ve been raped and still enjoy sex. They want to keep you in a box”. The analogy of a being kept in a box makes me think of Kayleigh’s mouth, in her video piece, as a box – feeling that she needs to keep the truth locked inside. However, in this video, Kayleigh does unlock her box – she does extract the contents within her mouth. Through the exposure of Kayleigh’s internal fluids mixing with her words, Kayleigh presents the visceral feelings of disgust that are engendered within her beholders when her box is opened. Orwin, on the other hand, presents what happens within herself when her box remains unopened – a loss of identity. When talking about her desires, in ‘Oh Yes Oh No’, Orwin either speaks through a microphone which distorts her voice or she speaks with the stage lights turned off so that her audience cannot see the body from which the abject words are leaking from.

EXTENSION

KAYLEIGH’S QUESTION TO ME: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAVING A FEMALE BODY AND BEING A FEMALE BODY?

I probably interpreted this question slightly differently to how it was intended... rather than exploring myself both having and being a female body, I considered the difference between being a female body myself and someone else having (i.e. holding or beholding) my female body.

My performative answer to this question was inspired by the theory within the article by Kathy Smith, 'Abject Bodies Beckett, Orlan, Stelarc and the politics of contemporary performance', where the quote which inspired Kayleigh's question came from: "[Stelarc] observes a distinction between ‘having a body’ and ‘being a body’".

In this article, Smith notes: “Orlan comments that as soon as we see the body opened up, our own body immediately identifies with it, and that ingrained in us is the idea that it must be a victim. She argues, however, that a body being opened up does not necessarily mean pain and that, “[i]n fact, it is really [her] audience who hurts when they watch [Orlan] and the images of [her] surgery on video” (Orlan 1998: 326).

UNRAVEL 

In mine and Kayleigh’s previous unravel, we discovered that we both presented the same nervous habit – sucking in our bottom lips. I therefore became curious to discover more about nervous habits. In N.H. Azrin and R.G. Nunn’s article, ‘Habit-reversal: A method of eliminating nervous habits and tics’, they reveal that nervous habits persist because of “limited awareness” and “excessive practice”. Therefore, to attempt treatment for nervous habits, Azrin and Nunn acknowledge that you must make yourself aware of each instance of your nervous habit and practice movements which are the reverse of the habit’s action.

But, why would we want to treat nervous habits anyway? What is the harm in frequently repeating an action if it is small, subtle and does not affect your every-day life? It is because they show others the truth. As Azrin and Nunn reveal, “the present rational is that a nervous habit originally starts as a normal reaction. The reaction may be to an extreme event, such as a physical injury or physiological trauma . . . The behaviour becomes classified as a nervous habit when it persists after the original injury or trauma has passed and when it assumes an unusual form at an unusually high frequency.” Therefore, by repeating our nervous habits, we are effectively repeating and exposing our past traumas.  

UNRAVEL 

Kayleigh and I decided that we should unravel my response to Kayleigh’s question, ‘Where does your body belong?’. Within this response I created a paper representation of Kayleigh’s body and instructed her to write on her ‘body’ what she thinks people see when they look at her. Inadvertently, Kayleigh chiefly wrote down the aspects of her body which she does not want other people to see, such as her ‘spots’. I found it interesting to note that few of the characteristics on Kayleigh’s list actually aligned with what I see when I look at Kayleigh. Rather than writing a list of what Kayleigh thinks people see when they look at her body, Kayleigh had written a list of what she hopes people don’t see when they look at her body.

To unravel this discovery, we decided that I should also create a list of features which I hope people don’t see when they look at my body. We also decided that Kayleigh should re-write her list and we instructed ourselves to try to be as deep and honest as possible… (although the length of time that was taken for us to create these lists was evidence of our difficulty in conforming to this instruction). We then took it in turns to read the other person’s list to them, so that would could record and observe our subtle physical reactions when someone else does see the parts of us that we don’t want them to see.

When watching these recordings back, we noticed a nervous habit which was frequently carried out by both of us – sucking in our bottom lips. As noted in my preceding blog, during Kayleigh’s previous unravel, we discovered that the mouth is the most abject place of leakage on the human face. However, rather than presenting a seepage, this action of sucking in our bottom lips conveys our mouths attempting to absorb – to suck our exteriors into our interiors – into the place where we can hide the ‘unsightly’ aspects of ourselves.