Finally made my first set of promo boxes and sent them off yesterday. The aim of them is to promote a specific piece of work and to give people a mental nudge to keep me in mind for opportunities that might come up in the future. I re-call reading the book Jaques Lacan for beginners on my degree course and he makes some fascinating observations about how society is built on a ‘gift culture’ which has stuck with me. I noticed the gift culture in China and how this action is used in the retail environment. Recently a collegue of my husband, a graphic designer sent out a company designed brochure with no contact details on or clue as to who had sent the item. However due to the interest in the design people did their own research to seek out the sender. This is a positive response to the simple action of sending something in the post. Although I then watched a TV show about ‘Variety Performance’ and Bruce Forsyth was being interviewed and commented that:
I gave out business cards to everyone I met, I even went round all the agencies to see them personally, but no-one ever rang me back.
After sending my boxes off at the post office I then got a pang of, oh my god what am I doing? This happens to me frequently when I have just made work. I can feel really confident about a decision, go full steam ahead, then straight after making something I worry what people will think of it, of me. Sometimes I find it hard to separate out the work and myself as they are both so entwined. To curb this anxiety I have been gathering material about performance by observing people and activity happening around me for example in my ‘Magician’ video at the Chinese Arts Centre and plane video. Although I still feel the work is stronger when I combine video with a live art presence. I digress, back to the promotion of work which I have used the internet to show videos but with the popularity of surfing the net I feel the work can be seen and easily forgotten. This is not a judgement on the work but the speed at which we use our computers and consume images in our everyday lives. Fundamentally people still want something to take away with them, can performance artists really aviod using the object in their work?
