I have been recently reviewing a photo taken in London by Emma Starkey, www.emmastarkey.com, of a homeless person sat bellow a coffee shop. The image is absurd due to the fact that it is almost like he isn’t there.
I decided to take the image and photo copy it 24 times this distorted the image.
this allowed me to then make the image seen bellow by a process similar to Richard Prince, I took a part of the image that was distorted and added it to the image that wasn’t then Scanned the image in to give the ‘jean’ effect. I wanted to make the image look as though the Homeless person was fading away into the wall.
I started to think about what the Homeless person was thinking and what he may think of those walking past him. I have started making a performance based on this where I talk to a bag of flour, like Hamlet talks to the skull of Yorick. I have taken the a passage of Act 5 Scene 8 which goes:
“Let me see. (takes the skull) Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. —Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come. Make her laugh at that.—Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.”
and I have changed it to:
“Let me see. (takes the flour)
(splits flour bag) Oh, poor flour!
I used to use you to my will, to make bread and cake!
you carried my daily diet a thousand times (try to eat flour), and now—how terrible— (sit down) I sit here.
It makes my stomach turn. Fading away into the wall on putrid piss filled streets. I don’t know how many times I kissed the soul of boots. Right here (point to mouth).
That is no joke now!
(point to audience) Your food?
Your baths? (Re-enact washing with the flour)
Your warm bed to go home to?
Your looks of disgust and distaste?
Snotty noses!
You don’t make me smile now. Are you sad about that?
(ask audience over and over)
(shouts) No
Look at that lady, look how much makeup she slathers on (use flour to re-enact), she’ll end up just like me some day.
That’ll make her laugh.
You laugh at me. Inside.
(silence)
Do you have a match?
(walk out)”
Bellow is some images that I took from the practice run I did today.
I felt that maybe a plinth or table for the flour would work and also that i need to practice the script, It just does not work with me reading the script straight from the paper!
