I am feeling a mixture of nerves and excitement as Tempting Failure 2016 is fast approaching. The festival runs from the 21st – 29th July and tickets are available here. My performance will be on the evening of the 28th July alongside Tim Bromage and Richard Herring at Hackney Showrooms.
I will be performing a new work titled:
16000:1 TEETH(OF)MY CHILDREN
I have decided to take the image of myself stood next to the stack of paper that I had originally intended for my MA Show and think about how I could take that idea forward. For me that is a powerful image, and I like the idea of using my body to process the paper / using the paper to document the body. The theme for this years Tempting Failure is ‘In Utero’ and so it seems like an appropriate time to bring a new project into the world. I will be taking the stack forward as a new project which will be explored through a series of performances. I like the idea of transporting a huge almost unmanageable stack of paper and performing with it for what will be an expansive period of time, potentially over a year intermittently. I will then collect, document and archive every interaction with the stack, so everything from the transporting and storing to the performative action itself. For me this brings into question, where does a performance begin or end? I don’t think performance solely exists for the period of time that the viewer is present. For example, when I have cut my skin, until it has healed it is still performing- even without any other witness than myself. I think putting these parameters in place will allow for me to learn through experimentation and challenge of what body and it’s materiality really does mean to me. Tempting Failure will mark the beginning of this long term project, which I hope to take to various venues in the future. The end of the project, I foresee, will be an exhibition the archive created through action. All traces and sheets of paper captured and accounted for. It will become a time capsule of an extended intermittent durational performance. It will capture time, body, memory and experience.
The action which I will explore at TF will involve my children’s teeth. I am fascinated with the notion that these teeth came into existence inside my body. They they left inside my children’s body and then as they left their gums, they returned to me under the guise of the tooth fairy. I intend for this action to bring into question, where does the mother’s body end? I am fascinated with the body as a site that is autonomous and also a site of creation; that all bodies regenerate and create new cells, and that my body grew other bodies inside it. This still seems mysterious to me despite the fact that I have lived through it.
