Being able to do live performance is much like the moment you manage to get that next hit of your favourite drug. Whether that is Chocolate, Caffeine, Alcohol, Cigarettes (nicotine) or Heroine (I don’t judge). But you practice and you build yourself up wanting it more and more everyday. Taking out the nigally irritating bits that don’t work or deciding on costume or how much clay to use. I felt like Im done with this performance now. Im happy to wipe it out of my brain and start on the next project. I felt that the feedback was good and looking at the film and pictures I’m happy with the ascetics. But what does it mean? How to I feel about it? where does it sit in the world?
I felt that this is what it represented to me:
Working on finding what it is to be human, how the body copes under stress and wether I as a human, could self-institutionalize myself into a state of being. ‘Clay Head’ sees the artist fold and mold a block of terracotta clay around his head. He starts by leaving the clay to sit in position so as to mold itself. He then starts to manipulate the clay removing the ability to see and breath. The body reacts to these conditions to become something further, a fight or flight situation. The body is transformed into a being not represented as the artist. Themes appear within the atemporal sculpture such as self-harm, torcher and themes of horror manipulation and play.
I talk in the third person as I am not the art. I mean I am in body but not in mind, the moment the persona takes a hold is the moment where I become something else, I loose control of what I am as a person. The other comes around and takes away my humaness and transforms. I like that and Its not what I believe it to be it what it is. That is what performance is to me, a becoming, a transmutation of the mind.
