more contextual- julia bardsley at spill festival,shunt vaults

in thinking for a while about the relationship between photography and performance i went to see julia bardsley for her trans-act performance in the shunt vaults. the performance was very interdisciplinary and used herself in many derivitive forms- through self-imitating puppets/props (ventriloquist), dolls (mini -me ), actress (in a tv set) and also delighted as i was to discover, like a kid in a sweet shop, used herself in pinhole photography. The many forms and representations of self was incredible. she was engaged in a live act of self as director, engaged in dialogue with contained self playing from a dvd in a tv set, self as actor. the mini-me doll bardsley used here was self in the same green tailored suit holding a video camera, and became real self videoing mini-self and vice versa. i liked the fact that we could view the real live footage of the doll being filmed but that it would have also been interesting to investigate a way of the doll actually filming back.....who is watching who? ...the doll inspired my in the film- sound art collaboration i did with Ash Sargant for Wormhole Saloon at Whitechaopel Art Gallery using a mini me customised dolls house doll of self as an artist making work.

the use of pinhole photography in this work used this form of photographys incredibly ghostly, haunting qualities of very long exposures, giving an air of menace/nostalgia/the presence of absence. i liked the fact that you viewed the work as you entered the first of the 3 phases of the performance like a gallery, that as you progressed through the space, you came to witness through spyholes the work again, but this time in the world locked beyond in the wall. in this trapped world was suffocating fractures of the organised , precise gallery world, this tiny space was disrupted, abandoned, ransacked. minature pinhole photos were lying on the floor of the worlds' beyond space. this reduction in scale was also fascinating and peering into the behind the scenes, it was like the junk room at my parents house where eveything was thrown if there was an impending visit from my granny, giving the illusion of we always live like this;).... from this i have considered use of the relationship between the real live act and then the toys/dolls/scale model derivitive and how ghostly pinhole can begin an experience tracing shifting identities.