contextual references- eve bonneau- spill festival

'body’ is the first word I say by eve bonneau - spill festival, shunt vaults, april 2007. the dusty cavernous vaults beneath london bridge station have had for me some very different uses of the space, some more relevant to the space than others- from sitting in tiered seating(you could have been anywhere) in one performance to being left alone to meander around discovering gems along the way protruding out of walls, or looking a bit shifty at the end of tunnels in others. my favour is with the latter non seating use of this vault, undertaking a nervous journey to get there before things begin.this nerve-wracking experience is even better if you are with someone who's going in the vault for the first time or maybe used to a 'traditional' auditorium and you can watch mentally trying to work out how they can safely-make-it-back-fairly-soon-into-the-real-world- of-the-station-beyond..... bonneau's performance involves you travelling to your destination at the very end of the vault, as you get closer you start wondering whether she is naked, and as you get there you realise she is, clutching nervously a bare light bulb. you are then slammed-door-shut-in and it begins.... you watch bonneau child like exploring her body through light, in front of you sitting on the floor. light switched on and off as she moves around the space, suddenly appearing directly next to you breathing on your ear lobe, as well as a second later appearing huddling in a corner. this shifts as she moves behind a screen, playing with the bulb now through shadow interplay. she distorts her shape as she changes distance and direction form the screen.this changes as a multimedia projector of s=close ups of her body appears on the screen, tiny at first but she then pulls it back, physically handing this projector like a child working out what this toy can do. as the screen is thrown up and the video projection is thrown to the opposite wall, across the audience, we are all involved, we have been watching her, now her us.we gain that sense of awkwardness, once we were hidden in the dark observing the screen, passively like spectators in a cinema, and now we are the performers, being watched with the projections falling on us. people nervously shift around out of this light, pressing their bodies along the walls, trying not to be seen again, phew...bonneau continues this watch me watch you throughout. the shifting identities i mentioned in bardsleys work with pinhole, tracing changing roles, is played out here but in a very different way. this work also calls into question sourcing documentation. good ole google failed me on this one to be able to post a representative image, there is only one on the spill site and its poor. in talking to laura yesterday about documentation of performance,. its hard, and my written account here is only now becoming second hand and my opinion and not a patch on the real live experience. did anyone else see this piece? how was it for you.....

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.