Interaction with the audience at Metron was more intense and more dynamic on days three and four this week-end. In the performance work YOURS, I invited the audience to participate in the work. This was following on from MINE, that I performed last week-end, where the audience were witnesses to my actions. I talked to each about the symbolism of the objects I was working with, that I was crushing the rosemary in an attempt to invoke memory in the space through the scent of it. I then offered each a sprig of the herb to invite the idea of remembrance for them. I asked them if I might then photograph their hands holding the piece of rosemary. Everyone agreed and all seemed pleased and quite touched by the simplicity and sincerity of the gesture. Many wanted to talk about the significance of it for them and offered me personal recollections.
This was the most engaged with the audience that I have been in a performance work. It was an enjoyable and rewarding experience and gave me a sense of real connectedness with the audience. I think that they enjoyed the opportunity to talk with me and to get more understanding of what I was doing. I think that for some it all appeared a little daunting and inscrutable when they first entered the space. They were pleased to speak with me and have me answer the most usual question ‘what are you doing ?’.
This is actually a hard question to answer, and one that artists often resist. It felt a challenging and positive process for me to go through, of testing what I was doing, my intentions, whether my ideas were reaching the viewer and the overall relevance of the work.
Interaction with the audience represents a new direction in my performance work and I am intrigued by the possibilities of working in this way. It is the next development I am introducing to my work following my decision to return to performance work in 2006 and to perform solo works. It is progressive and challenging for me to do and is helping me to gain confidence as a solo performer.
I am pleased by how much people are willing to engage and to talk with me. I obviously make people feel at ease and able to offer their own ideas and feelings to the work which is positive. I am aware that this is a format that some artists, notably female performance artists, do use in their work and have done since the earliest days of it. There are early precedents like Valie Export, Annie Sprinkle, Yoko Ono. Their contact with the audience in the main seemed to be provocative and about confronting them with images or to participate in actions that were designed to unsettle and challenge them. I emulated this posture in the performance work,TAGS that I made earlier this year.
Contemporary artists like Ann Rapstoff and Sonjia van Kerkhoff appear to use interaction in a more conversational manner as I am now doing, as a means of making connections with the audience and offering ideas and images through identifying shared experience.
If I feel any dilemma with developing the work in this way it is that there is a conflict between my desire to engage with the audience and to make the work more transparent for them and my own need to absorb myself in the ritualistic aspects of the work I have made.
The work changes for me when I am not in conversation and I am able to perform the repetitive actions that I have built into the work – in this case the crushing of the herb in the pestle and mortar. I am able to sink into the rhythm of the actions and synchronize them with the sound of the footfall in Alun’s video piece. It quickly takes on a contemplative aspect which feels as though it is approaching the core of the piece – an attempt to invoke memory. I hope that Alun and I will be able to show this work again and if so I will build into it periods when I am able to sit and work the piece without distraction – with or without an audience.
It is difficult talking with the viewer and yet maintaining my ‘performance head’. I was aware even if the audience were not, that even though I looked like I was chatting to them I was in fact still performing and they were participating in an art work. This was implicit rather than explicit and few were perhaps aware of this until I pointed the camera at them and photographed them.
This illustrates for me the necessity of adopting different performance persona within a work. As long as I maintain mindfulness of them and pay attention to where I am in the work then there need not be a conflict.
The European artists inhabitation of Harcourt Arboretum begins next week, so things are hotting up. Or getting wet, or something. I’ve been sketching and thinking for ages, but really awaiting the arrival of all artists on the scene so we can begin conversations. I think the aim is to allow our meetings to affect the work produced, at least that’s my way of thinking. Read more about the project at the web site 
