Attitude of Mind | Totality of Deeds

Performance/installation

Place: University of Cumbria: Institute of the Arts, Brampton Road, Carlisle, England (Breaking Ground Exhibition)

Duration: 3 hours continuous

Material: Human form dressed in black, white studio pillar, eight A4 photographs of previous performances, four A3 acetate brain scan images, lightbox, human hair, iron filings, soil, white cup, red and black glove, yellow and orange glove, plasters, bandages, paperback copy of Albert Camus: The Myth of Sisyphus

30th August 2019

Engaging in repetitive movements around a white studio pillar, I referenced the actions performed during Contexts: IX International Festival of Ephemeral Art and the behavioural lexicon developed through my studio practice.

The episodic continuity of these mechanical gestures, along with their trace and residue, would allow the exercise to exhibit hermeneutical traits. Such would be achieved through the implementation of symbolic signifiers planted within the works processes and the re-appropriation of post-performance artefacts. More akin to physical allusions than conventional performances, my actions work to organise human experience and cognition. I assume multiple forms, simultaneously strange and familiar, that I carry throughout. Thus, sacrificing all to appearance, I commit myself and become myself through the work, asserting my own perspective on the world and changing nothing of my circumstances. The deep feelings present in these allusions mean more than they are conscious of saying; they are, in a Camusian sense, symptomatic of individual universes – internal modes of being.

Photo credit: Mia Eccleston

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