Performance/installation
Place: The Pharmacy, Scotland road, Carlisle, England (Movement, Change and Identity Exhibition)
Duration: 1 minute, 10 seconds (installation completed for 3 minutes)
Material: Human form with feet darkened by soil and hands painted white, sheet of glass elevated by stacked bricks, vinyl floor squares, dental records, photographic documentation of previous performances, saliva, white emulsion paint, hair, blood, soil
22nd November 2019
Dealing with themes of identity, displacement and transformation, this allusion manifests itself as a record of prior reflection. It was conceived during a week-long residency, in which I worked alongside, and in response to, a Kurdish refugee.
Considering the extent to which a true understanding of external experience is possible, this collaborative climate encouraged a meta-cognitive approach to production. During which, I accentuated the process of responding to that which is in a perpetual state of becoming; that which provides no fixed point through which prolonged, conceptual identification may be established. Activated by my presence, the anatomical implications of the installation – a deconstruction of body and space – highlighted these problematic ideas; the inevitable failings of my endeavour ultimately informing the action itself. I, momentarily, became an artefact, one which embodied a previous set of experiences and unsustainable outcomes. Consequently, this cultivation and systemic relinquishment of identities rendered my comprehension of selfhood futile.
calumeccleston.com 