My Internal Monologue (2016)

Development/Background

The idea behind this performance was to show the transition from public persona to self. It transpired from a performance to camera piece that I tested and tried out while planning my live performance. This features a medium shot of me blinking, looking directly at the screen, my face obscured with overlapping transparent layers of the same image which I felt represented me wanting to hide myself away from society's judging eyes. This simple moving image allows the viewer to focus on the audio. 

My alter-ego, 'Shirley', is the exaggerated version of my everyday public persona. She represents the change in our behaviour and persona depending on our social situation.

In this performance, I undress Shirley to reveal my most vulnerable self. I have a sound recording playing on speakers for the audience to hear, featuring my internal monologue - myself talking about my anxieties and fear of judgement. 

By putting myself out there when I perform, I am giving the audience permission to judge me. As I constantly worry about being judged by others, I am allowing them to watch me and think whatever they want. I am putting myself out there and doing something, I find very daunting and uncomfortable. This is why I wanted to turn it around and make the audience feel uncomfortable. 

I feel like when I get into that meditative performance state, I completely separate myself from the audience... there's a barrier. This allows me to stare and look directly into audience members eyes; making the audience feel uncomfortable. The stare and the emotional audio playing int he background should have made the audience feel as though they are intruding and watching something that should be private. I want to make the audience feel as uncomfortable and scared as I feel in every day social situations.

The Performance Itself

I began by hammering a nail in the wall. I could still hear people in the audience talking at this point, which really annoyed me, so I dropped the hammer, after I had finished hammering the nail into the wall, to get the audience's attention and to make them shut up. It worked, and for the rest of the performance the room was silent and everyone's focus was on me and Shirley. Afterwards, I hung my jacket on the nail in the wall. I crouched down and looked directly at the audience as I untied my shoes and placed each one on the floor in front of the plinth. I had to think of ways that I could move and undress without gazing towards the audience in such a way that would look as though I was 'stripping'. I decided to lie on the plinth with my head facing away, but not for long and not so that I had my back turned to the audience. I sat up to take my socks off but lay down again to take my trousers off. I pulled each leg off slowly, focussing on the actual movement rather than the gesture itself. I wore a nude vest and large nude pants in order to appear naked and vulnerable (without putting myself completely out of my comfort zone). I left the shirt, socks, shoes and trousers on and around the plinth, as they were left after the performance, for documentation. After the performance and for the remainder of the exhibition, I put the sound recording on headphones so that the audience could pick them up and visualise the aftermath of the performance. Having the wig and the jacket on the wall almost symbolised hanging up your public persona at the end of the day and returning home to be yourself - no longer needing to pretend to be a persona when you are alone in the comfort of your own home. After I removed the trousers, I hammered a nail into the wall again and took off Shirley's wig, then hung it on the wall. This revealed my bald-like wig cap on my head. I removed my wig cap and then removed the make up; I had removed the public persona. What was left was me. Removing the make up emphasised the struggle that women go through every day to put on make up and become this other version of themselves. Make up allows women to feel more confident and happier/good about themselves but it is an example of how we hide away and want to be seen in a particular or different way. I ended the performance by standing up to reveal my true, vulnerable self. 

This is me. This is who I really am. Me at my most vulnerable, raw state. Testing my emotions.

The most challenging part of the performance was trying to carry on with the action while listening to the recording of myself crying and talking about my anxieties. It was difficult doing that and letting it all out in front of my Mum in the audience. It was incredibly large audience but that did not seem to affect me. When I perform I almost forget that there is people watching, when I get into that meditative, performance state of mind. I feel like I separate from my body in that moment; there are no thoughts going through my head apart from those focussing on the movement, the transition and what to do next. This makes it all the more easy to stare into the eyes of the viewer. That separation allows me to do what I fear the most in every day life. This is why performance art is my preferred medium. I received an incredible reaction from the audience. That makes it all worth it.

This is my Persona (2016)

Development/Background

During our week in Vienna, I really struggled to control my anxiety. Spending a week, day and night, in the company of others, was a struggle. I felt a lot of pressure, mainly from myself, to act a certain way and felt as though I was constantly having to think about the way in which I would say things so that I wouldn't offend people etc. This is daily anxiety that I normally conceal and keep to myself but I was not used to keeping up this front, this happy normal persona, for a full week straight. It was exhausting. 

Our work in the exhibition was supposed to respond to our time in Vienna and as it was suggested that I try out performance, I felt that my social anxiety was the one thing that stood out the most to me, while I was away. This idea that we perform and behave in a certain way in order to fit in and feel comfortable, is something that most people can relate to. 

My performance featured me drawing a protection circle around myself, writing my own anxious thoughts and displaying them for the audience to see. I wanted to do the opposite of what I find myself doing in every day social situations. I was laying all of my feelings and anxieties bare for everyone to judge and think what they want with them. I often looked at members of the audience directly in the eye so to make them feel uncomfortable and make them understand how it feels to feel as though you're being judged. I reached out to the audience and then pulled away, curling into a ball to show that I want to join in and I want to feel comfortable but I am scared. I focussed on how I could express all of the different emotions that I feel when I'm particularly socially anxious; the anger, the frustration, the sadness and mainly the fear. I ended the performance with me trapped in the middle of my words (my thoughts) on the floor, stood up and said 'every day is a performance, this is my persona'. I then walked out of the room and left, before returning as myself in my normal clothes (separating me from performance me). Arguably, those are two different performing 'Josies'; the every day performance Josie and the performance art Josie. 

I gained so much from this experience. My work was well received and had the best reaction I had ever had up until that point. This was when I realised how rewarding performance art is for me. I gain so much more emotionally. The euphoric feeling after a performance is well worth the anxiety leading up to it. Having members of the audience coming up to me afterwards to tell me they understood and that they shared the same feelings as me was such a relief and meant so much to me. I found this performance particularly therapeutic. Laying all of my feelings bare in such an environment allowed me to explore my emotions instead of suppressing them, as I do daily. This performance gave me the confidence boost that I needed.

‘This is my persona’, Live Performance (Film documentation), RAPID, AU, Vienna, Austria 2016

My work explores every day life as a performance. I am currently using performance art and characterisation as a way of showing a different version of myself to the audience. I am looking at my own vulnerability, fear of judgment and the side to myself that others rarely see. This particular performance looks at how we all feel the need to perform in order to feel comfortable depending on who we are with and our surroundings.

An Interview with Myself (2015)

An Interview with Myself (2015)

Development
I thought it would be an interesting idea to create a film where Shirley interviews me and I interview Shirley. The key would be to see the difference and change in personality depending on whether I was in costume or not. 

This began as a "sketch", an experimental idea; I didn't consider lighting and setting at this point. I began with a list of questions for me to ask Shirley and for her to ask me. I wanted to use some of the skills that I had learned from VestandPage's performance workshops and allow myself to answer these questions on the spot, through improvisation and spontanaeity, as myself and my alter-ego character. This was so that my response would seem more natural. I did not want to act as I do not consider myself an actor. I overlaid some of the frames using a fade transition in order to see my face and Shirley's face overlapping one another, to show how we are two versions and sides of the same person. I liked this effect but if I were to develop this, I would need to make sure Shirley was positioned exactly the same in the frame and to the same scale. 

It was interesting to look back and reflect on the first interview, Shirley interviewing me. However, if I were to carry on with this idea for the film I would need to consider backdrop, lighting and props in the background to differentiate the characters and to emphasise that Shirley is a fictional character.

From this, I decided to use the sound recording of me interviewing Shirley about herself, as I felt the visual was not going to be strong enough. This is what led me to my sound/mirror installation, 'An Interview with Myself' in the Anatomy Rooms, Aberdeen. I used the audio from the interviews and played it through headphones on stereo so that each side to me had one headphone; I asked questions in one headphone and Shirley answered in the other. I had a mirror with a transparent image of Shirley transferred onto it. This was to enable the viewer to look at themselves through Shirley's eyes.

The most compelling and interesting thing from this was what I learned about Shirley when I allowed her to answer the questions naturally. I liked how it was obvious that my confidence and attitude changed when I was in costume. Shirley is an exaggeration of the different persona I create depending on who I am with and where I am. She is a representation of how we (as humans) change our behaviour in order to feel comfortable in society. 

‘An interview with Shirley’, Sound and Mirror Installation, 2015

This installation features a sound recording of my alter-ego being interviewed by my real self. Each headphone has a different voice; the right headphone features myself asking the questions and the left headphone features my alter-ego (Shirley) answering the questions. Above the headphones, there is a mirror installation on the wall with a lazertran, printed photograph of Shirley which means the audience are forced to look at themselves through Shirley’s eyes, as they listen to the interview. Shirley is the most obvious example of one of my personas. However, she is a representation of how we, as people in our society, feel the need to act in a certain way and change our behaviour (or our persona) to fit in.

I Still Love You (2015)

Background/Development

This piece was a step away from the relationship between analogue and digital. I noticed that my work, at the time, looked at change and how the transition from analogue to digital technology could represent the change in my personal relationships over a period of time. This piece features an audio recording of me reading a line from a letter I received as a child, from someone that meant a lot to me at the time. I wanted to represent the deterioration of meaningful relationships in this video. The line 'Whatever anyone says to you, even if I don't see you much, I still love you' stands out to me because it is a complete contrast to the last thing this person ever said to me. I wanted this to be vague so that it could relate to any personal relationship and for the audience to find their own connection with it. The visual features two overlaid transparent moving images. One moving image shows me posting a letter and the other is a point of view shot of me looking down at my legs walking in the grass. The second visual, with the transparency, gives the impression of rain and uses pathetic fallacy to emphasise the sadness of the audio. I deliberately wore red and edited the colour of the images to black and white with a red filter, to highlight myself and the postbox to create a focal point. The video looks as though I am posting a letter but the idea was that the audience will never know whether the letter was actually posted, whether I changed my mind, whether the recipient received it or who the letter was written to. I feel like the final moving image appeared dream-like, as though a memory, with the colour filter and transparent image overlay. This is another example of how I use the past in my work. It suggests that this could've been at a point when letters were sent and received, before the relationship deteriorated. I feel like this video piece was a starting point for using my raw emotions in my work, in a way that an audience can relate and understand. 

‘I still love you’, Moving Image, 2015

The moving image, ‘I still love you’, features the quote ‘Whatever anyone says to you, even if I don’t see you much, I still love you’ which was taken from a letter I received as a child. I felt like this reflected my close relationship with that person and the distance, which inevitably came between us. It is a sentence that an audience can relate to and reflect on, with any of their own personal relationships. The film features myself posting a letter, as my internal monologue continuously repeats the quote. I wanted the film to appear as though the letter was posted but in a way that enables the audience to question whether or not it was delivered. This was filmed in such a way as to show the uncertainty of whether one will ever hear back from the other half of the broken-down relationship. In this work, I aim to represent the break-down of meaningful, personal relationships over a period of time.