[re]authoring
Material: Hairless body (in all but head), 100 meters of black satin double sided berisfold 7 mm width ribbon, No. 15 Swann-Morton sterile disposable scalpel (retractable), 120 kg of salt, freezing environment, Aktion video on loop, two parcan floor lights.
Action: 2 hour installation to be encountered one to one. An inert naked body lays freezing in the centre of the space.
Context: This was the second in a series of phenomenological actions that were to originally form a triptych and latterly culminated in The Lived Body artwork. Originally titled [RE]authoring through Sacrifice, this was exhibited at the inaugural Buzzcut in 2012 within the abandonded warehouses spaces of the Glue Factory.
Furthering a dialogue around the perception between the Being of the artist's body through the Flesh of the space and viewer as Other, this work was not about sacrifice in a ritualistic sense but by taking the elements of Aktion & Traces of Being and exhibiting them in a space alongside a bleeding inert body the controlled perception of the artist's own Self was sacrificed. Each encounter brought life, judgement, connection, rejection and even symbiosis to the foreground as the artwork became intrinsically about how the viewer perceived the space. As the body increasingly suffered from being in the freezing environment so each encounter altered. The work was halted when after 100 minutes the body passed the second stage of exposure through shock & incapacitation, entering hypothermia. The artist was unable to move their own limbs and had to be helped from the space and medically assisted to avoid circum-rescue collapse.
Exhibited with support from University of Bristol.
Production Management: Hannah Moore.
2012
Buzzcut - Glasgow, UK