First and Foremost

It only took forever...but I got here in the end!

I will upload some images of a previous performance and a video of a past performance as well (it'll take me a while to figure out how to get them on here).

I have to say that I don't have much of my work documented. I always found documentation of live performances problematic and so stayed away from it...I regret that decision slightly now as I would love to have something to look back on and to show you all. One of the founding principles in a lot of my work was that they addressed the liveness of performance, I never really figured out a way of documenting work that I was happy with. I found video and photographs poor substitutes to the live event and often misleading. Perhaps documentation of Live and Performance art wouldn't be a bad issue to address. It is certainly something that I believe performance artists should consider.

I once saw a performance by Chris Canavan where he was naked but locked in time by pouring hot wax over his head (don't worry he did have protective material over his face). The wax locked his body to the floor and Canavan stated that this also locked him into time. The main premise of his performance (or so his blurb in the NRLA booklet said) was that once the performance was over it was lost to time and space as those events were not documented and could never be recreated in that exact environment because time is continually moving...I liked the idea until I saw it was been photographed by Manuel Vason. In the instant that I saw the documentation of the work I knew that Canavan had not achieved his aim as he had introduced a whole new set of elements that addressed the documentation of time. His performance was never going to be lost to time and space once it was over because it will be forever archived!

I'm still trying to work out what it is that I want to achieve through this year and what I want to create. This time last year (before I interviewed for VLP) I had really set ideas of where I wanted to go. I was heavily theory based and took inspiration for any performances that I created from performance theory. Now I want to try something different...I just don't know what.

To help me work it out I have decided to go right back to the beginning and think about what it is that attracted me to Theatre and Performance in the first place. I'm hoping that looking at where I have come from might help me to focus on where I want to go.

I have a few half baked ideas bumbling around my head - so as soon as they are worked out I'm sure that I will have more to say :o)