Live - performance as part of Dublin Live Art Festival 2014, at the
MART
Through focus on, and manipulation of the act of breathing this piece seeks to call attention to the experience of being in the performing body. Through fluctuations in rhythm, depth and length, I try to find the space between breathing as voluntarily controlled and involuntary act.
Through focus on, and manipulation of the act of breathing this piece seeks to call attention to the experience of being in the performing body. Through fluctuations in rhythm, depth and length, I try to find the space between breathing as voluntarily controlled and involuntary act.
Image Credit: Fiona Kileen
Drawing down the
diaphragm, ribs expand outward and upward.
Air rushes in, past the
lips.
Hold,
a pause,
tightness in the voice
box,
stuck in the throat.
Release.
Breath pushes up and
brushes along the oesophagus. Feeling full, wide, tubular. Gushing out and
around the nasal passages.
Chest slowly releases.
The final,
whisper,
forced,
out.
Central to this work is a
struggle with questions such as: how can the gendered body show its experiences?;
how can we move beyond prescribed identifications, and towards empathy with the
flesh? how can we make strange the language of being in and representing the
body?
This piece continues my
exploration of tensions between the experiential and the spectacular body - states
of inhabiting the body, and being an image - as an on-going concern of my
practice, which studies a shifting and twisting relationship to the self
through the ever increasing prevalence of hyper-mediatisation.
This piece has existed as
both a live performance and a piece to video.
