Originating from thoughts concerning the previous or original layer being the template for the next work, here I re-presented and re-enacted Screen Projection, a work from 2008 exhibited as part of my undergrad. I have been trying to experiment more with live performance, as I’m still unsure if it is an integral part of the work, and as I’ve been tossing up re-enacting other peoples work I thought it was fitting that I try it out with my own. I’m conscious of the ‘aura’associated with performance work and I’m hesitant to create a sit-down-and-watch arena. I’ve also noticed from previous works where I am enacting the same action that is being projected- how viewers seem to give preference to the projected image; perhaps it has more authority than the live. The live vs. representation.
original screen projection (2009) & workings
Presented for a crit session, Screen Projection was projected onto one side of the gallery and used to prompt me to re-enact the performance live on the opposing wall. As a crit is taken to be a situation in which to show, unpack and explain recent work, I was interested in using the situation to become a work in itself. Performing a demonstration of the older work yet choosing to take aspects which are most relevant to my current practice and ignoring the rest. A selective re-enactment.
As I had my back to the original work for the majority of the performance I was working from memory (having re-made that particular work a couple of times and also being a gallery attendant for a show it was in I could re-enact it with my eyes closed if I so wished). The difference between visual prompts and memory is like that of tracing as opposed to redrawing. The footage from the original work acts like a mental projection of the past, literally projected behind me. This footage is of what has been and gone, in the present moment I have no control over its durational outcome as it has already been set. This juxtaposes the precarious present action, something may fail, fall, break, someone may decide- conscious or not to interact with the work. I then have to respond to these interventions, making the split second decision to attempt to remain integral to the original action or respond to the new interruption. The present action has a tension, there is an unpredictability of working live, any second the work could fall apart to reveal itself. There is a familiarity of repeating actions; a constructed déjà vu. Is the past dictating the future action or is the future action leading and skewing the memory of what has been. Along with the temporal gap there is a spatial gap causedby working on opposing walls, a physical space between the past and future actions, which mirror themselves. Mirrors squeeze out the space in between. The gap acts as a suspension of reality; a compression of time. As I, along with a viewer glance between simultaneous occurring, yet temporally spaced actions the work begins to act as a stereoscope. I begin to enact and merge with my former self.
The works second (or would it would it be 3rd) incarnation could be consideredas purely staged for the purpose of documentation as it was relatively audience-less - although I did alter the work in projecting it back on top of itself rather than onto the opposite wall. I had decided that the presence of camera in the above mentioned crit. would be too distracting for myself and for a viewer. In the same way the laptop left playing in the space, refers to the previous layer, the camera left running alludes to the potential of the present action becoming a past layer.
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