Performance And Self-portrayal -- a dialog and publication

Caitlyn Matthews is a contemporary artist who’s practice’s focal point centres around the body’s relationship to material and obscurity. [I am] interested in the labour of the performance, the vulnerability of the body and the abstract effects of interacting with different materials and lighting and how these things can manipulate the body. They often step into these awkward moments, implicating themself and the viewer. [My] practice is influenced by the Fourth-wave feminist movement that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of internet tools, and intersectionality. The fourth wave seeks greater gender equality by focusing on gendered norms and the marginalization of women in society. This piece of photography comes from a film series where the artists explore their personal relationship to body, sexuality, and gender. This is explored through the interaction between, body, space, material, and light. The image is layered footage of th...

[they] are dressed gregariously, inappropriate for their age. They wear bright clashing colours, strange wigs, and are blindfolded with silver scarves. They walk blindly into the future not knowing how the incidental audience of the City Centre will react. The work is about the vulnerability and presence of women on the street, we embrace the unknown, become creative wanderers. We notice that to some, we are clearly invisible, an embarrassment to others as they shift their gaze and move position. Not evident at the time, we realised that in most of the performance photographs, it was men who stared at us, an observable oddity punctuating someone’s lunch time break. We felt it was that precise moment when the ‘look’ was captured that the performance was actualised. A connection made, albeit fleeting…our work was done.

  I am writing in application to the Performance and self portrayal survey. I am writing also as 1 part of three people. JDD (me),  Heini Marie King  and Cyrus Hung. Below will explain the details of our performance, photography and themes. I am interested in the survey, its outcomes and how it can help develop the dialogue that has started between the three of us. The text below and image attached gives a basic outline as to what we are working on.  HMK, CH and I are developing a dialogue. It involves us  performing Parallel Play Our performance requires us interpreting the sound of one another’s mark making and infrequent peripheral vision which we co-create into a dialogue with drawing and movement as the medium. Our conversation around freedom of movement, power of media and decolonising through dialogue started last year. One of the recordings of our performance is the mark made diptych as a form of dialogue.  The name of the work, Parallel P...