Background: Véronique Chance

My background is also not in performance but in Fine Art/Printmaking and my interest in performance and performativity (and my interest in mediation for that matter) probably comes from the frustration l had for three years on a very traditional mono-disciplinary degree course at what was then Manchester Polytechnic.
At Manchester we were not ‘allowed’ to cross-disciplines and those that did had a very hard time or were punished with a lower classification of degree. I towed the line and tried to push the boundaries in my own way, by making large-scale works that required a lot of physical effort and which involved a process of piecing together prints in sections to make images the scale of theatrical backdrops. But I was not satisfied: by the time I finished the course I felt I had learned a lot of traditional printmaking processes and techniques, but very little else and even less of anything in a critical sense.
The year I had at Glasgow School of Art, immediately following my degree taught me far more than the three years at Manchester had done. Although still ‘taught’ under disciplines, the approach was far more open and multi-disciplinary, with the understanding of artistic practice being about an exploration of ideas and processes that come from a variety of sources and situations in everyday life (as well as from art), and an attitude towards the making of art that considered a more methodological approach. I was in a Printmaking department, but I could make objects, I could use photography and I could use text (and texts) in the making of my work. I could also make work that did not go on walls.

I’m not sure exactly when my relationship to Performance came about. I say relationship because that is what I consider my work to have- a relationship to performance rather than necessarily being a performance in itself and I have never called myself a performance artist (or any other kind of artist for that matter, although recently during my residency at the New Media Institute in Banff, I found myself using the term ‘media artist’ to describe myself, whilst at the same time being fiercely critical of the use of the term).

My relationship to performance is in some ways an uncomfortable one. I think this is because I was always petrified and self-conscious as a child of performing on a stage. I grew up in the environment of a small boys boarding school in Kent that my father taught in and I found myself on occasion (my father also being the English teacher), being coerced into playing small bit parts in school drama productions. My fear was not so much a fear of being on stage in itself, but a fear of the spoken word and particularly of forgetting my words, however few they were (and they were always very few), and of speaking out of turn or in the wrong place. So my relationship to performance has been more one of gesture and action, rather than one of utterance and one in front of a camera, rather than live.

My first attempt at a live performance came on the PhD in my second year, when wanting to describe the methodology of my practice in relation to the concerns of my research project in a seminar presentation. I have never been a big fan of ‘PowerPoint’ presentations in the discussion and presentation of art and I was trying to think of how I could make an alternative, but effective presentation that could throw up a number of questions that were central to my research concerns (namely the relationship between the physical presence of the body and its screen representation). I have also never been a big fan of reading out a presentation (although I have been guilty of this on several occasions, due to my fear of forgetting my words).
I began to think about my ‘method’ of practice (of performing in front of a camera) and how I might perform or ‘demonstrate’ this as a structural process. Mediation became a central to this, not least through act of bringing (or transferring) to a public arena what normally took place in the privacy of my studio, but also through the setting up of a live video feed that became part of the structure of the performance as a live event. In this (new) situation, the different ‘elements’ became props and characters, with the recording camera, a centrepiece of the event, through which all the elements connected and combined, in the position of the starring role. This strategy was designed to raise questions about the liveness of performance and its representation in a very direct way. It was also designed take the emphasis away from me as a performer, whilst also drawing attention to that very act.
The performance itself (as it would have been performed in front of a camera) was based on a simple exercise routine that I had practised and learned and that was to be performed on a silver exercise ball (the significance of the ball had to do with the idea of introducing a simple prop into a routine; the significance of the exercise routine, stems from my interest in the relationship between physical exercise, physical exertion, gesture and the repetitive act).

In a similar way to my fear of forgetting my words, I became fearful of forgetting the routine, but somehow the challenge of the event and the performance as one of physical gesture (rather than one of speech), made me overcome my nerves (no-one would ‘know’ the routine in any case).
I was also tickled by the very idea of performing an exercise routine on a slightly over-sized silver exercise ball in front of an audience.

I’ll leave it there…