The physicality of an image

Lia, the questions you pose about the performing (and peformativity) of an image and your earlier question regarding experience in the ‘doing’ are key concerns of my research and my work with the moving image. The title of my thesis: Re-presenting the Physical Act : Strategies for an Exploration of the Physical presence of the Body through its Screen Representation addresses these questions head on by proposing re-conceptualisation of the materiality of the body through its physical presence as an image.

At the heart of my concerns is the direct relationship (or interrelationship) between video and performance that has been prevalent since the 1960’s and 70’s when video was emerging as an art-form in its own right (and the question the emergence of video as an art form rather than just as documentation is key here) It is my belief that the body captured on video not only stresses its very physicality and existential presence as an image, [as a physical document and tangible record of an action or an event], but also in the very direct relationship it has with the viewer, in processes of spectatorship and communication, through which I suggest its physicality becomes concretised. This directly has to do with what an image ‘does’ and it suggests something in the performativity and ontological presence of an image (something that happens in the image itself and in the experience of viewing it) that is different but nonetheless experiential in the moment in which it is viewed.
So it is not suggesting that it is the same kind of experience as the experience of watching a live performance with live bodies, but what it is suggesting that it is another kind of performance in and of itself. It this way it goes beyond the idea of the product by including the image as part of the performance (or performed) act. In this sense it tries to hold onto the idea of the experience as a current experience rather than one that has transpired.

I tried to give a sense of this when I first set up the seminar performance ‘A Demonstration of Practice’, by having a live feed of my performance to camera that I was performing to the audience, projected simultaneously as an image directly on the wall behind me. By doing this I was not trying to set up binaries of this is me ‘here’ and this is the image over ‘there’ but presenting both ‘here’ in the experience and moment of viewing and doing. Jillian’s reference to the Butler text is key here. Also, what Amelia Jones refers to as ‘Body Art’ (as distinct from ‘Performance Art’) , as works that

‘may or may not initially have taken place in front of an audience: … that take place through an enactment of the artist's body, whether it be in a "performance" setting or in the relative privacy of the studio, that is then documented in such a way that it can be experienced subsequently through photography, film, video and / or text' (although I would contest the experience as being subsequent).

Jones' articulation and examination of this term is particularly relevant here since it posits the emergence of a trajectory of practice that explicitly implies not only the (physical) presence and existence of the body in the work from the start, but also points to a wider examination of the term performance through its functional status within the broader context of art practice (in photography, film, video and / or text…) and its relationship to the viewer. Jones defines this relationship as one of 'intersubjectivity' : 'a site where reception [in the viewer] and production [in the art work] come together’ and is largely informed by Merleau Ponty's phenomenological writings which see the body in terms of its 'lived' experience and its relationship to others constituted through the reciprocal relationship between ‘seeing’ and ‘being seen’.



Lia, your proposition of images that are themselves performed is very close to what I have been trying to do in my work, particularly my latest work ‘Live Run.’ In this work the ‘doing’ is everything and so is the construction and reception of an image whilst the ’doing’ is taking place. Over the last year I have been developing moving-image/performance works that use mobile camera technologies to record a series of long-distance runs. Starting from a premise of stereo sound and vision, I have two cameras attached to my head in order to record my viewpoint from each eye (and ear). What is recorded is the run in its entirety from my eye-view and experience of running the event. What I wanted to develop from the start and what I finally had the opportunity to work on during my residency in Banff, was a ‘live’ aspect to this work, where others are able to see my viewpoint (through the image) literally as I run a particular course, through the simultaneous performance of the run as it happens and its screening. I have only just scratched the surface and I was able to start something that is still very much in progress, but it is the closest I’ve got to so far to what could be described as the production of a work where the performance in both process and activity is in the image (or in the intertwining of the performance and the production of the image) and it is very exciting.