naked

i crossed a line in my practice last week when i lay naked in a gallery for the first time. ok, so i was covered with a teensy blanket, and kept my knickers on (oh my mother would love that sentence), but for all intents and purposes i was naked.

the work was about that public/private divide and how sound plays into that - i slept through both my alarm clock radio, which was playing 'a perfect day to chase tornadoes' by jim white, and a massively noisy soundpiece by tim bruniges. but i was able to create the kind of internal silence necessary for rest.

i can't say exactly why being naked was important to the work, but the work was definitely better that way - it defined me as a person out of place, and vulnerable within that place. besides, lots of people sleep naked.

on a personal level, it definitely placed me within the work and i really entered into a state that was separate from myself as a person. kind of what costume does for theatre/film actors.

it also reminded me that, in terms of performance, there's not a lot of naked so much these days. back in the 70s and 80s, everyone was naked. the body and its place in art was shocking and performing naked made statements that couldn't be made clothed. it kind of seems like people have stopped making those kinds of statements maybe.
maybe i'm just out of the loop.
maybe we're all just over seeing artists with very unordinary bodies doing extraordinary things.
maybe we'd rather just watch chatroulette.
maybe we rather like the vanilla, one-size-fits-all image of what it means to be a human these days, as dictated by my friends in advertising and media circles.

i don't know. but there was something about having to just be in a body, whatever its form, that had me wondering....