Contents
Title page................................................................................................. Contents….............................................................................................. Introduction……..................................................................................... CHAPTER 1: Memory and Place…..………………………………......... CHAPTER 2: Place and Gender............................................................... CHAPTER 3: Performance and the Nude body...................................... CHAPTER 4: Site-specific Installation……………................................... Conclusion and future directions ............................................................ BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................
Introduction
My practice is primarily rooted in the exploration of the entanglement between memory and place through an embedded gendered experience as a female artist drawing strongly on site-specific performance art and installation as a method of approaching and researching my subjects. I am constantly exploring the world around me to understand my own place within it. An overarching interest which has powered my work is the role of female artists exploring place as subject and while this may not be directly referenced in every project visually, it exists within the processes I undertake in each project, processes that embed themselves in my safety and empowerment of body within environments. The materials I use for research and to create are conceptually associated to subject matter and these change depending on context, although I regularly use film, performance, photography, sculpture, and installation. I employ methods of experimentation to understand my subject through visual and embodied creations of material. Through the research methods I become more embedded into the subject and even if these works never become public, they allow me to recollect, rethink and reengage.
The chapters in this text to pinpoint my conceptual practice within contemporary art by exploring contexts and ideas which build the foundations to my projects.
Chapter 1: Memory and Place.
Memory fascinates me; the way it operates and how it can be visualised is something I often refer to throughout my works. The inter-relationship between memory and place is a key objective to my practice. Memory exists through multiplicities, through layers of interpretations, time, narratives, and experience. It is also paramount to how we understand and misunderstand the world around us. Walter Benjamin used the word ‘crystallisation’ (On the Concept of history, Walter Benjamin, 1974, Part XVII) to describe the moment a memory flashes from temporality and becomes a visual, spatial image, which we can extract and archive mentally or physically. It is this understanding of memory which I use as a point of reference throughout my practice. I have used memory and memory-siting as research methods and as physicalities in my projects. Often inhabiting the way, the work exists in specific spaces or the work referencing this through its development stage. Methods such as mapping, walking, exploring, performing, data-collection and social encounters all help influence triggers of remembrance, yet it is the direct experience of embeddedness within a space that gives me the greatest deal of satisfaction of recollecting.
Embedding myself as a form of research allows me to straddle the complex experience of place and helps me ground myself in the fluidity of the environment, my senses and sensory cues which crystallise moments of remembrance aesthetically and contextually. Thereby, shaping what is knowable and what is possible in how the place can be used as subject.
Place and memory are so interwoven that different places allow for different experiences of memory. Habitual memory of inhabited space, or homes and workspaces for instance. These locations are familiar therefore the phenomenon of remembering does not come too often as our experiences are constantly being compiled from the familiar place over and over. Eventually new memories begin to replace old, creating spaces of interference when we purposely attempt to remember. However, we then start to gauge with the experience of nostalgia, an affection for a moment in the past which may be triggered by your senses. I have used this type of memory as context into focusing on the mundane, day to day experiences of people and place.
‘Quotidian’ Is a site-specific, text installation which is a example of my methods into researching place through direct encounters and embeddedness. The restrictions placed on society because of Covid-19 had become a stimulus into exploring place during the lockdown 2.0; engaging with the industrial, natural, and residential landscape around the area of my childhood. The processes I undertook to create this work made me become in tune with the idea of making memories or viewing the world around me in a way that will make me remember things I would usually ignore. I used the method of on-site groundings, where I situated myself on my parents’ back street for a length of time and recorded what I observed by taking notes. When noting something down you are making a conscious effort to remember, as pen hits paper you are forced to re-think about a moment just passed. Moments as mundane as hearing someone’s extractor fan became embedded into my memories, to be triggered into psychic-visualisation at any given moment. The notes-taken were made into a text based moving image, which was then put onto a TV that was placed back onto the street and within particular places I had begun to inhabit, such as the derelict caravan that had become my base over the weeks while I was engaging with the place.
Quotidian, site-specific video work (2021)
An earlier video piece; ‘Circadian’ was predominantly concerned with how social class effects daily life and exploring undocumented subjects who are often forgotten throughout history. By capturing memory and testimony, preserving them as three, conceptual video pieces that follow the life of my mother, father, and brother. The video pieces were originally intended to exist as a multi-channel installation within a gallery; However, the work had to be moved online, which made me rethink how I was going to achieve the same ambiguity of an installation in digital format. A process into doing this was using the slippery substance of memory and its fragmented nature to influence how I created the videos. By projecting the footage of each family member back into the environments that I had originally filmed them to create an abstract materiality and physicality to the video pieces.
Still from Circadian II: Mother, digital video, (2020).
An additional experience of memory is memory of place through singular event. A place that is less familiar to you that you have experienced an event in creates a rush of individual memories due to the sense of place when visiting after a period of time. Depending on what this event is the memories could be clear as day or muddled up to the point where they are just flashes of incoherent visuals. The complex nature of memory constantly inspires my processes, contexts, and outcomes. Since I began working with place as subject the dynamics of memory exceeds my expectations, and I am learning new things about how our minds work and how memory works when we engage with places.
Chapter 2: Place and Gender.
I have developed an awareness that my experience as a female artist exploring place is significantly different from the experience of a Cisgendered, white male doing the same. A gendered experience which has always been a part of my practice has visualised itself in recent site-inspired projects, however, it has existed in the development and acknowledgement of previous works. Recently I had the aim to embed myself into a place through methods of occupancy such as walking, living, and grounding myself on-site. But, this initiated a dramatic turning point into understanding the gendered experience of place. Earlier in my practice I had struggled to entrench myself into place because I did not feel safe. I spent months visiting a specific place for less than an hour at a time, always bringing a chaperone along for comfort which restricted me from being able to engage in the way I intended. I was collecting data in the form of photographs, video and found objects to work with from home, however I really wanted to be working on location as the work I was creating felt unresolved.
I was frustrated that I could not relate to space the way I imagine male artists could and this employed thoughts around how a Cisgendered man does not, in most circumstances, need to think about taking the same precautions as women when out in public.
Doreen Massey describes in ‘Space, place and Gender’ That people in different positions of society have diverse relationships with places they inhabit, thus projecting themselves differently in singular situations. “The social relations of space are experienced differently and are variously interpreted, by those holding different positions as a part of it” Doreen Massey, Space, place and gender’. Meaning my anxiety as a woman simply existing in public spaces is valid because as a woman I am in danger of men who have been deemed with a socially higher position throughout all of history and even now in the twenty-first century
Whilst considering issues around gendered experience of place I became aware of female geographers, artists of place and philosophers who wrote about this topic, which gave me the factual proof that it was not just my anxiety that made me scared to be in a place with no precautions, in fact this experience of fear extends through almost all women, throughout all of time. Rebecca Solnit wrote in Wanderlust about what it means to undertake the basic act of walking, whilst acknowledging the subjective experience of different people in society, different cultures and at different moments in history. Markedly the female experience being different to a male experience. “Women have routinely been punished and intimidated for attempting that most simple of freedoms, taking a walk-- continually sexual in those societies concerned with controlling women’s sexuality. Throughout history of walking, I have been tracing, the principle figures- whether of peripatetic philosophers, flaneurs, or mountaineers- have been men, and it is time to look at why women were not walking too.”- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust Why are women not walking too? I can talk about my experiences of harassment in the streets taking a walk, however the more recognised event of Sarah Everard tragic and senseless murder in 2021 whilst walking home from a friend’s house is a huge reason that women are worried about existing in public without any safety precautions. When this murder was released in the media women all over the UK took to social media to talk about their experiences with of harassment by men when being out in public. The first memory I had of being harassed in the street was when I was 13 years old since then I have been catcalled, followed, touched and assaulted this is why women are not walking, this is why I am not safe being a female artist exploring place. Like women are not safe simply existing.
I realised how important my safety as a female artist who wants to use place as subject and Sarah Everards tragic murder was a catalyst to devise my own precautions I would take during every on-site exploration.
Image: Health and safety sheet
These safeguarding measures are:
- Bring someone if/when; The first time visiting a place, if the place is secluded, if you do not feel safe in said place.
- Share location on phone to trusted people.
- Let a trusted person know where and when you will be in a certain place.
- When first visiting place write up a health and safety sheet including access and exit areas, distance from safety points, map exact locations, what are the right clothes and shoes to wear, whether the terrain hard to navigate, if I need someone there every time I go, dates and times of day I may go, if visiting at night do I need to bring extra equipment such as torches, what equipment I will take.
- When arriving back from any site record any important information that could put my health and safety at risk, this is important to make sure you can revisit the sheet and figure out a plan to prevent any issues arising in the future.
- Making sure you let the people who know where you are that you are back safe.
I initiated the process to make work concerning the interconnection of memory and trauma and my experience towards a place in which I want to reclaim and connect to. A theme I referenced to during the making of this work was ‘Topophobia’, meaning the neurotic fear of being in a particular place or area. A theme I had discovered through the work of Emily Speed, in particular Panoply a performative and sculptural intervention installed into the Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool for the Topophobia exhibition conceived and curated by Anne Eggebert and Polly Gould. Panoply is a 22ft high, wooden structure which was installed into an inaccessible area of the gallery, in which Speed performed within as she stuck her body parts out of holes on the outside of the structure. It appeared to be a trap as there was no way down without assistance however the name ‘Panoply’ refers to a complete suit of armour suggesting the notion of security and concealing.
Panoply, Topophobia exhibition, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool, (2021) Emily Speed.
This work prompted me think about the places which I was fearing because of my own traumatic experiences. I decided these issues needed to be addressed in my work, and that I must use my work as a form of internal therapy and external understanding and voice to other women who have had similar experiences. Through site-specific performance and installation work which has manifested as a figure of strength and reclamation.
Chapter 3: Performance and the nude body.
Performance has been a indispensable technique I have used in almost every project I have done. Using my body as a medium of exploration and experimentation is vital to embrace the idea that art, lived experience and the world around me is connected and that I should incorporate the effects of these on the way my body and my mind reacts with primitive contact with the spaces I inhabit. Often using improvisation as a tactic, to claim the unplanned as moments of chaos and occasional beauty, which are typically captured through video format.
In recent work I have been predominantly concerned with sexual violence, gendered experiences of place and women’s safety in rural, public spaces. In my project, ‘I looked back and saw everything’ I did a performance called ‘The dirt under my fingernails’ which allowed me to embed myself into place by being nude. I realised through memory and reflection on a sexual assault which happened in the space I was occupying how my vulnerable state enhanced my senses to my environment to block out what was happening to my body. Whilst performing my mind would switch between memory and direct sensations of the environment. I noticed things like the smell of the dirt and rotting leaves, the sound of the wind against the grass. These simple experiences of the environment were difficult for me to interact with until I became completely vulnerable. I chose to take away my clothes, my armour and let my body succumb to the environment through improvised performance. I became hyperaware of my surroundings as I was focusing on making sure I was safe.
‘The dirt underneath my fingernails’ Performance, filmed on black and white tape. (2021) Jessica Warren.
Each performance takes place at different points in time and in different spaces and because of this they are special because of the approaches and uses of them in my projects. They can be starting points. ‘She paints’ is a performance in which I created numerous paintings whilst nude. The paintings confronted my performance ‘The dirt under my fingernails’ by allowing my body to surrender to sensory urges whilst connecting to the work with my body as context as the work is a response to my bodily experience to sexual assault. By studying my body and its relationship to the marks on the paper I was able to create forms which influenced a sculpture I did later in the project.
Still from ‘She Paint’ Performance, video, Black and White Tape, (2021).
The performances may be inspiration for developments, research methods or moments of reflection. Some are the final pieces, while some are never seen by the public eye. They can happen in public spaces, in fields, in woodlands, in studios, on streets. Whilst some happen in my home, my bedroom, my garden. For me it is the ultimate way to explore the environments around my physical body. The nude form allows my body to be connected without restriction to the environment through bodily senses. When undressed I no longer feel like myself, I feel more powerful. When I take away aesthetic things, like make-up and clothes, in this way, I feel like I can represent other women; though we are different we all have skin, bones, muscle, blood. It no longer matters who I am as a single person but what I stand for.
Ana Mendieta’s work, particularly Earth Body has informed what I think about performance art, she obscures the restrictions of performance, film and photography and combines each process into an Avant-garde collection of works exploring the interconnections between her relationship to place and her femininity. Mendieta’s relationship to nature and the female body fascinates me, she describes it as a need to primitively connect with the worlds natural elements, grounding into the confrontation of unconscious impulses and primordial accretions.
Creek (1), Super-8mm film, (1974), Ana Mendieta
Like Mendieta my bare body reclaims, interferes, and assaults the space, taking the viewers’ attention away from peaceful environments to stunning interventions, which allows space for the audience to explore new and intangible narratives. While I connect with the environment, succumbing to natural urges and allowing my mind to drift between memory and present, noticing the unnoticeable. My nude body rejects the societal gaze, by symbolising my gaze. I choose how I want my body to exist in the space while performing, I am no longer thinking about what I look like, I am simply using my body to make direct encounters with my subjects or spaces.
Chapter 4: Site-specific installation.
My post-studio practice had developed during the Covid-19 pandemic when I was required to work remotely. I began concentrating on the spaces and places round me and how I could utilize them to display my work. Before the first lockdown occurred, I was primarily creating documentary-style moving images as discussed in chapter 1. When working on this project the initial idea was to experiment with multi-screen installations within a white-cube style gallery. However, being transferred out of the studios and back home I began to engage with site-specific projection. The moving images I had been filming months before were projected back into the original spaces. This created a multi-layered physically which my work had be lacking. My interest in place interventions originated my interest in place itself as subject matter.
I have been experimenting with site-specific performance and installation which has aided me to embed myself into place as subject. When I intervene with a place, I can manifest an art-site relationship. The direct experience determines the sculptural or performative response in which I document, often through video or photography, but sometimes in text. This acknowledges time to reflect on the happening and to show the work out of site.
I am aware of the issues that come with documenting site-specific work, displacing the work, and fetching it into a gallery or shown online can change the context of the work completely. This issue is something I question any time I create a site-specific piece, and dependant on that project I will decide whether to move, remove or in fact document. With the project ‘I looked back and saw everything’ the context became quite ambiguous, when on site the work related to my experience of sexual assault, when taken away from said site it became a reference to all women who had experienced sexual assault. Once documented and shown else where it allowed others to connect and relate. ‘Quotidian’ which has been mentioned in Chapter one; Memory and place, is an example of how I have documented site-specific work. The text piece had been played through a 30-inch, flat screen TV, which was placed onto the backstreet that influenced the work. With a digital camera and tripod, I filmed the text piece play on the TV whilst I am making sure the environment was prominent in the video. When capturing the environment site-specific art originally exists in, you allow the documentation, in this case, film, to become a piece of art itself, transcending the context out of chosen space and into any space the film is viewed.
When my work is displayed site-specifically the relationship of site and work theoretically gives the work a layer of physicality and comprehension. By responding to the space directly my work becomes a presence within the landscape allowing the dispersal of art into ordinary life, thus giving the wider public an opportunity to come across the work. In recent projects I have been concerned with reclaiming environments which hold traumatic memories, leading to me doing site-specific performance pieces and sculpture installations. These works become an attack on the memories of the place and a physical intervention of the sense of place, whilst making the public face these emotionally motivated pieces, creating conversations and acknowledgement to the narrative of sexual harassment.
‘She’ is a large-scale sculpture that was informed by my performances, ‘The dirt under my fingernails’ and ‘she paints’. ‘She’ symbolises a figure of representation, reclamation, and power while it stood in the original environment of the performance ‘The dirt under my fingernails’. After this initial performance, I started to make ‘She paints’, (Described n chapter 3) I reflected on these performances and the connection of my body to the marks made on the paper to create the form of the piece. Using materials inspired by two men I have always felt safe around, My father and brother. My father being a plaster and my brother being a sheet metal fabricator. Throughout the process of making this sculpture their hands-on experience to materiality, teaching me their trades made them become concerned in the works development and connection my physicality, protecting the sculpture and making it strong like the way I was raised by them. and helped build, ‘She’ into something extremely resilient. The sculpture represents me being able to reclaim the space and reclaim my body. I painted in paint matched with the colour of my skin. ‘She’ stood in the environment, to be intervened with by any passer-by. The sculpture and the environment were connected through its presence. The work stayed in-situ for the day, and I had left and returned multiple times to see if anyone had interfered with it, but no one did, and I am not aware of who saw it. However, I hope to think someone spotted it through the trees and were intrigued enough to approach. I had photographed the piece throughout the day to keep the event documented.
‘She’ Site-specific installation, (2021), Jessica Warren
The social engagement and the interferences of my work to the wider public is also important to me and drives my engagement with site-specific art. The area of my upbringing had no contemporary art in fact seeing contemporary art or ever being in the presence of contemporary art especially in the working-class community I grew up in never happened. People who may have never encountered contemporary art coming across my work in public spaces means that my concepts can be understood outside of the institutionalised framework that art comfortably sits in, these interactions have fuelled my passion to carry on making art in this way.
In ways of conclusion and future directions.
My practice is predominantly contextualised by the entanglement of memory and place, other aspects such as feminist issues and social dynamics form direct projects; creating works containing multiplicities and physicalities of concepts. In recent times my work had taken a turning point through the uncertainty of a project I had been doing concerned with place, in which I had taken time to reflect on. I realised that I was struggling to embed myself into place because of fear of my safety. This development pinpointed the awareness of gendered experiences of place, which went on to be directly referenced through ‘I looked back and saw everything’ but I had realised that within other projects this premise had been underlying between contexts. My work being site-specific means the wider public are forced to think about issues raised in each work, issues that are ignored become a part of someone’s day through these interventions, and these interventions become memories that will be triggered at any given moment in their lives. Moving forward in my practice I want to continue developing and making work in the way I have demonstrated through this report. I am aiming to take on residencies in places that are unfamiliar as I want to begin understanding female safety through exploring place in spaces away from my home town. I also want to collaborate with other female artists who explore place as theme and share my tactics of keeping safe and also bring more awareness to the arts around the issue of women’s safety in this industry and to acknowledge that it women’s experience of place is to be different than a mans and this is okay, as long as it is understood and does not stop female artists from work with place as subject. I am currently being commissioned by the Pink-Collar Gallery to create a piece of public art for their project ‘Re-imagine’ which aims to change the narrative on Femicide, meaning the killing of a female by a male because of her gender. Being commissioned is helping me develop my site-specific video works and giving me the time and funding to develop my knowledge of feminist issues around violence, abuse, and murder, so I can make more work in the future to shed light onto these issues to the wider public.
Bibliography
Benjamin, W. (1974). On the Concept of History. Frankfurt: Surhkamp Verlag.
Doreen, B. M. (1994). Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.
Eggebert-and-gould. (2012, January). TOPOPHOBIA: FEAR OF PLACE IN CONTEMPORARY ART. Retrieved from Topophobia: http://topophobia.arts.ac.uk
Mendieta, A. (1974). Creek. Galerie Lelong & Co, New York.
Rosenthal, S. (2013). Ana Mendieta: Traces. London: Hayward Publishing.
Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: a history of walking. New York: Viking.
Speed, E. (2012). Panoply. Topophobia. Bluecoat, Liverpool.