We were invited to make a new performance at TENT (Rotterdam) as part of a project titled ‘platforms of presentation: art as discussion piece’ curated by Bik Van Der Pol. We took this opportunity to make a piece of work that recognized the revealing of process as an integral part of the artwork.
We both make lists – a lot.
We set about examining lists as a daily activity.
We presented ‘an introduction’ to our practice through an overview of the practice of list making.
The performance took place in the auditorium of TENT, a room usually used for lectures by visiting artists. We used this framework by including references to standard lecture formats, such as the use of slides and ohp.
The two performers sit at opposite ends of an oversized bench explaining the rules to list making. They slip between these rules and their own examples. The audience watch Hannah cross her ex boyfriend of last years Christmas list. Rachel wonders what would be on a list of things that you would miss if you ran away.
Lists as a way to make the private public. To tell our stories and to expose our process. Lists as a way to make things official, to make things important – magnifying the stuff of our daily lives, and presenting it so new meanings are created. Lists that confuse the important and the trivial, until both definitions become blurred.
Lists as a way to show the connections, the threads and the links between different strands of our practice. Lists as a way to order the world. Lists as a reflection on who we are. Lists as a way to tell stories about ourselves – our interests, beliefs, desires and insecurities.
Lists as a way to reveal truths about ourselves – the push and pull of what we tell and what we keep hidden. Lists that reflect feelings of love and loneliness, fear and desire, obsessions. Lists that reference memory and forgetting, loss and the marking and passing of time.
Lists as a way to make sense, to remember, to understand, to learn and to forget. Lists that allow things to come into life and then go out again. Lists that bring closure. Lists that are endless.
(performance) eXpo festival 05, (NTU) Nottingham, November 2005
(performance) Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, April 2005
(performance) Exeter School of Art and Design, Exeter, March 2005
(performance) Platforms of presentation, TENT, Rotterdam, June 2004