Shaving

In the second year of my being at University I performed my first piece of performance artwork. The work did not have a title and was not documented in any way other than in writing. None of my work has a title, I label them myself to help me identify them, those names are made by taking the most obvious and memorable aspect of the work, for example my first performance work I called 'Shaving performance' because in the performance I shaved my body hair off. I had decided not to film the work as I wanted the audience to engage with the piece without being conscious of a camera, in terms of space a camera would have limited the area the audience would be willing to be in (I had found that most people avoid cameras that are filming performances).

The work was set up in a small enclosure of three black curtains formed together to make three walls, the 'fourth wall' did not exist, the space was an opening for the audience to enter and exist. I walked in and undressed down to my underwear, sat down in front of a mirror and shaved my body. I shaved my legs and arms, half of my chest and my neck and face save the eye brogues. The shaving was enough for me to look hairless whilst wearing clothes. The performance produced some lively debate within the audience who critiqued the work after it was performed. The debate was in how the audience read symbols of gender into the work, and whether bodily shaving is a feminine action. At this time I had been researching 'identity' focusing on gender identity and gender roles. The performance was in fact not intended to begin with to be a performance but rather preparation for a performance. Artist Ruth Bamber advised me to consider my preparatory actions as significant to the work, a piece of advice I took heed of and found that the preparatory act of shaving said far more and opened debate far better than the performance I had first planned.

I shaved only half my chest so that when wearing clothes no hair could be seen however under the clothes hair was present. This half shaving kept me in an in-between state of being 'shaved' and having hair, in one sense a hermaphrodite. The in-between state this held me in contributed to the debate as to my 'being masculine or feminine' in the performance. When I develop my ideas for performances and picture them in my head I am always replaced by a woman, she is tall and has red hair. I took this image of a woman to be some version of my 'Anima' a Jungian archetype which is your gender opposite and an image of desire in two simultaneous ways, a concept a persona you want to be and a persona you seek romantically in someone else.

(written 9/4/10)