Long Distance Relationships: London to ** with Love

It is so difficult to be far away from the people that I collaborate best with. I was very much affected by the performance we did together on September 7th. I have only just now had the appropriate moment to respond to the performance. I was in my living room in ** at 1:30am after that same day being on a train from Ningbo China to Shanghai and then a flight from Shanghai (delayed) to **. I was physically exhausted. When I started to prepare my mind and body for the performance, I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't know if I would remain tired, if this would show through the screen, or if I was to feel like I was even actually in a performance. In the end, I was in a trance, doing things to the screen and in response to what I perceived from the bodies on the screen. I really felt an intimacy that I didn't think one could feel without being physically proximate. The experience was powerful and emotional. I felt invigorated and inspired. Truly it did not feel as though an hour had elapsed, I think I could have performed all night. Interestingly, I really started playing to the screen with my face or minute details of my body so that perhaps on the projected screen in London I really was a disembodied presence in every sense of the phrase. I felt like I was sharing different parts of myself freely, even disclosing secrets to strangers. Perhaps the best part of the performance for me is that I couldn't genuinely gauge the audience's reaction; all my movements and impulses were coming from an authentic place. It is refreshing to exist as if no audience will judge your actions or your non-action. My collaborators, Laura Cherry and Treacle Holasz (who were gratefully dressed in fashions by Ziad Ghanem), unfortunately had a much different experience with the audience which was in fact very critically and verbally judging them for the duration of 2 hours. It truly makes me wonder about the purpose of performance; the role of the audience; and whether we can make work that both addresses and dismisses outside participants. I hope to develop this work and explore more questions about presence, absence, liveness, and performance states that feel like trances. In the meantime, check out the new gallery of photos (photographer Nick Gough).

I'm also proud to announce we will be working with Experimenta Gallery in Hong Kong for a show on February 14, 2012. Check out their website: http://www.experimenta.hk/blog/