To me, performance lies at the intersection of the public and the personal. Through human action and the body, intimate interactions are exposed in a meeting between artist and audience, revealing some element of who we really are – in both our sensuality and our ordinariness. I make performances and installations out of an effort to understand the complexities and paradoxes of day-to-day life and the world we live in. In observing the ordinary and even awkward, I sort out and enunciate the unexpectedly beautiful.
Through a process of working with familiar images and sources – whether a particular gesture, bits of conversations, phrases of text, or everyday artifacts – I slowly massage improvisations into abstract narratives. These might appear as durational gestures, experimental performances for the stage; choreographies for unlikely places; invitations for audience action or experience; or, as documents; as single or multi-channel video installations; or sculptural remnants.
Starting with a task, an action, a place, a memory, or a problem, I create little structures and then slowly excavate and build something quite organically. Yet, there is an inevitable risk of failure that is almost essential to this approach. Each project is something to be carved out. A work takes on a life of its own, and I allow disparate elements – video, language, movement – to meld and form their own logic. Sometimes I am catching up to figure out the project’s rules; other times I must patiently wait to see what emerges. Sometimes the sources and structures I intuitively choose seem mismatched or unrelated, but nonetheless, almost always create some strange, real connection.
I find that meaning comes from the spaces in between. It’s between gestures, between words, between edits, between performers, between the audience and the artist. It’s in the idiosyncrasies and subtleties – an almost energetic quality – of a performance. I’m less interested in the straight-forward and prefer the murky space of the non-linear and organic. I am interested in the odd theatricality of ordinary life and the exquisiteness of unplanned, unscripted actions. I believe in the unwavering intelligence of our moving bodies.
Each project requires different collaborations to realize the form it should take. I dance between media, melding technology and images into live events, and documenting and inserting the embodied into video. By inviting my audience into my process and performing my work in as open and genuine way I can, I hope to spark viewers’ imagination, conversation, dialogue, and generate further artistic production and discovery.
