The Artwork That Never Was

Jacob Bell and Caitlin Waugh converse about how isolation from the current Covid-19 pandemic has influenced and affected their original performances. Taking influences from Artists such as Tehching Hsieh, Antonin Artaud and Augusto Boal, the two discuss how performing the self has been altered in their two contrasting performances and artistic styles. Whilst sharing this as a key aspect of their works, it is interesting to see the pathway each has taken has found itself overlapping.Originally planning to display the body in an open, yet intimate space, Caitlin Waugh’s exploration of pleasure and comfort in the self and the body had completely changed direction when the pandemic prevented the installation from taking place. Instead she discusses how her performance had to take a new route as she began to explore the idea of performing the self when the only audience could be the self. Connecting the self to ritual and having an awareness of the agency behind one’s own actions became a key focus of this new performance, especially when exploring the necessity behind continuing to perform without an audience.Jacob Bell’s original piece ‘Our lives in boxes’ would have demonstrated an alternative view on the routine of life. Looking at how and why we decide to put our past memories and physical objects into isolation, alone in a box to be forgotten. The durational piece is described as a “personal meditation for myself, a way of connecting to my past and my present to hopefully find a clearer view on what is to come”. Tehching Hsieh was a key influencer in this development, the personal experience with Hsieh’s own work, and his decisions to keep those emotions and feelings private influenced Bell to take this opportunity in creating a piece of performance art and find a connection with himself.

This podcast is about the imagined performance of Flowting. It has developed from established writing on the psychological concept of Flow, particularly those from Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi and Jenova Chen. For this piece, my presence is both relevant and irrelevant, for my pathway translates into my own experience of flow, that another person could walk into the space and experience following the laid out pathway. They could move at their own pace, so as to maintain their own flow, with their speed and length of strides determined by them. The piece is heavily inspired by fl0w, the game designed by Chen to trigger flow experiences. The space and atmosphere is designed to emulate the early game of flOw, with the gentle soundtrack from the game playing aloud and a blue wash in the colour of the game’s background. With this performance I would partially bring the game to life. With this piece I want to encourage people to explore Flow in their lives, so that they can have happier, more fulfilled, stress-free experiences. I believe that this is especially important considering that this is a university project, where stress is high for both students and faculty. So, try to flowt in your own lives.

This podcast by Mollie Gates is a poem. Sat in a dark central London factory surrounded by a male workforce, a woman works. Extensively, she polishes pennies by hand until they shine, placing them, one by one, into the pan of a set of scales. Treating each penny with precision and care, she begins to polish until each penny gleams. As she works, she longs for her life to be treated with equality and fairness, but each male she watches complete the same task as her, will be paid 27% more. She knows it’s not right, it’s unjust. But what can she do? She can only imagine a life where she is treated as an equal, an equal to those she works beside. Equal work, Equal pay.

As an amateur sewer the message behind this piece is that an individual doesn’t need to be skilled in crafting and creating things to be able to be creative in their efforts to be environmentally sustainable. The concept of salvaging what we can of a dying planet is a living mantra for the way that we have destroyed our earth and how we are now being urged to make reparations for that. The hopes for this piece are that it serves as a realisation for many that now efforts need to be made.

Owen Hill translates his immersive performance into an imagined event in which we are magically transported through the human dimension of rooms to the post-human environment of the deep ocean and back again. The artist considers the way in which through polluting the oceans, we pollute ourselves.