live performance
duration: varible
location: The Tate Britain Museum, London, UK
This performance was conceived of and performed during a daylong performance art workshop lead by artist Hayley Newman. The participants were mostly local artists; I was the only foreigner. The workshop was designed to stimulate one’s craft through the participation and feedback of others – individuals whom we had just met – and explored various forms of documenting performance works. I was struck by the thought that anything useful could be achieved at all…We didn’t know each other, and just as in any other sort of short, contrived workshop setting, everyone is immediately confronted by the idea of having to “get to know” their workshop peers. As with any temporal activity involving a set of strangers, people’s personality types unfold and emerge during the course of the workshop. I am fascinated by how group dynamics are established, especially when the context is a situation involving collaboration between strangers. Thus I decided to take the situation to task; I appropriated the form of meet-and-greet activities that are often done to start company retreats or team-building exercises, and utilized their social function to create the performance.
image above: live performance still
After returning from lunch, I entered the room, removed my shirt, and sat in the center of our circle of chairs. I said the words, “My name is Kathryn Cornelius. Inscribe on my body your first impressions of me.” Then, the workshop participants wrote various words on my back. Some of these words were labels, some were descriptive, and a few others deviated from the task I gave to the audience and instead wrote whatever they felt like.
During the days that followed, I had my back photographed as the ink naturally wore away, paralleling, perhaps, the memories of my identity inscribed in the minds of the workshop participants I met that day.