this is a site i will be updating during the performance from october 1-10th, 2011 during art in odd places in new york city. i will be chronicling some of the developments as i go.
my work centers on the contrast between the visible, the ephemeral, the auditory—and the temporal marks of identity. i characterize my practice as sculptural performance art. i use my body as the purveyor of scent, and i collect language based upon the environment the scent creates, both in its transient presence on my body, and in its molecular interaction with the architecture and people present. from these transactions, come visceral, non-representational self-portraits composed from text, object, and scent
here's my proposal:
For my proposed project I will be wearing a single garment for the duration of a performance, in which I will develop separate perfumes to perform with each day of the festival while walking 14th Street between the banks of the West and East Hudson River. During these walks I will collect language from literature, pop culture, and conversation on the street, culminating in text poems and fragrances composed as reactions to each day's experiences. In addition, the garment worn during the performance will be crystallized in a solution preserving its use, but abstracting its form. One geographical and historical location I would like to include in my daily walk is St. Mark’s Bowery, as I consider the need for ritual, and the logical rhythm that their Friday noonday prayer service inspired in my routine of walking. As I think about how rhythm and routine work into life, prayer seems a logical place to go, and perfume is often referred to in literature as both poetry and prayer. The connections are loose enough to be open, but bound enough to fall into ritual. I am interested in documenting through the text I collect those phrases, which I will take from culture and define as prayer, whether directly referential, or someone swearing on the street. I know my own personal rituals and prayer are sacred and profane often simultaneously.
The documentation of the performance will be in the form of marks made on my garment. Wearing a single dress for the duration of the performance I will collect both the physical marks, but also the atmosphere of my experience. Furthermore, the perfumes will mark the spaces I pass by molecularly entering the atmosphere leaving an ephemeral trail behind me each day, and I will further document my experience at the end of the day by composing the fragrance I will perform with the next day, based upon the previous one. By the end of the performance I will have a collection of perfumes from each day of the festival, poems composed as text-based responses, and the dress, which I will crystallize and render abstract, as a non-representational form of self-portraiture.
Since the project takes place on my body in a set environment, the installation/de-installation and maintenance are simply based upon my own body’s energy and endurance.
For more information on my practice please visit my website:
