I created a performance called Wat Nu? which premiered on March 19th 2022 at Islemunda.
This performance is a solo or is it? Without the audience as co-performers or contributors or simply present, the piece would not amount to anything. They are an integral part of the performance.
Which made me reflect on my role as a performer and choreographer. I came to a conclusion that I was the Facilitating Performer or Performing Facilitator.
In my current research I have decided to continue down this path of being a Facilitating Performer of Performing Facilitator and as a 'solo'-artist. I started my search on online on why it is that we create performance solos. Solo's are performed across art displines from performance art to music, dance to spoken word. An answer to the why, other than it stemming from the tradition of storytelling, is lost on me still. In this search my mind was quickly drawn to self-portraiture, because I thought the mediums pertaining to the visual arts, such as painting and photography, lend themselves better to documentation throughout history. I could also imagine theories or thoughts on why people create self-portaits to be more readily available. Perhaps because of this ease of documentation. The performing arts and most performing art must be witnessed live.
I ordered two books on self-portraits. Natalie Rudd's The Self-Portrait and Ernst Rebel's Self-Portraits.
Diamonds, gold, glitter, queerness...
Going back to this mapping, reading about Clara Peeters and Vanitas, trying to unify a part of my interest with that which is emerging I come to the theme Vanity.
Vanity as a theme connects what I have been doing to where I am going. It can serve as a vehicle for my next interactive project. It is an exciting topic, because it deals with normativity, with truthfelness and faking, with superficiallity and identity. I believe that vanity, in the sense of caring about one's looks, goes deeper than is generally thought. Especially for people who are part of minorities, such as the queer minority. External expression is used as a form of self-establishment, of recognition within the community, of projecting political, social and ethical viewpoints outwards through an aesthetic.
There seems to be a fine line between being too vain and not being seen or recognised. Where does pride turn into self obsorption? How does being seen as an individual relate to being seen in or as a group? Why a self-portrait? Why a solo? Why an audience?
How can I play with vanity as a theme, take the mick out of it, explore it, revel in it, reflect on it, take others with me, indulge together, mock together, laugh together, be vain together and enjoy a push and pull between make belief and reality? Combine vanity and humility.
This painting formed a spring board into the Vanitas art movement, popular in the Netherlands and the low countries in the 17th century.
This painting is incredible to me! It has gold, coins, pearls, lace, flowers, jewellery, a bubble and dice. As part of my artistic research journey I created a mindmap in September 2021. The question posed to me and my fellow COMMA students was: what does your universe look like?
I drew a self-portrait and started mapping out my universe.
In bold lettering Clara Peeters is introduced at the top of page 36 in Natalie Rudd's The Self-Portrait. Peeters was a female painter in the early 17th century. Very little is known about her life. There are 40 paintings by her hand.
The painting Rudd introduces in these few pages on Clara Peeters is the work called Vanitas Self-Portrait. This work has been attributed to her.
Ernst Rebel briefly gives an account of in Antiquity craftsmen would sign their products, but they did not have the status of artists yet. Throughout the middleages it was considered poor manners to sign pieces of work. Even though, artists who were still on par with craftsmen would try and find inventive ways to sign their work or insert themselves in it. These ways were inventive in that they balanced the ability of being recognised as the artist with knowing ones place in society at large or in relation to the divine.
Some painters would put a self-portrait in their work. The idea of signing an art-piece comes with the desire to be recognised. The desire for fame.
I would say that this desire for fame that comes with signing an artwork, with placing yourself in it, with self-portraiture, is related to vanity.
What makes us interesting or important enough to have this claim to fame? Wanting to set ourselves apart from others? Wanting to be remembered? Wanting to be known?
