Fellow artist-investigators Travis Chamberlain and Ursula Eagly recently challenged me to write an artist statement. Generally, I feel that an artist’s “statement” is the artist’s “work” itself, and our reliance on written descriptions of what we do to apply for various fundings and/or justify ourselves to others is more or less a waste of time. However, Travis and Ursula made me do it, and in truth, I suppose it is a necessary evil – just like the awful-yet-essential “archival video.”
Once I barreled through my initial resistance, writing this statement was an interesting process. I approached it by writing very specifically about my two most recent performance projects, and then deleting everything except the general statements. With minimal editing after that cut, I ended up with this:
I create live performance. My work involves a hybrid of forms, including dance, theater, music, and visual arts. The degree to which I use each form, and the references I pull from each, vary greatly from piece to piece. Though there are common threads, each piece I make is very different from the last, as I work from an investigative point of view, emphasizing my subject through whatever form I feel will serve it most. I think of form as a tool – just like dialogue, movement, storytelling, or staging. I choose and create forms, which serve the ideas I’m attempting to explore with an audience.
Investigation is key in my work. I make work to explore subjects about which I have questions. I am interested in honesty on stage, which for me usually translates to awkwardness. I am interested in engaging the audience actively, without making them uncomfortable. I take the role of the audience very seriously, and I consider it often throughout the creation of a work. I am interested in the counterpoint between “onstage” and “off,” yet I respect that the audience’s role is generally that of witness and not performer.
Aesthetically, I am interested transforming the simple, common and often handmade into the sublime. I make work that transforms a paper airplane into catharsis. Transformation (of the performance space, of the performers, and ultimately the audience) is something I strive for in most of my work. I want to give the audience an experience, and I want it to stay with them when they leave the theater. I use materials that the audience encounters in daily life, and I pay close attention to entrance and exit points. The show begins as soon as an audience enters the building, and I hope that it trails after them when they leave – at least, I follow them with the show as far as I can, and hope they carry something with them after that.