Audiovisual Cultures episode 61 – Alone in the Beauty, Together with Dr Laurel Jay Carpenter automated transcript

hello and welcome to the official cultures the podcast explores different aspects and areas of arts and culture production I'm Paula Blair and I'm really delighted this time to be joined by artist laurel J. carpenter he talks very generous state by her practice many thanks to members at Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures and your continued and much appreciated support please listen to the ends to find more ways to be part of audio visual cultures for now I enjoy the discussion with floral okay certainly I am laurel J. carpenter the U. S. visual art performer currently based in new castle in the U. K. we're meeting at what's probably a bit of a strange time free is that fair to say %HESITATION then fair how much would you like to tell the state where you're not at the moment sure sure so I came to Newcastle specifically to study with Sandra Johnson who is my PhD supervisor here at north I'm really university and I submitted the thesis January third which was its own funny time right after the holidays and trying to manage those personal time scales with this overwhelming time scale of submission and now I'm awaiting my five which is coming up later in the month so I thought I'd feel more free right I wouldn't really expect instead of post submission I I had visions of traveling I haven't been enough to Scotland I haven't been to all the local medieval towns and I was really looking forward to getting to I haven't even been to jerk can you believe that never mind so I was expecting to catch up with all of that and hi Sandra slow time because a different consistency than I expected and it's really funny because of course as an N. body its practitioners interested in theories of embodiment it was in me of course I was having this other experience of %HESITATION I'm really shifted it's not the funny story is I was like a whole raft up so I was going I went to the woman who I buy bread from who I know pretty well trouble this week the relationship and I could feel her eyes widening as she kind of recoils from my insistence kind of conversation and I recognized it and I kind of shifted and wrapped up the conversation it took my breath and went and then the next week when I signed the deal was I like acting weird and she said he had honestly she's like yeah and I saw the moment that you realized it and try to rectify it so there is some different energy that I'd feel and I'm also churning with having means for it there is a slight mocking us I think today it felt a little bit yeah and I just felt I expected to just feel like the kind of cascade of relief and I didn't know I felt like I'd given my child away I was happy to give my child the way I felt very comfortable with the babysitter or where I have the additional layer of so getting ready for the five I'm also performing for the five estimates over two days which the graduate school of thought was unusual and tried to negotiate away from but I'm convinced them and it's appropriate %HESITATION it's a three hour outdoor performance I don't think I could have managed both in one day and it's one afternoon into the next morning but you know for me also then it sets the visa and state which is a moving target and if I'm not in school full time or don't have a full time job I can't stay so the completion doesn't just come with a sense of relief it comes with a sense of unknown and anxiety and the question mark of the future so I'm trying to manage all that but it definitely some of those issues might crop up again as a top three some of your work sure I suppose and we can start and the present and then see where that takes us okay and maybe think it's what your accounts even during a practice based peach state that's right which is a very different experience from doing it yes the eight state and it's really fascinating to hear that there's a performance part of your life then the device if it is a performance in a way which we don't think of heights sure you have to be a specific version of yourself that's right you have to find it somewhere because you may not feel that pop to your heart's content are fine but so the performative elements mean you're planning out at the moment so we don't need to get too much into not nice you want to say maybe we can think about it some of the performance of work that has been integral to your PhD and hopefully that'll open night to your work more generally it is easy for me to take kind of backwards chronologically because the piece on the performing for the five has been performed before it's already that's a little unusual I usually don't repeats sometimes I construct performances that are meant to be interactive so those feel incomplete until it's happened several times but this peas so part of what I did in the PhD is explore the contents of the research through these opportunities I had to redo work and I used it I was just %HESITATION experiments so this fees which is called lineage which is made in collaboration with my long term collaborator was a Norwegian artist trace along and our collaborative duo is called long and carpenter we've been performing together for ten years we made this piece for the Prague quadrennial last summer so it's an outdoor piece the overview of my research just to summarize my title my thesis is this is she and it's an exploration of this really specific slippage of selfishness are you experience sometimes but not even office definitely not all the time in my own performance work that was really different than what I had been reading about with dominant theories of character presents and persona so it wasn't quite any of those in literary theory and theatrical theory and it definitely didn't exist so much can visualize which is the lineage I thought so I spent the time exploring with the work and really finding with the working with the writing what those three outcomes or techniques and their links to a scale of connection that goes from micro to me so to macro personal and I was testing through the work of finding it but then this piece which was most recently presented we did it only a couple of months before my submission due date so it was a lot you know a whole brand new work to contextualize and get into the content of the thesis so I'm glad to do it again to see it again but here's the Segway it tries to incorporate intentionally from the three aspects of this scale the way that I'm thinking about it is the micro is about presents it's about a funneling flow of focus it's about immersive miss there is something in the way that we engage of fairies slow snail pace walk it's thirty meters that we get to in terms of the distance and when we first did in Prague took five hours gonna each only going half the distance because we start together in Minnesota five hours we walked fifteen meters without stopping so it's a very slow engagement so that really creates this immersive experience then it's duration also it has a certain kind of intimacy and what's within just kind of being in it for that long and connecting with whomever might come across in the kind of long term collaborative intimacy sometimes longer and I don't try to reach towards the public in direct kind of internet connection which is just I contacts I use that a lot I like not connection the unspoken bonds she is not the last so part of it hitting all three parts of my investigation was to see if we can really incorporate and then it has this big beautiful make thirty meters the shared dress in glistening saffron I mean it is partly rich orange and then we walk slow slow slowly slowly and then the dress extends and its connect so it's almost like a train it's beautiful in the sparkling sunlight and it's very noticeable and when we hit our endpoints the train becomes toxic and becomes a banner which is certainly a representative of a protest banner and was certainly related to feminist content and we need to movements and there's text on the train that's poetic and political those definitely also investigate the spectacle and how that functions in performance and what offers in terms of maybe a character in in that exceeding the norms is also a resistance so how can spectacle be re claimed to still be a way to resist and there's something really fascinating going on with a simultaneous separation and connections for sure it's not as our work and then she can have like we all we do is look for ways that we long to communicate but let's connect that's been the ten years of our work and it's interesting we first met and she was actually my student from university she was a little bit older she had done other degrees but she came over specifically for the glass department at Alfred which is widely recognized in another part so I can say that there's a strong into a traditional French but she came over for the glass and really found her way to turn the car it's interesting performance video and so I worked with her on her honors project she one of the big awards from her own efforts I was just lucky to kind of witnesses but then some time after that that she went back to her very remote region islands and that's where Alfred university is also very remote and isolated super world it's supposedly six hours from New York City really it takes eight hours however you try to get there and it's the poorest county of all New York state hospitals are closing right so it's a very specific locale which is very similar to where she was and someone that knew us both well listen I'm kind of more friendly capacity said need to having the same experience like two women artists in your remote locations trying to make sense of where you are you should more it was from not that was the criminal minds like that we should talk more and it almost immediately we were really committed we came up on the carpenter and we you know I'm good with all the promotional stuff I used to be a PR to underwrite space so I was like yeah let's make a website and it was really fast that we developed our first three pieces which we developed in tandem call the needs trilogy hunger thirst and shelter so those are kind of devised along in the same thinking process pretty much at the same point right off the bat although it took us a few years to get them all presented and the rest is history as they say when it's taken out it was interesting now to reflect on how we just so sure right away and neither of us had really collaborated before I definitely so we actually met my very close friend also from Alfred university Michelle and auto is a well known social practitioner and she is collaboration line in her teaching and her artwork today said I sat with her and said how do we collaborate how do we start she gave us some pointers and then we started skyping ends so it's going to send you think there wasn't a lot of you know it's funny yes the certainty was certainly intuitive I don't know why we were so sure some of that is I don't know we knew each other so there was a base level trust to their interests have developed and overlap in some places but the rest of her we both maintain a solo practice today says another collaborated another Sirius cooperators who's a social scientist so sharp so the work is closer to the plied philosophy okay she's much more interested in philosophical deep research and she's a W. this follower she really knows that work well and she was a philosophy double major or minor which is the focus that we have to U. S. education she was able to be %HESITATION the hardest full time that was a major focus but she also carried a philosophy sub focus that's certainly propels our conversations but our solo works really don't seem the same at all I mean they're both performative hers can be more installation which I've really left in my folder part of my career there's quite a few aspects we can get into I'm quite keen to ask if I could have breaks sure thing yes it's okay to talk about that yeah for sure so I call this cultural garment fascinating yeah because I feel like cost you carries the routed with theatrical connotations it carries with it the idea of a character ians there's something about it is it the way that the government talks through and has conversation with space dot com's remotely understanding and working sculptured body I toyed with wearable for awhile might even not sometimes I use that but I definitely feel like sculptural governance is what because it's both something about that terminology haven't really thought through this performance it's grounded and that's maneuverable like a garment you can imagine offer on wearables only in one position and it kind of has its own I mean I never show them alone but it has its own entity and has its own identity in some ways it can stand I feel very connected to them as separate from me in a way that's hard to feel in performance work so it is my making that then I get to step back from ends the U. S. of the holder right I'm a viewer of that work in a way that I can never be of my performance work something about making it feel complete on its own a hole on its own it seems like the size of a lot of the works because they become very basic home I go my whole career they say find one thing and you say your whole career I've done that and this may be frustrating looking at images of all of the documentation of a lot of your different so the works where other people started joining yes so that was the first really big dress piece so that which was also when they went back to school in the U. S. education is a little different so I had studied my undergrad I was an English literature students and I didn't think art was serious which I put in a and I wanted to be an attorney I was serious about that's always going to change the world I want to be on the Supreme Court then when I got to undergrad I took a law class and was so deflated because I realize my way was not through paperwork I think some people thought I was going to change the world through paperwork and I have a terrible memory so I was never gonna be able to remember all the precedents which is so much right you have to know and I was like oh no this is everything I've been planning for my whole life is over but I love to language and language was easy for me and I was interested in the play of language the rhythm the psalms and those are still the authors that I love the most the ones that movie with the minimum that the cadence of the pacing in the image and not a very anti plots you can ask any of my friends are like a she won't like that has too much fun but I was also always a very strong trend I could draw away from the hole but I never took art classes even really three university a couple dabbled a little but then I came out and I moved to New York and I was looking for positions in parts of me and I want to work in a gallery and that's how I found my way to peace so those words the supporting arts I've stayed in Boston which is where I grew up outside of their less than a year but it was through that job search that I stumbled upon experimental artwork so my very first job out of the inning wasn't movie yes in Boston which was founded in the seventies by Maryland or something so right had a very amazing awakening to the language I didn't even know I was looking for you know I wasn't okay renderer and I was in okay actress but I really wasn't interested in acting and but that's what I did because it was the only choice through high school and university and I did set design but there's something to functional and I you know just didn't click and then mobile yes of course everything clicked and I was like what insulation and sound art and performance so I was P. R. I think the company the publicist there part time very first job and then my parents were moving out of the country and I was like so I have to figure out what I'm doing my brother was in New York City my university roommates and I'm going to go to grad school at Columbia University come be my roommate got a apartment so I wound up in New York sooner than I would have maybe found my own way then and then started working at performance space one twenty two as the PR director and that was my only seconds away from the my first kiss yes to my first it's one twenty two being a PR person is such a great education because you have to talk to the artists when the idea is still in its infancy because everything has to be done really really have to get the press interested it's nine months ahead especially for magazine articles right that's a six month eight month lease so to get them interested in Karen Finley or demanded a loss or whoever is coming they have to kind of have something to give you and then I would take those ideas in this fledgling kind of %HESITATION snippets of information that they have and be able to put them together into a press release and then watch that develop an altar that conversation I was having with the reviewers and the press people and which that public forum it becomes which I really support but I mean that's the last kind of public discourse in art right not review where or preview it's more like previous relationship and then I would watch the performances every nights I loved it I lived there it was great and then not was how may sound my way and I this is my workouts I feel like take these good rendering skills take this love of pacing in cadence okay language wasn't quite my form that I knew I had an inclination towards those things but I had this kind of visual skill the spatial awareness %HESITATION which kind of start to put that all together and it was again it's always community right community is everything so my first friend in New York Christy marker hits kind of a downtown experimental dancer she was like you're an artist just make this installation for my dance of the all kinds of funky you know like broken down T. you know like lower Manhattan funkeys spaces and all mustard factory I mean it was the beauty of New York in the early nineties and the hard parts to when I moved to New York just in the midst of the aids crisis just in the midst of the culture wars and then I'm trying to do PR for all these artists who are the ones carrying this conversation and this weight on their own practices forward right but then there was so much political amazing work bubbling up through those cracks and I just felt like we got to see it all was great so did installations for many years just and then it took a few years in the old days artists submitted our slides to the slide file I need hope some curator would go through these huge filing cabinets of slides in these Manila folders and hold it up to the light and see something and our curator didn't follow me in this life I'll just from my installation work which was dense and clattered found objects driven and because the found objects I'm sure had a kind of tacit performer in there right because that was all domestic I love the domestic in Hannibal she just was like you could do a performance I don't know she thought I was a performer just couldn't see that potential which is likely to a performance for this opening and I was like ninety four or something we'll take a few years to start and then yeah I need performed installations for many years which comes from that movie S. tradition sure then it wasn't until graduate school should I go back to so far we so far pretty fabric but again I'll be coming back so when I went to graduate school here's the way which was after I'd been in New York for many years post September eleventh I was there for that you know I've been in New York for whatever thirteen years or something my thoughts okay I'm ready to have the next challenge and I was always interested in teaching and I in fact I had one of my day jobs Parsons school of design and after I had stopped and I was an administrator and my friend there had said you know I keep giving you a call class but you have to get your terminal degree if you really want to teach so is that a bit as I left and when I got to my MFA program it was from New York to world Connecticut so it's wide open spaces and a chance to meander and I had a gorgeous studio it was in not space not I decided to separate installation performance and look at them independently and slowly kind of installation fell and performance stuck it out and it came from intuition again the very first recipes which was called red cross stitch so it started kind of in two points one was the sites there's a very locally known hills site there were people going daily walks and has been memorial services and people have become engaged and married it's special to the place and stores Connecticut I loved it there either so I feel a connection to the site and then I was seeing glimpses literally like visions of a woman wearing red walking through forests D. feels like the driving and I see glimpses and I'd be in the studio and I catch a glimpse those were completed for me the site and those images and because the site was local I decided that the image had to be built locally so this the days before the internet support much internet is and I was posting of flyers and putting ads in the little local penny Seaver papers for anyone who wanted to donate a red dress and here's a drop off point or you can mail it to me or I'll come pick it up from you here's my email I received about a hundred red dresses and those were the dresses that became one impossibly long red dress size stitch them completes bodice to him again kind of a train and it took nine months which I thought was interesting in terms of not just station period and stitch them all together and there was you know so the community generated a lot came with very beautiful hand written notes about the connection that people had to the dress and why they were willing to offer it to me because they knew they'd never get it back instead she permanently into this impossibly on red dress and some of it's very moving and I have them together in a binder of all the letters you know it was an elderly woman sent her mother is bogged down from military ball she went to her father the first Christmas infant dress from a mom and one woman whose daughter had taken her own life and she was very funky and she left Tory a most and she had this kind of funky our girls dresses and got one and wanted to meet with me and say you know you remind me of her she would office projects I'm so glad she is a part of it and so then I wore the dress so beautiful day near Beltane near may first which is important to me the time of the year that's most fertile I started just behind the hill cross viewers came at the valley of the crafts and stood in yeah I could feel the anticipation the dress unfurled behind me just a little at a time so as I moved %HESITATION a little more revealed tonight came down the question a little revealed but it was all so if you actually hate crop so the grass is quite tall and then very resistant when it was a lot of friction so it was really hard work and I've never measured each war we need to the dress I know it's a hundred or approximately a hundred dresses and I don't want to know those specifics and kind of name it frame it but's it's heavy we're in a minute you know altogether if it's in this really big crate and I can't lift it by myself so it's a big heavy dress elements in the process of the peace being performed such you know I had plans as a performer you know I had been a performer I knew understood about duration testing the limits I definitely don't consider myself an endurance performer I don't tests beyond my limits and I kind of don't break whatever that foundry is but I like to go up to the limits as much as I can but it's usually time based like on him long and slow and I can get there but I'm not like Aston heart rate on loans so I had plans to like highly dress up on top of me and keep going but I had heard after the fact that huge controversy broke out in the viewing audience and I knew a lot of people there like my parents came up and friends from New York came people from Boston that I knew came and then my own supervisors were there my chiropractor Colin and so it was a lot of people thought they knew right it was a lot of people who donated dresses what I find is most interesting that comes out of that controversy of whether or not they should come in and help me some people were like she's suffering we have to go stop the suffering immediately and that's both of my supervisors were very serious practicing Buddhists so they were like no the suffering is a big part of it right so it wasn't even about the work it was just that everybody's own perspective chiropractor didn't want my back or as the Buddhists were like through this process is the only way right so the work allowed everyone their own space of ownership which of course comes from the way it was developed right everyone in fact wasn't everyone did write those letters I was carrying that history it was the heiress but to hear my mother tell the story of everyone trying minutes is very interesting right she's like who are all these people cleaning a piece of my daughter and her work so people were invested eventually two people came out and helped lift a part of the dress and then everybody rush to see so you know we changed from the sponsoring this acts I was trying to offer right and I think usually like it was this you know I mean it was the beautiful Hillcrest the beautiful blue sky all the beautiful dresses I just wanted to embody that image as an offer and then it became this parades which are things that are more no so I will and initially was kind of disappointed like move just became something comfortable right this is a way for everyone to understand the experience of the parades now the little kids are there and everyone's happy and it's a celebration but you know with time I thought but of course it was there so it could only unfold the way that it you know they needed to be part of it it's so cool mind to put limits on what the offering is like you have to offer and then the way that it's accepted it is the only way so that was an important piece for me because it was the first dress on the love comes in many long dress pieces but it was also the my very first experience of what I have come to terms with yourself their son to remember so clearly being behind the Hillcrest and then taking that first step up and the viewers are down below and there was something that shifted in me I mean it didn't feel like me it was the self more than it once all of them it was kind of collective identity it was all of us together it's funny it feels even message me describing it from back then whereas I've come to really define the alter cells from these three strands but that one that I really felt like my first memory of experiencing really strongly really clearly and it's flickering right because I remember struggling with the dress the other interesting thing is one of the reasons I think it seems to us like it was struggling so much was because that very world military count old beautiful vintage dress which had kind of an under skirts anyway it's just everything really well I mean I knew it was long and happy but that was one of the first ones after me and I could hear ripping I don't know why that dress can't live right at the top right from close to my body what will I do you know when I had a whole harness and everything so I thought I was just gonna walk forward and let work lined it forward but the ripping sound really alerted me and made me fearful and so that was where I flickered in and out of I was this other cellphone %HESITATION I was afraid laurel worried I was running my own performance but then it was the power of kind of the viewers and energy and the power of the dress tugging the words but the ripping sound made me reach back and yanked the dress which was much harder my arms are not as strong as you know my core so I think it was that I was trying to go between them and and my own kind of uncertainty in the event since they were unfolding I think that's what alerted the viewers first to like %HESITATION you know I wasn't so sure I was struggling they had to come it's theirs too they had to come help whatever my intention was whatever you know and all I did was walk down the hill past notes going to disappear into the forest kind about the horizon so wasn't even thought I had a purpose but they were going to come out sports wherever I was going like what was I doing who knows what they were gonna come out leaving it that suffering it sounds like they had real emotional investment and every individual piece of closing this on one thing and have become a community that's right yeah right all of the stories and all of these past people yeah all the center of the pipe these clothes that's right so people must have felt compelled to go well these are precious objects where it's that's right if it had been just one lone tree end of anonymous fabric could might not have I think that's right yeah it's really fast and that's the power of found objects and that's what I loved about I was making more installation work it's the history and the patina liveliness of thought beautiful curious thing I mean as much as I make performance I still love those things I think there's something fascinating about garments that they contain performance they seem to have ghosts of past performance of socks and because they've been worn and they might be stained from a body that occupied the missile war so it's fascinating in that sense as well as you carry more than just a bit of fabric that's right so much more and then the other Norman I think about a lot is when they made a lot of dozens of white shirt sleeve I say this also with their coats men's business shirts okay from the charity shops and those to the because they've been warned before so even before I wore it had that seem like energy I felt that same connection to it so it wasn't about me who had performed and it was about that they were however performed and lives even though they were deconstructed and reconstructed and it was all kind of funny it still carried that and then it's all the people and all the orders and all the things that suggest in terms of both embrace and contain yeah I like that too I like the abstracted guard before that not just a and that's the difference I think even though costumes can be abstracted of course or somehow altered beyond expectation there is still something about its functionality even if they're meant to constrain or something they still function towards not constraining sure makes me think of reading about your piece in Hexham is something where you use different clones I use the red gloves into pieces point out in touch yeah thank you an idea of some kind and quality part of the body thanks so it's in that specific part of the body where it's been very Jastrow expressive part but a part that's external Indian part of he and the idea of you touching your face while wearing the gloves and then discarding them and I feel like there's something there %HESITATION great gathering of the community of things that had belonged to the anonymous other winners yeah and then they change it they go straight when you work with them your doctor and someone comes part of something where you're performing and then the idea of you making it part of your phone to the performance yeah but it still embodying previous people so I don't know there's about those Hexham pieces is so unlike red crest where no one could reach as much as those clubs have the energy and it was certainly inspired by that same sense of you know I was moved by the sight right so I was interested in the tanneries in the history of hex %HESITATION and that's what blows first came from because the curator said in other news B. tennis there's a famous old glove in one of the museum exhibitions I was like wow and I've used arms and I've used loads of kind of parked his gloves before so it wasn't unknown to me but it's I love that feeling of thank something's going on me now I love you I'm a very serious vegetarian leaning towards speaking and I only use leather gloves so like what's that I don't know what it was like I was certain of the history it had to be those old used leather gloves still the ways that I's activated them then didn't allow the people to come through now wasn't the direct people right so wasn't like these are the donors of the dresses and these are just people who are coming to Hexham MP right so it was different their intentions were different like the viewers of red crest came to see that performance where is the viewers at the Hudson county were coming to see that he happens to be there you know there were some specific viewers but it was a lot of tourists just people coming to see the site maybe we weren't able to reach for the material to become enough of a bridge for us to meet but it's also the way that I use the material so instead of putting the dresses on display and you know what was done about that offering a set offering you know four times right at the start time image that everyone to be part of whereas the gloves it was all about hiding my identity or casting the room with the points you know as much as the object has power the performance and the gesture is the power as well you know using these big words power and offering spectacle and beauty but I do feel humble in those using that terminology I feel like I'm just privileged to be able to embody these words these opportunities for whatever short time I get to write I don't feel like I'm the origin of those terms but I do feel fortunate that I get to step into them I mean those are the terms that movie those senses of on kind of the big spectacle extra personal so you know we're on just a speck and there's this big other thing happening those are the words that move me unlike you know other performances that are subtle and saw small I feel like my intense maybe that but it comes across in the kind of this visual display looks like bigger splashes here and I like that tension but I also feel like wait I don't fit physically you know my gestures or make my hair is big my body's big on deck so like I can't fit in those subtleties visually even though I think I'm interested in them emotionally or intentional so I kind of have to do the big word big image that terminology for it to have space for me but then I try to find that place of you know in all of my work is silence I mean sometimes they use %HESITATION but very rarely never language or never spoken maybe only once a month carpenter so like all I have a quiet intentionality but still I'm comfortable carrying I think this is it I'm comfortable carrying the Baker and I feel like you know I have that capability like I can carry that image for wording you all can actually come out and see it like all of you come on rush up to the dress I can do it an interest in those two things I don't really want to do it on one of those very typical loud and since I am single introvert like I can go DES alone in my flat I never want to see a person but %HESITATION laut personable and kind of comfortable even though I need to be alive so I feel like that's in my work to those two things alone in the beauty yeah that's the title of my number one of the beauties perfect I was thinking if I just off the back of all of that idea of taking up space and this is a very feminist notion of the minutes trying to reclaim space and take up space because we've been shocked into corners we have to be as little as possible so it's pretty interesting talking about fitness and not taking up the space yeah so many of your garments they elements of your performances do you take up space for sure overall yeah even if it's your discarding things because not just thinking about the gloves but I remember your pace and being in a few years ago where %HESITATION needles yes that's right so so it's really fascinating you mentioned you were you sign because that was a very even decided peace talks if you're quiet enough you could hear them draw that's absolutely true you definitely one of the few yeah listens very yes yeah you came up right to the end those pins to hear me that piece was developed be an exploration of sound so I think there was no way to avoid some songs and I show this to write so I personally did made vocalization I mean I don't never use something usually not I think that's interesting that tension with the content of the homework because I invited people to make some right what does the lover's telephone with the ten K. so I wanted kind of commotion otherwise I wouldn't have anything to show Shane but I wanted that tension it's funny I just redid one of the very few pieces I have ever read is that he's brought it to also moments I think I did that in December mid December and my submission was early January I mean it was it was so crazy so I think that I didn't want to miss the opportunity to go and not whole festival is about sound inside how to hear our performance so it's like well it has to be tested but it was a different floor was a very different settings when I performed it much longer but the floor was wouldn't it didn't quite want all depends a lot so I found this kind of was a lot bigger so I had to add to some gossips to my address so I had this kind of black stripes down the side of my white dress and I found this black glass square %HESITATION very clean so that became kind of the target in the landing zone of the hands and the pins were I mean for a pin dropping right but so much louder than that other piece and I thought of you I did as I performed a racially but no one else did it was mostly sequential work so I was up on the balcony and installs performance through the whole evening some people were able to come up with the brakes and the other people are performing down and I would try to keep the same performance intention where I was noticing the difference between intentional and involuntary or inadvertent sounds but it was harder because I kind of knew the waves off like now it's a performance and now all the viewers are gonna start chatting because it's a pretty yeah the waves were more standardized but I would perform through the other performance work and usually they were had some of the noise it was about how much you know the whole thing was sound for the very young Finnish artists were performing and they were jingling battles and there were making vocalizations in that piece was really loud and then it suddenly stopped and I didn't have a chance to recognize that before the pencils like lots of that silence and then look I mean you could hear it everywhere and I was like wow this was my piece that was everything this unexpected harsh and look he couldn't really hear that yeah I feel bad that they were like oh no we didn't notice the organizer is a lot of the people that I mean they're they're like oh my god your pins are so loud I was like that's so funny so it's about the size of the thinking you might need it just as extensions if you prefer the status taking up space and some high because remember the precarity of course it's been going on to my second full of me should I am I to go should I get out of the way but I want to hear them so we went to St just my experience as appearance somebody who will speak about checking in getting close to you because I think there is this barrier often that the years of live performance will just not tradition they feel like I'm not locating crucial next year very UK's Thompson I wasn't expecting the viewers here to really there's a comfort in the perimeter yeah that's that the walls and I think that's what I really like I contact because I think it gets people and I've done pieces where you have to hold hands with other things so it's about because I'm very comfortable with coming right up to me okay I'm happy for them I feel like it gives me a purpose it's just a show I'm not comfortable you know but it's again looks like my terminology that I think many people would argue with it's about Hawaiian body I mean it's not how I understand but I like the idea of feminist notion of taking up space and that's definitely what lineage I mean that's part of the subject matter yeah we are re cleaning our voice and we are taking up space thirty meters right I mean you have to navigate I mean people can get around and we're careful about that especially here with risk assessment and awareness but it takes some consider it like you have to get around us when we're out that full extension and even just navigate like what's going on we're connected but which gradually taking up more space and then the tax on the train that was revealed in its batteries here is a silence broken so it is really about stepping into yeah it's a fascinating conundrum I think for two years as well as if you have something like that that is so clearly it's connected and yet it's so long they're supposed to connection and the distance from the performers so there's this question of are you going to talk shit or you like to go up and make it that way talk time with yeah you're looking at it and you're exploring about happy with people yeah could you sort of think well even if the artist isn't happy well they're ten meters away what are they going to do I think I stopped working there so long yeah yeah well I have to say I would not even know I didn't know until I receive the photo documentation how much people like reading a hat we're trying to keep the taxed on revealed until the end although of course the wind blows and you can see it coming that is purposeful but people were like reading ahead like a story unfurling it and checking up everybody had their hands all over and I had no idea I could feel the dress moving but but also kind of gusto like a parachute around us I mean it was definitely a on the move but we tried not to look back in control we had and I like this and that's the quiet immersive flow like I have one intention as a performer and that's to walk head very slowly what a luxury I'm lucky for five hours for three hours for eight hours I got to do one thing I mean months and lists right I mean I feel like all the work that I do in the studio in the office all the applications all the grants and all of it is for those few amazing hours where I get to do one thing and just be in the space that is everything to me as a performer that is everything to me but I think that of course doing that one thing would be different if I was a tough game the other thing if I wasn't carrying that visual if I wasn't alone in the beauty it's all about but I got to be there of course there's all this other worlds that is emerging because of this really you're taking up time as well as space for sure and as you say it's a luxury it's a privilege and a way to have the time to be able to take the time to do that I don't know if it's maybe %HESITATION but connections to the idea of this plan is you know a lot more than that is so there's that and then %HESITATION this notion of man meeting so these three studies when cities are getting ready faster than the flat nose Hey it's the feminization of thought of trying to be a woman who can do that that's why I'm interested in this because it's quite a privileged position to be able to be in yeah and he did this and then the product was not yeah so you can see that you're any images of it on your website you know it's very busy square that you're doing this yeah because it was a big country yeah this is busy the writing so you know people have to as you were saying negotiates with the safety and the space that you're sure Carmen this taking up yet but there's no idea of the time the eagles take to make that movement I made that could otherwise be done in seconds that's part of our our that's right it plays without purposeful why is it taking so long what are they doing yes exactly yeah I like that curiosity when I was younger and stronger I could push gestures that are a little bit more tougher right although I never did a like I said I never was an endurance performance you know I'm not an athlete like I was never pushing those and I'm not a dancer I was never pushing those kind of physical limits but I was stronger I could do things differently and now I feel like %HESITATION the one thing I have left the one thing that's just in my son's so it really can be slow which is much harder for ten days she is fast in her body that piece was harder for her because it's for the five of us in because it's March in northern UK we're shortening it to three hours but it mostly was her doing five hours for that short distance was just really very physically harm which you wouldn't expect right you know standing is hard sure but everybody in retail everybody who has a job workers stand that's what's so tough in the moving forward really is you're moving a little bit soon muscles are engaged but I just think it's the mental and the physical and it's you know when it's trying to gauge the distance and that's trying to just it's just a lot of holding on me just trying to hold on to it so that relates to a different style but I feel like that's true base that she's doing this where is I feel like I can just I mean it's not like super simple and I have to pay attention but going slow is for me I mean it's nothing thinking a very soon a sinister movement you've written quite a bit about this as well yeah I am very interested in it because I feel like just the world is to foster excellence for sure let me tell you that was a big part of my teaching yes which you know I have to say comes from the of all of it Smith when I went to graduate school and about first red crest piece is when I first met marina Abramovich the university of Connecticut such an unexpected place gave her an award of some type of fellowship so she came and she did a workshop with us just a few of us when it was a very small program it was a two year master's program and there were only four or five of us in each year and I was the only person no there were other performers at other times but it wasn't a lot there was a preacher enough video maker and sculptor and whatever very few of us she's all the documentation and she saw the book of all of the red cross students still she gave me one of the biggest compliments I ever had she said you're not like other Americans your true performance of this I take that with a grain of salt more so because I was the PR director performance space one twenty two but I do know what to say because when I was making work in the nineties and New York no one even knew I was an artist because I was making visual art performance and the European tradition and all of my closest friends and people I greatly admire Sallie Mae and Jennifer Miller and Holly Hughes and Karen Finley timer and they make performance are what we call performance art in New York at the time and its tax base it's definitely text and the people didn't even know I was performing I mean and it took me time to grow into it but even how people don't know they're like the New York scene doesn't know me no that is changed when I left New York and went to grad school and then got the teaching position then New York the Bushwick seen angry space developed in reclaiming of the seventies visual art performance is being engage their novels like in both ways I feel like %HESITATION I just missed the communities I didn't fit with the community that was my time the most money and then I miss to the new community of younger artists and that is definitely an undercurrent of fleece my career maybe not of my work but like trying to find the place that I fit and I think that's interesting in terms of the long and carpenter work we are trying to come together but it's impossible to come together and it's a struggle to connect and even though of course we recognize all the ways that we're privileged similar in our privileges are race on education or angel and what you know and yet still the differences make it such a challenge to find a mutual space a space that allows for both of us and we're certainly invested in exploration you know and then of course we're in it together in terms of building the work but if some of that wasn't there they learn interpersonal relationship I can be hard to get to in the work where is that how other collaborators that were just like yeah board even though they may become from other disciplines so I work less regularly with %HESITATION dance practitioner and scholar and musician and composer so our works feel like today's the night we understand our work and our working methods like where both visual artists whereas with these other collaborators with their backgrounds and who are differently gendered like today's eleventh women in those other collaborators both men but they're something of like we just speak the same language or just able to leap over the differences to come to a togetherness in a different way it's very similar really interested in that tension and maybe it is because we are so similar that discrepancies feel huge shift of perspective she and I are working on a book that will be my first publication of our ten years of our collaboration so I think we're really thinking about our practice in a new way and I've been really thinking about our relationship and our practice and our collaboration in a more significant way so it's still juicy to me right it's still like a stuffed on earth there I'm interested in this it's a very hard time when you come to the end of the PhD princess and then one sentence and in another sense it never really so it's nice if you have an overlap something like that but when he came before yeah and only going to continue on and you're going to mark this ten year police that's the end of it it's right it's that's yeah in some ways because I come to the PhD is such a poor person so long practitioner it has been funny when because it does feel more like the PhD was a soldier like I went on this weird trip and it was an intense trip was like suddenly I'm climbing Mount Everest but it didn't feel like of course I didn't move but it didn't feel like %HESITATION I moved house and I have a whole new life it just felt like I went on a trip and I hope that trip changes the immediate propelled me to move house but in terms of where it falls in my career and how much career I've had before the PhD is short even though I felt I mean I certainly felt it's right then I did it through menopause so doing that PDP menopause may say I demand an additional letter I'm one M. P. H. D. and I was like in you know what all the new mothers can also happen and I said that to someone and she said oh no don't do that because then it'll be devouring everyone with an M. P. H. D. will be lesser you know what is our world right well I don't want to H. D. even though of course I understand I was engaging through my own stuff in a way that was unique in so many ways like in the research and my body in the place that I lived in my lifestyle so that intensity definitely felt like I was on holiday this was a vision quest of some sort but it doesn't feel like it's life defining maybe it'll shift my career a little and I think it has you know on my engagement with research is different it definitely ended up new ways of theoretical research for me which I was interested in just not to this I just never was able to get this down but I already feel like my olds needs and the demands of my life job searches but also just life peace and life structure I can already feel them coming back the soldier this is winding up but I'm buying my tickets home and I think what I define as Holmen AB has changed it's still a different place it's still place I'm heading to that isn't so sure place I thought that totally through but there is something there ask me again in a year yeah very different it's transient people do say I talked to a lot of artists who are of my generation including my very close collaborator the dance artist Robert Bingham who has come over he spoke I developed a %HESITATION symposium and he was one of the speakers so he was invested in this process and I knew him he was a visiting artist and long term lecturer also where I taught and then he laughed and he had more of a visiting contracts you didn't have the tenure track contract like I did so he always had the trouble with the contracts but he finds like I'm done I'm going back to get he got his PhD and so that was the first inkling for me like %HESITATION I can leave this position and maybe do something else and he said it took him a year to understand how his brain had changed and the agility of his thinking he didn't even recognize until a year after he had completed everything so perhaps the store space right can't see no it does change you think psychologically as well as mentally and emotionally it's a massive thing today fingers crossed absolutely relieving at a time when you're as much as anyone facing on certain things first like so much of the world yeah they but feeling it seems very positive it does not really test the quality of work and then three years or so that you've been here as well as what you've done before so then there's going to be thanks to come fingers crossed all I can do for all of us really that's what I feel like you know like let's all just keep moving into our future let's keep bringing our values to the forefront as much as we can there's a lot to resist yeah and let's keep doing it together hello thank you really good practice for me yeah it's good for me to talk about the work so thank you for the opportunity very welcome thank you so much for your time thank you you've been missing two audio visual cultures me Paula Blair and my very special guest the world J. carpenter and huge thanks to a deal to retain a new castle for accommodating our interviewee this episode was recorded edited and produced by Paula Blair the music is common ground by air soon licensed under creative Commons noncommercial three point zero license and is available for download on CC mixer to Oregon if you like what we're doing please help make production and distribution costs with a regular payment celebra pay dot com forward slash P. E. A. Blair or make a one off donation J. pay pal dot me forward slash P. A. Blair episodes are released every other Wednesday subscribe on your chosen app so you never miss an even race you can find the full back catalog on you J. Davis at audio visual culture style wordpress dot com or follow eighty cultures part on Instagram the navy cultures on Twitter and Facebook for more information and useful thanks thanks so much for a lesson on catching next time