Julie Vulcan's I Stand In, gave anonymous bodies a cleansing ceremony, to reflect upon global human tragedy and it's representation in the media, offering an alternative paused, silent, dignified treatment of the body. Each person is accepted by the host, to lie on a table, oil spread over their skin, a thin white sheet then soaks into them, and is hung on a washing line. Like white linen hanging to dry on two ropes, this is what she keeps of her repeated ritual. It reminded me of embalming and mourning for the dead, I think it shared similarities with this in it's caring and valuing of the body.
Heather Cassils' Becoming An Image was a one-off, unique visual experience. Naked muscles of a torso, what appears to be a wrestler, bouncing off the ground and circling around it's contender: a solid cube of hard clay. We can hear the heavy breathing, the punching, kicking, all their body used to collapse against the block, gasping, short noises, grunts, the fight goes on for about half an hour. But we can't see, everything is pitch black, and following the fighter going in circles, is a photographer, who shoots his flash and momentarily we saw, a silhouette of the man, woman? frozen in mid air as they throw themselves against the matter. The flash keeps going repeatedly, so we can see, so little, so briefly, it's on the edge of vision.
Then they leave the space, and slowly a dim light lites the arena, and the block appears with all the marks, bent out of it's rigid shape, completely mishaped, reflecting the strikes of the wrestler's anatomy.
I really liked the beginning of Season Butler's The Woman Who Walks On Knives, where she stands before a wooden table, paciently scraping a dead fish with a knive, taking it's scales off and putting them onto a pile on the side. This scales will travel far. She then undresses to put on some flippers, and tape her legs together bottom to top, puts a blonde wig on, oils her torso and throws on herself the scales. She is like The Little Sea-Maid of Hans Christian Anderson's tale, which inpired this piece. She will travel across the vast room, taking, aided with tweezers, a scale of her skin at a time, swinging her arm in a swimming stroke for each scale. Beautiful.
She then reaches a small stage, with an empty plastic fish tank, and attempts to sing, under the water, or drown her self. We fear for her, but she seems determined to go under the water. She finally cuts her legs open and leaves.
