The fisrt piece I saw from SPILL festival of performance this year, was Jamie Lewis Hadley's Analogue to a blunt trauma, where the central theme, in my view, was the medical and violent connotations of the substance of blood. Carrying a golden gun, dressed with black boots and fingerless leather gloves, a man walks into the space, a white dimly lit room with a sofa. He lies there, and a woman walks in with a medical suitcase, dressed as a professional, yet not exactly like a doctor. She takes different devices out of her case and checks his blood pressure, to then begin a blood extraction. Soft spoken, she checks how he's feeling, though we can't hear the exact words, they have small chat, exchange a few smiles. The bag rests on the floor beside them, slowly filling up with the warm liquid from inside him.
Once it's full, the doctor walks behind the sofa, further back into the room, and proceeds to hang it from two wires, so it stands at eye level, suspended. She leaves.
The golden gun is resting before the sofa, to one side, it has been since he placed it there before he lied down. It seems a reminder of who he is, like a broken soldier whose wounds are being taken care of. He soon stands up and another man enters the space to hand him a new gun, this one is black and real; aiming at his own hung blood, he shoots.
Like shooting oneself, only through a medical device that isolates that living tissue, packaged, held together by plastic. This valuable liquid donated, sacrificed, in a literal way. Seems to have as little sense as men fighting and pouring each other's blood for whatever the reasons. Is it part of the initiation ritual of manhood? Get a gun, shed some blood, then you gain a certain status, matching with the boots and the leather gloves.
Jamie Lewis Hadley, former professional wrestler, is a solo live art performer that explores blood, deterioration, pain and violence. He is currently concerned with performing medicine and the history of bloodletting.
Jamie explains that his use of blood "comes from a frustration that I am unable to donate blood because I have had sex with a man ‘in the last 12 months’. Secondly, I believe a wider audience can engage with performance work that uses blood when medical equipment and professionals are used to extract and exhibit the blood." He also hopes that the topical use of a live firearm in the piece will highlight and raise questions around this current social and political issue. (Attitude.co.uk)
