CHTHONIC (2019) PSYCHOGENESIS SERIES (2018) PERCEPTION:LAB (2015)

This submission comprises three individual Performance Artworks exploring the notion of a ‘phenomenological wound’, they are: PERCEPTION:Lab (2015), Psychogenesis Series (2018), and CHTHONIC (2019/20). Thematically linked, the ‘wound’ is perceived beyond the visceral/literal, instead through psychological, existential, empathic/sympathetic (or rejection) processes between the shared phenomenological space/flesh of artist and audience. This was an investigation into the queer dis/abled body through a methodology that maps an artist’s psychogenesis through performative action, asking: • How is the perception of psychogenesis affected of altered through failure? • How does the materiality of the artefact hold the presence of a psychogenesis through the absence of Being? • How do external and internal borders manifest in Being or psychogenesis through the queer or dis/abled body? Our practice produced insights upon the phenomenological perception of an artist’s own psychogenesis. Sitting within the field of analysis of performance art proposed by Amelia Jones (2009), application of Luc Boltanski (1993) on sublimation, Jones highlighted the problems for aesthetic hierarchy – akin to Cartesianism – between painter and action, before considering how the performance artist collapses these processes and responses into the action of their own body (2009:49). The research builds upon these implications for the physical wound, applying a phenomenological lens to the wound as expressed/explored via the methodologies of duration, failure and enacted personal histories as psychological and existential wounds, catalytically queering normative perception towards a multiplicity beyond a Cartesian essential Self. PERCEPTION:Lab (2015) was shown in Boston USA at the Mobius Gallery, supported by University of Bristol; Psychogenesis Series (2018) began while in residency at The Sidney Nolan Trust, and CHTHONIC (2019) was shown at Bow Arts, Raw Labs as part of the London Festival of Architecture with funding from Arts Council England.

- PERCEPTION:Lab (2015) [Performance] a conceptual artwork, that can only ever be encountered in this unique way once. While the concept may have life beyond the 13 hours, these actions will never be performed again in this way.

- Psychogenesis series (2018) [Book section] an artist who works intrinsically through the practice of phenomenology, explains the rationale for a new phase in their process of research: a methodology that engages with embodied and disembodied phenomenological experiences.

- CHTHONIC (2019/2020) [Performance] This artwork was a de/constructive process; sculpting the physical Being, intangible Self/s and the foundation of a space that would hold a monochromatic cross of bones.