Performance
Videowomb
I performed Videowomb at the Maternal Bodies: Individual, Collective, Other Symposium, June 2023. I used the 20 minutes provided by the organisers to show a work-in-progress version of the piece.
The screen shows my bump getting bigger over the course of the performance whilst ultrasound images give an indication of what is going on inside my uterus. On the soundtrack, I read out anecdotes which roughly align with the number of weeks pregnant my bump is on the screen. Within the work, I explore my ambivalent feelings about a medicalised pregnancy and birth. The performance troubles the relationships between technology, the mind, and the body through a process of continual fracturing and suturing.
Videowomb
Breaking Point
Breaking Point is a performance by Libby Cufley, curated by Alex Billingham and developed over a two-week residency at Failbetter, Birmingham,
Tensions between the domestic and the workspace, between creation and destruction, and between the serious and the absurd are at the forefront of the work. Within the performance, I precariously stacked crockery on the edges of plinths and the top edge of the MDF walls within the space. Three audience members were seated within the performance space and the rest stood at the perimeter. Tension was built from the outset as the audience had to navigate their way through the detritus of previous iterations of the performance. An uneasy balance between respecting the objects as delicate and deliberately placing them in scenarios where breakage was likely, ran throughout the work, culminating in most of the items being broken. The piece ends with myself scooping the shards of china into the centre of the space and lying down on the pile like a bird nesting.
Write up by Marcus Keating available at Untitled Bab
