Nicola Hunter || Lost Bodies

"The physical entry of the artist's body into the artwork is a transgressive gesture that confuses the distinctions between subject and object, life and art: a move that challenges the properties that rest on such divisions". Adrian Heathfield, (2012), Alive in: Live Art and Performance, p.10

On the 23rd of July 2016, during Day 3 of Tempting Failure [International festival of performance art and noise art], I had the great opportunity to witness and experience through my lenses a new performance by Nicola Hunter, entitled : LOST BODIES.

I started following Nicola's work and process online (website: nicolacanavan.com/) last year and I was immediately captivated by the intensity, meaningfulness, generative force and rough beauty of her works, able to have a strong visual and emotional impact on me, as viewer.

However, nothing can be compared with the experience of seeing and feeling the artist in action, in front of your eyes, in a process of transformation. Here and Now. A sensorial experience where barriers of intimacy are challenged; where, even if you are not called to interact or participate in the action, you become an active part of the process. Exactly, as Heathfield points out:

"The shock to perception that are frequently deployed by contemporary Live artists, somewhat like those of other visual artists, take the spectators into conditions of immediacy where attention is heightened, the sensory relation is charged, and the working of thought agitated. The artwork is alive. Such conditions, it seems, bring us as spectators into a fresh relation: into the now of enactment, the moment by moment of the present". (Adrian Heathfield, 2012: 8)

First some words about "LOST BODIES" and Nicola Hunter:

Her body transpired into the darkness that day. Her last breath grew wings: pulling the soul from beneath her bones to the next life. Grief births a visceral journey, which swells and tears the skin, spitting you out onto barren lands. There was death and it took me with it. ‘

Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. The wildish nature comes to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over-domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped’ (Clarissa Pinkola Estes). This new performance is the first few breaths of a new life, with a new voice, in new flesh. In ‘Lost Bodies’- artist Nicola Hunter (formerly Canavan) - accompanied by a shamanic figure, Alison Brierley - celebrates loss as a strengthening process, a metamorphosis and a return to the wild.

Nicola Hunter (UK) has been performing and showing work nationally and internationally since 2007 within programmes such as Momentum Festival (Brussels), ]performance s p a c e[ (London), Inbetween Time Festival (Bristol), City of Women (Ljubljana) and SPILL National Platform (Ipswitch). She has collaborated with Predrag Pajdic, Manuel Vason (Double Exposures) and Ernst Fischer and has been awarded the Artsadmin Bursary, the Artists International Development Fund and has been financially supported and mentored by Unlimited, Live Art Development Agency and Pacitti Company.

Over the last 10 years Nicola Hunter has been developing a feminist practice which is rooted in action based performance and spans live work, documentations of its products & traces and the re-presentation of these in other forms. With performance at its core, she investigates themes around abjection and ritual with a focus on interpreting or creating experiences in her own body. She has an active interest in the anthropological body, exploring the ways that social, cultural and political dynamics shape the perception and understanding of the human body and how these interactions are interpreted through social engagement how they are controlled through mass media and the arts.

www.nicolacanavan.com

Going back to the 23rd of July, when the first performance of LOST BODIES took place in the beautiful and intimate performative space of Theatre Utopia.

Once I entered the space, I felt I was transported in another spatial and temporal dimension. The smell of burnt sage, filled the space, making my vision a bit blurred. I first saw in a very close physical distance, Alison Brierley, in her shaman costume, performing the ancient art of smudging : a ceremonial act which allows the smoke (from burning sacred plants) to cleanse the space. While Alison fanned the smoke around us and around the space, I looked through the smoke cloud and saw in the middle of the room a pile of earth and flowers, a sort of little holy mountain. I had to move forward to find a place to stand, as more people were entering the place...

After a few step I opened my eyes wide to absorb the entire image, I saw Her at the end of the room, sitting majestically on a throne, with a long white, wedding dress, a crone of red roses and white spray flowers, and a blue long veil covering her face.

For an instance, the atmospheric scene reminded me of the paintings of Caravaggio, in which the contrast between an intensely dark and solemn background and the effects of light prevails, and also Artemisia Gentileschi's paintings (influenced by Caravaggio's style and technique) with their sense of mystery through her use of light and shadow.

Usually in paintings, we see men sitting on the thrones, a demonstration of patriarchal power., However, here, the "painting is alive", female, and the ritual has already begun. Clearly, patriarchy is challenged...

Very soon, I found myself sitting on the left side of the room, closer to the "throne" scene. My sense already awakened; I could even taste the sage on my mouth.

I turn on my camera. I am about to document the event.

From this point, my experience will be differentiate, because of looking the entire process through the lens of the camera. By taking into consideration the essence of performance, Peggy Phelan argues that "Performance's only life is in the present" (Phelan, 1993:146), and I agree. What happens here and now cannot be re-presented, cannot be brought back in life, and certainly is not the "true" event to be depicted in my images.

Once I try to capture the action by pressing the shutter release, I don't document or save the performance. Looking back at the photographs, I don't see back the "true" performative moment, but my own subjective experience reflecting in my choice of frame, my perception of what happened in that instant, what for me was more "important".

I zoom in and out; I can see isolated and framed details that my naked eye can't compose...my sensations start being intensified, as I see her finger moving into a small dance. The whole image starts "breathing".

With a slow movement of her hands she raises the wedding dress, revealing her barefooted in front of a white pair of shoes, full of blood, in which she immerses her feet before standing up.

Blood is associated with life but also death, passion, pain, conflict. Of course, it couldn't be missing in a ritualistic performative action like this one. The veiled bride stands up and starts walking around the mountain of dirt and flowers with the white shoes of blood, while the Shamanic figure follows her under the sound of the drums. I can't see her face...I can't "see" any pain though facial expression, but it's in the space as a sensation. As viewer, at that moment, I associate blood with pain...not a physical, but an emotional one.

Dignified pain, which will be partially released when the shoes are taken off - aggressively - and thrown away on the floor with a few rose petals around....I zoom in to the shoe; carrier of meanings : of loss and pain, love and hate, dirt and hope.

The purity of white doesn't exist. It never really existed, such thing as purity.

The ceremony continues with the "faceless" bride crawling on the pile of dirt and flowers, with her naked body half - revealed underneath the big dress. I can see her searching and finding a large candle -phallic symbol- with which she starts masturbating. I witness the rhythmic masturbatory movement of her body accompanied by the drums; a moment of ambiguity; pain and pleasure break the confinements. The sound of the drums mixed with the recorded, amplified sound of heavy breathing and screams, the liveness of the ritual, sacrificed body, the still strong smell of the burned sage, the intimacy of the repetitive action, enhance the sacred element of the Event. I feel part of it...

The next scene takes place, with the Bride standing up, close to the throne. Her body language and postures reveal an inner power. With a razor blade in her hand and a decisive, firm, abrupt and strong gesture, she cuts off the dirty and "sinful" wedding dress, revealing her strong, naked, female body. Exposing without fear; her strength mixed with fragility, she takes off the floral crown and the veil, attached to her forehead with needles and syringes.

Blood runs down her face. Through the lens I see in close-up the vivid, red blood and her gaze. An intense gaze. There is no pain. I don't perceive pain. I sense only inner power, channeled through the entire body, and then transmitted through the eyes. Eyes of fire. Anger. Intensity ... Dignity.

I feel from distance the warmth of the blood, which now I associate spontaneously with a regenerative, live force. A river of emotions washes my own body. Strangely, I feel empowered through her. From where it comes comes from? It's not just the fact of being a woman, too. I can't empathise cause I am not in that "place". We don't share commonn factual experiences. But still I can project myself in that state. There is no time to reflect on my projections and feelings ...

I follow her through the lenses, as she nails to a wooden surface the blood-stained, cut, dirty, "dirty" wedding dress, opposite the throne. She buries the shoes, in the pile of earth and flowers.

The Shaman arrives with a bowl full of black paint with which she covers her entire body except around her pelvis and vulva, which now becomes the symbol of (female) power. The Shaman adorns her with a feather collar. I am wondering if they are Eagle feathers, "infinitely important to the tradition of Native Americans, symbolise wisdom, healing, power and freedom" (Ina Woolcott).

Eagle soars, and is quick to observe expansiveness within the overall pattern of life.

From the heights of the clouds, Eagle is close to the heavens where the Great Spirit dwells. -Jamie Sams, Seneca/Choctaw, and David Carson, Choctaw

The cathartic ritual is coming into an end. She slowly moves towards the throne and we will see her fearlessly sitting again, like a wild Godess; her vulva proudly exposed to us, her arms comfortably rest on the sides of the throne and her feet are rooted on the ground. She will bend back her head and open her mouth and display in it the candle.

The shaman lights on the candle and leaves the space. The silence is broken from the sound of her heavy breathing. The lights fade out. Only the flame is left ...Metamorphosis has been completed.

I realise that I am in anapnea ...