A brief write up from her own words of her performance:
The performance involves asking for help and handing over the responsibility of deciding which part of my loved one I will keep with me. I have chosen the wallet as an object that I consider we will always have with us. It is also a place where we keep passport sized or shrunken photographs of the ones we love. I have taken this small token of keeping a loved one close, and emphasized and exaggerated it by asking people to help me fit a life-sized photograph of my loved one into my wallet.
The groups of people I ask and the locations that the event takes place will also have an impact on how this task is approached. I am interested in seeing how other people respond, and whether or not they will be empathetic in their actions.
The first performance took place on 26th July 2011 at 7pm in a location of significance for me and my loved one. The people who I asked to help me had all met and developed a relationship with my loved one while I was away, and in turn met me while he was away.
These are a few of the photographs taken during the performance by Rebecca Voelcker.
Erin with a life sized photograph of Sean
Up we go onto the bridge!!
We attempt in different ways to fold Sean into her wallet
Having to dismember parts of his limbs from the image, as he was still too large to fold into
And yes! We managed to fold his limbs into the card section of her wallet and his body into the note section!! How terribly sadistic that sounds! eek!
The audience who watched us from across the bridge consisted of the interns from the Scottish, Welsh and English pavilions, they noted on how it seemed as if we were digging into the ground, as if it were a preparation of a ritual- to make a memory permanent. And for all of our individual sentiments, the personal bond that we once tied with this person was now left with us taping a memory, to fold him into a material object with the person he is closest with, and also to bind their love and our affection for him in the short period by which we all met within our stay in Venice.
Perhaps it is the ritualistic notion and semblance of digging that it flashed upon me the similarities between Erin’s work and a recent film I saw at the Museo Fortuny, though the themes dealt are polarities apart, it is an interesting note in their sparks of similarity.
Passage, 2001, by Shirin Neshat
And a bit about the artist and her work :
Shirin Neshat's visually compelling films explore the culture of Islam, especially the condition of women in that world, where they have more power than is often assumed. By questioning sexual politics, Neshat reveals something of the collective condition, its rituals, conflicts, and emotions. In Passage, a group of men carry a body wrapped in white cloth across a beach; in the distance, a group of women veiled in black chadors dig a grave with their hands, while a child arranges a circle of stones. These minimal, enigmatic scenes, set to a haunting score by Philip Glass, were filmed in the Moroccan coastal town of Essaouira. The location, where Neshat has worked before, is similar in character to the landscape of Iran: as Neshat’s work becomes better known in the West, she is increasingly uneasy about returning. But geography is almost secondary to the film. Inspired by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, specifically the televised images of bodies held aloft during funeral processions, Passage may be Neshat’s most timely and affecting film yet.
Ciao Ciao
xxx
Steph
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