“How does a collaboration become possible when it is not so much a question of an activity but a thought process, an exchange?” Emma Hedditch

My research is initiated as ephemeral and performative. Over the next two years I hope to use the process and thinking of critical design to discover whether these very immediate, visceral experiences can translate into a solid, conceptually tight practice. Following on from this, whilst I retain a desire to maintain the performative aspect of my work in tandem with a more adaptive robust realization, a second question concerning the documentation of performance arises. Responding to Peggy Phelan’s somewhat pessimistic examination of the politics of performance, I hope to further pursue this question of whether there can be a meaningful relationship between the product and the performative.

My practice is broadly participatory, creating environments for the examination of social interactions ranging from intimate exchanges to group mentality and behavioral norms. The work seeks to manipulate its participants by making the boundary between the real and the simulated ambiguous. I am concerned with investigating how the visual arts and design might respond to Teresa de Lauretis’ critical account of an effort to find another perspective, “a view from elsewhere”, which she describes as existing in the “social spaces carved in the interstices of institutions and in the chinks and cracks of the power-knowledge apparati.” I aspire to following this line of enquiry, testing the boundaries between product and performance, science and the creative, design and art, through both practical and academic research.

I graduated from Edinburgh University with an MA (undergrad) Fine Art in 2007. Since leaving university, I have exhibited at Madder139 and The Atlantis Gallery in London, The Big Shed in Suffolk and performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. In the past year I participated in a year-long series of exhibitions and performances organized by ShowFlat, and most recently I exhibited at Central School of Speech and Drama as part of a performance, theatre and art evening curated by Forest Fringe

Making explicit the implicit in the explicit

All American Hero