As part of my intervention I decided to do an interactive performance piece, as a way of testing my current research question—‘How can I use multidisciplinary performance to explore the intersection between the systems of Patriarchy, Colonialism and Capitalism?’
This performance had two parts :
The Love Letters
I asked people from different backgrounds to write a letter under the following premises :
“Think of yourself as multilayered individual. Reflect on those those layers (for instance Class, race, culture and gender). How do they intersect ?
Then write a letter . Write it to an enemy , to a family member, to your culture, to a state of mind… to something or someone you love yet you are critical about. Anyone or anything. Any writing style is valid.
Just release it.
Your letter we’ll be exchanged anonymously, but if you don’t feel like sharing it that’s okay, just write freely”
The reason for this was that I wanted to enable a safe space for people to reflect on their intersectionality and express themselves freely. I received a large number of letters reflecting on different themes such as culture, tradition, family values, self-esteem and, of course, love and relationships. This also gave me a lot of insight for my research, since it has allowed me to observe how many of these areas interconnect how deeply human all of these processes are. I felt very organic.
Some of these letter can be accessed on my previous blog entry.
The Live Performance
After collecting all of these letters, I put them in rose envelopes and proceeded to do an interactive performance in which these were anonymously exchanged. The performance had to layers, the personal and the collective. In the one hand I applied red lipstick while looking at a hand mirror and singing old Cuban love songs. In the other hand, I kissed the letters one by one, leaving a lipstick stain, and laid them in a circle for people to calmly collect. Since it was done in a grass field, the space allowed for people to sit around and read the letters they had collected while the performance was still going. The main intention was to create an overall reflective experience in which we were all interconnected to a certain extend.
Some Feedback
- “Loved the performance. It made me emotional to think about the love letters being written anonymously and being picked up by strangers to read them and be confronted by people’s emotions, as if these strangers are now put into the place of recipient, they become the object of affection without meaning to, and must receive whatever type of love is in the letter, a simple love, an innocent love, a welcome love, or a resentful love, a wish to be able to love easier, a celebration or love or a moment of mourning . Its really quite lovely.”
- “I was transfixed and thought it was very brave to perform in a public space like Laura did. The letter I got in the performance was a very intense letter of devotion to another person. It was quite beautiful—I read it aloud to a friend and we both felt “wow” like we’ve never felt the way the letter talks about feeling. I’d like to see more performances, to see how Laura can keep exploring this very interesting topic from a variety or angles — and to see what our own responses to the aesthetic and content say about our own ingrained notions of “what is acceptable” or “what is art” or “is love a worthy topic to explore” and on…”
- “Loved the setting, the arrangement of the letters at the end, and even the audience that came and sat. The real focused attentive love that you are expressing, the duty to love of the letter writing and kissing, the solemn ache of the song you sing is at the end transformed by the hyperbolic symbol of seduction and desire with the derranging makeup – becomes Sheela-na-Gig like. To me it sends a distorted message of “when will my love be enough” or “when will i be enough?” “Is love something habitual and custom? Or is it expressed most clearly by seduction and desire?” “Where does my worth lie? In this performance of dutiful love or my appearance and sexuality” is it both? As a viewer that experience is lost and we can’t obtain what you are visibly expressing, but the actual audience can and do engage. Also ‘kiss and tell’, but what you are telling is not really telling us the truth, you know? Your repetitive motion and the actual sense of duty you apply to the letter kissing is again one form of expression that can hide a lot of emotion under the surface. It’s called transference. When a person puts them self to a task to avoid expression or confrontation of their reality or emotions or thoughts. I find elements of that here, when all things are considered.”