HARD POOR & DEAD | 5th - 7th December 2008

3 Doors, 12 House Plants, Purple Glitter, Jock Strap, Hammer, Masking Tape, Ghost VHS, Joy Division T-shirt, Bucket of Sand, Plastic, Table, Blowtorch, Nails, White Y-Fronts, Blue Flag, Postcard of James Dean, Postcard of Leigh Bowry, Brogue Shoes, Walking Socks, Sello-Tape, Red Scarf, Rope, Carrier Bags in knots, Pencils, Apple, Found Book on Dreaming, Step Ladder, Belt & Blonde Hair (Dye)

The performances occurred over three days, accumulating the debris from each individual action and utilising the debris of objects left in the space from a previous performance by Irish artist Leo Devlin. Proximity Effect saw curator Mark Greenwood develop a programme of three artists, Devlin, myself and Liam Yeates, where each artist would perform in the same space and work with the detritus from the previous weeks performance.

'Hard' was the first and longest performance, lasting over an hour. I performed a sequence of short actions and whilst I had a predetermined score of titled actions I also allowed live decision making and spontaneous actions. Concentrating primarily on my own body as a site for prosthetics and intervention, 'Hard' also used a mirroring of objects in the space attempting to become 'step-ladders', 'door', 'table' and 'hammer'. The textual actions of writing and inscribing the space and also shouting pre-written texts worked as a kind of index of the actions performed. As this was a long performance constructed from many short actions the structure did not build vertically but horizontally allowing actions and texts to sit next to each other not on top of each other. The actions could thus be read as a process of becoming and transforming. There was a focus on domestic objects and the violence these objects could embody.

'Poor' and 'Dead' were shorter actions for smaller intimate audiences and were spontaneous actions of 'reading' and responding to 'Hard'.

Performed at Proximity Effect at Plymouth Arts Center 5, 6, 7 December 2008 a REDAPE Event Curated by Mark Greenwood.