Julia Bardsley and Almost the Same

A couple of weeks ago Julia Bardsley, who is a "live art" artist and former Artistic Director of the Young Vic, came to do a workshop with us for my Performance Lab class.

The workshop was immensely satisfying and thought provoking. After a few warm up activities to get our minds and bodies ready she had us discuss our modes and aesthetics of creating work. Then we had an just over an hour to create an "Installation of the mind" or an "altar of ideas." Here's mine: I call it Imagined City

It's "floating" on the wall.

After that we created a character through qualities of movement. We began with individual qualities and then fuzed them together. After that we did a ritual of creating the face (or the projected self) of that character on our partner - who's face was made "blank" by a stocking over the head. To finish the projected self we added a wig.

Overall the workshop's structure was enlightening and really a lot of fun. Having spent the day with Bardsley I was excited to see her performance Almost the Same - a collaboration with sound artist Andrew Poppy.

Playing at the Chelsea Theatre, my fellow classmate Jane and I went to go see the "feral rehearsals for violent acts of culture." It begins with the audience lining up according to height - we then enter the space and stand in a triangle formation. The curtain opens revealing Bardsley at the apex of an opposing triangle set up in the seats of the house. She emerges from a black plastic body bag and continues to pull out two feral rabbits. Lights out, we then move to the actual audience and sit, again, in a triangle.

The rest of the piece is in three parts - the first with Bardsley clad in black animalistically and ritualistically mourning the hares. Poppy's live mixing of the sound give the piece a stunningly eerie vibe. Along with Bardsley never-wavering intensity. The video of the pale and almost transparent Bardlsey evokes an almost "master"-esque and controlling juxtaposition to the live animalistic Bardsley on stage. The images of the skinned hares, meat, sculls, ritual - along with the elaborate wigs, costumes and gestures mix horror with absurdity, disgust with fascination. Although "live-art" is not my personal aesthetic, nor do I have a lot of experience with the mode I was really transfixed by the combination of Bardsley's performance, the amazing use of projection and the stunning sound. Having met Bardsley, I was surprised out how intense and striking the piece was compared to her soft demeanor in real life. She's definitely created a heightened performing persona, which can be traced back to her methodologies. Really fascinating.