]performance s p a c e [ is an artist led non-profit organisation that provides studio and project space, aiming to cultivate live work that critically and physically pushes the boundaries of body and space.
This has lead to its recent ‘In Conversation…’ series of pieces, stretched across three weeks in a disused industrial estate of Hackney Wick, an area of London fast becoming a Berlin-like mecca for exciting, experimental art and theatre.
Last week was the creative residency of gender-based artist Poppy Jackson and transgender performance icon Nina Arsenault. Arsenault funded $150,000 worth of cosmetic surgery through her work in the sex trade before concentrating her extensive powers upon performance and exploring the idea of femininity in modern culture.
In Unit 6 of Hamlet Industrial Estate they created together an intriguing, multi-disciplinary installation piece that uniquely raised questions and provoked thought through its vision.
Both performers were inside a specially constructed space of four walls, through which the spectators could only peer at through windows. Jackson poured water into a pail and began to shave her legs, Arsenault knelt staring at herself in a mirror.
The room inside was warmly lit in contrast to the shadows we stood in outside, looking in. Trees without leaves grew in the corners, four laptops under four windows played different videos of both artists; hardcore fisting porn was projected upon one wall, possibly starring Arsenault herself; and on the facing edifice she was speaking an ever-repeating tale of her previous loves, one of whom lifted her off the ground by her neck.
This is quite clearly not traditional theatre and it is not structured in a traditional theatre way: there are loose start and end times, people can come and go as they want, you can stay for the whole four hours or just catch 15 minutes.
Purists may miss the narrative lean, others may scoff. But what the production achieved, in my opinion, was making you ask ‘why’ this piece was put together in this way, what was the thinking behind Jackson and Arsenault’s work, and, from that, question more about the tangible world and social mores in which you live.
• ‘In Conversation with… aGender: Poppy Jackson + Nina Arsenault’
• ]Performance s p a c e [, Unit 6, Hamlet Industrial Estate,
• White Post Lane, E9 5E9
• www.performancespace.org
