The Buzzcut Commonplace Book was an alternative documentation project for Buzzcut Festival of Live Art and Performance in March 2015. The project took the form of a website where audience members were encouraged to submit creative reflections on the work at the festival and a 15 minute performance response that I developed over the 5 days of the festival.
The Buzzcut Commonplace Book derived from a model of creative response developed for the Abandoned Practices Institute by Mark Jeffery (ATOM-r), Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish (Every house has a door).
It aimed to be a meeting point between my practice, the work of the artists presenting and the reflections of the festival audience.
The website documenting the audience reflections can be found here
Photo credit: Beth Chalmers
Performance Response (Sunday 23rd March 2015)
1. This performance starts with a list of things that I have missed: I have missed the wise glory owl I have missed the guddling I have missed imprints I have missed an anticipated stabbing I have missed blood on the streets of Partick I have missed an inverted shell I have missed man vs. woman I have missed what Richard would do I have missed the treat ment I have missed a savage amusement I have missed a dirge I have missed a confession I have missed a girl and gun I have missed 3 out of 4 expressions of masculine prowess I have missed Donald and Dusty I missed the fire I have missed the old hairdressers and stereo I have missed fermented ink I have missed the drone and the robot I have missed the soap opera I have missed the smoke and the colours I have missed the flood plains STILLNESS FOR MISSED THINGS TAKE OFF BOILER SUIT 2. Jamie McMurry response 3. Marlene Dietrich karaoke song and projected text and movements 2 TAKE OFF ONESIE 4. This performance ends with a list of things that I have witnessed: a book of unsaid things (missing) an autobiography of objects an archaeology of objects an augmented body-machine our terrain is our biography and there is a politics of space because space is political I saw a falling tower block I felt a terrible loss I saw a disembodied hand I saw red hands and blue hands The stag’s head and the ram’s head An archaeology of objects The next image when it arrives will be… An ending, an event, a transition An invisible land The futile attempt to clean what cannot be cleaned A painting ripped from its canvas and folded in on itself A performance folded in on itself A canvas, an art lecture I was healed, I was held, I was kissed I consume And this is not about me but it is about us And they are not afraid of anything And this is a bad essay, a queer essay, a tasty essay And we cannot help but be changed in the process of interacting I am welcomed into a reflective space I have a moment of calm amid chaos I see questions that outnumber the answers I think about my responsibility to enter the discussion I am healed, I am held, I am kissed I felt like I was returning I am carried on a journey through childhood reminiscences I remember tastes, smells, sounds, textures I am haunted by a missed encounter with Marlene Dietrich, I am haunted by a missed encounter with Alfred Hitchcock, I am haunted by a missed encounter with Ingrid Bergman. I saw Freud wearing crotchless chaps I saw his work being critiqued through a series of increasingly elaborate knob gags I was taken on a grotesque night out that condensed a whole evening into an hour And we cannot help but be changed in the process of interacting I heard hundreds of tiny rusted bells drop to the floor and felt the focus of 37 minutes I saw two women not giving a fuck And I have witnessed many different versions of masculinity I witnessed a jilted bride in a graveyard Or a cruise ship singer in a graveyard I revisited a scene from my past I witnessed an event, I felt the closure of a moment like the shutting of a door And we cannot help but be changed in the process of interacting And we cannot help but be changed in the process of interacting And we cannot help but be changed in the process of interacting AND WE CANNOT HELP BUT BE CHANGED IN THE PROCESS OF INTERACTING 7. Hugs SLIDES: Don’t think about fire and sand and ash and fear, and trembling We are the heroes now – the dancers and the public. it remains unresolved they and I are like organs of one single intercorporeality an invisible landscape conditions the visible one an unimaginable connection with your milk, Mother I swallowed ice do you see blue through your blue eyes? layer upon layer of different sets of linkages the simultaneous presence of performer and performed They simply set up home inside our dreams Root me to the earth and watch me fade away theatres for repertoires of preservation I’ll draw a line and you follow it Thinking of my GOB Be In The Right Place At The Right Time With The Right People imagine different selves A man came in with a bucket of blood I remember when the man came on stage The knife glistens in the light. the present thing in its absence He struggled with himself Full of melancholy longing or wishful yearning can the new be recognised one good joke and perhaps some cheerful nudity emotion that can jump changes travel from the edges to the center People are my roots, my soil The autobiographical and the political are interconnected I felt dead cool Time fragments All streaked with oil and rust So rudely forc’d the aura of his defined state contaminated by repetition
