UNRAVEL
Whilst watching Kayleigh brush her teeth during her unravel piece, ‘What do you desire?’, I was reminded of Traci Kelly’s one-to-one performance, ‘The Mirror Pool’. During this piece, Kelly squirts wine from her mouth into her participant’s mouth and vice versa. To use Kelly’s words during her Bunker Talk for Manchester School of Art, she creates “a slippery place that takes place at the boundaries of skin”. It is this description which, for me, is reminiscent of the act of teeth-brushing – both, taking place at the “boundaries of skin” and being “slippery”. Whilst Kelly’s performative act and teeth-brushing are both literally slippery, in terms of their incorporation of fluid substances – Kelly’s performative act is also slippery in terms of her evasive, elusive and unpredictable encounter with her participant. Kelly transforms the typically solo activity of wine-drinking into a duo activity. After watching Kayleigh’s piece, we talked about the nature of teeth-brushing, being a private, solo act. Moreover, we revealed to each other that we both experience embarrassment if our teeth-brushing is witnessed because of our shared struggle to keep the toothpaste contained inside our mouths. This imagery of trying to keep toothpaste contained inside our mouths allegorically visualises peoples’ attempt to keep certain words inside their mouths. In her Bunker Talk, Kelly also said that ‘The Mirror Pool’ “undermines the orality of the mouth in relation to its cultural adherence to language by reattaching it to more primal muscular functions such as spurt, sucking and blowing”. Therefore, Kayleigh and I also decided to undermine the orality of the mouth by transforming the act of teeth-brushing into a one-to-one performative act – Kayleigh watched me brush my teeth and vice-versa. If a person can become comfortable with witnessing (as well as performing) a physically abject leakage, then maybe we can begin to normalise verbally abject leakages as well.
In her Bunker Talk, Kelly also talks about the “Temporary Autonomous Zone” that she creates within ‘The Mirror Pool’. Kelly describes this term, derived from the theory of anarchist writer, Hakim Bey, as “a socio-political space that undermines formal structures of control . . . They take advantage of the cracks in formal procedures and they open up a new terrain that operates on the borderline of established grounds . . . So, the empowerment is not taking place where I’m located or where the participant is located – it’s on this borderline space between both of us where the power of the encounter takes place and emerges”. She says that “in this space between bodies, biological assigned sex or sexual orientation dissolve. And, when I say dissolve, it does not mean that these categories are not relevant to different subjects - it’s more that they become a different solution with the possibility of different applications. So, ‘The Mirror Pool’ is very much about contested borders where skin meets with mucous membrane and, in this respect, proposes a different materiality”. As it is mine and Kayleigh’s intention to create a space where societal labels and identities dissolve and the true core of self is revealed, Kayleigh and I discussed how we could use the performative act of teeth-brushing to also generate a Temporary Autonomous Zone. We decided that our audience member should be presented with the option of brushing our teeth, rather than watching us brush our own teeth. Therefore, rather than either the performer or the participant being in control of the orientation of the event – the power is placed within the encounter itself. The participant does not unwillingly witness abject leakage from the performer’s mouth. Instead, the participant consents to a co-production of the leakage and as a result, an acceptance of this leakage is generated.
