PROJECT SIX.
Performance Art
Initial ideas
-touching peoples faces
-having a curtain over peoples faces and touching them
-eating in the dark
-touching my face in the dark
Questions / Concerns
How are your senses enhanced when there is darkness?
Why do we sense things?
Is this too serious?
Is this considered art?
work in progress
touch
Touching people is something that we have been trained NOT to do.
But yet, for this performance piece, I want people to touch my face.
I wanted to give people the chance to do something that we've been told not to do all of our lives, but with a twist, I wanted it in the dark.
Initially I thought about doing this outside where people can see me and they can see each other. But I realized, no one is going to touch me if they can see that other people can see them. People are naturally self conscious and worried about whether or not people will judge them. Thus with darkness, it allows for anonymity and honesty.
The gift aspect is not only for myself but for the people that are engaging in it. The gift of one touching someone's face (which is considered wrong or not something we should do) but also the gift of concealing oneself and doing something in secret. Another gift is experiencing and enhancing your sensing by losing one of your main senses: sight. And lastly, the gift of knowing me in a different way. I trust all the people in the classroom and understand that this is something that is not only uncomfortable for me but for the audience as well. But, you never really get to touch people unless they consent to it, and by doing this, I am inviting the other to this intimate and scary experience.
reflection
I am not going to lie, this was hard.
It wasn't a hard concept, just stand there while people touch you in the dark. But something about that left me unsettled.
I was scared. I was scared that people were going to judge me. Judge my cheeks, my eyes, my face. I was scared to let people see the real me, the lauren with chubby cheeks, the lauren with not the smoothest skin, me.
I left the performance with tears in my eyes. I had just let people touch my face. Something that I always hated, something that I tolerated. I always kept my guards up so I wouldn't get hurt, and being 'forced' to let them down, it was terrifying.
But at the same time, I felt a sense of relief. I sat down in my room and just processed what had happened. No one cares. No one cares about my 'chubby cheeks' or my 'round face' all of these things that I have been saying to myself over and over again, no one cares, but me.
And that was the gift. It came a bit later. The gift of being generous to myself. Learning to love myself. Learning to let people in.