This is a collection of five blogs I wrote while re-making my live art performance THE BUTTER PIECE. My writing is joined by five pieces from other artists whose work involves, or is about, the body. It’s an insight into the artistic process but also a reflection on themes that come up from living in our skin – being seen, looking and being looked at, queerness, shame, ageing, change and materiality.
The guest writers are: Orrow Amy Bell, Jade Blackstock, Gillian Dyson, Ursula Martinez & Holly Revell. It was edited by Jodean Sumner and features drawings by Gillian and photographs from Coralie Datta and Matt Rogers.
This is one of a series of writings that reflect on my journey toward re-making a performance art work called ‘The Butter Piece’. I first made it in 2011 and I’m revisiting it now a decade later.
‘The Butter Piece’ was shown live at CLAY, Leeds on the 26th November and Colchester Arts Centre on the 1st December. More details here.
08 December 2021
The most difficult part is the beginning.
Removing the dress.
There’s no way to take your clothes off that doesn’t smack of taking your clothes off
-and all that that denotes
I’m naked in it
And the butter starts hard.
As I ease up to it, it doesn’t respond easily
I have to give it my sure, smooth, slow movement.
And it responds by leaving oiliness up and around the spaces
- places you aren’t supposed to be aware of in company
It feels shameful.
Smeary
Like accidents and ignorance
Secretive - derived from
Secretions
Judgement
I feel hot.
The outer surfaces of my skin tighten against the gaze of the audience.
Later is better.
The social context slips away and naked is the new normal.
Anxious tension gives way to pleasure as
The butter gives me it’s soft, smooth, slow movement.
And I slide into it like a warm bath
- and play.
We make long slides
short shunts
We can do what we like.....
The end is a different kind of daring.
Clothes on, or off, doesn’t really matter because we have arrived
Exposure has melted into power
The risk is only falling
free falling
and free standing.
***************
This is one of a series of writings that reflect on my journey toward re-making a performance art work called ‘The Butter Piece’. I first made it in 2011 and I’m revisiting it now a decade later.
I made The Butter Piece because I wanted to confront SHAME.
We don’t talk about how we get to know our bodies as children, about masturbation, about wetness, very little about periods.
I spent a long time thinking my body, how I wanted to explore it and the responses it made, or didn’t, were wrong.
Rude
Messy
Leaky
Dirty
Shameful.
I thought I needed to close up and cover up.
I think this got in the way of my sexual potential as an adult.
Of my pleasure and my presence in my own body and my intimacy with others.
I eventually found a kind of sensual emancipation, probably around the time I made this piece, but personal journeys don’t just stop at the good bits.
My body continues to change and have new experiences – many of which are similarly not talked about and fester as a result.
I wonder what the opposite of shame might be…
I’ve decided on safety.
I realise that for me, it’s the security of trust with another, social validation in community and plain old information that have allowed me to right myself.
To risk being seen.
To revel in being felt.
To uncover
Open…….
Want.
In order to eradicate shame, inhabit my body and pursue pleasure I first need to feel safe. Safe from embarrassment, judgement, ridicule, betrayal, blame. It’s emotional safety.
-If you believe women’s bodies are precious and sacred as I do, then maybe it’s a kind of spiritual safety.
And as I write this I am mindful that, before any of that, there’s the need to be safe from harm. A physical and sexual respect that should be beyond the need to ask for it. Yet one that has not been, and is still not, afforded to so many women.
This is one of a series of writings that reflect on my journey toward re-making a performance art work called ‘The Butter Piece’. I first made it in 2011 and I’m revisiting it now a decade later.
Someone asked me if The Butter Piece was a queer work and I didn’t know what to answer. So I started thinking about the queer work I see, and the notion of ‘the queer body’ and I still don’t know what to answer.
I do use the term ‘queer’ to describe myself and I made The Butter Piece so that might make it queer by default. I’m also an artist but I am not sure everything I make is art – although it is when I intend it.
How do being and doing relate?
Sometimes I think my very identity is an action and vice versa. Sometimes it’s totally irrelevant, or I want it to be, to ensure no-one feels the work isn’t for them. But I also want to make it for some people in particular, and I want them to know it.
I made this first and foremost for women. The Butter Piece was definitely intended as a feminist action – my queer identity wasn’t something I platformed back then. It is more visible and important to me now. I’m starting to realise I’m a bit of a late developer with both my art and my voice.
If I try and feel it out, queerness for me relates a lot to ‘otherness’ but in some contexts I have felt ‘other’ as a woman so it’s hard to separate out difference and discrimination purely on the basis of gender or sexuality.
I can say that being in physcially intimate relationships with women has been transformative to my sense of self and my self is what I use to make performance. Intimacy with another female body has been validating, healing, informative, joyful. It has enabled me.
There’s no overt queer content in this piece though. No words. Just what you see and hear and maybe smell. I find references that speak to the sense of my sexuality in that but I don’t know whether you will.
We could take queerness to mean radical, the transgressive, and by this definition The Butter Piece is a sure thing. Queer in provocation, by putting my female body on display with my own agency.
Is it transgressive to be an audience to such an act then? Is it radical to look? Does that make you queer for those moments? Are we all having a collective queer experience?
This is one of a series of writings that reflect on my journey toward re-making a performance art work called ‘The Butter Piece’. I first made it in 2011 and I’m revisiting it now a decade later.
I mentally prepared before comparing pictures of me ten years ago and now.
It wasn’t enough.
I found it really difficult, especially looking at myself from the back – and I’d always considered my back one of my best features. I guess we look at our fronts more so the rear view image was more shocking.
I knew I would look older but I hadn’t thought about what ‘older’ translated to. It was less about wrinkles and more about shape. The shape of me is different in space – sturdier and more irregular. I have swellings and indentations in places that used to be smooth – hills and valleys instead of plains. Or perhaps it’s the same landscape after ecological change so the undulations and river beds have become more epic.
Weight is definitely a part of what I see, and I expected this, but what I find repulsive is where I have the heavy, dimply, ballast of my mum.
I have to do some work on this…
Why do I find features of my mother undesirable – is it because of her weight or her age?
Is it because of the relationship, her being my parent, or would it be the same with any older, or well upholstered, woman?
I think it is the relationship and lack of examples.
When I was a young the only women’s bodies I saw were those in magazines, TV and film or my mother. Such a fail-fail paradox. On one hand aspirational fantasies that I was physiologically programmed to never attain. On the other an inescapable destiny that I was desperate to individuate from. Where were the alternatives? Where were they then and where are they now?
As an adult I realise that my mum always looked great for her age. A certain amount of weight suited her and contributed to her youthfulness.
I believe I have become more attractive as I have gotten older. Or maybe I have shifted my parameters of beauty. My skin is increasingly porous. More of who I am comes through. The inner informing the outer instead of the other way around.
I look more like me and this ‘me’ is a product of my nature, my nurture and the congruence of myself.
This is one of a series of writings that reflect on my journey toward re-making a performance art work called ‘The Butter Piece’. I first made it in 2011 and I’m revisiting it now a decade later.
In the same way I might prepare a costume, or set, lighting, other things the audience might see
I am preparing myself. I am preparing my body.
I want to say ‘This is not about bettering my body’ – but that position isn’t cut and dried.
In creating a physical performance I do need to be stronger, I will want to access the full range of my physical expression. I definitely think about the aesthetic of the figurative form, how I am using my instrument.
It is possible that being more active might change my shape.
I might lose weight.
But, I have to check this rationale isn’t being ridden by a desire to be more attractive in a socially prescribed way. To check that my preparation isn’t masking a desperate dieting, gyming, tumbling race to the finish line of the show – where I am thinner and beautifuller and all my ex-girlfriends and artistic rivals kick themselves.
My way through is to think about being embodied. Grounded – where the ground is an internal surface. A place where I fill my skin, I am the right size, I can stand up inside myself with all my physical and emotional material.
And so I am training.
I’m training by spending quality time with myself
– sometimes exercising, sometimes not.
I’m looking at pictures of myself
I’m moving around
I’m being tactile when I can and noticing space when I can’t.
I’m eating
I’m noticing what pleases my skin
I’m attentive to tiredness, tenderness
I’m taking up space.
I’m noticing when I feel uncomfortable and not making it comfortable
I’m noticing when I feel groovy and not pissing on my own cornflakes.
I’m not hiding.
To be intimate with a lover, a friend, an audience
– you first have to be intimate with yourself
And intimacy is about honesty, clarity, vulnerability.
