Catherine or Kate, the royal name dilemma: Humour and performance in collaborative art practice
Catherine Sagin
Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) (QUT)
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree Master of Arts (Research) 2012
Visual Arts Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology
KEY WORDS
Bas Jan Ader, Charles Green, Collaboration, Conceptual, Double-acts, Gilbert and George, Humour, John Cleese, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Tertiary Performance, The Third Hand, Yvonne Rainer ABSTRACT
The traditional model of visual arts practice is one that privileges highly individuated reflection and research on studio based, predominately material outcomes. This archetypal approach to thinking about cultural production tends to overlook all of the conceptual and contextual collaborations that take place, both informally and formally in the process of making artworks. The aim of this practice-led research project is to creatively and critically explore the potential for actively engaging in a collaborative process for making artworks. It will focus on this approach to research and making through performance and video based works made in conjunction with Kate Woodcroft. Through doing this it aims to explore the possibilities for thinking and working beyond singular, materially based practices and develop new understandings for this as a model for generating new and unexpected creative outcomes. Key departure points for this discussion include; tertiary performance, conceptual art, and humour.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT...... iii TABLE OF CONTENTS...... iv TABLE OF FIGURES...... v STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP...... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... viii
1.0!INTRODUCTION...... 1
2.0!METHODOLOGY
2.1 Approaches to Collaborative Practice...... 3
3.0!CONTEXTS
3.1 Tertiary Performance: Between Reciting and Saying...... 7 3.2 Mediating Action: Methods of Documentation...... 11
3.3 Conceptual Art: Nomadic Possibilities...... 13 3.4 Humour: Comedy, Cars & Double Acts ...... 17
4.0!CREATIVE OUTCOMES
4.1 Duel (2010)...... 20 4.2 Mazda 121 residency (2010)...... 22 4.3 Iʼm the kind of person you should choose to have with you (2010)...24 4.4 Networking (2011)...... 26 4.5 Survey (2011)...... 28 4.6 Gorillas in the Mist (2011)...... 30 4.7 Capper (2011)...... 32
5.0 !CONCLUSION...... 34
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 36 APPENDIX...... 39
iv TABLE OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Video stills from ʻIvarʼ, Catherine Sagin (2009) Figure 2: Video stills from ʻVestbyʼ, Catherine Sagin (2009) Figure 3: Documentation of ʻSinging Sculptureʼ, Gilbert & George (1969-73) Figure 4: Video still from ʻGordonʼs Makes us Drunkʼ, Gilbert & George (1972) Figure 5: Video still from ʻWeʼre always trying not to repeat ourselvesʼ, Fiona Mail (2009) Figure 6: Performance documentation of ʻIʼll be honest with you ok [...]ʼ, Fiona Mail (2009) Figure 7: Performance documentation of ʻLives of Performersʼ, Yvonne Rainer (1972) Figure 8: Video still from ʻFall Iʼ, Bas Jan Ader (1970) Figure 9: Video still from ʻFall IIʼ, Bas Jan Ader (1970) Figure 10: Image of Bas Jan Ader from ʻIn Search of the Miraculousʼ, Bas Jan Ader (1975-) Figure 11: Video still from ʻAAA-AAAʼ, Marina Abramovic & Ulay (1978) Figure 12: Performance Documentation of ʻImponderabiliaʼ, Marina Abramovic & Ulay (1977) Figure 13: Video still from Fawlty Towers, Season 1: Episode 5 ʻGourmet Nightʼ (1975) Figure 14: Image of ʻNot getting on anymoreʼ, permanent marker on A4 paper, Paul Harrison & John Wood (2011) Figure 15: Theory of Appearance in collaborative duos, image of John Wood & Paul Harrison, Catherine or Kate (2011-) Figure 16: Performance documentation of ʻDuelʼ, Fiona Mail (2010) Figure 17: Three channel video configuration of ʻDuelʼ, Fiona Mail (2010) Figure 18: Video still of ʻMazda 121 Residencyʼ, Catherine Sagin (2010) Figure 19: Image of the ʻTwo Fat Ladiesʼ & their Triumph Thunderbird Watsonian (ca. 1998) Figure 20: Image of Mr. Bean & his Leyland Mini, Episode 3 ʻDo-it Yourselfʼ (1994) Figure 21: Installation view of ʻIʼm the kind of person you should choose to have with youʼ, Catherine Sagin (2010) Figure 22: Video stills of ʻIʼm the kind of person you should choose to have with youʼ, Catherine Sagin (2010) Figure 23: Installation view of ʻNetworkingʼ, Catherine Sagin (2011) Figure 24: Image from ʻSurveyʼ of Service Station Attendant in Akureyri, Iceland, Catherine or Kate (2011) Figure 25: Video still from ʻGorillas in the Mistʼ, Catherine or Kate (2011) Figure 26: Installation view of ʻGorillas in the Mistʼ, Catherine or Kate (2011) Figure 27: Performance documentation of ʻCapperʼ, IMA Surfers Paradise, Catherine or Kate (2011)
v STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP
The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference is made.
Signature: ______
Date: ______
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To Kate for being a worthy adversary, collaborator, barista and top-notch Mazda 121 driver.
To my family for their un-wavering support and encouragement.
To my principal supervisor Mark Webb for championing the collaboration from the outset & for endless bouts of tough love.
Thanks also to my peers and colleagues in Brisbane for making the city & suburbs a better art-place to be.
viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION
This exegesis will detail, reflect on, and critically analyse the creative outcomes of the research and work that has developed out of my collaborative practice with Kate Woodcroft. First it will briefly outline how and where the common intersections of our individual art practices led to the space of collaboration. It will then elaborate on how the collaborative process informs the practice led methodology that Kate & I employ to make artworks. This will be further contextualised by discussing and critically evaluating the key creative and conceptual fields that the methodology develops out of. Finally the processes and outcomes of the creative research will be documented, reflected on, and critically evaluated in order to demonstrate new ways for considering collaborative methodologies in contemporary visual art. The project is practice- led and comprises 70% creative outcomes and 30% exegetical component.
Figure 1: Ivar (2009) Video Stills Catherine Sagin
I began this Masters project with the intention of further exploring the work I had been doing in Honours dealing broadly with the bodyʼs relation to domestic spaces, specifically my own interest in ʻreadymadeʼ furniture. These investigations often involved filming myself interacting with Ikea flat-pack materials that I disassemble and reassemble, reorganising their normal functional uses until they became dysfunctional and often absurd objects (fig 1 & 2). I was interested in using their implicit systems of organisation against
1 themselves in order to discover what other possibilities these materials might have as artworks.
At this time I also began to seriously explore the possibilities of collaborative work with fellow graduate Kate Woodcroft, and we began to develop performance works under the pseudonym Fiona Mail. The significance of this process, we soon discovered, allowed us to share our common interests and research into performance and humour. It also allowed us to engage in a highly challenging and fruitful dialogue that was not apparent in either of our respective solo practices. Over the course of the Masters project we have been more focused on working as a collaborative team, and now work exclusively in that way.
Another very important aspect of our work since beginning the Masters has been the treatment of our collaborative name. Since 2008 the practice has undergone three name changes; in repeatedly dislodging the name of the practice we mean to explore and contest institutional protocols and broader assumptions on the workings of collaboration. We first exhibited together under the pseudonym ʻFiona Mailʼ in 2009. In doing this we relinquished our individual status but also experienced a sense of relief in having a phantom-self represent the face of the practice. The pseudonym allowed us to more openly play with the tentative nature of working together at that time because we were still trying to ʻseriouslyʼ define and articulate our solo practices. The importance of this shuffling will be discussed in more depth in both the methodology and creative works section.
2 2.0 METHODOLOGY
2.1 ! APPROACHES TO COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE
A significant part of my own research over the course of the project has been learning to navigate the complexities of collaborative practice. My experience of the learning environment has always been one of group initiated dialogue and critique, and in 2008 this process led to being involved in establishing an Artist Run Initiative in Brisbane - No Frills* - with three other QUT graduates (including Kate Woodcroft) who shared similar ideas about contemporary visual arts practice. In 2009 No Frills* moved into Metro Arts and initiated 12-months of programming solo exhibitions and public forums. This investment also led to Kate & I starting a more intensive conversation around our common interests and approaches to making - namely, performance, humour and the idea of serious play to generate work. In the last 2-4 years of working with Kate these approaches to making, the combination of play, humour and performance have become the dominant methodology that we both engage with when developing work.
Over the course of masters I have come to recognise that the joint methodology arrived at through the collaborative process can be understood as a fluid composition of both dependent activities (dialogue, problem solving, conceptually and physically developing works) and independent activities (research, reflection, approaches to making). As such, the methodology developed can be identified as practice-led and performative. The notion of practice-led research (as different from qualitative and quantitive research) is what Carol Gray explains as “research which is initiated in practice, where questions, problems, challenges are identified and formed by the needs of practice and practitioners” (1996: 3). The primary approach we have taken to developing the practice is through using ourselves as the objects, content and often context of the practice. In this regard most of our work to date can most readily be identified as performative, and the practice–led model that most closely aligns itself with this is also considered performative as it is described by Brad Haseman; “expressed in non-numeric data, but in forms of symbolic data other than words in discursive text. These include material forms of practice, of
3 still and moving images, of music and sound, of live action and digital code” (2010: 156).
My own approach to developing the joint methodology that has evolved over the course of the project has been heavily informed by Charles Greenʼs writing on the apparitional “third hand” in collaborative practice. In Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Post Modernism, Green dissects three broad types of collaborative authorship in which shared authorship is a strategy to convince the audience of new understandings of art and identity (2007: 189). As Kate & I have discovered over the last four years of making together, working in collaboration sets up particular personal, administrative and creative idiosyncrasies. In the process of navigating these idiosyncrasies we have discovered the potential for our relationship as friends and collaborators to emerge as both subject and context for the work we make.
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 3: Singing Sculpture (1969-73) Living Sculpture piece Gilbert & George
I have also kept up long-standing research into artists Gilbert & George, who have also set themselves as the content and context for their collaborative efforts for over four decades. I am fascinated with how their self-proclaimed
4 existence as “living sculptures” aligns itself with much of Conceptual artʼs agenda to re-evaluate and re-negotiate the site of value in art beyond the art object. Early in their partnership this renegotiation took the form of repetitive performative actions, as in Singing Sculpture (1969-73) (fig 3) and Gordonʼs Makes Us Drunk (1972) (fig 4). Their denouncement of this work as “performance” however is of particular interest because it encourages a more complex consideration of the discursive spaces of action based, performative methods of making that Kate & I employ.
Another British duo of interest is Paul Harrison & John Wood. Kate & I first encountered their work during undergraduate study through an interview they conducted with TATE Modern. At this tentative period in our own collaboration we sought to re-make the interview and post it as a response to the original on youtube. The subsequent video; Weʼre always trying not to repeat ourselves (2009) (fig 5) allowed us to exercise a type of embodied research into the dominant methods of practice across performance, video and humour with which we were most enamoured. In re-making Harrison & Woods ʻskitsʼ, which are characteristically deadpan and studio-based, we also began to engage in a more considered dialogue about the intersections across our individual ideas and approaches to practice and the potential to develop these further.
Artists using the body as material and working across fields of performance and conceptual art - Marina Abramovic, Bas Jan Ader, and Yvonne Rainer - are also important to my research. These artists often conceived of plans or rules by which their work would play out so that the idea became the machine that made the art. This doesnʼt mean that there is a fixed system to either the process or outcomes that the ʻmachineʼ might generate, but that it provides a starting point from which to move from when thinking about or making work. Prior to the collaboration Kate & I independently used this approach to frame many of our individual studio-based investigations. Because of this there was an almost seamless convergence of our practices into the collaborative process. Over the course of the Masters project I have also come to appreciate that this conceptual framing of works also encourages elements of play and chance to become important to the unfolding of the work.
5 In addition to these conceptual and performative methods we employ, this notion of play also allows us to indulge in our shared sense of humour as an important strategy for making. In what we hope will be a long-term partnership, this mutual enjoyment of certain types of humour allows us to make light of the rich material that ensues from negotiating our relationship as friends and collaborators. In this way, humour manifests itself through a kind of banter between us and through our common interest in the absurd and the deadpan in both pop culture and art. My research interests here cover everything from Buster Keaton to John Cleese to Bruce Nauman and Bas Jan Ader. I am particularly interested in how the conceptual and physical jokes that these comics and artists play with can inform our own approaches to making artworks.
So the joint methodology that Kate and I have developed over the course of the project comes out of the fields of performance and conceptual art. They are sustained by our interest in play and humour as approaches to making that engage with chance and unexpected outcomes. These things serve to pinpoint the most dominant and influential considerations in both our shared and individual research and making processes to date. The primary conceptual fields from which this methodology develops, will be discussed in greater depth in the following contextual review.
6 3.0 CONTEXTUAL REVIEW
3.1 TERTIARY PERFORMANCE: Between Reciting and Saying
The conceptual emphasis Kate & I place on our practice has resulted in relatively performative and nomadic methods of working. By this I mean that we do not prescribe to a fixed process, our work moves between and across media (video, photography, performance) depending on the conceptual requirements of each project. In looking at the work we have made over the last four years this approach describes the eclectic and mobile forms and content that we have dealt with as well as our shared interest in using ourselves as vehicles for the practice.
When we begin to make work we engage in dialogue and share ideas on particular contexts and encounters; i.e, exhibition opportunities and sites, and on the relationships that will be involved over the course of a project. We then undertake further research into these shifting fields so we are able to better articulate and set up a conceptual framework for the work to come out of. However one of the key things that we have struggled with over the course of our collaboration is how to articulate our activities and outcomes in relation to performance art. And this has meant an ongoing reassessment of where we sit in relation to its history, and a certain ambivalence in using the term to describe our dominant method of making. During undergraduate study I labelled my studio-based investigations as performance with little consideration of what it meant to be mediating my process via camera and in absence of a viewer. A large portion of my research over the past two years has subsequently been aimed at trying to better understand what the parameters of performance (if any) might be in relation to the practice.
In light of this I have long been fascinated by the way that Gilbert & George have always contested the term performance in relation to their work. As they say here,
We never did performance, ever. We never called it performance, ever. We didnʼt like it. For many, many years we wouldnʼt even show in the standard group shows
7 to do with performance, because we felt it was completely different. Performance, that was a Fluxus movement (Gilbert & George in Green, 2001:147).
At one level I feel this deferral in labelling their activities in respect to this framing of art practices is part of a larger blue-print of evasiveness around individual authorship in their own collaborative practice. Because through a kind of denial of their individual personalities this deferral of singular subjectivity tends to blur the parameters and distinctions between their life, their art and each other. But I also feel that this outward denouncement of the term performance in relation to their work has further merit in that it begins to point towards what Charles Green suggests as a brand of performance that requires an account outside of the parameters of performance art and anti-art narratives (2001: 171). And to a large extent, this is what we are still reflecting on in our own collaborative efforts.
Early on, Kate & I drew on the term ʻtask-based performanceʼ because it best described the frameworks and sets of ʻinstructionsʼ that predicated our individual and joint endeavours. In a 2009 work Iʼll be honest with you ok [...] (fig 6) we stood side by side motionless in a public store-front each with a ball & chain strapped to our ankles.
Figure 6: Iʼll be honest with you ok, I just need a body next to me thats all I need, you need it as much as I do (2009) Performance Documentation Fiona Mail
8 In planning and making this work we were interested in adopting an endurance approach to performance and a mirroring of bodies as undertaken by artists such as Marina Abramovic & Ulay. In their practice the ʻend-pointʼ of the work was often predicated by their mental and physical capacity to withstand a set of carefully planned actions. Our short-lived foray into endurance encouraged us to think strategically about the audienceʼs position and response to performance. We have since acknowledged however that the parameters of terms like endurance or task-based do not adequately account for the often playful, nomadic and humorous characteristics of our work.
And as the collaboration has progressed we realise that these ideas that Gilbert and George and Charles Green suggested about the framing of performance art, begins to point towards a space that we feel our work might better occupy. In trying to locate this space we have also looked to practitioners who straddle multiple creative disciplines and are not neatly situated in visual arts practice. Dancer, choreographer and film-maker Yvonne Rainer (fig 7) has frequently challenged the discursive spaces her practices occupies. In Feelings are Facts she refers to a lack of theatricality and deadpan abstraction of tasks in her work (2007: 398). The following quote from Rainer goes some way to describing how Kate & I came to understand the complex spaces that we occupy in both the research and practice we undertake;
Primary performances are what we are already doing – original material. Most performance is secondary. I.e. performing someone elseʼs material, in a style approximating the original or working in a known style or genreʼ […] I want our spoken stuff to be tertiary – someone elseʼs material, or material that has actually previously been brought into existence (via media, or live) as though it is oneʼs own [...] I feel that the tension is produced from not knowing whether someone is reciting or saying something (Rainer in Sayre, 1970: 14).
This term ʻtertiary performanceʼ has been valuable for us because it describes a space where methods of appropriation and re-contextualisation can exist. The work utilises, and in a way melds together, existing ideas, activities or methods in order to re-assess their significance and implications for future work. In responding to or re-enacting certain ideas or motifs, we explore how we can strip-back or inflate the treatment of the subject matter we are working with in order to bring about this tension of reciting or saying that Rainer attests to. By
9 doing this we hope to engage and confound the viewer and have them seriously consider what it is they are presented with.
10 3.2!MEDIATING ACTION: Methods of Documentation
My research on performance art and the subsequent preservation of live work via digital means and text predicates the next part of my discussion. Over the course of Masters Kate & I have worked both locally and internationally and have remained the dominant content for many of the works. Although some of the activities we undertake include a live audience, (as with Duel, 4.1) many do not. In cases where there is no live audience the task and its outcomes are subject to mediation through other forms as they are developed for public exhibition. It is therefore difficult to package what we do firmly under the strict umbrella of performance art as someone like Peggy Phelan might term it. As she notes,
Performanceʼs only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance (1993: 159).
So, there is this supposition that performance is to be received in a certain space at a certain time. The ʻsomething otherʼ that Phelan refers to then becomes of further consideration as a space of alternate possibilities that does not necessarily have to undercut the value of performance, but augment it. Indeed, Yvonne Rainer felt of her transitioning during the mid 70s into film- making as if she were “venturing into a motherlode of possibility” (2006: 400). Kate & I similarly value the camera as a tool to progress and expand the work and strategically position the viewer. As Boris Groys writes about the performance group Collective Actions:
The production of documentation was - and still is - for Monastyrski the actual field of artistic practice [...] the originality of an action becomes secondary in relationship to its documentation - every documentation being not merely a re-representation of this action but a further contribution to its creation (2011: 9).
Valuing a performative approach also means that the methods of documentation we use need to be much more carefully considered - as in the two manifestations of Duel, one as live performance, where the presence, the immediacy of the encounter becomes its ʻrepresentationʼ as Phelan would have
11 it - and one as video work which engages with both recording and potentially extending the performances representational possibilities.
12 3.3! CONCEPTUAL ART: Nomadic Possibilities
The strategies employed by Yvonne Rainer, Marina Abramovic & Bas Jan Ader provide key conceptual and contextual fields from which Kate & I continue to develop our own methods and ways of working. This is because these artists often conceived of plans or rules by which their work would play out. These plans were carefully constructed in order to produce ʻunknownʼ outcomes within the frame of the work. In a discussion of Sol Le Witt in relation to the work of Bas Jan Ader, critic Jan Verwoert points out how this planning has the capacity to bring about ʻauthenticʼ outcomes:
Le Witt was [...] trying to find a way to bring a moment of necessity into art practice when he proposed that artists should work with a pre-set plan, so that the “idea becomes the machine that makes the art” (2006: 28).
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 8: Fall I (1970) Video Still Bas Jan Ader
Bas Jan Ader is of particular interest in framing these considerations because his work demonstrates the capacity for a practice to use a conceptual framework to meander between seemingly menial acts: Fall I (1970) (fig 8), Fall II (1970) (fig 9) as well as those of significantly higher consequences: In Search of the Miraculous (1975-) (fig 10). In Fall I Ader sits on a chair on the roof of his house,
13 the camera at ground level documents the moment when he proceeds to fall from the chair across the roof and into the bushes in his front garden. In Fall II (fig 9) Ader rides his bike from the footpath into a canal in Amsterdam.
These short-lived and seemingly redundant acts of self-sabotage conjure up the slapstick, deadpan and absurd antics of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Aderʼs later project however, In Search of the Miraculous (1975) (fig 10) a multi- part project aimed at traversing the transatlantic in a one-person sailboat foregrounds his broader practice as oscillating between methods of play and seriousness. In 1975 Ader set sail from the East Coast of the United States for Europe, his boat was found off the west coast of Ireland and his body was never recovered. Jan Verwoert adds;
The entire cycle of In Search of the Miraculous is characterised by the particular way in which Ader uses the means of conceptual art - the purposeful reduction of art to the staging of idea - to frame a key motif from the culture of Romanticism, that of the wandering tragic hero on a quest for the sublime (2006: 3).
In constructing our own systems for developing work we look to generate these moments of necessity to use art as a stage for new ideas to appear on. These ʻsystemsʼ can manifest out of moments of individual crisis, confrontations between us as collaborators or between us and other ʻcombatantsʼ in the arts community. As the collaboration has developed we have become very interested in the idea that these moments have the capacity to reveal our immediate social, physical or psychological responses to them as well as those we engage with, or those viewing it. These moments then become points of reference that necessitate further reflection and provoke us to consider what potential they might be for future works.
We have also come to understand the necessity of trying to be as honest and direct in each otherʼs articulation about the limits or boundaries that we might encounter in the process of the collaboration. I feel that this also aligns with the conceptual approach to making we are developing because this dialogue forces us to negotiate our individual ideas and approaches to developing work. By each of us having to articulate these considerations we try and provide a space for letting go of some of our limits or boundaries and find a common space to work from. As Charles Green says when discussing Abramovicʼs work with Ulay;
14 The process of working together in performance represented a massive investment of experience and effort in a common goal, as well as a total sublimation of all artistic efforts into a shared practice that annihilated the boundaries (psychic, mental, social) between artists [...] eliminating boundaries is not the same as eliminating difference: It implies travel and translation, not loss (2001: 181).
Though my approach with Kate is less concerned with testing physical and mental body limits, in introducing Abramovic and Ulayʼs works to this discussion I aim to demonstrate how their approach to making allows for the collaboration itself to become “the artistsʼ subject matter, a permutation of artistic teamwork” (Green, 2001:159). Notions of parameters and boundaries were often tested quite literally by Abramovic and Ulay. In AAA-AAA (1978) (fig 11) the artists stood facing each other both producing a continuous vocal sound, they slowly built up tension, their faces coming closer together, screaming into one anothers open mouths. More than endurance this work is also a manifestation of the dialogical third space in collaborative practice. In another work, Imponderabilia (1977) (fig 12), the artists stood facing each other naked in a museum doorway entrance, visitors were required to step through the artists to enter the space. This action required the viewer-participant to decide which artist to face as they brushed past their bodies.
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 11: AAA-AAA (1978) Video Still Marina Abramovic & Ulay
15 The framing of these works was obviously carefully considered to produce a heightened sense of awareness – physically, emotionally, socially, culturally - between the collaborators and the audience. And although the outcomes of our collaboration are nowhere near as confronting for the viewer, the process of honest and direct dialogue (sometimes personally confrontational) in the development of making work is aimed at eliminating some of the emotional and psychological barriers we might have to performing. And in doing this we try to construct a space for ʻmoments of necessityʼ to appear, for new and unexpected possibilities to emerge.
What I have tried to point out in the above discussion is that the construction of conceptual frameworks is not galvanised to a particular medium and that this has opened my work with Kate to a greater range of nomadic processes and responsive possibilities. Most importantly, we also see in this framing the capacity to oscillate between play and seriousness as exemplified in the art of Bas Jan Ader and discussed by play theorist Brian Sutton-Smith;
[P]lay and the playful are a duality [or] more subtly the ends of the same continuum, one end of which has play games that are framed, follow the rules, and have relatively predictable expectations... and at the other end of which doesnʼt play by the rules but with the rules, doesnʼt play within frames but with the framesʼ (2001: 150).
This penchant for play within and beyond the frameworks we set ourselves will be further elaborated on in the succeeding discussion on humour.
16 3.4! HUMOUR: Comedy, Cars and Double Acts
Humour has always been a shared interest in thinking about art, but as a strategy for making has only recently become a conscious part of the collaborative process. Many of the practitioners we look to in this field are not visual-arts based. We have identified strong ties to British comedy duos from the 60s and 70s, double-acts such as Morecambe & Wise, Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello & The Two Ronnies. These comedians have become increasingly important to our thinking because of the often-competitive play that they use to generate comic effect. We are also interested in the way that Monty Python, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin all used strategies of absurdity, deadpan delivery and physical comedy to disrupt social and cultural conventions. For us it is the unique capacity for humour to interrupt ʻcommonsenseʼ and open up fields of enquiry that may not be immediately apparent when developing ideas for work that has become important.
In describing a skit from Fawlty Towers1 (fig 13) the following anecdote by John Cleese locates the technical aspects of making work that can arise in pursuing comedic effect;
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 13: Fawlty Towers (1975) Season 1, Episode 5, ʻGourmet Nightʼ
A very good example of how technical comedy is, is “beating the car”...everybody thinks its hilarious and it is very funny, but the first time I did it it wasnʼt
1 Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975.
17 funny at all, because I was using a stick or a branch that was too rigid and as I hit it with this rigid branch it just wasnʼt funny and then I went out and started hitting it with a floppier branch and that wasnʼt funny so I went out and thought well, its something in the middle, so I went out and got another one [...] and suddenly it was hilarious. Itʼs very nice that when I run out of the shot from that point of view thereʼs an element of surprise simply because we donʼt know why Iʼve run off [...] Itʼs not just that an idea is funny itʼs that an idea done exactly right is funny (BBC, 2009)
This approach to framing (the camera and joke) has become a much more considered aspect in our video work and can be seen in both Gorillas in the Mist (2011) (see section 4. 6) and in Mazda 121 Residency (2010) (see section 4. 2) . The humour that ensues from Cleeseʼs thrashing of the car is also affected by the personification of the object brought about by the car-owner relationship. As I previously discussed, Kate & I have become increasingly interested in using our relationship as collaborators as content for the work. This is largely due to the richness of the comic and absurd material that comes from negotiating the relationship as friends and artists. It also develops out of the cartoonish nature of Kateʼs ʻbubbleʼ car – the Mazda 121 – as well as our relationship to it as driver and passenger respectively. Because it becomes a site - a contained yet mobile space - for much of the discussion and activities we have as collaborators: it is like a nomadic lab for playing around with ideas as we are thinking through prospective projects.
Most recently the potential for the collaborative relationship to emerge as both content and subject of the practice has been informed by collaborative duo Paul Harrison & John Wood. In their work, Not getting on anymore (2011) (fig 14), weʼre interested in the way that the positioning of the silhouettes coupled with the title makes light of a possible ʻfeudʼ between the duo. At a glance this drawing seems to play with a common routine of the double-act in comedy that involves a kind of love/hate relationship between the two. They argue and bicker with each other but remain loyal to their bond when an ʻoutsiderʼ comes along. However because the work is static, and the artists themselves are not present, the viewer is given no clues as to the authenticity of the statement, or in fact why they are not getting on anymore. And it is this somewhat deadpan ambiguity, and the way we felt that their work also referenced other art and pop culture humour that has been important for us in thinking about some of our own works
18
Figure 14: Not getting on anymore (2011) Permanent Marker on A4 Paper John Wood and Paul Harrison - Image courtesy of the artists
Another of Harrison & Woodʼs works that we were excited about discovering was via a TATE Modern interview with the artists. In response to the interview, which we both strongly identified with as a collaborative team, we decided to make a low-budget parody of their work to test out Rainerʼs idea of tertiary performance, and then post this response on YouTube to see what might come of that. Harrison & Wood have since contacted us and in late 2012 we will be undertaking a mentorship with them in Bristol. One of the most recent explorations that follows on from our growing interest in the image of the collaborative duo is to collect research on difference as Green describes it, not about loss of identity in the collaboration, but exploring our individual traits, physically and psychologically in the space of shared practice. We have identified this trait in three of our favourite duos including Harrison & Wood, Morcambe & Wise and Gilbert & George (fig 15), and by undertaking this research we aim to collect accounts of co-authorship from selected collaborative artists, comedy doubles, fictional pairs and others that reflect our interest in the potential of these dialogues.
19 4.0 CREATIVE WORKS
4.1! Duel (2010)
Figure 16: Duel (2010) Performance Documentation, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane Fiona Mail and Catherine Sagin
I would like to begin the creative works section by discussing Duel (2010). It has been a particularly significant work for Kate & I because it marked a point in the practice where we began to feel more comfortable in the collaboration, working outside of the studio, understanding performance as both a method of the development and a possible manifestation of its outcomes, and constructing these conceptual frameworks for the work to develop out of. Duel also demonstrates the cross-section of key ideas and contexts from which we continue to make work - the shuffling of authorship, play, competition, (re) presentation, humour/absurdity, questions of ʻperformanceʼ liveness/audience and mediated outcomes/documented extensions. On reflection these things have been the central ideas and processes that were creatively explored and critically reflected upon over the course of the project.
In Duel (2010) Kate & I challenged each other to a live fencing match, the winner secured naming rights to the collaboration for the period of one year.
20 Prior to the competition Kate & I trained in fencing for three-months. This process was important to us as we wanted to set-up an authentic competition and in the process better understand the etiquette and history surrounding the sport. From the training process we also developed a three-channel video work using body cameras strapped to our wrists (fig 17). So, the three current iterations of Duel - as live performance, as performance documentation and as a three-channel video work - demonstrates our interest in “documentation being not merely a re-representation of this action but a further contribution to its creation” (Groys 2011: 9).
The performance also allowed us to publicly kill off our pseudonym ʻFiona Mailʼ and further engage with co-authorship as a site from which to explore the possibilities and limitations of our relationship. In relinquishing naming rights Kate was not attributed for any of our work undertaken over the next twelve months. The outcome that ensued was that the work lived on beyond the initial performance. Various things happened: a museum that we showed with soon after was very put out by the re-naming as they had originally commissioned ʻFiona Mailʼ and suddenly they were showing ʻCatherine Saginʼ. People began to exaggerate the work – citing that Kate had also relinquished a portion of her yearly income to me. In constructing sentences for applications the use of the single name made for a lot of grammatical issues. These un-planned developments encouraged us to consider a broader perception of collaborative practice (beyond our own experience and understanding of it) and to champion the use of our relationship and the image of the double-act for future work.
21 4.2! Mazda 121 Residency (2010)
Figure 18: Mazda 121 Residency (2010) Video Still Catherine Sagin
In Mazda 121 Residency (2010) we investigated the possibility of using Kateʼs car as the site of a durational, endurance work, as a week long live-in on-road residency. We made the work shortly after applying for numerous international residencies and beginning to engage in a more considered discussion about our long-term aspirations as collaborators and what opportunities we wanted to secure. Our experience as Co-directors of No Frills* had instilled in us a willingness to utilise materials and spaces that were readily available to us. Many of our peers had began programming exhibitions in their houses and we were well versed in capitalising on minimal means in order to disseminate our work to a wider public. On a number of occasions Kateʼs Mazda (affectionately known to us as ʻute truckʼ) has assisted us in re-locating house, transporting works for exhibition, and as I previously discussed became an extension of our studio space. For Kate & I, the idea of a DIY, low budget, residency inside the car (and outside of the constructs of an institution) was both full of comic potential and a natural progression to the programming we had been undertaking in No Frills*.
In considering our relationship to the car we also began researching a broader collection of comedic car-owner relationships, two of my favourites being;
22 The Two Fat Ladies2 and their Triumph Thunderbird Watsonian GP-700 (fig 19), and Rowan Atkinsonʼs forays as Mr. Bean3 in his immortal Leyland Mini (fig 20). These sorts of humorous engagements between body and inanimate objects are strands of research I explored in my Honours exegesis and they continue to assist me in framing works through thinking both conceptually and formally about body to body, body to object relations, and to the viewerʼs relation to the work. Unfortunately after a mishap on the road our plan to begin the residency was shelved and we were left with a prelude to the project consisting of a 30 min looped video of us driving a circuit around the Brisbane Airport.
Our original intention for this prelude work was to trial the use of a body camera mounted inside the car and to investigate locations for the residency, the airport signified to us this desire to travel and establish ourselves on an international platform. On reviewing the footage however the location was not as clearly disclosed as weʼd first envisaged and the work became more about the space inside the car and our seemingly hostile but ambiguous relationship as protagonists of an unidentified journey. This is where the ʻShire Themeʼ from Lord of the Rings becomes particularly important in further framing the work; it references protagonists (and double act) Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee on their quest to destroy the ring. This fictional and epic background narrative further frames the visuals and acts as a comedic device that connotes these notions of travel, companionship, and the seeming discomfort between us that might also be apparent in the work. So it was this interest in the comic potential of the car as providing a third space for framing a potential narrative, albeit a puzzling one, between the two protagonists that we were playing with in this work.
2 The Two Fat Ladies was a BBC television cooking program starring Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson. From 1996 to 1999 Wright and Paterson traversed the english country side in their Thunderbird motorcycle sourcing ingredients for their recipes.
3 Season 1, Episode 13, Act 3 - Do it Yourself: Bean purchases several items to renovate his apartment. After squeezing everything inside his mini he realises there's no room left for himself or the chair heʼs purchased. Bean proceeds to construct a rig that allows him to remotely drive the car from the chair mounted to the roof.
23 4.3! Iʼm the kind of person you should choose to have with you (2010)
Figure 21: Iʼm the kind of person you should choose to have with you (2010) Installation View, Museum of Brisbane Catherine Sagin
Iʼm the kind of person you should choose to have with you (2010) consists of a two-channel video projection (fig 22) and a six metre jetty that was installed at the Museum of Brisbane. In titling this work we wanted to suggest a broad narrative between the figure at sea and the figure at shore. This narrative is ambiguous but the title asks the viewer to further consider the duel screens in relation to one other. Footage from the first channel was captured from a body camera fixed to the bow of a small boat. The figure in the boat unplugs bungs from the bow and attempts to row to shore. The second channel documents another figure sitting at shore looking out to sea, both channels fade out when the boat sinks before reaching the shore. Originally the work stemmed from our interest in trialling the sinking of a vessel at sea, a vessel that we ourselves would sabotage. This nonsensical act was also a method of setting ourselves up for imminent failure and the physical act of sinking signified to us a moment of defeat against a third body - the sea.
The idea of boating was also appealing to us because of its potential to inflate romanticised and potentially tragic notions of personal conquest. The work has
24 strong connotations to Bas Jan Aders In Search of the Miraculous (1975). In researching this work we began to understand what we were doing with this installation was to present it as staging an idea, to explore the metaphoric and allegorical potential of the objects and images we were using. So there is this emphasis on allowing for the sinking of the boats and with framing the camera in order to feed back into and fold out of the familiarity of these motifs. Verwoert notes;
Ader does not seek to deny or overcome the ready-made rhetorical quality of the motifs or genres he draws on. Rather it is precisely at the level of their rhetoricity that he discovers their potential (2006: 10)
Following on from this idea, the tasks we set ourselves in the practice are often humble and scaled back versions or allusions to much greater and more epic frameworks of existence. Our response to these tasks move between being highly charged and consequential (as in Duel), and, redundant and mundane (as in Mazda 121 Residency). Iʼm the kind of person you should chose to have with you, sits somewhere in between these spaces. With this work we hoped to invoke a certain ironic mood through the contemplation of sublime vista accompanying the deliberate act of self-sabotage in the sinking boat. The positioning of the jetty was important in that we aimed to encourage the viewer to position themselves at the end of the jetty shadowing the contemplative figure at shore in the video. Our treatment and use of these visual signifiers (canoe/ jetty/dawn/silhouettes) is perhaps best described by Rainer in her discussion on the objects integrated into her choreography:
I used them for their melodramatic or narrative connotations and not for specific function that might further a plot or argument... the pillows in Continuous Project-Altered Daily (1970) functioned as both objects to be carried around, “cushioning” devices, and avatars of sleep, sex, illness, and death (2006: 400).
As with the historically romanticised symbolism equated to fencing in Duel, we felt that the objects and scenes we were dealing with in this work also came with a particular weighting that could be stripped-back and/or emphasised. In this way the work is perhaps more representational than generative though this is not to say that play and chance do not play an integral part in the unfolding of the work.
25 4.4! Networking (2011)
Figure 23: Networking (2011) Installation View, Artspace Sydney Catherine Sagin
In February 2011 No Frills* was invited to make-up the Brisbane contingent of Eastern Seaboard; an exhibition of work by Artist Run Initiatives from the eastern coast of Australia. During the residency we sent cardboard cut-outs of ourselves to the Artist Run Initiative Post Museum, Singapore and made a request that current residents and peers - the directors of Boxcopy Contemporary Art Space, introduce them to distinguished figures in the Singapore art scene. This idea was motivated by our anxiousness to begin travelling, establish networks and further test the strength of the collaboration. The cut-outs allowed us to collaborate with Boxcopy without being present, this was both a practical and conceptual decision. The idea that the facsimiles would represent us and that we were facilitating a performance from afar was also appealing to us because it enabled Boxcopy to determine certain directions of the work and for us to extend the collaboration to a third party.
The work displayed for the exhibition at Artspace (and Boxcopy) includes five life size freestanding cardboard cut-outs of us and three members of Boxcopy. Two videos illustrate the encounters in Singapore. The first is video of an image of
26 our cut-outs being introduced to the Director of the Singapore Biennale by Channon Goodwin, Boxcopy Director. The second video is documentation of our travels and interactions with Boxcopy members as they escort us around the city. One of our major considerations in this work was the possibility of being absent in the work but still considering it as a performance by boxcopy and through the presence of the cardboard cut-outs. This relates back to my discussion on methods of mediating action and the spaces surrounding performance that are certainly capable of generating merit in their own right. As part of the display of this work at Artspace and for our Masters show in Brisbane, we asked the Boxcopy members present at the introductions to send us photographs of themselves. This self-portraiture exercise also became an important part of the project as it played with our (often fraught) interest in the processes of self-representation that we expected to attend to if we are to become successful as artists. This led us to continue an exploration into appearances and visual representations during our residency in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland.
27 4.5! Survey (2011)
Figure 24: Survey (2011) Photograph, Akureyri Iceland (1 of 18) Catherine or Kate
Following on from the Artspace residency we spent three months in Seyðisfjörður, a remote town on the East Coast of Iceland. Our experience of remote districts in Iceland triggered an interest in modes of representation associated with tourism and travel; tourist photography, travel literature and advertising, mythologised landscapes and souvenirs. With this work we were thinking about what might be the antithesis of this material and how we could also extend these ideas around self representation that we had begun playing with in Networking. Also as a progression from Mazda 121 we considered using a hire car to stage works, this led to a discussion on the globally ubiquitous setting of the gas station and how it had the potential to undercut the epic and darkly romantic vistas of our location through their generic functionality.
At the very simplest level, gas stations break up the narrative and provide an opportunity for reflection on the journey or a dilemma. However, gas stations also act as scenes of sanctuary (the washroom), conflict (pity those poor attendants), and communication (they had pay phones long before cell- phones existed) (Abebooks, 2011).
28 Driving the Northern route from Seyðisfjörður to Reykjavik we stopped at 20 service stations and extending on these ideas of representation and presentation asked each attendant to say which one of us they believed was more attractive. This question required that the attendants disregard normal social etiquette and in a brash way, make an on the spot judgment about us. We found the power of social etiquette quite incredible in that it was often difficult and sometimes impossible to gain an answer. While the outcomes of this work were based on an absurdist and essentially futile exercise, it was the moment of the exchange, the present-ness of the ʻperformanceʼ that we wanted to explore. And this became a space that was extremely charged, because the awkwardness of the transaction often moved people to draw others into the discussion, to seek verification of the question, to become quite tense, or to even relieve them of accountability for their response.
During our interactions with the attendants we came to recognise that the way we phrased the question made a significant difference to the attendantʼs willingness to answer. And in pursuit of a significant tally we began to verbally assure participants that by answering truthfully they were assisting us in completing a work and that their decision would in no way affect our relationship as friends or collaborators. Documenting these encounters became an extension of the live work and the current configuration consists of a series of 18 twin-framed photographs (with attendants and ourselves) that has an accompanying text tallying the results: Kate 5, Catherine 4, No Answer 11. As in Duel (2011), this method of testing collaborative boundaries (both mental and physical) continues to be an important departure point for us as we seek to externalise the idiosyncracies of our relationship and manifest material for the practice.
29 4.6! Gorillas in the Mist (2011)
Figure 25: Gorillas in the Mist (2011) Video Still Catherine or Kate
Gorillas in the Mist (2011) is a single channel video of us streaking in the Icelandic landscape. There are three iterations set in different locations and each contains long stretches of barren but quite dramatic landscape preceding the event. The fixed-camera framing of this work was designed to seduce viewers into a relaxed state through contemplating a somewhat darkly beautiful, and romantic image of the landscape. In this work we were interested in further playing with the way that the natural landscape is represented in Icelandic tourism with the slogan that reads “Pure. Natural. Unspoiled. Iceland. The Way Life Should Be”. We also wanted to work more with the idea of framing a visual joke that had become a much more considered aspect of our video work. And this is what we wanted to explore when confronted with both the representation that the slogan suggests and our own experience of this totally unfamiliar terrain.
The title of the work is taken from the 1988 film about Dian Fossey, a scientist who travels to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas. We decided on the title after considering our own travels to distant and alien shores and our actions as ʻapingʼ the streak that is stereotypically reserved for male hooligans. The act of streaking also draws ties to mythologised Australian values of
30 mateship and ʻlarrikanismʼ and is often about puncturing the official event that it takes place in. In titling the work we also began considering how the Guerrilla Girls declared themselves as “feminist counterparts to the mostly male tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Batman and the Lone Ranger” (Guerilla Girls). This potential reading of the work was appealing to us because it is a direct reference to these overtones of feminism that have, up until recently, been particularly dormant in the practice. Foremost, this is because we have concentrated on fostering the space of collaboration itself within the broader contexts of collaborative duos in art and popular culture. But the significance of gender in relation to the practice is something we are seriously beginning to acknowledge and will be a key consideration going forward.
Following the filming process we spent time discussing how we could push the work further, beyond a one-liner joke and to ʻstreak in publicʼ so to speak. For our exhibition at Metro Arts we projected the footage onto a screen mounted on the tray of a utility truck. Viewers accessed the work by taking a passenger seat in Kateʼs Mazda 121 which followed the ute as it drove a block around the inner city (fig 26). This format re-introduces the act of streaking as a public spectacle and opens the work up to incidental viewers - pedestrians and other motorists. But it was also yet again playing with the comic potential of the 121 as a site for making and hosting work as previously discussed in the above section on humour. This iteration of the work also enabled us to take the viewing experience outside of the gallery space and consider the re-translation of the Icelandic landscape (snow and open spaces) into the cityscape of Brisbane. So further displacement, play and unexpected encounters came out of this. I will expand on these notions of play and displacement coupled with further methods of mediating performance in the succeeding work.
31 4.7! Capper (2011)
Figure 27: Capper (2011) Performance Documentation, Warwick Capper with Artist Damiano Bertoli Institute of Modern Artʼs Satellite Space, Surfers Paradise Catherine or Kate
This work was developed in response to an invitation by the Institute of Modern Art to perform at the opening of their Satellite space in Surfers Paradise. In thinking about the Gold Coast as a tourist mecca, often considered the glitter strip because of its façade of glamor and celebrity, we decided to invite Warwick Capper - former AFL player, Big Brother contestant, porn and Z grade actor - to announce our absence at the opening. As a high profile resident of the coast he seemed to embody all that Surfers Paradise really was, and everything we were not.
Our absence at the performance was also a method of trialling being both present, by name and public announcement, and physically absent in a work. This approach was similarly explored in Networking via the use of cardboard cutouts and the mediation of our actions via a third party. We see in this deferral a playful response to our invitation. We had thought seriously about developing a new work for the space but our experience of time-constraints in the lead up to an exhibition lead us to think about ways of deferring the responsibility and making work out of this deferral.
32 ʻCapperʼ is also a manifestation of our interest in exploring the hybrid terrain of performance we were investigating and relates back to my discussion on Peggy Phelan and Yvonne Rainer. In particular the idea that there is the potential for work to develop in between the space of live performance and documentation. By inviting Capper to appear on our behalf we thought of ourselves as facilitators for the performance, and we hoped to unsettle viewersʼ expectations of our work. We wanted the audience to question his role at the opening, the authenticity of his announcement, and the reason for our absence. We were interested in further playing with what the parameters of ʻperformanceʼ might be, and the ambiguous nature of our role as artists in relation to it. The final outcome of this work was the announcement as it was recorded and exists as a 5min sound file.
33 5.0 CONCLUSION
The primary focus of this Masters project has been to creatively and critically explore the transition from solo to collaborative practice through the creation of a considered and informed dialogical space. My experience of this has involved a heightened commitment to the practice and an openness and enthusiasm to fostering the third space that produces our joint efforts. The experience I have gained from this project, as a Co-Director of No Frills* Artist Run Initiative, and in the exhibition and residency opportunities undertaken during it has cemented my aim to sustain a long-term career in collaboration with Kate.
Through discussing the importance of conceptual and performance art in our approach to making work I have aimed to foreground how the collaboration has been informed by, yet aims to also further question and expand upon these contextual fields. It has done this through giving shape to a practice–led methodology that uses a combination of play, humour, live and mediated performance, time-based and digital approaches to explore the potential for jointly making artwork. The works I have discussed also reflect how the collaborative process can be understood as a fluid composition of both dependent activities (dialogue, problem solving, conceptually and physically developing works) and independent activities (research, reflection, approaches to making). It has also become increasingly important to us that our relationship as collaborators has constructed a space for us to be both subjects and objects in the work we make.
In coming to terms with the identity of working in collaboration, Kate & I have also uncovered several particularities of the collaborative dynamic which are still in the process of being revealed. As such, this paper is not an exhaustive account of our interests but rather serves to outline areas that have been of key interest over the past 2 years - performance, the performative, conceptual art & humour. Perhaps the most pertinent area for discussion that I have chosen not to address in this document is our - up until now - reluctance, or rather apprehension, in addressing the fact that we are both female artists increasingly incorporating content that puts our gender at the forefront of the work. Kate & I completely acknowledge that these areas will be important
34 considerations as we move forward and we are looking forward to discussing (in dialogue and in making) these spaces in a more explicit manner as we continue the practice outside of University.
In August 2012 we will be undertaking a mentorship with Paul Harrison & John Wood. During this time we aim to begin an independent research project that seeks to collect accounts of co-authorship from select collaborative artists, comedy doubles, fictional pairs and others that reflect our interests. Our long- term goal for this research is to work towards future exhibitions and the publication of a book by 2016.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
35 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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38 APPENDIX
Figure 2: Vestby (2009) Video Stills Catherine Sagin
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 4: Gordonʼs Makes us Drunk (1972) Video Still Gilbert & George
39 Figure 5: Weʼre always trying not to repeat ourselves (2009) Video Stills Fiona Mail
40 This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 7: Lives of Performers (1972) Performance Documentation Yvonne Rainer
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 9: Fall II (1970) Video Still Bas Jan Ader
41 This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 10: In Search of the Miraculous (1975 -) Bas Jan Ader
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 12: Imponderabilia (1977) Performance Documentation Marina Abramovic & Ulay
42 Figure 15: Theory of appearance regarding collaborative duos; one collaborator is taller and wears glasses (2011-) Image courtesy of the artists John Wood & Paul Harrison
Figure 17: Duel (2010) Three-channel video configuration Fiona Mail
43 This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 19: The Two Fat Ladies (ca.1998)
This figure is not available online. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from the QUT Library.
Figure 20: Mr. Bean, Episode 13, Act 3 ʻDo it Yourselfʼ (1994) Video Still
44
Figure 22: Iʼm the kind of person you should choose to have with you (2010) Video Still Catherine Sagin
Figure 26: Gorillas in the Mist (2011) Performance documentation/Installation view Brisbane City Catherine or Kate
45