Heather Jones

Yes, No, 2008

No, Yes, 2008 Yes, No, 2008

Description

From a forthcoming work, written by Mette Woller of The Dirty Collective: "Wearing a white dress, the words ?es and ?o on Heather's front and back seemed starkly black against the white. The words were thus not only in contrast to each other as opposites, they also separated themselves from the one wearing them, clarifying that an opposition is at stake. Exposed in the white stage light, Heather seems vulnerable with her high heels, feminine dress and long loose hair. She starts to spin, making the words chase each other as they alternate, offering associations to the idea of making a choice. She spins faster and faster, until she loses her balance and falls over, creating a game of heads or tails with her body.

Falling provides a temporary resolution, but it is as if the choice making has failed, the result unattainable and no decision possible. She is caught in a perpetual game of confusion and indecision. The sound of her heels clapping against the floor and her heavy breath dramatises the game Only when she falls the tension is broken and an inner hope of an ending emerges in the audience. But the game is not over, the repetition almost unbearable. She keeps on, spinning and falling, her hair becomes wet with sweat, slapping her face and sticking to her mouth. She is pushing her body to the limit, exhausting herself until she is not able to stand anymore. It seems, as if the feminine character is transformed into a repulsive and self-destructive monster. Finally the game is over, she is no longer able to get up. She lies on the floor. Her chest is pumping up and down, and in the end she vomits. She has pushed her body to the limit of exhaustion, forcing the audience to watch.

In that way, the work makes associations with the abject art practised by feminist artists in the late 1980s that challenged the perception of the ?rue nature of woman, by claiming it to be ?ure construction. Abject art investigated the repression of the ?onstrous-feminine - parts of the female body which are claimed to be non-feminine within society. Even though abject art concerns shit, blood and vomit, it is not the lack of cleanliness that causes abjection, but that which disturbs identity and thereby the system and order constructed by society. The parts repressed are thus objects existing as part of the human body, but as something inner and hidden. Once revealed, coming out of the body, it creates disgust and horror, since it is seen as a threat from the outside and thereby no longer part of the body. It has become something other. The abject is thus that which separates the inside from the outside, the desire from disgust, the feminine from the non-feminine. It is the uncontrolled that we will never be able to control. By changing her appearance from feminine innocence to embarrassing and painful behaviour, Heather seems to continue the discourse of abject art. Her behaviour is controlled and uncontrolled simultaneously. Exposed and staging her self, it seems like Heather is madevulnerable and neither the audience nor herself can control her body's reaction.

But, it is still Heather who is pulling the strings, she is not disempowered completely. In that way, Yes No creates a complex relationship with its audience, since it blurs the hierarchy with Heather on top and the audience below. Heather leaves no option available; she is, in a way, transferring her own pain to the audience. In this way it is perhaps possible to claim, that Heather's performance becomes a one-way communication, almost a monologue, which the audience cannot participate in but is stillforced to be a part of. However, to reframe this very analysis, one can question in what sense the performers presence is ever made manifest.. Despite the fact that performance art involves the performer's body, it is interesting to look at how that body contains the performer's self. The performance is a theatrical construct that follows the ideology of theatre. To perform is therefore always connected with a form of layer; a mask one wears and thus becomes something outside oneself. Yes No in this sense is complex, since the exhaustion of Heather is ?eal? she is not faking how her body collapses. But the performative element simultaneously contains something constructed, a set-up that separates the performer from her audience. She is in a way absent and present at the same time and therefore perhaps not one or the other, but a whole that includes both. In the performance her body becomes both representation and presentation, since it is there as flesh and blood, but still is representing a construction. This generates an interesting discussion about the difference between the body's self and Heather's self. Is it possibly that Heather can present her body's self, but at the same time dislocate her own self, the inner self? Do the body and the self co-exist or are they opposites? In other words, does Heather expose her personality or has her body become a shell, through which she can construct an illusion of presentation? Despite phenomenological theories, does the human mind then still separate the inner from the outer, repressing the connection of vital co-existence?"

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