VulnVulnerable Grandeur
Conversation
r Dear Shannon
& A Spectacle of Herself
(films screened on 4—10 April) d
& A Spectacle of Herself
(films screened on 4—10 April) d
As part of the Common(ing) Thread programme Vulnerable Grandeur, the directors of the paired films Dear Shannon (dir. Julia Heijligers) and A Spectacle of Herself (dir. Laura Murphy + Black Bark Film) engaged in a conversation with Common(ing) Thread as moderator.
Did you know when you first started out on the journey that you would end up with such intimate and personal works?
Laura
From our perspective, I’d say absolutely, because the film is research for my next live solo show. And the work I make often is really autobiographical. The challenge in the film for us is working out how to connect the autobiography to wider politics. But absolutely, we knew the work would be really personal and autobiographical. Do you have anything to add to that, Holly?
Holly
I think that your work is always very personal and autobiographical. It was interesting placing it in a camera lens as opposed to theatre, and also placing it within a wider context of what’s going on in the world. And in a very playful way, despite the fact it’s quite like, you know, big doomy subjects of the world.
Laura
Holly and I did some camera phone experiments for some funding that I’ve got the other day, and maybe this is really obvious, but it just made me realize how much Holly is the lens in A Spectacle of Herself, and Nicole as well, but because Holly literally holds the camera. I think it’s really obvious months down the line from making a film, but just how I can see so much of her in the film.
That’s also a connection with Julia’s work as well, because Julia was on the other side of the camera. Your personality is not always there in the film, but it’s still a very, very personal work. So what would you think about this choice for you?
Julia
Yeah, I actually have the same feeling. When I started the project I kind of wanted to distance myself from it, and I’m also not a filmmaker, so I just filmed the whole adventure, so to say, because it made sense. I was first making the video where I didn’t have any of myself in it and it was just about Shannon and Eleanor. But, once you view it, you really see that the person behind the lens has such a big influence in the whole movie. And it was obvious that there was a third person who wasn’t really there yet. And it’s also why I changed the edit to this film, because there was so much intimacy that couldn’t be seen in the first one, when it’s actually what the film is about. So, I can totally relate to that. And I’m also happy that I made it much more personal because of course it’s personal in that sense that when you feel intrigued by a person that it does say a lot about you too. In some way, it’s a reflection of yourself, you know?
Laura
I think also, just riffing off what Julia is saying —speaking collaboratively because Nicole’s not here, but it is important to bring her into this — so much of the film (like with my live work as well) is always a product of play and discussion. And that’s what collaboration is about, right? But what you see is always just what you’ve skimmed off the top. But it’s really the product of intertwining our brains in this really amazing, brilliant way. And it’s the same in the rehearsal room with my director. Often our best work is when we’re just playing, when we’re dicking about being assholes in the rehearsal room. And then we’ll think we’re hilarious and decide to use it. And I think it’s always really important to acknowledge (it seems really obvious because it’s credited) but who’s in the room because it changes the energy, it changes the aesthetics, it changes the politics. The final product.
Julia
Yeah, I can also imagine that Holly and Nicole can also relate to you in a way, that you represent also what they’re thinking. If you’re doing it together.
Laura
And direct. I’m the one on camera but Holly and Nicole are both directing me. So although it’s my body and my voice they’re the ones directing, shaping, curating, nudging.
Holly
Yeah, it’s interesting, the collaborative sense, because as a filmmaker I have worked with a few different performance artists or theater-based artists. I’m a documentary filmmaker, so I’m quite familiar with representing people’s stories; trying to represent them in a fair way, an authentic way. This was a very collaborative process, but a very interesting mix between making a performance work and making a film; of trying to stay true to the performative aspects of it in a theatre setting, but also playing with the tools of film. So it added this really interesting dynamic of playfulness.
The way we also tried to think about your works together was in the different ways you approach the concept of the spectacular or performative; the spectacularised body. We had this word in mind. A costumed body, or a person in a certain setting, is perceived differently than in another setting. I think you both counteract this through allowing us into these intimate spaces in different ways. So how do you both think this idea of the spectacular relates to your work?
Julia
I was thinking a lot about it because I think it could also lead to some kind of sensitive subject to call a body a costume. And that’s what I was, in the beginning, doubting about. But at the same time, it does make a lot of sense, also seeing how I view my own body and how I use it. And once you have less control over how your body in that sense takes control over where you are in your life and how people respond to you, you know how people react to you. It’s about how we got a body and have to find ways to make it our own, because we can’t always relate to what this body of ours conveys. This in the sense of the body as it is, but also in the context of “Dear Shannon”, to what it can become when a disease takes control over it, and how it might push your whole identity to a different path. Seeing identity as part of the connectedness of a group of people.
The people who could relate to you before might lose this feeling because they can’t (or don’t want to) anymore. On the other hand a whole new type of person might be drawn to you.
There’s a lot of control in using clothes as a form of expression but with your body it’s of course different. It’s not as obvious to “control” this. Like with Shannon, she changed her whole body and it’s only been 15 years or something since she had her breasts? I believe she also used it in her own ways to create a different life around her. Because of course it’s a whole different life than when she was perceived as a man. And I also find it interesting to see that in that way you also create your own safe space around yourself. Different people came to her which gives more openness to explore this side of yourself.
Laura
This is one of my favourite things to talk about because I write about it loads in my Ph.D. I’m really interested in this idea of the spectacularised body because I’m an aerialist. I feel like we could go down a whole tangent about ’what is performance?’ and ’what is performativity?’ and ’when are we performing and when are we not?’, and all the rest of it. But I think aerial is so interesting, and other super-virtuosic performance disciplines, because they’re so politically loaded. And in my Ph.D.—which is about aerial work and whether or not you could create performance work that used aerial work that was socially or politically critical—I wrote a lot about the connection between Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle. Capitalism as spectacle, and society as the spectacle, and how aerial work and other virtuosic (especially circus disciplines) fit into that. In terms of looking choreographically and also socially, like through history. How, for example, the circus industry has mirrored capitalist and technological developments for over the last hundred years. It is really bonkers. You look at when aviation began in the early 1900s and that pretty much around the same time, or just after, flying trapeze became the main focus in circus tents. And similarly with mirroring aesthetics like Hollywood glamour, again circus ripped off that. It’s interesting now as I think everything feels a little bit more segregated, because there’s so much more stuff, so much more media, we don’t see those connections quite so explicitly. Circus is really just looking at lots of people working very, very hard to compete with other things. And I’m interested in how that could be used constructively within performance work.
And then I guess in relation to autobiography, if done with thought and unpacking and rigour it can create a really interesting tension between the different facets of the human experience: how we operate in the world, how we perform, how we present, how we work hard. The idea of the spectacle of the woman, or the spectacle of the mentally well person. There’s loads of different spectacles to play with. The circus industry is changing a lot now, even contemporary circus, but it’s still not very much embedded in circus practice to really think about the aesthetics of the body on stage. The body is a tool to show a skill. You don’t look at the gender of the body or the skin colour of the body. You’re expected to look beyond that and just look at the skill, which obviously we don’t. So I think for me, that feels inherently political, which feeds into another question we were going to look at.
So that’s a question we asked you about whether you consider your work political and how that word sits in relation to your practice?
Laura
Everything is political if you examine it long enough, but I do actively try to engage with politics in my work. Maybe sometimes to my own detriment. But I think it’s about really addressing the meaning of what you’re doing. Yes, I do see my work as political, and I always strive to make my work political, but I also think everything is political. I was having this chat with my director a while ago. There’s a bit in my solo show where I talk about how many strap-on dildos I’ve got. We just tweaked it a little bit because we had a punchline for it that didn’t quite work for me. And we thought, let’s just state it and then move on. It doesn’t actually have to be funny (although it is quite funny because it’s silly, isn’t it?). But also there’s something very simply political about standing naked on stage, telling everyone how many sex toys I’ve got and then moving on to talk about something else. And that feels important to me.
I have these conversations often with artists here in the Netherlands who tell me ‘I don’t want to be called an activist’ or ‘I don’t want to say that my work is political’. I agree that it’s very difficult to define what is political and what is not, because in the end I find their works very political. I don’t mean it as an offence, I really see it as a value.
Laura
I don’t see being political as a bad thing. And I don’t think making political work means you have to make work that’s didactic or telling people what to do. There’s loads of different ways of being political. When I was younger, I did engage in a lot of activism and that’s something I’m proud of. I guess that thread still exists as a little undercurrent in my work. It’s much more subtle now. I used to make work about things like banking investment in the arms trade. I did this project once where I dressed up in a suit and made up a fake company. And I’d go into banks with a little recorder in my pocket and record all these conversations with bank managers where I’d try to get them to give me money so I could help them stop investing in the arms trade. It was all really silly but it was about corporate language and interestingly, actually back to spectacularness and virtuosity, I think really it’s about the virtuosity of language and how we use the virtuosity of language as a sort of tactic for distraction. And it’s interesting now that I work with circus which also uses virtuosity as a tactic of distraction.
Julia, do you have any thoughts on the political nature of your work?
Julia
No! I was thinking about it but I found it so difficult because I have never really perceived myself as political; I thought more about the social aspect. So I’m curious to hear why you consider it as political, because I can imagine there’s some extra load to it in that way that I might miss myself. Because for myself, it’s just an intimate portrait, you know?
Holly
I think it’s really interesting you say that actually, Julia, because, coming from a documentary background, the choice of what you put in front of the camera for me feels quite…loaded. Yeah, the word that you just used. Even just choosing to represent one type of person over another type of person. Or a person that presents in a certain way over someone who presents in more of a conventional way, or a ’normal’ way. An acceptable way, I guess, I mean in political terms. Always as a filmmaker, it feels quite pertinent and something that’s at the forefront of when I’m choosing subjects of the film, or I’m choosing stories to tell, or amplify. Going back to what you said earlier, it is a balance of ’what am I curious about?’, ’what am I interested in?’ and ’who am I compelled to be?’. Also ’who am I drawn to?’. I went to see Laura’s show Contra before we worked together and I knew I would love to work with Laura. It was an incredible show, and it spoke to me very intimately. And I think that is an interesting balance of the relationship or the intertwining of ‘who am I?’ and ‘what am I drawn to?’. Then combined with the act of representing either that interest, person or situation on film which, as with all art, is there to be experienced by lots of other people.
Similarly as Laura I do very much see myself as political. And I was an activist when I was younger. I’ve never shied away from that, and it’s always at the forefront of the way that I do my work because it is with quite a lot of vulnerable people, and in very intimate situations. So it’s definitely fed into my curiosity and my interest in the subjects I choose to work with.
Julia
I’m also very intrigued to find this out further. I think this is the first project where I put myself more to the front because before I shied away from it all the time. That’s also what I noticed when I did the first edit, I was literally hiding behind the camera when actually I took a big part in the whole film without even knowing it. And because I got this question the other day too about if I consider my work political…I think for me, I’m still in the process of seeing what that means to me, and how I deal with it.
I wanted to say, I think your work comes from such an honest position and place because you’re just filming what’s around you. You haven’t planned. Like you said, you weren’t a filmmaker and it just felt right for you to film. So I think there’s other aspects to the work that maybe we see afterwards when it becomes a film, that when you’re in the situation of filming that’s not at the front of your mind, but becomes incidental in a way. Like you were saying with your edits, when you made the choice to bring yourself into the film I think that adds…I don’t know, I just thought your film is really touching! And I think seeing you, the filmmaker within the film as well, allows us further into this space to experience.
In line with the open call, we wanted to ask you about your reflections on the use of costume and what costume means to you within the films?
Julia
Even though I’m not visually part of the film, I do kind of use Shannon as my costume. As the one behind the lens, it worked for me that you have some kind of representation of yourself that is different from the one that was in front of the lens. So I think that it’s also fascinating to think about how in that sense, you use all other people as your own costume when you can’t express yourself in that way.
And then, of course, there are the other aspects of how you use your body,using your body as a tool. Because I also think that Shannon did that, but then her world got taken away from her. But still people perceive it that way. You can’t take it away, the thing that your mind is in, your body. It does tell a lot about your place in society, whether you want it to or not.
That was definitely an aspect we were interested in for your film. In the other films we have in our screenings it’s more obvious, the reason why they talk about costume.
Laura
I always struggle with this question as I just like being naked! I think because I toured my first show so much and I’m naked most of the show, it’s become the way I really enjoy being read. I’m naked for some of A Spectacle of Herself. I think I need to find a better way of unpacking why I like being read as naked. I like the politicization of a naked female body and how you can play with the idea of it being sexy, or being funny, or being socially inappropriate, or all those other things in terms of making a spectacle.
In terms of the rest of the costumes…oh I forgot about the clown! I don’t think of myself as the clown. We wanted to create different worlds and play with this idea of being different kinds of alter egos, or different people. I also touch on that in the bath scene where I’m talking about words taking up space and asking if it makes me a bit like NASA and or Elon Musk if I am taking up space? I guess in a subtle way the costuming and this idea of playing with alter egos kind of asks those questions of what it means to adopt different personas. What do you think, Holly?
Holly
I love that you love being naked. I think that it’s really powerful. I like it in terms of the power relation between the audience on stage, or on camera. I like that you’re taking control. And I think that’s really compelling. We had these different characters in different worlds, like the astronaut, and the clown, and naked Laura, and then day-to-day Laura, or aerialist Laura. It’s really fun to play around with them visually. We did a lot of playing around in these three spotlights and bringing the different characters in, with their different feelings, and thinking how do they interact with each other? I didn’t really think about it until we are talking about now, but we never introduced the clown, it was always over there [gestures far away]. We never pulled him —them— into the mix. It was always quite separate. It was heavy and light at the same time, because it’s a clown, but talking about the demise of civilization. And then it’s only at the end that it’s kind of pulled together in that last shot.
Laura
Yeah, when I’m naked with the clown shoes. Well, we know I’m the clown, but it brings it back that everyone’s the clown. I’m sure we could find loads of meaning we didn’t even intend in there. I always think of the clown as a little bit like God, but not like God-God: godlike. I don’t know, I’m not explaining it very well! Does it make sense to be a little bit like God? He’s by himself and it’s a man’s voice saying ‘this is happening and it’s awful’. We’re thinking about how we can use the clown in the live show. We’re thinking about having a projector screen above the stage, and the clown looks down at the stage action. Which is kind of godlike. Or the observer. But then I am still dressed as a clown. It goes back to the performativity and virtuosity again there, because you’ve got the virtuosity of the lip syncing undermined by the failure of the clown. And there’s lots of thought at the moment about Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, being such a clown, but he’s also quite a dangerous man.
Yeah, it’s a tool to hide behind in a sense. As we come to an end, are there any closing remarks, or anything you’d like to say each other.
Laura
I just loved your film, Julia. I loved it so much actually I’m going to watch it again later.
Julia
I also really like yours. It’s so different from what I am normally surrounded with. I was very intrigued by it. Especially because I totally got your story. I really liked the clown idea actually, also as a God there’s a lot to think about in that sense. I’m intrigued!
Laura
It’s been brilliantly fascinating to look at the works side by side. Especially in terms of performativity, and vulnerability, and intimacy, and how those are built in different ways.
I have to say also for us it was a very interesting process to put them together. From the beginning we really liked your films but the connection wasn’t obvious for us. And then we read the synopsis again and realised these two really fit. It ends up being very interesting because the connection is not so obvious as it is for the other films, for instance. The different approaches together are powerful. Your films are such a different thing from anything I’ve ever seen.
Laura
I wanted to add one more thing actually, which was just saying your film, Julia, as a pairing together, made me see new things in ours.
Julia
I’m just interested to see yours again now actually. Because also in the beginning I was trying to figure out the link, but then it made sense when I read about it. But now I’ve got a better insight on it, I’m interested to see how I perceive it now, you know?
Laura
Yeah, now you’ve got the scoop!
Did you know when you first started out on the journey that you would end up with such intimate and personal works?
Laura
From our perspective, I’d say absolutely, because the film is research for my next live solo show. And the work I make often is really autobiographical. The challenge in the film for us is working out how to connect the autobiography to wider politics. But absolutely, we knew the work would be really personal and autobiographical. Do you have anything to add to that, Holly?
Holly
I think that your work is always very personal and autobiographical. It was interesting placing it in a camera lens as opposed to theatre, and also placing it within a wider context of what’s going on in the world. And in a very playful way, despite the fact it’s quite like, you know, big doomy subjects of the world.
Laura
Holly and I did some camera phone experiments for some funding that I’ve got the other day, and maybe this is really obvious, but it just made me realize how much Holly is the lens in A Spectacle of Herself, and Nicole as well, but because Holly literally holds the camera. I think it’s really obvious months down the line from making a film, but just how I can see so much of her in the film.
That’s also a connection with Julia’s work as well, because Julia was on the other side of the camera. Your personality is not always there in the film, but it’s still a very, very personal work. So what would you think about this choice for you?
Julia
Yeah, I actually have the same feeling. When I started the project I kind of wanted to distance myself from it, and I’m also not a filmmaker, so I just filmed the whole adventure, so to say, because it made sense. I was first making the video where I didn’t have any of myself in it and it was just about Shannon and Eleanor. But, once you view it, you really see that the person behind the lens has such a big influence in the whole movie. And it was obvious that there was a third person who wasn’t really there yet. And it’s also why I changed the edit to this film, because there was so much intimacy that couldn’t be seen in the first one, when it’s actually what the film is about. So, I can totally relate to that. And I’m also happy that I made it much more personal because of course it’s personal in that sense that when you feel intrigued by a person that it does say a lot about you too. In some way, it’s a reflection of yourself, you know?
Laura
I think also, just riffing off what Julia is saying —speaking collaboratively because Nicole’s not here, but it is important to bring her into this — so much of the film (like with my live work as well) is always a product of play and discussion. And that’s what collaboration is about, right? But what you see is always just what you’ve skimmed off the top. But it’s really the product of intertwining our brains in this really amazing, brilliant way. And it’s the same in the rehearsal room with my director. Often our best work is when we’re just playing, when we’re dicking about being assholes in the rehearsal room. And then we’ll think we’re hilarious and decide to use it. And I think it’s always really important to acknowledge (it seems really obvious because it’s credited) but who’s in the room because it changes the energy, it changes the aesthetics, it changes the politics. The final product.
Julia
Yeah, I can also imagine that Holly and Nicole can also relate to you in a way, that you represent also what they’re thinking. If you’re doing it together.
Laura
And direct. I’m the one on camera but Holly and Nicole are both directing me. So although it’s my body and my voice they’re the ones directing, shaping, curating, nudging.
Holly
Yeah, it’s interesting, the collaborative sense, because as a filmmaker I have worked with a few different performance artists or theater-based artists. I’m a documentary filmmaker, so I’m quite familiar with representing people’s stories; trying to represent them in a fair way, an authentic way. This was a very collaborative process, but a very interesting mix between making a performance work and making a film; of trying to stay true to the performative aspects of it in a theatre setting, but also playing with the tools of film. So it added this really interesting dynamic of playfulness.
The way we also tried to think about your works together was in the different ways you approach the concept of the spectacular or performative; the spectacularised body. We had this word in mind. A costumed body, or a person in a certain setting, is perceived differently than in another setting. I think you both counteract this through allowing us into these intimate spaces in different ways. So how do you both think this idea of the spectacular relates to your work?
Julia
I was thinking a lot about it because I think it could also lead to some kind of sensitive subject to call a body a costume. And that’s what I was, in the beginning, doubting about. But at the same time, it does make a lot of sense, also seeing how I view my own body and how I use it. And once you have less control over how your body in that sense takes control over where you are in your life and how people respond to you, you know how people react to you. It’s about how we got a body and have to find ways to make it our own, because we can’t always relate to what this body of ours conveys. This in the sense of the body as it is, but also in the context of “Dear Shannon”, to what it can become when a disease takes control over it, and how it might push your whole identity to a different path. Seeing identity as part of the connectedness of a group of people.
The people who could relate to you before might lose this feeling because they can’t (or don’t want to) anymore. On the other hand a whole new type of person might be drawn to you.
There’s a lot of control in using clothes as a form of expression but with your body it’s of course different. It’s not as obvious to “control” this. Like with Shannon, she changed her whole body and it’s only been 15 years or something since she had her breasts? I believe she also used it in her own ways to create a different life around her. Because of course it’s a whole different life than when she was perceived as a man. And I also find it interesting to see that in that way you also create your own safe space around yourself. Different people came to her which gives more openness to explore this side of yourself.
Laura
This is one of my favourite things to talk about because I write about it loads in my Ph.D. I’m really interested in this idea of the spectacularised body because I’m an aerialist. I feel like we could go down a whole tangent about ’what is performance?’ and ’what is performativity?’ and ’when are we performing and when are we not?’, and all the rest of it. But I think aerial is so interesting, and other super-virtuosic performance disciplines, because they’re so politically loaded. And in my Ph.D.—which is about aerial work and whether or not you could create performance work that used aerial work that was socially or politically critical—I wrote a lot about the connection between Guy Debord’s concept of the spectacle. Capitalism as spectacle, and society as the spectacle, and how aerial work and other virtuosic (especially circus disciplines) fit into that. In terms of looking choreographically and also socially, like through history. How, for example, the circus industry has mirrored capitalist and technological developments for over the last hundred years. It is really bonkers. You look at when aviation began in the early 1900s and that pretty much around the same time, or just after, flying trapeze became the main focus in circus tents. And similarly with mirroring aesthetics like Hollywood glamour, again circus ripped off that. It’s interesting now as I think everything feels a little bit more segregated, because there’s so much more stuff, so much more media, we don’t see those connections quite so explicitly. Circus is really just looking at lots of people working very, very hard to compete with other things. And I’m interested in how that could be used constructively within performance work.
And then I guess in relation to autobiography, if done with thought and unpacking and rigour it can create a really interesting tension between the different facets of the human experience: how we operate in the world, how we perform, how we present, how we work hard. The idea of the spectacle of the woman, or the spectacle of the mentally well person. There’s loads of different spectacles to play with. The circus industry is changing a lot now, even contemporary circus, but it’s still not very much embedded in circus practice to really think about the aesthetics of the body on stage. The body is a tool to show a skill. You don’t look at the gender of the body or the skin colour of the body. You’re expected to look beyond that and just look at the skill, which obviously we don’t. So I think for me, that feels inherently political, which feeds into another question we were going to look at.
So that’s a question we asked you about whether you consider your work political and how that word sits in relation to your practice?
Laura
Everything is political if you examine it long enough, but I do actively try to engage with politics in my work. Maybe sometimes to my own detriment. But I think it’s about really addressing the meaning of what you’re doing. Yes, I do see my work as political, and I always strive to make my work political, but I also think everything is political. I was having this chat with my director a while ago. There’s a bit in my solo show where I talk about how many strap-on dildos I’ve got. We just tweaked it a little bit because we had a punchline for it that didn’t quite work for me. And we thought, let’s just state it and then move on. It doesn’t actually have to be funny (although it is quite funny because it’s silly, isn’t it?). But also there’s something very simply political about standing naked on stage, telling everyone how many sex toys I’ve got and then moving on to talk about something else. And that feels important to me.
I have these conversations often with artists here in the Netherlands who tell me ‘I don’t want to be called an activist’ or ‘I don’t want to say that my work is political’. I agree that it’s very difficult to define what is political and what is not, because in the end I find their works very political. I don’t mean it as an offence, I really see it as a value.
Laura
I don’t see being political as a bad thing. And I don’t think making political work means you have to make work that’s didactic or telling people what to do. There’s loads of different ways of being political. When I was younger, I did engage in a lot of activism and that’s something I’m proud of. I guess that thread still exists as a little undercurrent in my work. It’s much more subtle now. I used to make work about things like banking investment in the arms trade. I did this project once where I dressed up in a suit and made up a fake company. And I’d go into banks with a little recorder in my pocket and record all these conversations with bank managers where I’d try to get them to give me money so I could help them stop investing in the arms trade. It was all really silly but it was about corporate language and interestingly, actually back to spectacularness and virtuosity, I think really it’s about the virtuosity of language and how we use the virtuosity of language as a sort of tactic for distraction. And it’s interesting now that I work with circus which also uses virtuosity as a tactic of distraction.
Julia, do you have any thoughts on the political nature of your work?
Julia
No! I was thinking about it but I found it so difficult because I have never really perceived myself as political; I thought more about the social aspect. So I’m curious to hear why you consider it as political, because I can imagine there’s some extra load to it in that way that I might miss myself. Because for myself, it’s just an intimate portrait, you know?
Holly
I think it’s really interesting you say that actually, Julia, because, coming from a documentary background, the choice of what you put in front of the camera for me feels quite…loaded. Yeah, the word that you just used. Even just choosing to represent one type of person over another type of person. Or a person that presents in a certain way over someone who presents in more of a conventional way, or a ’normal’ way. An acceptable way, I guess, I mean in political terms. Always as a filmmaker, it feels quite pertinent and something that’s at the forefront of when I’m choosing subjects of the film, or I’m choosing stories to tell, or amplify. Going back to what you said earlier, it is a balance of ’what am I curious about?’, ’what am I interested in?’ and ’who am I compelled to be?’. Also ’who am I drawn to?’. I went to see Laura’s show Contra before we worked together and I knew I would love to work with Laura. It was an incredible show, and it spoke to me very intimately. And I think that is an interesting balance of the relationship or the intertwining of ‘who am I?’ and ‘what am I drawn to?’. Then combined with the act of representing either that interest, person or situation on film which, as with all art, is there to be experienced by lots of other people.
Similarly as Laura I do very much see myself as political. And I was an activist when I was younger. I’ve never shied away from that, and it’s always at the forefront of the way that I do my work because it is with quite a lot of vulnerable people, and in very intimate situations. So it’s definitely fed into my curiosity and my interest in the subjects I choose to work with.
Julia
I’m also very intrigued to find this out further. I think this is the first project where I put myself more to the front because before I shied away from it all the time. That’s also what I noticed when I did the first edit, I was literally hiding behind the camera when actually I took a big part in the whole film without even knowing it. And because I got this question the other day too about if I consider my work political…I think for me, I’m still in the process of seeing what that means to me, and how I deal with it.
I wanted to say, I think your work comes from such an honest position and place because you’re just filming what’s around you. You haven’t planned. Like you said, you weren’t a filmmaker and it just felt right for you to film. So I think there’s other aspects to the work that maybe we see afterwards when it becomes a film, that when you’re in the situation of filming that’s not at the front of your mind, but becomes incidental in a way. Like you were saying with your edits, when you made the choice to bring yourself into the film I think that adds…I don’t know, I just thought your film is really touching! And I think seeing you, the filmmaker within the film as well, allows us further into this space to experience.
In line with the open call, we wanted to ask you about your reflections on the use of costume and what costume means to you within the films?
Julia
Even though I’m not visually part of the film, I do kind of use Shannon as my costume. As the one behind the lens, it worked for me that you have some kind of representation of yourself that is different from the one that was in front of the lens. So I think that it’s also fascinating to think about how in that sense, you use all other people as your own costume when you can’t express yourself in that way.
And then, of course, there are the other aspects of how you use your body,using your body as a tool. Because I also think that Shannon did that, but then her world got taken away from her. But still people perceive it that way. You can’t take it away, the thing that your mind is in, your body. It does tell a lot about your place in society, whether you want it to or not.
That was definitely an aspect we were interested in for your film. In the other films we have in our screenings it’s more obvious, the reason why they talk about costume.
Laura
I always struggle with this question as I just like being naked! I think because I toured my first show so much and I’m naked most of the show, it’s become the way I really enjoy being read. I’m naked for some of A Spectacle of Herself. I think I need to find a better way of unpacking why I like being read as naked. I like the politicization of a naked female body and how you can play with the idea of it being sexy, or being funny, or being socially inappropriate, or all those other things in terms of making a spectacle.
In terms of the rest of the costumes…oh I forgot about the clown! I don’t think of myself as the clown. We wanted to create different worlds and play with this idea of being different kinds of alter egos, or different people. I also touch on that in the bath scene where I’m talking about words taking up space and asking if it makes me a bit like NASA and or Elon Musk if I am taking up space? I guess in a subtle way the costuming and this idea of playing with alter egos kind of asks those questions of what it means to adopt different personas. What do you think, Holly?
Holly
I love that you love being naked. I think that it’s really powerful. I like it in terms of the power relation between the audience on stage, or on camera. I like that you’re taking control. And I think that’s really compelling. We had these different characters in different worlds, like the astronaut, and the clown, and naked Laura, and then day-to-day Laura, or aerialist Laura. It’s really fun to play around with them visually. We did a lot of playing around in these three spotlights and bringing the different characters in, with their different feelings, and thinking how do they interact with each other? I didn’t really think about it until we are talking about now, but we never introduced the clown, it was always over there [gestures far away]. We never pulled him —them— into the mix. It was always quite separate. It was heavy and light at the same time, because it’s a clown, but talking about the demise of civilization. And then it’s only at the end that it’s kind of pulled together in that last shot.
Laura
Yeah, when I’m naked with the clown shoes. Well, we know I’m the clown, but it brings it back that everyone’s the clown. I’m sure we could find loads of meaning we didn’t even intend in there. I always think of the clown as a little bit like God, but not like God-God: godlike. I don’t know, I’m not explaining it very well! Does it make sense to be a little bit like God? He’s by himself and it’s a man’s voice saying ‘this is happening and it’s awful’. We’re thinking about how we can use the clown in the live show. We’re thinking about having a projector screen above the stage, and the clown looks down at the stage action. Which is kind of godlike. Or the observer. But then I am still dressed as a clown. It goes back to the performativity and virtuosity again there, because you’ve got the virtuosity of the lip syncing undermined by the failure of the clown. And there’s lots of thought at the moment about Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister, being such a clown, but he’s also quite a dangerous man.
Yeah, it’s a tool to hide behind in a sense. As we come to an end, are there any closing remarks, or anything you’d like to say each other.
Laura
I just loved your film, Julia. I loved it so much actually I’m going to watch it again later.
Julia
I also really like yours. It’s so different from what I am normally surrounded with. I was very intrigued by it. Especially because I totally got your story. I really liked the clown idea actually, also as a God there’s a lot to think about in that sense. I’m intrigued!
Laura
It’s been brilliantly fascinating to look at the works side by side. Especially in terms of performativity, and vulnerability, and intimacy, and how those are built in different ways.
I have to say also for us it was a very interesting process to put them together. From the beginning we really liked your films but the connection wasn’t obvious for us. And then we read the synopsis again and realised these two really fit. It ends up being very interesting because the connection is not so obvious as it is for the other films, for instance. The different approaches together are powerful. Your films are such a different thing from anything I’ve ever seen.
Laura
I wanted to add one more thing actually, which was just saying your film, Julia, as a pairing together, made me see new things in ours.
Julia
I’m just interested to see yours again now actually. Because also in the beginning I was trying to figure out the link, but then it made sense when I read about it. But now I’ve got a better insight on it, I’m interested to see how I perceive it now, you know?
Laura
Yeah, now you’ve got the scoop!
In their works, Laura Murphy & Black Bark Film and Julia Heijligers question how the (costumed) body is perceived as a performing one, and in two different ways display the realness and sensitivity behind the costume and ‘performance’. Both posit the body in performance as one that can be socially delineated. However, by taking us into their space behind the presentation, each work counteracts this notion. Murphy & Black Bark Film, in A Spectacle of Herself, ‘investigate aerial work’s potential as a critically engaged practice and its use as a vehicle for social and political propaganda.’ Heijligers, in Dear Shannon, asks ‘what does it mean to be “the queen of the scene” when this is only recognised through a costumed body?’
Both films can be considered as alternative forms of documentary, and allow us an intimate insight into the thoughts and lives of their subjects. A Spectacle of Herself consists of an exceptionally performed sprawling monologue that takes us to unexpected relatable places, ’interrogating themes around virtuosity, autobiography, queer identity, and the spectacularised body’. Dear Shannon is a highly touching piece that allows us intimate snapshots into the emotive relationship of three people, that ‘shows what hides behind costume; vulnerability, a new kind of beauty and a body in distress.’
Both films can be considered as alternative forms of documentary, and allow us an intimate insight into the thoughts and lives of their subjects. A Spectacle of Herself consists of an exceptionally performed sprawling monologue that takes us to unexpected relatable places, ’interrogating themes around virtuosity, autobiography, queer identity, and the spectacularised body’. Dear Shannon is a highly touching piece that allows us intimate snapshots into the emotive relationship of three people, that ‘shows what hides behind costume; vulnerability, a new kind of beauty and a body in distress.’
Artwork by Daeun Lim
Curated by The New Flesh & First Cut
Curated by The New Flesh & First Cut