It had originally been planned as a one-off live event, but that is probably unlikely to happen in the near future. The technology required to perfectly sync the playback of the left and right monitor 'panels' was surprisingly complex and not perfect, resulting in the 'master' playback glitching out on occasion. However, I managed to get some serviceable material to demonstrate the proof of concept:
The work is a perfomative reiteration of 3 images and sequences in the book 'A Pictorial History of Striptease' (R. Wortley, Octopus, London, 1976) which has had a major influence on my personal and creative development over four decades. The multiple iterations are tied in to one of the themes of Chapter 3 of the written thesis and the works of 'Shirley'.
My internality, like Shirley’s, shifted when I realised it wasn’t sufficient to be a passive watcher looking at people, like those in the book, doing these things. I wanted to be those people doing those things and being looked at – if only by me – therefore siting myself as both object and subject to the self. Like Shirley’s multiple reiterations, the striptease element is one I have to continually reworked and reinvented as it no longer really exists in the form it once did (1960s-1980s) – having morphed into neo-burlesque, which is a different artform that does not follow the ritualistic routines of the classic era [see Barthes' essay in 'Mythologies'], or degraded to pole dancing, which tends to de-emphasise the tease and tension/release elements in favour of the overly explicit and /or purely acrobatic. The three varied personae and costumes depicted in the originals are translated by me into reality, embodying and becoming what were once merely 'others' but have now been assimilated into my own personal mythology and sense of being and self. It therefore multiplies reflections of Self as Other and as subject and object, which also has relevance also to the webcam work I've been involved in since 2020.
The in-progress reflections and further documentation are here.
