anima ¬ s

[jumpy]

http://invisible.gq.nu/arttm/indexa/htm
anima¬s Art [TM] Inverness
Tuesday - Saturday 11am - 6pm
18 January - 15 March 2003
e 5nlo_5j ¬ ka mn; ylka *je5 hgsurel ñ -TTosu f ï Ä ï u ‹ arin tr K mª

© Ken Davidson 2002

This project ("Anima¬s") consists of documentation of "live actions" which
(in the main) involved strangers donning a selection of animal disguises and
then being photographed. The majority of the photographs - of a current
total of more than 600 - were taken in Okayama, ("The Land of Sunshine"), a
city of around a million people near the 'Inland Sea' in Central Japan and
between Hiroshima and Osaka. The citizens and the city of Okayama are to be
thanked for their help and their participation. Images from the series were
first shown from material online in Tokyo in July 2002 and in Cologne at the
10th Performance Art Conference in October 2002.

In 1995 and 1996 I had researched and worked with Egyptian Middle Kingdom
iconography on an opera project and since the late 1980s had produced
theatre and mime in terms of 'performance art' and 'live art'. Between 1991
and 2001 I had also worked in the theatre with Finnegans Wake, a novel
famously obscure in the identities of its characters. By 1998, I was more
and more interested in creating performance work simply for myself or for
people I might meet casually. I called this 'invisible performance'. I have
previously exhibited visual documentation from live performances at
Clerkenwell Literary Festival and at London Foundry in 1999
(http://invisible.gq.nu/wake/hill/hill_montage.html), and at Streetworks
Festival, at StreetLevel Gallery in 1998.

Looking back, as a child (in the 1970s), I had invented my own
american-style superheroes and, for a time, swapped homemade comics with two
likeminded friends. My heroes had names like Duplicate Boy and Duplicate
Girl, the It, Powerboy, Captain Blood - names like that. There was a line
beyond which I longed reality to step. When I changed school, reality did
take that step. I was a hundred miles from anyone and anywhere I knew. At
the age of nine, to make my presence felt on my new surroundings, I now
wrote and acted out short plays for my new classmates. My plays were about a
boy with a secret identity ('the White Tiger'). He would use this identity
to stop 'terrorist' plots (the IRA) and 'evil' (the 'bomb'). Identity has
formed a strong theme of my work since.

As a direct predecessor to this series at Art [TM] - beyond three earlier
exhibitions of documentation, in the Autumn of 2000, I had staged a variety
of public performances with performers in various "party" masks, costumes,
and with props - toy guns, scythes, etc - for appearances at DOM Cultural
Centre in Moscow and on Russian TV Channel 1. I think there were about
thirty people involved but it is difficult to say as these numbers included
a brass band, a ballerina, 3 pianists, and others who participated on less
'official' levels. All the same, in giving an idea of the nature of that
time, on the final Sunday of our stay in Russia, I was arrested with a young
Moscow girl at 11 o'clock in the morning, both of us in "sheep" masks and
Hawaiian leis. I believe the policeman said "would you come with me, please.
I believe my captain would find this amusing." In any event, the events in
Moscow were the first time I used the "animal masks".

In the months following, a separate idea connected with what we staged in
Moscow proved unworkable and the performances at the DOM also saw many of my
original props and masks 'disappear' - many are now in the Foundry
Collection. I thus began to conceive of making a series of portraits with
the animal masks left and with a second 'stock' purchased during a visit to
London. I wanted to know what I might reveal if I could use the world, as it
were, as my "cast". I started with my family. When I saw how the photographs
appeared, I wanted to carry on. I recognised what I saw. I had carried that
idea in my head before. In the days following September 11, I found myself
with the opportunity to travel to Japan. I went. The girl in the sheep mask
was waiting for me. I saw the series chiefly as a sort of 'interactive
theatre' which could be made quickly and outside of traditional formal
contexts without the usual inconveniences of time and the procedures
associated with 'live' work.